Махамудра: два мира бок о бок (1998, Сан-Франциско), занятие 1

[Говорящий 1]
Because it's really, you know, we go many places to teach, and this is like the biggest pleasure to teach here. And I'm not just a...pele gyep means to flatter somebody, and it's not just pele gyep, okay. Tonight we're going to talk about Mahamudra.

I studied with my Lama for 25 years, I lived with him, he's the abbot of Sara, was the abbot of Sara, and he was the assistant abbot of the Tantric College in Hassa in 1958, which is a very high position because then you become the head of Buddhism in Tibet after that, and you hold the throne of Jetsun Kappa. And then he says they started shelling his monastery, he was in the bathroom at the time, and he ran to this mountain next to his monastery, they just flattened his monastery, they killed I think more than 9,000 monks, didn't make it out, and all he had was this towel in his hand, you know, like he forgot to drop the towel, and that's all he took to India was his towel and his rosary, you know. So I figured, since he was such a big Tantric master, we were looking forward to learning Mahamudra for him, and for years we waited, and then finally one day he said, okay, now you're ready to learn Mahamudra.

And he taught it to us from a text by the first Panchen Lama. And I don't know about you, but I always heard about Mahamudra, and I'm from the Dalai Lama's lineage, there's four great traditions in Tibet, we're called Gelugpa, or the Dalai Lama's lineage, and we don't do, our Mahamudra is very, is like secret, and it's not very much advertised. And so if you're just starting out in this tradition, you sort of have an inferiority complex, because all the other traditions are talking about Mahamudra all the time, and then you start to feel like maybe we don't have a Mahamudra, and when you go to talk with students from other traditions, you feel bad because you can't talk about Mahamudra together.

And, you know, and my Lama explained to me that it's like, in our tradition it's a very private thing, and we keep it privately, and we don't talk too much about it, but when we teach it, we teach it according to the first Panchen Lama. So this is really the first time I think my students have studied it with me. First Panchen Lama was born in, they don't know exactly his birth year, it's probably 1565, maybe 1567, they're not sure.

He died in 1662. The first Lama of any great lineage is usually one of the best, like the first Dalai Lama. And it's only long afterwards that they decide that you are the first Panchen Lama.

You know, like around the third, they'll usually decide that the first one was the first, and the Dalai Lamas are that way too. And he was a really great scholar. I think his, we have a computer project.

We are inputting his text. We finished his text. He wrote 5,200 pages.

He wrote over 250 different books in his lifetime. And I think the neat thing about him is he would often write in poetry. So he would present incredible philosophical texts, and on top of that it would be in really exquisite poetry.

So I look forward to the time when the younger students here start translating that poetry. It's really beautiful. I think my favorite book by him is called A Debate Between Ignorance and Wisdom.

And, you know, you have this picture of the devil and the angel over this guy's head fighting with each other for the guy's mind, and it's exactly the same thing. And it's an exquisite text about emptiness and all the mistakes you can make about understanding emptiness. And someday someone should translate that.

Well, our Brazilian poet has left us, so we're waiting for somebody else to show up. Anyway, this text is six pages long. It's in poetry and explains the Mahamudra.

Then I think he decided that people couldn't appreciate the poetry, and he wrote about a 30-page auto-commentary. So he wrote his own explanation of his own poetry. And that's what you have in your hands.

I don't know if you've got it yet. No. Okay, during the break, we'll take a break, and then during the break you can get his text.

We translated a few pages of it that I felt were important for people, and something to take home and read about it. I'd like to talk about Mahamudra first to explain where it stands in the traditions of Tibet, in the four traditions of the great traditions of Tibet. And then secondly, what does the word Mahamudra mean?

You know, it sounds like a very... I mean, even if you never heard of Buddhism, when you hear Mahamudra, it sounds like something important. And I think we'd like to talk about the meaning of the word.

You know, what does Maha mean? What does Mudra mean? And then finally, after taking a break, we'll come back and I'll show you a typical Mahamudra practice, or a typical Mahamudra meditation.

So we'll go like that. I had to write this part down. He goes through, the First Panchen Lama, in his poetry, goes through every single Mahamudra form in Tibet.

And I thought you might like to know some of them, okay? And I'm going to write them on the board for the benefit of some of the students who are learning Tibetan. First Dalai Lama said, if you write some foreign language on the board, everyone thinks you're smart and they believe what you say.

So, okay. I like people to repeat the Tibetan, okay? I have lots of students in New York, like hundreds, and most of them thought they would never learn Tibetan, and most of them are learning Tibetan, or I'd say maybe half.

So it puts a seed in your heart, and then sooner or later, you start to see it, and it starts to come in your mind automatically, okay? So say, Tlenchik. Louder.

Tlenchik. Kejor. Tlenchik.

Kejor. Okay, Tlenchik means all at once. Ke means comes up.

Jor means like a practice, like Neljor means yoga, okay? Tlenchik Kejor is the version, or is a take-off on Mahamudra by a great lama named Gampopa. Gampopa was a student of Milarepa, who's a very famous meditator in Tibet who lived a thousand years ago.

His teacher was Marpa. His teacher was Naropa. His teacher was Talopa.

And his teacher was one of all these tantric angels, okay, who appeared to him. So, first, the first penchant lama goes through explaining how 700 years ago, Gampopa was passing on this teaching of this is sort of like the emptiness of the mind, and Mahamudra stresses the emptiness of your mind. What does that mean, you know?

Does it just mean that you forgot everything and you can't remember? Or your IQ is like zero or something. But anyway, it means...

We're going to go into that after the break. So it's like a trick to make you come back after the break. But mainly, Mahamudra concentrates on the emptiness of the mind.

So Tlenchik Gyejor has three versions. Tlenchik is the emptiness of different objects, and here it's referring specifically to the mind. So in that sense, it's the same as Mahamudra, okay?

Say kaoma. Kaoma. Usually, I don't know what it means here exactly, but kaoma normally refers to like a capsule or a chamber in your heart, and it's used for a special meditation on emptiness.

So again, this is another kind of meditation on emptiness. In Tibet, the heart is located... the mind is primarily located at the heart.

So when they say, I think so in Tibet, they don't go like that. They go like this, okay? We had the pleasure a couple days ago of having a teaching in a shambha kagyu temple, the Bodhisattva Institute in Tucson, Arizona.

And this kaoma is the presentation of Mahamudra according to the shambha kagyu. Kagyus all trace back to Tilopa, Naropa, Marpa, Milarepa. And then with Milarepa students, they split off into all these different kagyus, okay?

So this is called the shambha kagyu, and their main lama was called King Bonelzor. He lived about a thousand years ago. So again, this refers to a kind of emptiness meditation, okay?

Stressing techniques using the inner body, okay? Say ngan den? Ngan den?

Ngan means five, den means has, and this is a special practice with five different components. This was taught by a lama named Dagpo Haje, and he was also a student of Milarepa. And later on, the whole kagyu tradition that comes down from him is called the dakpa kagyu.

So again, it's about a thousand years ago. And again, it's methods of achieving the direct realization of emptiness through special practices. So I'm not going to cover what that means until after the break, but I want you to get a sense of how it has come down through the different traditions, okay?

Say ronyom? Ronyom. Ronyom.

Ronyom. Ro has a lot of different meanings. It can mean taste, nyom means equal, and again, this is like a secret practice or a special practice developed by a lama named Gyare, Haje Gyare, Chuje Gyare, and he is the founder or one of the important lamas of the Drupa kagyu.

So you're getting all these different kagyu lineages. Again, the main point of this practice is to perceive emptiness directly, okay? I'm going to skip a few other ones because it would go on too long.

This is one of the more popular ones you hear about. Say chö. Chö.

Chö. Chö means to cut. Those of you who studied the Diamond Cutter Sutra, you had Dorje Chöpa.

And chöpa means to cut. And it's like some kind of very special practice for terminating something. Like, if you think of Arnold Schwarzenegger or something like Terminator, chö means that.

And chö means this big, strong, nasty guy who terminates somebody. And chö means termination. The only thing that can really terminate your suffering and the only thing that can terminate your negative emotions, which is the goal of part of Buddhism, part of the goal of Buddhism is to reach nirvana.

Nirvana is the ending of your negative emotions. Like, think of how it would feel not to ever have anger again, not to ever have jealousy again. And according to Buddhism, if you can reach a state where you see a certain thing directly called emptiness, which you can only see in deep meditation, which you can only do if you meditate a lot and someone trains you a lot, then that emptiness has a certain power.

That emptiness has the power. Once you can see it, and it's all around you all the time and you can't see it, you have to be trained by someone to see it, you have to learn to meditate very deeply. Constantly you have to practice.

And then at some point, if you see emptiness directly, that emptiness has some kind of power that within a certain number of years, you will never again have a negative emotion. And that's one of the greatest goals of Buddhism. Buddhism goes on to say that if that happened to you, and if you could never have a negative emotion again, then slowly your spiritual body would start to be repaired.

Like your inner energy and your inner spiritual body, your real body, not this one. Okay, this one goes away. But the body that you have, your spiritual body, that if you could remove your negative thoughts forever, then slowly that would be repaired.

Right now it's in a state of damage, because bad thoughts damage it, negative emotions damage it. Every time you have jealousy, every time you feel a little irritated, every time you feel a little upset at someone, it damages that inner body. When you see emptiness directly, the damage starts to become reversed.

And eventually, according to Buddhism, you would not have to get old. And the change in your inner body would actually start to manifest it in your outer body. And eventually you would become a being of light or something like that, that's the point of Tantra, that's the goal of Tantra.

And eventually your body would change, and you wouldn't be living in a body that could die like that. But you have to see, the only thing that has the power to trigger that process is emptiness. You have to be able to see emptiness directly.

You can't see emptiness directly unless you're in a deep, deep state of meditation, which takes a lot of practice. And even if you can get into a deep state of meditation, if someone hasn't taught you what to think about while you're in a deep state of meditation, you'll never see emptiness. So the goal of this whole practice, frankly, is to move into a different kind of body and mind.

Your mind changes completely. It's cleaned out totally. You become a totally compassionate being with none...

You're incapable of having a negative thought. And then physically you change completely. The older you get, like me, the more interesting this becomes.

Like if you're 20 years old, it's not such a big deal. But if you're 40, or if you have a back problem, or something like that, it's very intriguing. And I...

You don't have to believe me tonight, and you probably cannot believe me tonight, but the goal of Buddhism is that the Heart Sutra says, ma rikpa me ma rikpa sepa me pa ne, ga shi sepa paru yang me do, meaning, you can use emptiness to stop the process of aging and death. And so it's not just... This is really what the Buddha taught, and it is the goal of Buddhism.

I think Buddhism as it came into the United States in the last 20 years was mostly perceived as a method to be calm, or a method to get more friendly, or a method to help the environment, or something. And stuff like that, you know. And that's not the...

It's not the real goal of Buddhism. The ultimate goal of Buddhism, even in the Heart Sutra, the most famous sutra of all, the Buddha says, you know, I'm trying to teach you how to see emptiness, so that you don't... you can remove your negative emotions, and then eventually your body will change, and you don't have to live like that.

You don't have to die. And this realm is not the ultimate place where you have to go. You're here temporarily, and you will be going to another place.

This realm is like a boo-boo, you know. And you can fix it. And the practice of Buddhism is to fix it and move beyond this realm.

And very beautiful, and very, very... Tibetan Buddhism is cool because you still have all the old instructions, and they're still very clear, and there's still living people who have done it and can show you how to do it. And that's the whole point of a good Buddhist lineage, okay?

So chö means... despite there's a lot of weird ideas about chö. By the way, there's a lot of weird ideas about Mahamudra.

And hopefully by the end of tonight, I'd like to destroy Dharma rumors, you know. This is one of them. So chö means the termination of your negativities, and ultimately the termination of death itself through the practice of seeing emptiness directly, okay?

This particular version came down through Machik, who was a student of Padampa Sangye. These are, again, great lamas of the Kagyu and also Nyingma lineages. Machik was famous because she was a great woman lama in Tibet, okay?

Say dzogchen. Dzog means like completion or perfection. Like...

in modern Tibetan, you say momo dzodwe, which means... which means have we run out of momos, okay? And momo is the Tibetan hamburger, okay?

And chen means the great. So dzogchen means the great completion or the great finalization or something like that, okay? Very, very popular in the Nyingma tradition of Buddhism, brought to Tibet by Padmasambhava and popularized by his disciples, the great tradition of the Nyingmas.

So pretty much in his verses, in his opening verses, the first Panchen Lama is saying, look, you have all these traditions, every single tradition that split off from Milarepa, Marpa, Naropa, Tilopa, and Padmasambhava himself. And all of these great traditions of Tibet with all of these special practices that they do, and the goal of all of them is the same. It's Mahamudra.

Really, all of these are different versions of Mahamudra. And then he gives another term for Mahamudra, which makes it more clear what it means, okay? Say umma.

Umma. Tati. Tati.

Umma. Umma. Tati.

Tati. At this point in his text, the first Panchen Lama says, look, whether you call it shijie, which we didn't write, whether you call it chö, whether you call it dzogchen, whether you call it whatever, it all boils down to the same thing, umma tati. Okay?

He says the guts of all of them are exactly the same thing. Umma means middle way, Madhyamika. And this is the study of emptiness, okay?

Tawa means to look at your world in terms of emptiness. Everything about your world, you try to see the emptiness of it. Now, if you haven't had any teachings on emptiness, it sounds like, you know, empty in America means like meaningless, right?

Oh, just empty words or empty ideas or something like that. Empty actions. It means like meaningless or something like that.

It's not at all what it means in Buddhism. And before the night's over, you know, we'll go through what emptiness means. It's not what you might think.

And it's something very special. And if you learn it well, you can get to some amazing states. You can stop your negative emotions.

I mean, you can't even imagine what it would feel like not to ever get jealous of someone again or not to ever be upset with someone again. What it would feel like, how nice it would feel. I always tell New Yorkers, a big selling point for emptiness is, you can save a lot of time, you know, because it takes time to have anger.

It takes time to be jealous. If you think about it, your lifetime is made of a certain amount of minutes and you fill much of your day with negative thoughts. You know, like it takes time to figure out what someone said to you.

It takes brain, it takes a certain percentage of your brain to remember the words they said to you that upset you. And the time it takes to review it over the week after they said it, you know, and get upset to the proper degree about it, it takes time. And you get all that time back as you start to understand emptiness.

As you start to purify your mind, you get hours of your life back in big chunks as you eliminate them. So then you become much more creative. Mental afflictions or negative thoughts, they sap you.

Your energy leaks out, you know. You feel exhausted after you have a good jealousy attack, you know. And to be around someone that irritates you at work is much more exhausting than the work.

You know, you can work hard all day long, but if you're into it and you have joy about the work, you can work 18, 20 hours a day, and we do, you know. But then if you're around somebody that you don't like and you have to think about how you don't like them, then, you know, by lunchtime you feel exhausted. This is, you get all that time back and all that energy back, and then you become this, people say, oh, you're so creative, you know, you have so much going on, you're able to do so many things.

They say, yeah, because I just saved 10% or 15% of my mind. I got back. I don't have to waste that time.

So, umma is like that. Tawa means to view things like that, to view the world like that, to constantly be aware of the emptiness around you. And it helps you get your time back.

It helps you eliminate your negativities. And then chi means instructions, okay. So, umma tatri means the instructions on the way to view the world as emptiness, how to see the world as emptiness.

And the first Panchen Lama says, look, whether you call it dzogchen, whether you call it chakya chenpo, say chakya, chakya, chenpo, chenpo, chakya, chenpo, which is the Tibetan word for Mahamudra. Mahamudra is an Indian word, a Sanskrit word, and then chakya chenpo is the Tibetan equivalent. So whether you call it dzogchen, whether you call it chö, whether you call it nganden, shijie, whatever you call it, it all boils down to one thing, umma tatri.

Umma tatri means the instructions for gaining the view of your life where you constantly see the emptiness of things and you're aware of the emptiness of things. So he says this is the real meaning of Mahamudra, okay. So if anybody asks you, the guts of Mahamudra, the real meaning of Mahamudra is to perceive directly emptiness.

It can only be done directly in a deep state of meditation. You can never ever have it happen to you if you don't meditate daily, deeply, okay. So, you know, you can sit there and say, I'm forty years old, I'm fifty years old, I haven't seen any of this thing that you're talking about that's supposed to be all around us and it's supposed to make me feel better when I go to work, you know.

I haven't seen that thing. And I say, yeah, you cannot see it unless you're in deep meditation, unless you're able to meditate very, very deeply. You'll never see it, okay.

And to do the meditation, you have to be trained. It's not enough to sit there, my Lama would say rabbits have this ability to sit there, you know, very still and not move for a long time, he says. But they didn't perceive emptiness, you know.

You need, you need, it's not just meditation. You need the content. It's like having a good internet and no content, you know.

So, it's like, it's not just enough to meditate. You must be able to meditate deeply and then you must be trained how to see emptiness once you get into deep meditation. And that's Mahamudra.

That's the skill of Mahamudra. Mahamudra means that, okay. He's going to go on, and we'll talk about it after the break, to divide Mahamudra into two great divisions, two great kinds of Mahamudra.

One is Tantric Mahamudra, okay, secret, secret practices of Mahamudra. And that's one whole side of Mahamudra. And then the other side is what we call Dholuk, means the open side, the side that anyone can learn, anyone can be trained in that.

You can talk about it in the Unitarian Church and everything, okay. That's, that's called Dholuk, okay. So he divides Mahamudra into these two great systems of seeing emptiness directly, okay.

So the point, even in Tantra, even in the secret teachings, the whole point is to see emptiness directly. You use different methods, different holy, sacred, beautiful methods to see emptiness directly. So it's really not a question of what you see, it's a question of the method, okay.

And then he goes to great lengths. His next thing he talks about is, look, when you see emptiness directly, it's the same emptiness. Whether you use secret methods to see it or whether you use open methods to see it, the emptiness that you see directly is completely the same.

In the secret teachings, we call it clear light, okay. And in the open teachings, you call it emptiness. And it doesn't matter what you call it.

What that object is, is pure, hundred percent, unadulterated, sheer emptiness. And it doesn't matter whether you go at it through the front door in the open teachings or whether you go at it through the back door, which is the secret teachings. What you see when you get there is completely the same.

It's pure emptiness. And once you've seen one, you've seen all of them. He goes through that, quotations from Master Shantideva, you know.

Once you've seen one emptiness, they're all the same. So it doesn't matter whether you go at it from this angle or this angle. The point of Mahamudra is to see emptiness directly.

So there's an open Mahamudra and there's a secret Mahamudra. And he goes into some information on both. I'd like to talk about what Mahamudra means, what the word means, okay?

Because I don't know, I grew up and I loved words, and I'd like to know what the word means. What's the maha, what's the mudra, okay? We'll go into that.

Say, chakya, chenpo. Chakya, chenpo. In Sanskrit it's mahamudra.

Maha and chenpo are the same thing, okay? So it goes like this. I'll talk about some of the common meanings of chakya and then about the special meaning of chakya.

Chakya normally means a seal. In Tibet, seals were very big. We have a project going in Russia.

Some of the people working on it are here. We're on our way there, actually. And one of the side things we do is we're collecting all the Buddhist seals.

And these were carved into different substances like wood or other gemstones. And then the big shots would have these seals. And if you owned the seal, it meant you had the power.

You see what I mean? They didn't have fax machines or anything like that to prove that a letter was from the king. You might get a letter that says, kill your brother or something like that.

We've started a war. Please come with 500,000 troops or something. And there's no way to confirm that this really came from the emperor or something, Chinese emperor, unless it has the emperor's seal on it.

And they tried to make them very intricate. They're very beautiful. We have about 400 in a collection in St. Petersburg, Russia. And they're very, very ornate, very beautiful. And the idea was to carve them in a very complicated way so everybody would know that when they got the letter from you saying, I owe you $100,000 or something, if the seal is on it, you know it's from that guy. So that's what chakya means.

Chakya means a seal in the sense of a personal seal that a king would use. That's the first meaning of chakya. There's a meaning of chakya in tantric practice, which means mudra, meaning a hand gesture.

So there are different hand gestures that you use when you do rituals. So there's a common thing like this and like that. Those are all different meanings.

They all have different meanings. And those are called chakya, meaning a mudra. Okay, a different gesture.

There's a very profound meaning of chakya in the secret practices. It refers to one of the people that would be engaged. You'd be engaged in a secret practice with certain groups of people, certain kinds of people.

And chakya has a special meaning there. So you would have your own mudra, and that would refer to another person. Among those, there are lekhi chakyas, yeshiki chakyas, very many different kinds of chakyas.

So sometimes it refers to that. And there's ways of explaining that that tie it to the meaning of a physical seal, like some kind of seal that we would press into a wax or something like that. And those are the meanings of mudra.

But the First Venerable Lama, he digs around and he finds this sutra by Lord Buddha. I believe it's the Tengen Zengi Gyalpo. It's in your reading.

It means King of Concentration Sutra. And he says, look, in there, what did the Buddha say? He said, chakya means the seal in this case, in this context, means emptiness.

Ultimate reality. And that's the meaning of the seal. In Mahamudra, the mudra part here means emptiness itself.

The chenpo part means big. Chenpo means big. Maha means big.

It came into the Western languages as mega. And still in India, you can have a maha-cola. Coke just came out with these big bottles called maha-colas and stuff like that.

So it's the maha and mahayana and stuff like that. So maha means big. Then all of the texts on the Great Seal, all of the texts on Mahamudra say it's great in the sense that it's found in the Amarakosha.

Amarakosha is a famous Sanskrit dictionary that was translated into Tibetan. And in there, it says big has seven meanings. And one of the meanings is supreme, highest thing in the universe.

And the first Panchen Lama says, that's what maha means in this case. Why? Because if you see emptiness directly, which is the chakya, right, the mudra part, if you can get to see emptiness directly, then you would reach the highest point in the world because it would liberate you, okay?

It has the power. Emptiness has a certain power. And again, it's weird to think that there's some kind of object that's around us all the time, like air.

It's around you as, it's as common as air. It's around you all the time. And because you lived, you were born in America, you know, like some mistake, you were born in America.

And because of the emphasis of this culture on other things, you know, this culture says it's important to have a house. This culture says it's important to have a position. This culture says it's important to have money.

And that's, and you feel better, or you feel like worth more. I didn't work for eight years. I was in a monastery, and people treated me like I was, I washed the dishes at the monastery while I was studying.

And they'd say, what do you do? And I'd say, I'm a dishwasher. And no one would talk to me much, you know.

And after that, I got a job in this huge corporation. And then they'd say, oh, good morning, Michael. You know, I'd feel weird, you know.

I mean, you grew up in a culture that says, that concentrates on those things. That's how we spend our 50 weeks of your year. You are allowed to have two weeks for yourself, and you have to work 50 weeks to get the two weeks.

It's like this really bad deal, you know. It's a deal my boss would make. And he does make it, in fact.

And this is the deal. Your culture has convinced you that that's something important to do. And so you didn't grow up in elementary school.

They didn't say, okay, Johnny, you must meditate every day, because when you get to 12th grade, you have to see emptiness, you know. I mean, you don't, you know. They didn't say that.

They didn't say that, and maybe someday they will in this country, I hope. No, it'll be nice. And so, according to Buddhism, and I don't ask that you believe me.

I could get up and say anything, and if you'd believe me, just because I have a red suit on, the Buddha said, you're a fool. You know, the Buddha said, don't believe it until they prove it. But anyway, I'm just proposing that there's some kind of object around you as common as the air around you, and you can only see it if you can learn to meditate deeply and if you have proper training.

But if you see it, you don't have to die, okay. If you see it, just seeing it once, it takes about 20 minutes, okay. Just seeing it, I mean, the actual experience takes about 20 minutes.

Seeing it, if you have that 20-minute experience, quickly you'll be able to remove negative emotions from your mind forever. You will never be irritated with another person, never be angry, never be jealous. And eventually, that effect on your inner body and then on your outer body would be that you don't have to die, and you would enter a personal paradise in the sense that your body and mind would be pure and like an angel's mind and body, and then the world around you would start to transform also.

And that's how we say you get to heaven. We do believe you go to a different place, and you can do that, but it all hinges on emptiness. So because it can give you those goals, according to Buddhism, okay, you don't have to believe it right now, but you can try it.

Because it can give you those goals, it is supreme. Emptiness is supreme, and that's the meaning of Mahamudra, okay. Big seal, great seal.

The great means it would be great not to have to die and get old, you know. It would be great to have all your hair, you know. And it would be wonderful, you see.

That's the meaning of the great, okay. Maha. And then mudra means seal in the sense of emptiness, okay.

Seal meaning emptiness. Connection between this action and the meaning of joining this yoga, joining the seal to the wax. And the secrecy of the seal, you see.

The seal is something that the king owns. People aren't allowed to fool around with the seal. If a kid got a hold of the seal, he could, you know, write an ultimatum to the candy store, you know, and say, you will present this kid with candy for the rest of the year.

And if it has the emperor's seal on it, you know, the seal is a very powerful thing, and it was closely guarded. I mean, it was the ultimate treasure of any king or emperor in Asia, or great lama. Like, Pabongkha Rinpoche has a beautiful seal, and Chidam Rinpoche has his own seal, and these are kept in a special box, and you can only use them.

But if it got out, you would never want to be separated from your seal. I mean, it's like part of your authority. And the same thing with your mudra, okay, with your chakya, in all the meanings of chakya, you would never want to be separated from your chakya, from your mudra.

It should always be at your side, always keep your mudra close to you, and keep it with you, like that. And those are the meanings of mudra. You see, I forget where the long A goes in the Maha, but in the mudra, it goes at the end, okay?

Long A in Sanskrit means feminine, woman, woman's energy, and the perception of emptiness, and wisdom in general in Buddhism are feminine qualities, are a woman's qualities. And for example, the real name of the Heart Sutra is the Conqueress, okay? Okay?

So it's really, in Buddhism, the compassion side is the man side, is the day side, and the vajra. And then the wisdom side is at night, and is feminine, and is the bell. And these are the meanings of those.

So it's important that mudra is feminine. In ngak, in the practice of ngak, it's chakya ma, okay? Chakya ma, meaning the mudra should be feminine.

Okay? And that's the real meaning of Mahamudra. That's the meaning of the word, okay?

I'll do a little bit about how to do it. We'll just start. The preliminaries of a Mahamudra meditation, okay?

And they're very similar to preliminaries in any other kind of meditation. But basically there are three, or four, or five elements that if you're going to try to do a Mahamudra meditation, you should know, okay? Say khyam dro.

Khyam dro. Khyam dro means going for refuge, and this is some kind of Buddhist idea called going for refuge. For a normal American person like us, a very simple way of explaining khyam dro, or refuge, would be, where do you...

what is the goal of your life? You know, where do you put your hopes in your life? What do you hope will happen in your life?

You know, what thing would you be happy if it happened in your life? And I know, you know, when I grew up, I grew up normal American, you know, nothing special, nothing too much this or that, pretty much normal, public school, everything. The normal goals were to have a good family.

And these are not bad goals. I'm just saying this is normal. A good family, a good spouse, nice children, serve your parents well, try to get a good, honorable job, you know.

And I didn't grow up in the kind of family that was stressing that I had to become a millionaire or something like that. It was just get a nice, honest job, buy a nice, honest house, have a good family, go to church, things like that, you know, be fairly intelligent, serve your community, and things like that. That was...

that was the goal of life. That was kham dro. We took shelter.

We took refuge in those things, a house, a family, the relationships with your other family, you know, having a good career, a good job, and a certain financial security. And that was the... those were the goals.

That was what we took refuge in, you know. If you had all of those things, then life was okay, and life would be all right. And then at some point, I think in any thinking person's life, something happens to destroy that...

that way of thinking about your life. And that's... for me, and I think for many people, it was death, you know.

Like my two parents and my brother died in one year. And then that explanation of life, to say that this is what's important about life, seemed totally wrong. Because, you know, my mother was a good person, my father was a good person, my brother was a good person.

They did all of those things well. You know, not perfect, but as well as anyone, you know. And then somehow it seemed wrong, or it seemed...

it didn't seem like a reasonable goal, if at the end, you could just be snuffed away in an hour, and everything that you worked for was for nothing. You see what I mean? If there was no more...

if no one... the house is there, and there's no one to live in it, you know what I mean? The clothes are all there in the closet, there's no one to wear them, you have to give them away to the Salvation Army, you know.

The bank account dwindles, you know. You inherit the money, you blow the money. And all of your mother's work, she was a schoolteacher, you know, fifth grade.

Decades and decades of working to collect these objects, a house, you know, food, clothing, and to live this kind of life, it all seemed something wrong, you know. Something seemed wrong. It didn't seem to be reasonable that that would be the goal of human life.

Khyem Do means to rearrange those priorities, to rearrange those goals, and ultimately, it means to attempt, the attempt to take your refuge or put your hopes in something higher. You know, like, could you reach a point where you didn't have to die? Could you reach a point where you could teach other people to do that?

You know, is it possible to reach a thing that the Christians call heaven? You know, it doesn't matter. Is it possible to go to that place?

And could you put your goals there? Something beyond feeding yourself and clothing yourself and working like an animal for your whole life, you know. Is there something higher goal?

And is it for real or is it just some voodoo of some religion, you know? Or are those things really possible? And is it not just some vague place that's somewhere in the sky?

Or is there a specific thing that any normal person, if they were trained properly by a good teacher, could reach that thing? You see what I mean? Buddhism says yes.

Buddhism says you can do that. And that's the goal of Mahamudra. So the beginning, the very first part of a Mahamudra meditation is to decide that you will go for that and that you'll put your hopes in that.

And you won't limit your hopes to what, you know, cows and horses and deer and mice can do. You know what I mean? You're a human being.

Can you reach something higher than financial security? And there is no such thing as financial security anyway. If you get it, you're usually too old to enjoy it.

And then shortly after that, you die. You get to have a better hospital. You know, you get to have all the, you get to have all the, the newest kinds of operations from the best surgeons or something.

By the time you can really collect that much stuff, you're dying. And is it possible to reach something higher? So Khyamdo, the very first part of a Mahamudra meditation is to decide that guy, you know, the other night in the Unitarian Church said, yes, there is.

You know, maybe there is. You know, at least it's worth a try. Because otherwise everything's hopeless.

You know what I mean? Otherwise you're just born to die and you're just getting old all the time. You know what I mean?

Otherwise I don't think suicide would be so stupid. You know, if that's all there is, then there's not much point to it. But if it's possible, you know, what do you place the odds tonight?

Maybe if you trained yourself more, you'd place the odds a little higher. What do you place the odds at? Like one in ten thousand that I know something.

You know, that what I speak of is real. You know what I mean? That people in this room may have seen those things and experienced those things and be well on the way there.

You know, what are the odds? Is it one in ten thousand? Is it one in a hundred thousand?

You know, khyam dro means to say, okay, maybe one in a thousand odds, so let's try. You know, let's try it. And it's just to try it.

So khyam dro means to take refuge in that. Put your goals in some kind of higher goal for your life, for human life. Okay?

That's the basic meaning of taking refuge. Okay? Say lama.

Lama. Nyal dror. Nyal dror.

Lama. Lama. Nyal dror.

Lama means lama. Okay? It's a translation of a Sanskrit word.

What is that word? Guru. Okay?

The word guru got made dirty in this country. I mean, when you think of guru, you think of a guy with, you know, fifty Rolls Royces and, you know, and stuff like that. But I mean, the word guru became, in this country, a little sad or dirty.

It means a holy, well-learned, compassionate, wise person, man or woman, okay? And that's the meaning of lama, you know. Lama neljor.

Neljor means to practice with your lama. Neljor in Sanskrit is yoga. And again, you know, the word yoga got dirty in this country.

Yoga is like some kind of exercises you do where you stand on your head or something like that. It's not the meaning of yoga at all, okay? I mean, the ultimate, the real meaning of yoga is deep spiritual practices, okay?

Mental or physical. But that's the real meaning of yoga. So lama neljor means, you know, practice, practicing with your teacher, okay?

And the point here is that the second part of a Mahamudra meditation is to commune with your teacher, you know. It's to, if you are visualizing at that point, you are picturing your lama, and then in your mind you are making them better than what you see, you see what I mean? In your mind, you imagine, what would it be if Jesus came to me in the form of this person, you see what I mean?

Somebody totally perfect, somebody totally holy, and then they, you know, what if they, out of all the people in the world, they chose me to try to help? You know what I mean? It's like City of Angels, you know, Nicolas Cage, he's got this nice, soft look, you know?

And it's like that, you know, what if I was the person that this person chose to help? Out of all the people in the world, they decided that I was worth helping, and they came to me. And when you visualize your lama, you're supposed to visualize this perfect person.

It doesn't mean that you be naive about your lama. It's not like you don't realize that your lama has problems and some normal problems or normal qualities or something like that. It's to, it's healthy, it's spiritually healthy to try to imagine that there's at least one person in the world who's totally perfect and totally compassionate and who's madly in love with you spiritually and wants to help you and will do anything to help you.

You know what I mean? And during Lama Nyong'o, you imagine that, you know, as, as you begin the meditation, you imagine a person like that. And you can use your current lama, if you have a lama, and then you, you fix them in your mind, you know, you make them, you take away the bald spot and you make their teeth whine and, and then you make them, like, perfectly compassionate, never can get angry, never gets jealous, you know, everything perfect.

And then you, you, you imagine that they are meditating with you, they're sitting in front of you and they're meditating with you, and they're beaming this love for you, like they're madly in love with you in a spiritual way, and they're sending you power, you know, they're sending you strength. At the, at the peak of this meditation, you, you actually melt into them. They come and they melt into your body, and then you, it's like, it's like having love with them in an ultimate way, and they're, they become you, and you become them.

It's called gyu-de, gyun-der-ba, gyun-der-ba means two, the two beings become one being, okay? And then you imagine that all the, all the holiness of them and all the, everything else about them is, is flowing into you, and you're becoming like them, you know? So it's a very holy exercise, and it's not some kind of naivete, you know what I mean?

It's not some kind of inability to see that this person, you know, picks his nose and stuff like that. But, you know, it's like, to see them, purposely imagine them as a holy, perfect being, and then slowly become one with, become one with them, and bring them into you, and, and spiritually, mentally, physically, you're just like them, and, and, and they love you enough to do that and come into you. So that's lami-no-dzo, and that's a very good part, that's a very important part of, of a mahamudra meditation.

We'll do one more preliminary, and then we'll take a break, and then after that we'll do an actual mahamudra meditation. Say sem-kye. Sem-kye.

Sem-kye. Sem-kye. Uh, remember the process I described already tonight, okay, and I'll go through it one more time.

When you get jealous of somebody, and I'm an expert, I can tell you, okay, when you have a slight feeling of jealousy, or even a medium attack, you know, of jealousy, and you see somebody, and I saw Gone with the Wind the other night, and Scarlett, she's played it so well, and she's like, every time they mention the other lady, she's like, her eyes go like that, and, and I was really empathizing with her, you know, and so, so every time you have a little touch of jealousy, according to Buddhism, the mind, the thoughts, and some kind of physical component deep within your being, called your inner body, or your vajra body, takes a, takes a shock, takes a hit, you know. There are some kind of configuration in, in your spiritual body, and certain channels are, are laying near other channels, and every time you have a jealousy attack, or a slight feeling of jealousy, it constricts, and it damages you more, and the collective effect of that, over a lifetime, you know, year after year, day after day, hour after hour, they accumulate, they're like radiation, they never leave your body, so it twists and, and distorts your body, your spiritual body, until finally it kills you, and, and every wrinkle you have, every white hair you have, all those signs of your thoughts on your body are, are caused by, by negative thoughts, and we have them constantly, so constantly your body is getting weaker, and, and getting, having those problems. The irony is that every time someone does something to you to make you angry or jealous, your normal reaction is to respond with the same thing.

You see, so somebody says something unkind to you, and then you say it back again, and then, according to Buddhism, then they say something kind, unkind back to you, and then there's this cycle starts to go, this negative energy, negative interaction with people, so that they do something negative to you, and as a result, you do something negative to them, and as a result, they do something negative to you, and as a result, you do it again back to them, and there's this cycle, in fact, the whole suffering of life is called the cycle, or the circle, the wheel of life, and, and it keeps going like that, so that the natural human reaction to something negative, you know, if you're in a traffic jam, or, or someone says something bad to you, or someone else gets something that you wanted, and you get jealous of them, that negative feeling that you have starts to kill you, and, and eventually does kill you. So, semkhe means to be aware of that about yourself.

You're aware that this self-perpetuating cycle is going on with you. Someone says something bad to you, you think something bad about them, there's a traffic jam, you don't like it, then there's another traffic jam, and you don't like it more, and then it goes like that, and your whole life goes like that. You, yourself, are killing yourself as you sit there, okay?

That's the irony of life. According to Buddhism, you, yourself, are, you, yourself, are like slitting your own throat, okay? You, yourself, are responsible for your aging.

You, yourself, are responsible for your death. And, and semkhe means to look around the room and, and look at the, the gray hairs that some of us have, and, and look at the wrinkles on people's faces, and the sign of their, the picture of their thoughts on their face. You know, everybody's face has a certain look, and everybody's face has certain wrinkles, and certain expressions, and certain twigs, and everything.

And, and look around the room and realize that each person in this room is going through a very similar cycle of killing themselves. And to feel sad, you know, to feel like it's a shame we have a hundred and something sweet human beings here, you know, sweet human beings that are killing themselves, you know, and they don't have to do it. That's the irony.

That's the, that's the terrible thing about it. That's the, that's the tragedy, is that it, it doesn't have to happen. It's a mistake, because you weren't trained right, because they taught you something different in first grade, you know.

In elementary school they taught you something else was important, and they didn't know how to do these things. And so that, just because they don't know about this stuff, the people in this room are dying. And it doesn't have to be like that.

And to get that emotion of sadness, to see a group of people, and to know that they could stop it, and to know they don't know enough how to stop it, and to know they could learn because they're a normal American. You're the most highly educated people in the world. And Americans take to Buddhism like ducks to water, you know.

I mean, they're very logical, they're very skeptical, and that's great. And they're very critical, and they won't take it if it's not, doesn't make sense. But such a, a group of people so close to being able to do it, and then not doing it, and, and dying on their chairs.

And then sem kye is called bodhichitta, okay. Bodhichitta means to, to think like that, and to look around and see other people like that, and to think, oh, maybe I could help them. Maybe I could do something.

You know what I mean? Beginning with myself, okay. I mean, it's one thing to talk about, you guys should practice Buddhism, you know.

You guys should see emptiness. You guys should stop your jealousy, you know. And then not to do it yourself.

I mean, in Buddhism, the goal is, you help them by doing it yourself, you know. You can't ... human beings are like dogs.

When you walk in a room ... we have these two temple dogs where I live, and they're these sweet little hassa-apsos. But when somebody comes in the door that doesn't like them, they smell it, and they go after this person.

And these little things have these little, sharp, two needle-like teeth, you know. And we like keep count. There's notches on their collar, you know, like how many people they bit, you know.

And inevitably, it's someone that doesn't like dogs, you know. And they can sense it right away. They have this sixth sense.

Immediately they start barking. It's weird. And you know you have to run out quick and grab them, you know, like that.

So, people are the same. I mean, there's a certain ring of truth in your voice. People can smell it, you know.

People can smell it when you're telling the truth, you know. If you say, this Mahamudra stuff works. This Mahamudra stuff is for real.

You know, if you saw emptiness directly, you don't have to live like that. And they can sense it. So in Buddhism, the idea is that Semkhya means compassion for other people.

And it leads you to make yourself whole first, and then work on other people, you know, help other people do it. So the idea is to reach a point where you could speak from a point of view of being someone who had experienced Mahamudra themselves. And then other people sense it.

And they say, hey, maybe I could do that. Maybe you don't have to die, you know. Maybe that stuff is true, you know.

So that's the idea of Semkhya. Semkhya means to have compassion for other people that's based on doing it yourself first, and then being able to help them to do it, okay. I'd like to take a break, like a ten-minute break, and come back in like ten minutes, and then we'll do just a very brief Mahamudra meditation.

It'd be a shame to let you leave without knowing how to do a Mahamudra meditation, okay. Also, pick up a reading during the break, okay, and you can, somebody will hand them out over there. Okay, we'll do, well, we'll do an actual Mahamudra meditation.

I'll describe to you how to do an actual Mahamudra meditation, okay. And I can start from a couple of questions that people ask me when I, during the break, one guy came up and said, it's just a metaphor, right, when you talk about not dying. It's just a metaphor, right?

I mean, and he said, this body has to die, right? And I said, no, you know, it actually transforms. And he says, no, but you're just talking metaphorically, right?

I mean, this body has to die, right? And I said, no, no, you know, like, it changes, you know, and your body changes. And he says, yeah, but it has to die, right?

And I said, no, it doesn't have to die, you know. And it went like that for about five minutes. And then he says, then he got to the hard part.

He said, yeah, but we didn't see anybody do that. You see what I mean? And that's true.

You know, you haven't seen anybody do that. Like, His Holiness looks like he's getting older, you know, and so do all the other lamas, you know what I mean? So, so you haven't seen anybody do that.

And he, and he asked me, what about that? And I'm like, I didn't know how to answer for a second. And then I said, well, you, you might not be able to see it.

It's like emptiness, you know. What I said about emptiness is that it's around you all the time. It's as common as the air around you.

Unless you are trained properly, and unless you learn to meditate deeply and do it every day, you can't see it. You'll never see it. You'll go to your grave swearing it never existed.

You see what I mean? Like, you think you've seen everything, but what if somebody tells you, you have to meditate for X years to see this thing. And if you don't meditate almost every day for X years, I swear to you, you can't see it.

And it's there, but you can't see it. And I can tell you about it, and I can describe it to you. I can tell you how great it is to know that you're not going to die, stuff like that.

But if you can't see it, you just either believe me or don't believe me. But you, you have to train yourself, and you have to learn to meditate. What about the, what about the body?

And that's, we'll talk about the emptiness from that, okay? Mahamudra means great old emptiness, right? Why is it great?

If you see it directly for 20 minutes, you don't, you're out of here eventually. You don't have to be like this. You don't have to live like this.

Oh, but we didn't see anybody do that. You know what I mean? So, I told the person, and we talked about it, and he got it like that.

You know, he said, oh, I get it. It's a matter of perception, okay? Like, you might not see the person like that.

For example, His Holiness the Dalai Lama, you might think he's getting older. You know, it's in the newspaper, he's 62 or something, you know, and you see his picture, and you think, oh, it doesn't look quite the way it looked before. You have an experience of the Dalai Lama getting older.

You know, his face looks to you older than it used to, and you know he's 60-something years old. You know, that's how you, you go see Seven Years in Tibet or Kundun, and he's this bright, precocious 21-year-old, you know, and then you see him, and you say, the Dalai Lama's getting older. So, to you, it looks like the Dalai Lama's getting older.

But the point is that if you had a different state of mind, if something about your mind was different, radically different, you know, if you had proper training, you might not see it that way at all. Okay? You might not see it that way at all.

And we do this in New York, okay? Statue of Liberty thing. This is, what is this?

Be careful, you know, Tibetan monasteries, and you debate, and everything you say is wrong eventually. Sometimes it's better to sit there and go, what is it? Huh?

Okay, it's a magic marker, a marker. It says, I mean, dry erase marker. You see it, and I ask you what it is, and you say it's a marker.

Why didn't you say it's a, it's a white and orange cylinder? You didn't see me right with this yet. I was using the black one, okay?

You don't have any proof yet that this is a pen. You see what I mean? You can say it looks like a pen, but if you say it's a magic marker, and it's not just a, a wooden fake painted very convincingly, you know what I mean?

If you were really a scientist, if you were really objective, then you would say it's a cylinder, okay? It's a white cylinder with an orange top, and that's all you can say right now, okay? Now, if you're living in another realm, might you see this as a bar of gold or something?

You know, in fact, can you turn this into a bar of gold? That's a big question. Seriously, okay?

If you were living in another world, in another realm, and you walked into this room, is it possible you could see this as a, as something radically different? Is it possible? You have to say, theoretically, yes.

You know, did I see it? Did I meet the guy who walks in here and sees you with a gold bar in your hand? No.

But theoretically, it's possible. Prove it, you know, in the, in the debate ground. Prove it, you know.

How do you prove that a being from a radical, from a different realm could have a radically different perception of, of what was it? A white cylinder with an orange top. Okay.

Can you prove it, that that's possible? That a being who's living in a different realm might enter this room, look in my hand as I'm waving this thing around, and have a radically different perception of it? You guys in New York know.

Okay, you can tell me the answer. A dog. Okay.

I mean, and I'm not kidding, you know. I mean, it's funny, but I'm not kidding. A dog is living in a different realm.

According to Buddhism, a dog is living in a totally different world. I mean, that world and our world are coexisting at the same time. They're going on in the same place at the same time.

They're having a whole different experience of the world. Every object which you take for granted is a pen, right? Why?

Because you're a human. For them, when they look at my hand and they look at the thing in my hand, they're seeing something totally different. Say it's a puppy.

What does he see? A doggie tree, you know. Like something to chew on, you know.

A chewable object, you know. Something...the only interest a dog has in this thing is that it's a chewable object. And now you have to be really objective.

You have to be scientists, okay? Don't be...what do they call it? Don't be biased, okay?

Don't see it...don't just be human, okay? Who's right? Is it a pen?

Is this white cylinder a pen? Suppose I draw with it, okay? Okay.

Is it a pen or is it a doggie tree? Who's right? She says it depends on your viewpoint.

And I'm not being silly. This is very, very important. We are doing a Mahamudra meditation.

You can go home and do this Mahamudra meditation. Somebody else asked me, um, is it possible for a person to understand Mahamudra almost naturally? You see?

Not the called natural liberation or natural perception of emptiness or something like that. Is it true that you have to be trained? Is it true that you have to go through really disciplined training in how to see things?

And then disciplined training in meditation? Or is it possible that some person is just watching their thoughts and then suddenly they see emptiness directly, you know? They call it like a fish in the Panchen Lama's text.

It's like a fish jumping out of the water and just go whoop! And then whoop! You know?

And you see, uh, they call it Shrim Gyi. And I look it up in the dictionaries and I'm in there, you know, I ask my Lama, it means whoop! You know?

And, and, and, and, you know, just this little whoop when a, when a fish comes out of the water and goes back in, you know, whoosh! And, and is it possible that somebody else asked, that was the second question, somebody else came up and said, is it possible? Because in some traditions of Buddhism, you hear that, you know, like if I was just sitting and watching my mind, or I was trying to think about nothing, or I was just kind of daydreaming, or, you know, I was watching my thoughts go by, or is it possible to, to see emptiness directly under those conditions without any particular training in this life?

The answer, and in the First Panchen Lama's text also, and the answer throughout Buddhism is yes, it's possible. It's extremely unlikely, you know. This person who's been trained, trained, trained, trained, trained, trained in their past lives, if you believe in past lives, and then suddenly in this life they, something triggers it, you know, and they can maybe have some almost natural experience of that.

The odds are something like one in a billion, okay? I mean, maybe five people on the planet can, now it's six, right? Now, now six people on the planet can do that, or something like that.

The odds are very bad. It's not a normal way to see emptiness, very, very rare. And it comes from doing the normal way in their past lives, okay?

So there is no, nothing but the normal way, okay? So the answer is that, yeah, you are doing now a real Mahamudra meditation. It is, it is not to sit and watch your mind go here and there.

It's not to sit and watch your thoughts. It's not the exercise of sitting and trying not to think, okay? Otherwise all the daydreamers in your high school would already be enlightened, okay?

It's not like that, okay? Really, it's not all those things. It's not those things.

And the First Panchen Lama is, he's very adamant about it because he does not want people to what? Die, okay? And it's not just a, a question of theory or philosophy or something like that.

If you don't get this straight that I'm talking about, if what I say is true, in the debate ground you have to say, if what I say is true, then if someone teaches it to you wrong, you die, okay? It's a big mistake. I mean, it's a, it's a, it's life or death question, how do you do Mahamudra meditation?

How do you really do a Mahamudra meditation? Because if you get it wrong, the stakes are your life, okay? According to what I said, you don't have to believe it, but I, it's true, okay.

Anyway, what's it got to do with this stupid pen? Okay, so, some animal, I mean, we've proved something tonight so far, that you can't say who's right. You can't say the dog is more right or the human is.

I mean, if we really be objective and we're unprejudiced, you know, we're not like counting humans better than dogs, okay? If a, if a dog sees it as, a dog can justifiably and reasonably say, that's a doggy treat, and a human can justifiably and reasonably say, I saw you right with it, it's a pen. Who's right?

They're both right, okay? So, there's a big question, okay, and this is my, you are doing a Mahamudra meditation. This is the real thing.

Why? It'll get you enlightened, we'll talk about it. Can one thing be two things at once?

From its own side. Okay, yeah, you see, can it be a doggy treat and a pen from its own side? Okay, you, she said, from this being's viewpoint, and they have just as much a right to see it as anyone else, it's a doggy treat, and from this being, who's living in a different realm, in the same room, right?

Remember that, we'll get to that later, okay? There's two beings living in different realms, in the same Unitarian chapel, okay? And, and is it possible for one thing from its own side to be a doggy treat and a pen at the same time?

And the answer is no. And then Buddhism says why, and they say, because if it was a doggy treat from its own side, when I stuck this up and said what was it, everyone would say, you know, there'd be this big rush up to the front to, to chew on it, okay? And I, and I could give them out at the door instead of the readings, you know?

And, and so I'm not kidding, and I'm not being facetious, I'm really not, you know, if it was a doggy treat from its own side, then you would all, you would all have answered it's a doggy treat, you know? And, and if it was a pen from its own side, and you brought your cocker spaniel here, you know, they would say, oh, hey, pen, you know, that's right, you know? So according to Buddhism, it, it doesn't have its own identity from its own side, that's all, okay?

It doesn't have, from its own side, at this level of our conversation, it's only a white and orange cylinder, okay? If you are a human, you see it as a pen. If you're a dog, you see it as a chewable thing.

And both is right, both of them are right, okay? And the fact that it's not a pen from its own side, and the fact that it's not a doggy treat from its own side, is what we call its emptiness, okay? That's all.

And everything you ever heard about emptiness, other than what I just said, is wrong, okay? And I'm not embarrassed to say it, it will not get you enlightened, it will not help you, it doesn't have any use or function, it doesn't help at all. That is the emptiness of the pen.

Did you perceive its emptiness directly? No, I mean, we went to this complicated thing, the guy stood up there for 15 minutes and talked about doggy treats, and then, and then finally, I got some rough idea that maybe it's not a pen from its own side. But when I hold it up, there's a part of you called your innate ignorance, feng ge, that still thinks it's a pen from its own side.

I mean, I can explain it logically to you, that this, if you see it as a pen, that's your problem, okay? You're losing out on a really good thing to chew, you know? There's something about your mind that's making you see it as a pen, you know?

But still you, in your heart, you still believe it. That's called innate ignorance, okay? And, and it takes a long, long time to overcome that.

There'll come a point at which you, you would really see the emptiness of this directly, and that has to be done in meditation. You can't be staring at the pen, you have to be thinking about the pen, and suddenly you go into a direct perception of its emptiness. So, what's it got to do with me?

It's interesting. It's getting late. I got other, you know, I got stuff to do tomorrow morning.

Can you get around to how this helps me, okay? You know, I mean, I understand that a dog doesn't see it the way I do, and I'm willing to admit at this late hour that we, we both have a right to see it our own way, you know? And he's just as reasonable as I am.

It's just as, as valid. We call valid, but not correct, right? That's a long story.

It's, it's valid for the dog to see it as a treat, and it's valid for me to see it as a pen, and I understand that from its own side, it couldn't be both at the same time. So, it's empty of any identity of its own, okay? From its own side, it only gets to be a white and orange cylinder.

From your side, it becomes a pen, or from your side, it becomes a doggy treat. So, what's that supposed to do for me, okay? So, you have to admit the possibility that in this room, there could be two realms coexisting at the same time, you see?

And I'm talking totally different worlds. A dog walks in here and is, is literally in a different world, you see? You, you, you, if I ask you, is it, is a dog in another realm, you'll say, no, he's, he's in this chapel with us.

But if you think carefully, he's truly in a different realm. Every object to him is as different as, as this white and orange cylinder is, you know? So, you have to admit that it's possible that this chapel could be holding two realms at the same time, depending on who's looking, right?

Depending on who's here. And we say that's the emptiness of this chapel, okay? The emptiness of this chapel is that it's not a human's experience of this chapel, and it's not a dog's experience of this chapel.

From its own side, it's neutral. It's like a cylinder, okay? And if you're a dog, you see it as one kind of world.

And if you're a human, you see it as a different world. And those are two different realms, two different realities can happen in this room at the same time, okay? You, this is just logical.

By the way, that's the emptiness of this room. That's truly the emptiness of this room. And there's no, like, black hole in your head or something like that.

All those explanations of Mahamudra that stress somehow imagining something black, imagining something sparkly, you know, imagining the whole, you know, space between here and here, or something like that are false, and they don't help you, and they can't help you, and they don't do anything. Watching your thoughts is no big shakes. You've been watching your thoughts since you started this life, okay?

Trying to stop your thoughts, you know, you tried that when you're in high school with all those drugs and alcohol and everything. I have some friends who come to class, they're heroin addicts, and they, I asked them, what's the big thing about heroin, you know, because I never tried it. And they said, you almost stop your thoughts, you know.

Like, it's some kind of a attraction to stopping your thoughts, because they drive them crazy, you know. Stopping your thoughts is not a goal, okay? It's not a reasonable goal, and it can't, it can't last.

Sooner or later, you start thinking again. According to Buddhism, it's just a, very subtle thoughts are going all the time. You can't stop your thoughts.

Buddhas have thoughts. Enlightened beings have thoughts. It's not a practice to try to stop your thoughts, or even just to watch them roll around your head, okay?

Real Mahamudra, real study of emptiness, is to reflect and to think about the fact that this thing doesn't have any nature of its own. What's it got to do with your life? How is it supposed to make you free from death or something like that?

Can you imagine now two realms going on in this, two separate worlds coexisting in this chapel? I mean, you can imagine, you have a feeling of it now, okay? And Buddhism says, if you had a different state of mind, there could be a third realm existing in this chapel, and that would be an enlightened realm or a tantric paradise, okay?

Like a paradise filled with holy beings, and there's no contradiction and no problem, and it's just as real and valid as your current experience, okay? It's not like humans have a monopoly on reality. You see what I mean?

Like, dogs have their own reality. Humans can have their...they have to coexist. We have to share this chapel.

There can be two realms here. Buddhism says, given the right conditions, this chapel...you could have been seeing this chapel as a tantric paradise, and you would be seeing yourself. When you look down at your hands, whether you see paws, or whether you see fingers, or whether you see this golden light of an immortal, total ecstasy being forever, it's all a function of your mind, you know?

It's the purity of your mind, and you have to accept it about this...what was it? Yeah, cylinder, okay? You have to accept that fact about the cylinder.

So, the possibility that you could not die, the possibility that you could be experiencing a completely different world here, it's totally logical, and totally...you have to accept the possibility, okay? So, the only thing you have to do tonight...by the way, you just finished your Mahamudra meditation. That's it.

Seriously, and I'm not kidding. It's very funny. He's got this six-page text.

There's four lines on how to do it, you know? What are they? Nagarjuna said, you are just a bunch of fingers, and limbs, and a body, you know?

A torso. Whether you look down and see paws, and a tail, or whether you look down and see hands that are going to rot in some grave somewhere, or whether you look down and see golden light shimmering off this total ecstasy being, is not coming from it. It doesn't have any nature of being like that.

It could have been any of the above, the same way that the pen is. And that's a Mahamudra meditation. Once you get that, just remember the pen, then all things are possible.

Then the goal of Buddhism can be realized by anybody in this room. You can enter a tantric paradise in this life. You don't have to...

the guy was right, who asked me the question, right? You don't have to see that. That's the whole goal of this class.

That's the goal of 200,000 Buddhist books that exist in the world. That's all it is. The Mahamudra section of his text is like that.

Then he says, we'll get to that later. Okay. And that's how you do a Mahamudra.

Now the last thing you have to know is, why is the dog seeing a doggie treat? And why is the human seeing a pen? You know, why...why does the dog look down at the same cylinder and see a leg and a paw? Why does the human look down and see an arm and some fingers? And why would the tantric deity look down and see this golden, beautiful light coming out? Why?

Okay. What makes a dog a dog? And what makes a human a human?

She said karma, okay? I mean, Buddhism says that every time you do a goodness to another person, that one more seed is planted in your mind to see this hand as a...as a golden light. You see what I mean?

One more...one more tiny seed is put in your mind, and if you keep it up long enough, gradually you see it change. And that's karma, okay? Karma is...is doing good things for other people, taking care of other people. Every time you do some small, kind thing to another person, and it can be in your mind even, you know, a kind thought, a pure thought about someone, you put one more seed in your mind that later will make you see this. And I'm not talking a thousand years from now. The...the whole point of Tantra is that you can collect these energies in your mind, and you can...they can have their result in this lifetime, okay? Very clearly stated that before...before you get much older, you could start...the change could start taking place, okay? Because it's coming from your mind, okay? And if you think, like, I'm making up this thing about karma, oh, there's something...I...I read all the Indian Psychopaedia when I was a kid. I still remember, the Buddhists made up the idea of karma to explain the world, you know? It's not like that. Something's making a dog see this differently.

You have to admit it. You don't have to say, it's good karma or bad karma. You don't have to use those words even.

But you can accept the idea that there's something in the dog's brain that is making them see this different, and it's not a...didn't come from nowhere. Come on, we're scientists, right? We believe in science.

It must have come from somewhere. It's not like a dog's mind is just accidental, you know what I mean? It must be coming from somewhere.

There must be a reason why a dog sees it differently than I do. Something in his brain is making him see this different than the way I see it, okay? Buddhism says, and you don't have to accept it now, I'm just putting seeds in your mind, okay?

Right? You don't have to accept the seeds for me to put them there, right? Okay.

Every time you do a good thing for another person, every time you even have a kind thought to another person, you collect extremely powerful karmic seeds in your mind to see this room as a paradise. And if you do it with enough training, you can purposely change your body before you die, okay? And that's Tantric practice, okay?

That's the Mahamudra that you can't describe in public, and I won't, okay? That's something you need special training for. But you must go for it, right?

You must try to learn it. And then, and then you do a Mahamudra meditation that makes it happen in this lifetime. So you can do it, okay?

If what I said about the pen is true, then every being in this room can, can reach that stage. And that's, you know, the Christians call it going to heaven or something like that. You can really do it, they're right.

You know, it's just so fuzzy and unclear how to do it. If you do it Lam Rim, you know, step by step, specific steps that you take, and then finally you come out like, you know, some Tantric angel, and you can do it. Everybody in this room can do it, okay?

And that's, that's because you understand the, the emptiness or the potential in this room for two realities to be going on at the same time. So yeah, you might see the Dalai Lama getting old. What does he see?

You see what I mean? If he is Avalokiteshvara, is he? Is he a Tantric angel?

Come on, you can't prove it. Seriously, you know, you're Americans, we have to remain objective, you know. Is, is the Dalai Lama a Tantric angel?

I don't know. I can't read his mind. I see a man getting older.

He's a very, very wise, compassionate, incredibly great teacher. But is he a, a god, you know? Is he some holy angel?

I don't know, okay? I really don't, I can't see it. But, but what does he see when he looks in the mirror?

Can you say that? Can you say that he sees himself getting older? You don't know.

You really don't know. You have to say you don't know. If you're a debater in a Buddhist monastery, you're deceived.

I'm not sure. But, but if I ask you, is it possible that he's seeing Chenrezig when he looks in the mirror? Yeah, why?

Because of this what? Because of this what? Because of this what?

Because of this, what am I holding? Oh, good. I was hoping to trick him into vague ground.

It's, you always try to set somebody up, but he didn't fall for it. Okay, kids are the worst. Adults always fall for it.

Okay, because of the emptiness of this, oh, I almost said pen. Okay, but don't forget, okay? Okay, because he's empty, meaning he is not an old man from his own side, and he is not a Tantric angel, ageless, sixteen-year-old Tantric angel.

You know, he's not either one from his own side, you know. And that means that he can become, or we can become, that thing, okay? And that's, that's all.

That's a Mahamudra meditation, and that's the, the reason to do Mahamudra meditation, is just what I talked about, okay? That's all I have to say, actually. Then you just have to collect really good karma.

How to do that is a whole art, and, and you have to study that. It involves taking some kind of commitment to, to collect good karma, and then to, to check it all the time, okay? To check yourself all the time.

And then that's all you need to know, okay? We'll do some prayers. Like one or two questions?

No, perfect, okay. Yeah, okay.

[Говорящий 2]
I was playing with the ambiguity in the language in that, when you kept saying that phrase, to see from its own side, I kept seeing, hearing sight.

[Говорящий 1]
Oh, yeah, good.

[Говорящий 2]
To see from its own sight or side. Yeah. I assume you're saying side.

[Говорящий 1]
Yeah, I'm saying side. In Tibetan it's, yeah, go ahead. No, go ahead.

Yeah, you could say that. Yeah, you could say that. Yeah, I was saying from its own side.

In Tibetan, for those of you studying Tibetan, it's rangonendupa. You know, does it have a nature of being a pen from its own side? And you have to say no.

And then you say, what's the proof? And you say, because a dog comes in here and doesn't see it as a, as a pen. That's just a proof of its emptiness, okay?

That's a very, if, you know, if you're like, really busy and you have to go to work and you don't have time to meditate, that's like a ten-second Mahamudra meditation, okay? Yeah.

[Говорящий 2]
My question was, if a person is saying, basically, essentially, that everything is, from a certain perspective, evenly distributed, if one tries to remember that, then it goes off-balance again. Therefore, my question is, if this is all true, then why have Tibetan Buddhism, why not just have Zen Buddhism?

[Говорящий 1]
She said, if it's all true, then why not have Zen Buddhism? I don't think, it really doesn't matter. If you can get there, it doesn't matter at all.

You know, it really doesn't matter. Every kind of Buddhism exists. I heard his, this is the first thing I ever heard his Holiness say.

I was 20 years old. We were standing out in a, in a, in a drizzle outside his cottage. And he was standing on the porch, you know, and somebody said, your religion is just like every other religion.

You've, people in Tibet have killed for Buddhism. You know, why have all these religions? You should give up all religions.

And he said, wait a minute, every kind of Buddhism that exists, if it continues to exist, it means because it's helping somebody. You see what I mean? So, yeah.

[Говорящий 2]
My question is, if one is trying, that, it seems to me that that effort is the same thing as saying that that is a pen.

[Говорящий 1]
I don't get it.

[Говорящий 2]
To try to achieve a state of unity, to create dualism, period. Sorry, but this is just an objective fact. Therefore, how, I mean, obviously, people do try, do practice, year after year, many, many people.

And something, there needs to take that leap. I'm not sure that if a person tries to do that, no matter if they practice meditation for many years, or if they've had good karma, or they're in an advanced life, or whatever, that that is necessarily the solution. I wouldn't need more than, I wouldn't want to spend my whole life trying it that way, if it's still, to try is obviously to separate.

And yet, of course, one doesn't want to not try. So, is there, when I go in my daily life, can I translate what you just said with the pen, if you could just say a few more words? Help me translate what you said about the way the dog sees the pen and the way the human sees the pen.

Is there something I can take with me into my day, daily practice, that I can use in my daily life? Should I, if I try not to think, then that is a thought, basically. Okay.

[Говорящий 1]
Just a couple of comments. The Buddha taught for 51 years. We have 100,000 pages of his speech still exist.

He divided his time equally between explaining emptiness and explaining how to do good karma. I mean, the entire contents, 1,500 texts in 100,000 pages, are almost purely equally divided. And we were inputting them in computers, so I, last 12 years, you know, hundreds of people working.

He spent 25 years explaining emptiness, Mahamudra, and then he spent like 25 years explaining what it is to lead a good life. And tonight, I think for the first time, for many people here, many, maybe even a lot of Buddhists here, we tied them together. You see what I mean?

They're both. If emptiness is correct, then you must be compassionate and do good things for other people. And now there's a reason, and now it makes sense that the Buddha spent half his time teaching emptiness and half his time teaching how to be ethical or compassionate in your daily life.

So that's it. That's all. That's the answer.

Like that. One more. Anybody?

No? Good. Oh, go ahead.

I wanted to know, are you speaking theoretically, or are you speaking of experience of emptiness? No, I can't. Let me see.

I'll tell you some of the experience of a person who's seen emptiness directly, okay? Immediately following that experience, which is 20 minutes long, immediately after that, you have a series of profound perceptions, you know, profound experiences happen to anyone who sees emptiness directly. One of them is, maybe the most important one is, you know you're not crazy.

You see what I mean? I mean, people come up to me and say, I can't think I saw something. Is this...

And I say, no, if you think you didn't see it. If you... it's a...

you know. That's one thing. And you know you're not wrong.

That's the second thing. You have a direct personal perception of all of the time it will be until you become enlightened, until you become a Buddha. So you have a direct personal knowledge, direct perception of how your life will go, and then you have a direct perception of your own enlightenment.

And from that moment on, you know you will be a Buddha, and you know everything that's going to happen until then. Roughly, in a rough way, you know everything about that. You meet a Buddha, you know, you perceive what a Buddha is directly.

And those are all... there's maybe 10 or 15 other experiences, but those always happen to a person who sees emptiness directly. And imagine what it would feel like to know those things.

You see what I mean? Imagine what it would feel like to go through the world and know those things, to know when you're going to be a Buddha, and to see it, and to always know that, and to know you wouldn't die anymore after that. You see what I mean?

To know those things. And imagine, I mean, try to imagine what it would be like to go through the world like that, and try to imagine what that would feel like. And then try to imagine how you'd spend your life after that.

What would you do after that? You know what I mean? That's all.

Okay, let's stop there. We'll do some prayers, and then we say... It's very rare.

I mean, you didn't hear someone talk about this stuff, probably, very frequently. I mean, it's not like your normal thing in the newspaper. So, we say that's a very holy karma, a sacred act, and that this ground is forever blessed in a way.

So, you know, dedicate it to the people who live around here, and dedicate it that someday they might hear about it, if it's true. You know, you don't have to say it's true or not true, but if it's true what we said, then amazing things can happen around here. So, as a result of this talk that we had.

So, we say pray for all the people who might be affected by what went on here tonight, okay? And we'll do those prayers. And then stay quiet for a few minutes after that, okay?

Dei Svaha