Учения ретрита в молчании 3: Второе зрение (2001, Аризона), занятие 5

[Говорящий 1]
Holy Lama Khen Rinpoche, Great Lama, he used to call me up to his room and watch a TV show. And I think he liked the advertisements better than the shows. And there was one a while back.

There was a gruff old man who acted as a college professor in a TV show. And he was making an advertisement for an investment company. And he said, we make money the old way.

We earn it. And Rinpoche really loved that. I think it reminds me of the retreatants.

They have been here, I think, this week or next week, it's a year and a half. It's halfway. And they've earned what they've reached.

The first year was a lot like freshman year in college. Everything goes wrong. You're lonely for your family and your old friends.

You're confused. You don't know where the classes are held. And the teachers all seem mean.

The other students are all smarter. And it's hard, the first year. I think even the body needs time to adjust to such an extreme place.

And our houses, they weren't really finished when we came. And lots of strange creatures would crawl in. We didn't know how to close them up.

It got really, really cold. And obviously it's very hot. But this is an old idea in ancient times up to modern times.

It's called in Sanskrit tapas. Tapas is a beautiful word. It means to burn something hard.

Like if you have a clay pot and you put it in an oven and fire it for a whole day, that's like tapas. And then the pot comes out hard. Or if you take a sword, like the great Irish diamond mountain sword, and you put it in a hot fire, and the fire makes it shine and blaze with red hot heat.

And then afterwards it comes out hardened and tempered. I think even the word temper comes from the same word as tapas. So tapas means to burn yourself a little.

And afterwards you come out harder. In Tibetan, the translated word was katup. Ka means hard to do.

Tup means I can do it. And I think that each of the retreatants has shown in the best way by their actions that they got hard and tough. There's talk about making the places a little more comfortable.

Maybe putting in some real water. Maybe, you know, improvements. I say no.

I think it's good for people. And people throughout history have used tapas. I think that the people who come here for deep retreat, I'm not talking about short-term visitors, but the people who come for serious retreat should be serious.

And they should be tested and fired. I don't think you can sit with your mind all day and fight with it if you can't face a rattlesnake. And so the blessing of tapas has come to each of the retreatants.

One is very allergic to bees. One bee sting would create a mark on her arm for several years. So, of course, she's the only one who's been bitten by three or four.

She spent three days in like a delirium alone in her bed. This is tapas. You know another retreatant was bitten by a rattlesnake.

She was in the hospital. She came back. She just sat down and started to meditate.

We saw her several weeks later, and her eyes were still wandering around. And another retreatant lived in the city her whole life. She was nervous about the countryside, being alone in the dark much of the time.

So, of course, a big rattlesnake moved under her yurt the first week. He wouldn't leave. Everyone tried.

He would rattle every time she walked to remind her. But she toughed it out. A special man came and took the snake away.

Another retreatant sits on her porch at night watching the stars. It's the only 10 or 15-minute break of the day. And a huge form smashes through the gate.

A wolf, a coyote, has decided he likes to see her. And then he would come back, I think, for weeks. So everyone has been tested.

I think I can say every single one of us has had very serious emotional difficulties. We've invented a word for it. It's called mind crash.

And you just get sad, and you cry for a day, or you act crazy for a day, or you get angry for a day, or you just feel lost for a day. But now that freshman year is over, I think we feel like sophomores. Sophomores know everything.

And each of the retreatants has gotten really tough and hard. And there are beautiful things coming out of the tapas. One retreatant has done a beautiful, huge moment-by-moment description of all of the visualizations in our sadhana.

It's a very long sadhana and our daily prayer, meditation. And she has done a beautiful sequence script for each meditation, each detail. Another retreatant has done beautiful illustrations of many of the special breathing practices that we do.

And she has also done a beautiful book on the ancient practice of tormas, which are special offerings, how to make special offering cakes in the secret tradition. Another retreatant undertook to make a manual of all the problems that people might face in the future trying to do what we are trying to do. And then each retreatant contributed the things they have found to help.

And that retreatant also is undergoing very difficult, special practices called cindralangali. And we'll be doing some special practices more. Another retreatant has been drawn to do a study of the ancient Sanskrit books, which the practices we are learning have come from and has done very well.

Another retreatant has written up a beautiful course of study, like questions and answers about the entire practices of our sadhana. And these are all just spontaneous. They just are coming out from the tapas.

So I think we should keep this place tough. And it acts as a filter. People who can't take it won't stay.

And the ones who stay will be serious. I think someone expressed concern about the lack of any water at all under this earth. And I think it's great.

I think real meditators should live in a tiny place. They should work hard. They should live off a gallon of water a day for all their needs.

In Sara Monastery in Tibet, Holy Lama told me they were not allowed to have any covering on the windows. They were supposed to learn tapas in the cold. In the debate ground, they would debate for, oh, usually every other day is two sessions, six hours.

And then every other day is one session, three hours. And then one day off. It was so cold that they would bury themselves in the ground, up to their waist, to stay warm.

No monk was allowed to wear a cloak until you reached Senkyang Dhambo. This is, oh, 15 years. I don't think you know, and I don't think Ken Rinpoche has, Holy Lama has told many people, after the first 12 years of studying, it's a custom to go in retreat to prepare for the holy study of Madhyamika, emptiness, middle way.

Ken Rinpoche wholly went to a cave above Sara in the mountains. He got very ill. He was alone.

He almost passed. Even in India, in modern times, the monks at Sara and the other holy great monasteries sit in the sun for hour after hour. The debate ground used to be a big muddy field.

You came home covered with dirt. Your voice was gone. Your face was burnt.

Their hands are split open and bleeding. It used to be a problem. You would say, you know, could you slap your hands to the side?

The blood spurts in my eyes. And there was no water at Sara. There was a small stream of mud about 200 yards down the hill.

People tried to drink it. I couldn't even drink it. This is toughest.

Holy Lama Geshe Thubten Rinchen lived for 20 years in a hut with clay tiles broken on top. The students would sit in class and get soaked. Geshe-la would shift around his bed, which was his teaching throne, and try to avoid the water coming down.

Holy Lama Geshe Thubten, a great debater from Sara, would live in a stone hut in the mountains above Dharamsala, his holiness' place. He would travel to countries in the West. He would be offered thousands of dollars.

I saw him come to Sara. He was distinctive because he refused to change his robes, which had ripped off and covered only down to his knees. But he wouldn't spend a few dollars on himself.

He humbly offered all the money to feed the monks at Sara, and he went back to his stone hut, and he died there. I think it's an honor to follow their example. And if you have a group of people practicing tapas, and you have an equally dedicated group of people helping them, amazing things come out.

We have everything we need. We ask for a book. It just appears quickly.

We need to know something for our practice. The caretaker's gone. Look it up in the database of thousands of holy books still being input furiously due to efforts of kind people sitting here.

Holy wisdom being said for the future. Any time we need special food medicines, they just come immediately. Any time we have a problem, it's solved immediately.

We have holy, beautiful masters of different skills who come and teach us. We are so lucky. We have the best.

And so it's like we are the tapas, and you are the fuel. And it's a beautiful thing. I think we should try to keep this tradition of being hard-asses here.

It doesn't mean that we shouldn't make comfortable places for people who are not well or who can't physically do difficult things. It doesn't mean that we shouldn't have classes in comfortable places for new people or people who aren't used to difficulty. But the real serious ones should be joyful to carry on this tradition of tapas.

We aren't allowed by our vows to hurt our body. Our body is a very holy, precious temple. We have to take very good care of it.

But within those rules, we should be tough. We've been talking about how to see things that almost no one can see. Where do we really come from?

What are we supposed to do while we're here? What will happen to us later? We spoke about five stages that the mind goes through.

First, you don't believe you could see those three things. Then, later, you start to think maybe you could. After that, you get some training, and you start to believe it is possible.

Then you work on it, and the vision gets deeper and stronger. And then, finally, it opens into reality, direct perception. You can see exactly what you will evolve into in the final moments of limitless time you have lived.

And you know how long it will take to get there. And it's an unbelievable feeling. You could help so many people if you could impart to them the instructions for doing this.

People would be free from every fear. If you work hard, you can reach a point where you see every single place where beings live in this world and in countless other worlds. You can see every living being who lives on those worlds.

And you can know that you will be able to serve them and help them. All in a moment's time, your mind is freed from the limits, from the little box we stay in. Space has no meaning anymore.

You can see all things, all places, even before enlightenment. And you can see the holy beings who exist around us. You can meet, talk to them.

You can receive help from them. And most importantly, you can learn to see their core, the very inner essence of them, which is a higher truth. And that truth actually underlies all existence that we are aware of.

All these things which we can't see, you can learn to see. Today I would like to talk about the old way of seeing these things. I would like to talk about the traditional methods.

There are thousands of years old, and they haven't aged a day. You have to try to respect and learn them, because they work. To go from Viparyaya, the dark island, I don't believe I could see every living creature at once.

And to cross into the ocean of Vikalpa, which is, maybe I could do it. You need innocence. You have to be like a child again.

We get more and more hard and jaded and calcified as we get older. We don't have dreams or visions or faith that special things are possible. So you need a kind of innocence.

You have to be open to special ideas. You can't say, oh, I never heard of anyone seeing all the people who live, all the creatures who live. Be like a child, be open to the idea, hope.

You haven't lived that long. Time is endless. You haven't seen anything.

Every time I said to Holy Lama Khen Rinpoche, ah, wow, I never heard of that, he would scowl. He'd say, there's lots of things you haven't heard of. Then to cross the long plain of Agama and reach the foothills, you need a strong horse.

Agama means a belief that these holy things are possible and that you could do it because someone you totally believe in has sworn these things are possible. Perhaps they have even seen them themselves. That horse is learning.

We call tt. In Sanskrit, shruti. It means listening.

Then in the foothills to reach the high mountains, in the foothills of Anumana, you need a strong walking stick. Agavis are great. They're light and strong, the sticks that grow here on the plants.

That walking stick is called cinta. Cinta, it means contemplation. You think about what you heard.

In Tibetan, sampa. And then to get to the height of the mountains. The mountains are pratyaksha, direct perception.

Of what? Of what you will be. Direct.

See it direct. Of countless beings, see them all and know you will help them. You will be the one.

Direct contact with what you would call angels. Having them teach you and to see their essence. You need a rope to climb that mountain.

The rope is meditation. So in Tibetan and in our lineage for thousands of years, tsultsam gomsum. Tsultsam gomsum.

Listen, think about what you heard, and then meditate on it. This is how you can see the things that you didn't even believe you could see. I would like to talk about each of those steps today.

Then tomorrow explain why they work. Because we are blessed, we live in a very skeptical country. Buddha loved skeptical people.

Because once you show them good reasons, they will understand and they will move. Then people who just believe everything you say, skip from thing to thing, and end up with nothing. I imagine a bright sun over the island and the sea and the plain and the foothills on the mountain.

The sunlight covers all of them. This is the blessings of our teachers. This is the blessings of the holy beings who have brought this knowledge to us.

They are the light of this world. This world would be dark without them. They have carefully, gently, with great toughness, in their own lives for thousands of years, they have passed on these things from generation to generation.

And you can always ask them for help. Ishvarapanidharanabha. There are many ways to reach what you need, but there's always an alternate.

Just pray to the holy beings for help. They will help. So learn, think about what you learned, meditate, and always pray for the blessings of the holy, beautiful beings who surround us.

They will give it, the more you believe. Someone said they're going to hand out special strings today or tomorrow, I don't know. We call sung du.

Sung means protection. Du means a knotted string that you wear. It's supposed to protect you.

If you get in an accident, you wouldn't get hurt so much. It's a piece of string. It doesn't have any power at all.

The power comes from your faith. The power comes from your innocence and your hope. That protects you when you have a problem.

I don't mean psychologically. I mean reality shifts because of your faith. So for the first step of tesam gomsang, you need a good teacher.

Some teachers are good at explaining things. They know the path by hand. Some teachers just experience things and they know the path by foot.

I think it's good to have a teacher who has both. So first you need a good, authentic teacher who knows how to explain what they have taken the hard work, tapas, to actually experience. Another powerful aid is chilam kyi nyam dra.

We talked about it yesterday. It's the habit of stopping every 10, 20 minutes. We said you could make a secret sign that no one knows.

Maybe you pull your ear. Maybe you scratch your cheek. Maybe you just chew on your fingernails.

And then every time you do this secret sign, you believe that off to your right, behind a clear curtain, is all the living creatures in the whole universe who are hoping you will comfort them. And you imagine that you are touching them and comforting them. And then you go back to your conversation with your friend.

I'd like to do a chilam nyam dra now. We had an agreement last night. You knelt before your holy makeshift altar and you spoke out loud the secret sign.

I will make this sign. And then you people, suffering beings, beautiful living creatures, will know I'm trying hard. I'm coming soon.

So I'd like to ask everyone to close their eyes because the signs are secret. Then make your sign and do your hour-to-hour yoga. Okay, and no longer than that.

You could and you should do it constantly during the day, every time you remember. It's the first step in planting a powerful seed in your mind to be able to see those beings yourself. I think the last preliminary for learning is that it's very good to have a Dharma friend, a spiritual friend, or two or three.

I don't think you fully appreciate who Holy Lama Ken Rinpoche is, our root lama. The traditional enrollment of the Three Great Gelugpa monasteries in Tibet was about 20,000 monks. There were many more at the two Tantric colleges and many minor monasteries around Lhasa.

Every year at the Munlam Chenmo, there would be public examinations of candidates to become a geshe. There are many kinds of geshes. The highest rank is Lharambra.

There would be, oh, say, two Lharambras from each monastery of 5,000 to 8,000 monks. Then those eight or nine Lharambras would be taken into the Potala Palace, where no one went. They would be set before His Holiness, the Dalai Lama.

They would debate each other. One or two would be chosen. Angidambo.

Angidambo means highest rank. Ken Rinpoche, Holy Lama, he achieved the highest of those ranks in the year he was examined in the whole nation of Tibet. He was the greatest geshe.

Then he became the administrator of Gyumri Tantric College. There are only two Tantric colleges in Tibet. You have to be a Lharambra geshe even to ask to come.

You only can apply after 25 or 30 years of intense study and practice. He was the administrator. He was chosen as the head to be the abbot after the next abbot resigned.

One day I asked him, Rinpoche, how did you do it? He said, geshe jampa senge. I said, was he your teacher?

He said, no, he was my roommate. Well, who is he? Where is he now?

He's dead. Could you tell me about him? He was a bunpo.

He was a shaman. He was like a spiritual magician. He snuck into Sara and posing as a monk, he got ordained.

He was intending to swipe the knowledge of the Buddhists and bring it back to the shamans of the mountains. He never went home. Then he and Rinpoche ended up in the same room.

And night after night in the dark they would talk about the lessons and their practice. And they would question each other relentlessly. And after 20 years of this, they both got the highest rank in the same year.

Geshe Jampa Senge went to Italy later. He became the teacher of the great Giuseppe Tucci. And he passed away there.

But Rinpoche often said that the reason he went from a naughty young man to a holy lama was the exchange with a true friend. The bad friends take you to movies. The bad friends show you Time magazine.

Bad friends waste your time with worthless hours of talk. Dharma friends try to discuss the holy things that are happening to them and you. And between the two of you, you get stronger and stronger.

When you don't feel like meditating, they force you. When you want to eat all the cookies off the altar, they stop you. Unfortunately.

This is a real Dharma friend. And there's no better way to reach your goals than to find one or two. Then you have to start a study of the great books.

We live in a world full of books. There are thousands and thousands of books come out every year. We pick up a book and we read it through and we put it down.

And next year, no one buys it anymore. In the monastery, in the first 12 years, you read one book, Abhisamadhanakara by Maitreya, the future Buddha. It's only 50 pages long.

So you go through at an average of 4 pages per year. You debate it. You memorize it.

You tear it apart. For, oh, 12 hours a day, 15 hours a day. How could you do 4 pages a year like that?

These are not books. These are holy, sacred, secret messages sent to us by holy beings. And they have withstood the test of time.

Maybe every thousand years. One of these books is released to us. You have those books, frankly, due to the kindness only of Ken Rinpoche, and Geshe Thubten Rinchen, and other great lamas, and frankly, due to the kindness of holy lama John Stilwell, who is sitting here, you have all of them ready, the 18 courses, the 5 great books, extremely rare, precious in this planet.

You have all of them. And due to the efforts of Ken Rinpoche's holy students, lama Art, Dita Lali, Maria, her husband, these holy people who have worked their whole lives, you have everything. I think it's good to take a break, have a nice drink, smile at each other.

When Winston Law brings the gong, please come back. The next step of learning, in the old way, which is the only way, is to memorize the instructions. And in the old days, this was passed on from teacher to student orally.

The teacher would sing a few lines, and the student would repeat, and then slowly they would memorize the book to be taught before they were allowed to learn what it meant. This is still the tradition. Memorizing has got a bad name in the West.

It's considered uncreative. Modern methods of education refuse any value in it. It is said that children who just memorize things don't learn what it really means, and they can just end up being like parrots.

But this is a very wrong idea, especially for holy books. In the monastery, the first major book you would memorize is the book I mentioned by Lord Maitreya, the future Buddha. It was brought back to us by Lord Asanga, who met Maitreya in a Buddha paradise and was taught it by memory.

I can't even begin to explain what it feels like to have Maitreya, a totally compassionate, holy, enlightened, omniscient being whispering in your mind all day. It's unbelievable pleasure. It's unbelievable comfort.

Whenever you have a problem, whenever you're getting angry, whenever there's a difficult situation, Maitreya himself begins to whisper in your mind these holy lines. It's a companion for life. These are not books.

These are putting a holy being inside your head. And the strangest moments, they come out and speak to you. It's a blessing to memorize.

We were driving in a car, the retreatants and I, several years ago, through a forest near Flagstaff. One of the retreatants in the back spouted out, Chöngnyindey! Which is the Bhagavan.

It's in the beginning of the Heart Sutra. And we turned around. Why?

I don't know.

[Говорящий 2]
It came.

[Говорящий 1]
It's a blessing. Oh, you have to do it. It's wonderful.

Choose the book carefully. It's hard to memorize things. It takes a long time to memorize even a few minutes of a book.

I'll tell you the traditional ones. Maybe you'd like to try to start. First, a person would learn the simple mantras, Om Mani Padme Hum.

It was said in olden days there were people so thick that when they got to Padme Hum, they forgot Om Mani. And when they got Om Mani, they forgot Padme Hum. But with time, all of us can learn.

Then the longer mantras, Vajrasattva's mantras, for example. Then, traditionally, we would learn the prayers before our class, Sarsipukhi, and prayers like that, Sanghe Chodang, and the verse for dedicating goodness, Gewa Di, which comes from Arya Nagarjuna. Then a young boy in the monastery would learn the simple graces for offering the first part of our meals to holy beings.

After that, almost always, Ganden Lhagyama, the Thousand Angels of the Heaven of Bliss. It's a meditation text, how to prepare for meditation by praying to the incomparable Jetsun Kappa. After that, Holy Lama Khen Rinpoche would make us learn Lojong Jigme.

This is eight short verses written by Diamond Lion a thousand years ago to try to develop kindness. After that, one of the short lamrims, the instruction books for reaching enlightenment. There are only twelve to twenty verses.

I think a great one to start is Lamsa Namsum, the Three Principal Paths. It's in the book called Principal Teachings of Buddhism. Then, Yenden Shigyama, the Source of All My Good, which is in the book called Preparing for Tantra.

Or, if you are ambitious, Lamrim Dudu, The Song of My Spiritual Life by Jetsun Kappa. I think it's in the course on ethics. Then the Heart Sutra is traditionally learned after that.

And then, even a young child, seven to eight, nine years old, would begin learning the Ornament of Realizations by Maitreya. It's about fifty pages. It takes thirty minutes to recite.

Next would be the Madhyamika Avatara, Entering the Middle Way by Chandrakirti. This takes longer, maybe forty-five, fifty minutes. Next, the Abhidharma Kosha by Master Vasubandhu, The Treasure of Higher Knowledge.

It's over an hour, maybe hour fifteen minutes. Not too many people make it through all the five great books, frankly. Most of them forget them quickly after they reach America.

But next would be Vinaya Sutra on how to live a good life, Rules for Monks and Nuns. This takes close to two hours. And a few brave souls memorize the Pramanavarttika of Dharmakirti on logic and perception.

And that is difficult. It also takes over an hour. A very few, maybe two or three a year, of the best monks will then undertake to memorize the entire Trangay Lekshe Nyingbo.

This is two hundred and thirty pages long. And it explains the differences between the mind-only school and the middle-way school. Holy Lama Winston has kindly worked much of his life for the last few years to prepare transcripts and to organize and edit the teachings which we were so fortunate to receive from Geshe Thubten Rinchen La, Holy Lama, on this same book.

After that, if a student were fortunate enough to meet a tantric master, they would start to memorize their prayers for their secret meditations. These are sadhanas, dakye. And if you have been fortunate enough to have been granted one, which happens to about one person in a million, you should certainly try to memorize parts and then eventually the whole thing.

Imagine having an enlightened, holy, beautiful woman whispering in your ear all day long. Don't be a fool. Don't think those are long, boring prayers.

Keep it precious in your heart. Learn it. How?

Oh, I wanted to say, it doesn't have to be in Tibetan. The Tibetans don't memorize it in Sanskrit anymore, do they? But according to your capacity, if you can learn the Tibetan, and memorizing is a great way to learn, try.

If not, English is wonderful. If you're ambitious at the end of everything, go and memorize the Sanskrit versions. Some people have.

Also, it's a great help to others. When you teach, and all of you must teach, you can speak with authority. This is very important for people who want to learn holy knowledge from you.

They can be confident that you are not just making up something. They can be confident that they are receiving instructions that have been spoken by an enlightened being who has experienced everything. So, even for the sake of your disciples, your own students, start now.

I would like to talk a little bit about how to memorize. I think it's very important. No one taught me properly.

I sat on the edge of my bed with a book for years and struggled. Then I had the honor to stay at a small room on top of Sera Mae main temple. I saw a holy lama named Geshe Losang Pende in the dusk.

He was pacing on the roof from wall to wall from the parapet. He looked like those Olympic swimmers who swim fast to the wall and then dive down and kick and return. He had his rosary behind him and he was bent over and he was speeding towards the wall.

I almost yelled, Geshe-la, don't bang your head or fall off. Then he would suddenly turn around and come back. Then they taught me, walk.

Walk when you memorize. It's very powerful. It keeps your channels open.

It refreshes your mind. And walk in a circle in your yurt or between two places. But walk.

I find it very nice under trees to do. Then start small. Everybody who tries to start to memorize expects to recite the Lamrim Chenmo in a week.

It doesn't work that way. The great lamas, Jetsun Kappa, would memorize 10 or 20 pages a day their whole life. We can't do that.

Start with a small prayer, four lines, and try to make a goal, maybe a line every three or four days. Don't be discouraged. When you're first starting, this is very, very normal.

Everyone's like that. When you get to the second line, you'll forget the first line. It's okay.

Everyone is like that. The ability to memorize increases as you get more practice. You have to do it steadily every single day and only five or ten minutes.

Don't do more. You'll quit. Just five or ten minutes.

Take that one prayer, the short verse, and recite it three times. The first time, look at the book or the paper while you're walking. The second time, close the paper and go as far as you can without looking.

Then open it up and finish. Then go through one third time, one more time, looking at the paper three times, and then just stop. There's a secret to memorizing.

After about five minutes have passed and you've finished the three times through, then close the paper and just walk and think about the meaning of what you memorized. Go through one line on the first day and think carefully about the meaning. The next day, go to the second line and so on.

This prevents you from becoming one of those mechanical parrots which you do meet in the monastery who never understand what they've memorized. I'll tell you another common danger. People finally make it through their first little prayer and they're so excited that they've mastered it and they go to the second one right away.

Don't do that. After you've finished the whole book or prayer, then keep on it every day for half the time it took you to memorize it. If it took you eight months to memorize a small book, then spend four months more just getting used to it.

Don't jump to the next book right away. There's an instruction in your book. It says, sing along beads.

In the monastery, the young men go out in the evening to sing their memorizing. It's so beautiful. Those of you who went to Serra, I think you heard them.

One of the most lovely things is that being refugees, they come from all parts of Tibet and they sing in the song of their own region. It's very beautiful to hear. The Khambas will say, and then the Utsang will say, and the two Khambas, who no one can understand, they all have their own song.

It's very beautiful. We are the pioneers now in America. We can put them to our own songs.

I know one venerable chanting master who is doing this. I think it's wonderful. I'm doing mine to Neil Young.

Don't be shy. Don't be embarrassed. This is your right.

Find the most beautiful song you like and use it. I've heard such beautiful music. We were sent some beautiful CDs from a holy yoga center in New York.

Some kirtan singing. It's very beautiful. It would go very well with many of our prayers.

Other people sent us Qali music, the Islam holy singers. These are also very beautiful tunes. You can choose your own.

Don't be shy. You don't have to sound Tibetan. They don't sing in Sanskrit.

They use the old beautiful songs of their country. It's helpful to carry some beads. You can knock off a bead for every verse or every line.

If you tend to get lost, you can count the beads and see if there's still multiples of four. The text you have says, watch for holes. This has three meanings.

First is literal. If you're on the roof of a... If you're pacing on a roof, then be careful and don't step off the side.

You can get excited and step on a rattlesnake or something. With a little bit, you have to watch where you're going. The second meaning of watch for holes is after you've memorized something and then six months have passed, your mind tends to change it.

Like all the rock and roll songs I knew a century ago, and I sing them to myself silently sometimes. Sometimes I hear the original and the words have changed. So it's good to go back to the original at times, destroy them for future people.

The third meaning of watch for holes is very serious. The greatest memorizer in the time of Lord Buddha was Devadatta. His half-brother, who hated Lord Buddha and tried to compete with him in everything.

He could recite thousands and thousands of pages of scripture out of pride and out of a sense of competition. Envy. Wanting to appear knowledgeable more than his half-brother.

And all of us are susceptible to the same thing. All of us, without exception, are susceptible to pride about things we've learned. And so you have to be very careful.

This is a great danger. The more you learn, you have to be very, very careful. It will bring great suffering to you and others if you allow pride to affect your learning.

And it will, and we have to try to fight against it. Return at times means go back after you've memorized it every week and do the old things, otherwise they slip away. Use your time means...

Memorizing is a wonderful way to use your spare time, what I like to call, like, waste time. I used to drive Holy Lama to Washington, D.C., once a month. It's a four-, five-hour drive.

So why not recite the Abhisam Alankara five or six times on the way? And this is a very wonderful way to use your time. We are often made to wait for others.

We often have times during the day when we have to sit somewhere and use the time. You'll even see the holy young monks like Jampa, while as they cook or do other duties, they will sing their songs to themselves. It's a wonderful way to spend the time with meaning.

A word of warning, everything you memorize, you will forget. It happens to everyone. Lamas often say to you, Ah, I've forgotten more text than you've ever memorized.

Be graceful, it's part of the process. You can't recite 25 hours of text every day. The effect is the important thing.

It will stay in your mind, singing. The repercussions of it will sing in your consciousness for many lifetimes. I studied with a holy lama, Geshe Ngaung Kelnden, in New Jersey.

He lived in the Baksa refugee camp. He was from Inner Mongolia. He was studying in Tibet when it was invaded.

He reached India. He lived in the jungle there. Like half the monks there, he got tuberculosis.

He was cut open, they cut out a lung. He would walk around the temple in New Jersey, bent over on his side, wheezing and taking tiny steps. When he taught you, you had to wait a few minutes between each line.

He was on his deathbed. I saw him reading a book. I said, Geshe-la, what is it?

He said, I'm studying primary logic, the thing that 12, 15-year-old children study in the monastery. I couldn't believe it. I said, Geshe-la, at a time like this, why?

He said, nothing is lost. I'm putting it in my heart. And then he died.

So nothing is lost. Don't worry if you forget things. I know some of you are thinking, it's too late for me.

I'm already too old to do this sort of thing. It's never too late. That's a foolish idea.

Five or ten minutes a day to have the honor of Maitreya whispering to you. Then go for teachings on the book you've learned. In your text it says, I think, swim in the pool.

Teachings are like a huge ocean. You can never learn all of them. But the process of being exposed to them constantly will give you the ability to see the things we spoke about.

Sip the nectar four times. It means, when you hear a teaching once, then try to review it three times afterwards. This is an ancient custom.

Don't go back to the second day of teaching until you've gone over the first day three times. It doesn't have to be formal. It can be on your way home tonight in a car and you just decide to think about it for 20 minutes.

Then lock it in a crystal jar. It means, whatever you've learned in Tibet, learning, listening to a teaching was considered a grave action because after that you were responsible for handing it on to the next person. Many people would refuse to go to a teaching because they knew of this responsibility and it was too serious for them.

It's our responsibility to pass this light onto the next generation. Otherwise, everything will become dark in this world. People will believe you can't see what's going to happen after you die.

People will believe your mind can't see every world and every human animal living there. People will believe there are no angels around us. The world will be thrown into a very terrible darkness.

Our country is close to that. The people here have worked very hard. I've seen beautiful records of teachings given in the last few years, put out by the usual anonymous do-gooders who refuse to put their names on things.

Many of the people here worked very hard and we are very grateful. For example, we receive books of Holy Lama Khen Rinpoche's teachings which have been prepared by his devout holy students, disciples, who are great lamas themselves. We have received holy books of Holy Lama Suparinpoche's teachings.

They are like a beautiful meal for us during our break times. The people in charge of ACI have been kind enough to send us an expensive complete set of all the tapes and texts. We use them constantly during our break months.

This is a very kind thing to do for us and for others. There are other people here who are making beautiful transcriptions of secret teachings constantly. So keep it for others.

And cherish the flower. Every time you get a chance to thank someone, a teacher or one of the holy disciples who have recorded things for us, pass them to us, then thank them and be joyful. It's so rare.

So often, I know because I have this problem, we tend to be competitive with other traditions or other teachers or other groups. But if we can cherish each tradition and learn from it, it's a precious thing. There's too little holy learning in this country.

Every little piece is precious. Every little kind, holy thing that someone can try to do is another step for us all. And if you have time, you should learn those.

If you are attracted to the Christian path, then you should memorize the words of Jesus. If you are attracted to the holy paths of ancient India, you should memorize holy books, the Bhagavad Gita and Yoga Sutras. If you are attracted to the Judaic path, then you should memorize the great books of the ancient prophets.

Every kind thing that happens is Sangeki, Chinle Yimbi, Kebe Eche. It's an activity of equally enlightened beings in this world. We are very lucky every time someone turns any wheel of any Dharma.

There's so little. The second stage after learning is contemplation. This is after you've taken a teaching, you go home and you think about it.

In silence, you mull it over to yourself. Then after that, when you are with others, try to turn the conversation to holy talk. It's hard.

There's a great wave of useless talk sloshing from coast to coast constantly. It's hard to fight against it. But as you sit with others, then question each other.

There's a great danger, I know, because I've wasted many years of my precious life being jealous or competitive with my fellow holy students. But if you can break through that, then you drop your pride and your envy and you say to someone in a car, What do you think about that Pratyaksha thing? And that Agama?

Seems to me it's just another kind of anumana. And start a conversation like that. When I first got to New Jersey, there were 10 refugee Mongolian monks and Khenpo Rinpoche and myself and Holy Lama Art.

And I remember they would assemble for prayers. We would drink tea together at their table and try to listen to their holy talk. And there was a great Sarambha from Kalmykia, the last of the great Kalmyk Lamas.

His name was Geshe Ngawangyampa. He was blind. He had had a cataract operation.

They told him to leave the bandages on for four or five days. He tore them off and started reading his scriptures. Then he went blind.

But he was a great master. Then there was Geshe Kangbin and Sarambha Geshe Khenpo Rinpoche. And Geshe Kangbin was funny.

He would sit there at tea and very humbly ask one of the great Geshes a question. We couldn't figure it out. We knew he knew the answer already.

But he just wanted to hear it said again. It takes great humility to ask a question of your fellow students. It's a good practice.

You might even learn something new. So get over these demons of laziness and pride and envy and question each other. Like the old Socrates, the old Greeks.

And debate. Debate is a very beautiful custom. I'm not talking about two politicians getting up and exchanging unkind remarks.

In the old days, ever since thousands of years ago, a great wise man would sit together and they would question each other. In ancient India, it was called satsang. The custom continues to today, even with great American and other Western teachers of ancient Indian traditions.

It's a beautiful thing to see. And you ask questions. And you sit quietly in the evening and enjoy holy talk.

In Tibet and in ancient India, this custom became formalized into great formal debates. You've seen them. You've seen pictures.

Some of you have been to Sara. And it has become a very exciting exploration. People purposely sit together.

They gather in a group of maybe 10 or 15 fellow students. One student sits at the head of the circle. Another student or two jumps up and races towards them and screams a question at the top of their lungs.

And claps their hands and dances in a circle. This is a beautiful, exciting way to learn. In a single evening, you can learn more than months of classes.

And the great debaters always explore the questions they are not sure of. The wimpy debaters explore the questions they figured out last year because they don't want to appear to not understand something. The great debaters bring up the questions they don't know about.

It can be a very exciting, beautiful process. I think we should have it here, or wherever we end up. Before you go into a debate, you have to prepare your weapons.

There's a beautiful story in Tibet. A guy was on his way to the front lines to fight a battle. There's a joke in Tibet.

Oh, a major battle took place in Kham yesterday. Three people got hurt. Anyway, he stopped at a farmhouse on the way to the front lines for the night.

In Tibet, it was a custom to put up any traveler for free and feed them. He went to the outhouse with his rifle, and he left it there. Next day, he walked off to the front lines.

He ran into the enemy. He reached for his rifle, and he realized it was gone in the outhouse. And so he crapped in his pants out of fear.

And he asked the enemy if they could wait while he went and got his gun. So it means he left his gun where you shoot your poop. And he left his poop where you should shoot your gun.

And in Tibet, it means you walk into a debate without being ready. You have to prepare two things. In the text, it says jampa.

Many of you know the greatest lama in America. He's the anonymous cook in New Jersey, pretending to be a little normal guy. The perfect service of his lama, perfect heart.

His last name is Lung Rik. Lung means scripture, agama. Rik means rikpa, logic.

When you enter a debate, you have to be armed with what you've memorized, because no papers are allowed in the debate ground. And you have to have logic. You have to be able to follow a logical flow.

Logic has a bad name in America. Logic is boring. Logic is syllogisms.

People say logic doesn't work to get you to mystical goals. They use logic to prove how logic is not necessary. Without being aware of it.

We use logic constantly. Driving a car, walking from the parking lot here. When you frame a sentence, you use countless shades of logic to order the words properly.

Speech, thinking, is logic itself. It's a path to mystical experiences. So, when you go into a debate, you have to be logical.

If in a debate you're not logical, even since ancient times, they would just throw you out. You follow a path of reasoning. You reach the truth.

Your feeling when you debate with your fellows has to be we are searching for the truth. People came with me to the Geshe examinations. They would watch from behind a wall as I was grilled.

And then afterwards, they would race up and say, Who won? And the Tibetans couldn't understand the question. It's not a point.

They don't even think about it. It's an exploration for the truth. So, if you have a good heart, if you try hard, if you sit down with your fellow Dharma students and reach over the wall of envy and pride, you will both come to the truth.

Oftentimes, young debaters will debate a question whole night. And then, maybe a week later, you find the answer in a book that you all came up with already. This is true exploration.

This is how to get true knowledge. The second meaning of jampa, his name means love, maitri. You can't be a successful debater.

You can't explore the real meaning of truth if you don't have love. In my class in Sara, we started with 60 monks. I was awed at the beginning.

They were 15, 20 years younger than me. And they were so good. And they had memorized everything.

And they could debate everything. I could hardly follow them the first few years. Some seemed very prideful.

Some seemed very gentle. At the end of the course, almost 20 years later, there were only three monks left. It was all the gentle ones.

It was all the kind ones. So, when you debate, go around the table, see who's lost. See who's afraid to speak.

See who's not confident. And purposely help them. Engage them.

Find out what they know. Find out what they can contribute. Don't ignore them.

Don't leave them. And this love is what will make you successful in finding truth. That's why the text says, have Jampa hold your gun.

We have a tiny bit more to go. I think you need some more refreshments. I'm sorry it's long.

Please have something to drink or snack. After that, it's very short. I wanted to emphasize, when I say logic, I mean questioning, whether it's in your own mind or sitting around with coffee and a few good Dharma friends and just asking each other the questions that you're wondering about.

It's a beautiful way to use the faculty of speech. Then you come to some sort of conclusions. For example, after tomorrow's talk, I think you will have all the information you need to actually see those things we spoke about, what's going to happen to you in the very end of things.

You'll come to be able to see all the beings there are, all their worlds, in a single moment. You'll make contact and be taken care of by holy beings like angels. You will see their essence.

These things happen in a state of deep meditation. All the learning, all the memorizing, all the classes, all the teachings, all the questioning is only preparation. The real thing takes place in deep meditation.

So I think it's important to say that for every hour you study or learn or memorize or debate or question or contemplate, you must spend one hour in deep meditation. It's a rule of thumb. And I know, on behalf of all the retreatants, we beg you not to abuse this guideline.

And especially not for us. We don't want that karma. You take care of your meditations and your retreats.

We can take a little less of whatever we need. You make sure you use your time in the right priority. It's a very holy deed to serve people in retreat.

But not if you're not meditating yourself. We hear rumors of many people in retreat. It's a great joy for us.

People who didn't have time before are making time. They are doing one-month retreats. We're very happy when we hear.

We feel you in retreat. We don't have special powers. I don't.

I should say, I don't claim on behalf of all of us to be able to read anyone's minds or anything like that. But I can say that we sense you in retreat, even in the East Coast. We are very happy.

We have six senses by which we can experience direct perception of things. We can see beautiful things. We can hear directly.

We can smell directly the occasional pizza. That's not a hint. We can taste.

We feel the touch of the air and clothing. And we have a capacity of direct mental perception. When you remember an object, you're having a direct perception in the higher schools.

When you hear yourself talking to yourself in your mind, you're having a direct perception. The mind of the moment before is serving up something for the mind of the present moment to hear. These are direct perceptions.

There's a seventh direct perception. It is taught in the scriptures on perception and logic. It's called Nel-Dzor Mun-Sum.

Nel-Dzor means yoga. Mun-Sum means direct perception. It means that in a state of deep meditation, a person who has been trained properly by study, by thinking, by questioning, and by having a good heart and thinking of all the suffering they can help stamp out, then in an incredible moment of deep meditation, you can directly see what you will become in the end.

The savior of countless living creatures in our world. Each of you will become. You don't have to take my word for it.

You can see it. Imagine what it feels like to look into the future and see yourself helping millions of living creatures. Imagine how it feels.

You will. You can see it. Imagine what it feels like to look upon countless planets, see countless precious, holy, suffering little ones, and know you will help them all in a few minutes' time.

Imagine what it's like to make your first contact with an angel and speak with them. Imagine what it's like to see the real reality that lies above this one. You can do it.

You have to meditate. After all the other preparation, you are ready. You have something to meditate about.

Don't be a fool and sit down without it ready. You need to prepare for the meditation. You need to have something to meditate on.

That was the purpose of learning and thinking. Years of work. Then sit down.

That's the most important instruction there is. Sit still. It's so hard for us.

Find a silent place. This place is hot. This place is freezing.

This place is dangerous with snakes and other animals. This place is lonely. But this place is quiet.

It's important to, if you can, get out of the cities, get away from the towns, if you really want to meditate deeply. The cars make subtle vibrations throughout the earth. The radios and televisions send vibrations through your body.

The emotions of a million people or more wash over you. And the noises of your house, the electrical appliances, the people talking. I'm not saying you can't see these things in your own home.

You can. That's true. You will.

You can. But the quieter place you can find, the better your chances. Then your body has to be silent.

It takes actually a great deal of physical strength to sit quietly for even half an hour. It looks like it doesn't take any strength. It takes a lot of strength of your body to sit still and straight for even half an hour.

If your backbone and the channels which run close to it are not aligned and straight, you can't meditate properly. You certainly can't undertake the more advanced practices. And so it's very important to keep your body healthy and to exercise it wisely without vanity.

I think yoga is a very ancient way and a good way to meditate, the asana exercises. And these have a great effect on your channels. We have been very honored as retreatants to have several very amazing and qualified teachers to help us.

And thirdly, your mind must be silent. After a year and a half of silence, we are all very sensitive. We know each bird's song.

We sing them to each other and laugh. But there's this tremendous noise of our own minds. Talking all day, it almost makes you crazy.

It's hard to stop. The text says, tat-stha, tad-anjana-stha, samapatti. Tat-stha means keep the mind fixed on the object.

Fixation is the first goal. It's done by stopping the mind from wandering away. The greatest single method for this is sadness.

Even if you find yourself distracted or unable to get quiet driving around, then think about all of us. We are all half dead. We are all dying.

We are all scratching at the earth as the huge snake devours us. All our efforts of our whole lifetimes will be erased in a few years after we die. Our situation is hopeless.

Out of millions and millions of people, we have a tiny chance of success to escape. It's a very serious and sad world. It will immediately bring your mind down.

Tat-stha. Tad-anjana-stha means you need clarity. Clarity doesn't mean the clearness of the object.

It means the sharpness and brightness of your own mind, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, the way you feel when you're reading a great book or listening to Neil Young. The mind is bright. The mind is engaged.

The mind is into it. Maybe you're even slobbering. That's tad-anjana-stha.

It's the opposite of ching-wa. Ching-wa means the mind gets dull. The mind zones out.

The mind spaces out. These are the two great extremes which destroy meditation. Either you're thinking about lunch, wandering, or you're spaced out.

The mind is dull. You ate too much. How many meditation sessions have I given up before they started by eating the wrong things before or not sleeping well?

Samapatti means you reach a state of balance. In Tibetan, it's called nyomba-jukpa. Nyomba means balance.

Jukpa means you reach the state in your meditation. This is how to make your mind silent. You don't need a lot of instructions.

If the mind is wandering, think of all of us. Who will die next? If the mind is zoned out, think of how lucky we are, one in a million to have a little chance.

We are like the little rabbit that was saved. Become a master not only of the subject of your meditation. Pay attention to the method.

Master the process. Become a serious, hard-ass, tapas-oriented meditator. Learn all the details of meditation.

You have the Course 3 from Holy Kamalashila. Bhavanakrama, the stages of meditation. And you have the unbelievable chart by the Teacher of His Holiness, the incomparable Chidam Rinpoche.

Study it. Learn it. Learn the preliminaries and learn the problems that will come up in meditation.

One of the teachers who comes in to help us keep our bodies working and keep our channels open blurted out, Oh, I saw such and such a caretaker teaching this unbelievable course on meditation, the five problems, the eight antidotes. We were so happy to hear it. Become a master not only of the object but pay attention to the method of meditating and then constantly improve it.

Don't be lazy. Don't just flop down and try to wander. I have found it useful once a week on Monday I think of it like a high jumper.

Raise the bar. Once a week, raise the bar. Make your goal a little higher.

It means if you are only able to sit quietly for, oh, 15 minutes without moving, then on Monday, every Monday, raise the bar. How much? It's not what you expect.

It's harder than you think. Raise it by one minute. I'm not kidding.

One minute a week is a wonderful achievement. But be steady. In one year, you will be totally quiet, silent, unmoving for an hour.

It's beautiful. It's enough. One year is not much time to spend for that.

Don't do more. I'm on 10th week. One of your children will get sick.

There will be a disaster with the water tank. One of those dumb retreatants will get bitten again. And then you'll fall back.

You'll get into a rhythm. And then things happen. Face it.

It happens all the time. You go 10 weeks. You're up to 11 minutes without moving.

I know some retreatants who track their mental not moving. I got 12 minutes in on the object today. Man!

It's a lot. So things will happen. Your rhythm, your progress will be stopped.

You'll drop. Then circle back like an army in retreat. And come back to the front.

And start again. If you were up to 15 minutes without moving an eyelash and you got interrupted for a week by one of those world disasters, then come back at 12 minutes. And start working up again.

But be relentless. What I'm trying to say is in memorizing, in study, in debating, in meditation, you're going to have obstacles. You will drop.

Something will happen. All the progress you made for a few weeks will be stopped. Then just come back gracefully, patiently, persistently.

And start again. Oh, 5, 10 minutes less than before. And within a year or two you'll be a great meditator.

It's only in the deepest meditation that you can get a direct experience. It's like having an eye in your own heart. And the eye suddenly opens.

And without moving, with your physical eyes closed, you see the future. You see what you will be. It's a...

You can't describe how it feels. And how many people you can help. And I want to emphasize as we stop that it's impossible if you don't do it for others.

It will never happen. You have to look at the people around you. Stop worrying about yourself.

Everything will be taken care of if you take care of others. They are dying. Almost no one in this country knows what's going on with themselves.

They are in a hopeless state. They are worse than the baby, the child rabbit. They can't even cry out.

There's no one to cry to. It's an unspoken truth of our lives. We are just headed for death.

It's obvious all the great works of people are nothing more than a baby rabbit scratching in the dirt. They disappear in about the same speed. You can help them.

You have to help them. Each person becomes the savior of their own world. It's a wonderful idea.

It's true. Each of you will become the one who saves the other people here. It's a trick of emptiness.

That's all. Tonight, I'll add something to you. Secret signs.

There's a certain stage called Chugyungi Tingzin. Chugyungi Tingzin. In deep meditation, before you see the other things, you are able to travel back in time.

It's not like the other things I spoke about. It's a different process. You follow back the seeds in your mind.

You look at one seed in your mind and you follow the thread back to the seed that caused that one. And then you follow that seed back. You follow your samskaras, your bhaktyaks back.

When did I first have this thought about this thing? What planted that thought five years before that? What came before?

How did I have that thought? What is the first time in my life I can remember having a thought like this? You can follow the bhaktyaks back only in deep meditation.

It's not a direct perception like those other ones, but you can learn to follow back the threads. Chugyun means the threads of what you've known and learned. Tingzin means samadhi, deep concentration.

If you follow back far enough, you will come across the holy teacher who taught you before you came to this world. It's impossible that you or I got this far without the direct guidance of great gurus and lamas before. It could have been on other worlds.

It could be that they didn't look anything like Tibetan or Indian teachers of this time or this world. They could have been totally different. There are many worlds where the great teachers are all women of knowledge.

It could have been someone like that. But you can go back and find them and see them. They can certainly see you.

So it's a very holy practice to do a Chudlam Kinnanzha with them. I suggest tonight you create a second secret sign. You speak it out loud.

They don't need the speaking out loud. It's for us. When I put my hand on my shoulder and reach back behind to the past, or when I rub my neck as if I was trying to do a certain yoga exercise and messed it up again, then it's a sign I'm thinking of you, my sweet, holy, beautiful teacher who helped me come to this world.

Please touch me sometime. Come and touch my hand. Imagine their hand is close.

They're very happy you're asking. Finally, you recognize that they existed. And they touch your hand.

It's a wonderful yoga. It's a wonderful secret practice. So announce your sign tonight kneeling before your altar.

And then you now have the two yogas. Practice them all day, every 10-15 minutes. Just reach up to your shoulder.

Imagine this holy lama, maybe a woman touching your hand. And then bring it back to the present. This plants a seed to see them again.