Дхарма на работе (1999, Пало-Альто), занятие 1

[Говорящий 1]
Okay, we'll start. The name of the talk is Dharma in the Workplace, okay? And usually I do something different, so...

actually I'd like to go over three goals in business in general, okay? This is a new idea we've had recently that... In general, I think people have this impression of what a businessman is, and in my...

when I was growing up, in the 60s and 70s, it was considered a bad word, you know? If you wanted to insult somebody, you called them a businessman. And I remember calling my boss a businessman, and he objected one day, I remember.

I said, you're just like all those businessmen, and he... And he got upset that I called him a businessman, which is a sign that it was a bad thing to call somebody, you know what I mean? And there's this feeling that businessmen are stupid, or businessmen are greedy, businessmen cheat other people, businessmen only care about money, and things like that.

Or that work, in general, or the capitalist system is designed for that, you know, to hurt other people, or to exploit people, or things like that. When I went to Australia, we gave an interview on national radio, and the guy found out I was in the diamond business, and he like attacked me on the radio, about this business that hurts so many people, and things like that. How can you, as a monk, sell things which are just meant for vanity, and which hurt all the people who work in the mines, and things like that?

How can you be involved in a business like that, you know what I mean? And then we went through a long talk. The basic feeling I had before I went into business, and I didn't enter business till I was almost 30, I didn't have a real job till I was almost 30.

I spent about 8 years in a monastery, a small Mongolian monastery in New Jersey, studying with this lama, and I didn't go anywhere, and I just lived off an inheritance that I had. And so it was sort of frightening to go into Manhattan, and start interviewing. My lama told me I had to go to work.

He said, it's one thing to study philosophy, it's another thing to put it into practice. And you have to go to work. And we fought for about a year.

And then, I remember one day he gave this very compelling talk at Rutgers University, and then I, on the way home, I said, I'll do whatever you say. So he said, okay, then go to work. And...

I didn't need money, I had lots of money. And... not lots, but I had enough to live on.

So he said... You know, he went away to India, actually. Then I started interviewing in the diamond business, because I'd had this experience maybe 8 years before, that informed me that if I ever went to work, I should work in the diamond business.

And I had no knowledge of the diamond business, I didn't know anybody. It's like trying to join the mafia, you know? And...

I went to 30 different stores, small jewelry stores, I remember, asking if I could have a job. And they all asked me the same thing, they said, what do you know about diamonds? And I said, nothing, but I'm willing to learn, you know?

And they just threw me out. And then... Then I met this guy in Manhattan, and he was from Israel, which is a big diamond-producing country.

And... And I asked him if I could work for him, and I said I would do anything, you know? I said I'd wash the windows, I'd clean the floors, I'd be a messenger, I would do anything he asked.

And then, he could hardly speak English, and he was just starting this business, so he said, okay, you can work for me, and I'll pay you $7 an hour, and you have to be a messenger. And you take these golden diamonds, on the subway sometimes, very dangerous actually, and then you go up to the diamond district and come back to the office, and just deliver jewelry, you know? So that's how we started.

And it was just two or three people at the beginning. And he had just reached New York, and he was living in a hotel room, okay? At the end, this is like 17 years later, the company employs about 800 to 1,000 people, and we own a...

well, we owned a building in Manhattan, and they do about 100,000 diamonds a day now. And it's about $150 million turnover per year. Now, I'm not a partner, okay?

He never did that. And I took the money and gave it away. But what I like to talk about is how to do it, you see what I mean?

And Forbes magazine got all excited and came and asked us, how did you do that? And then Doubleday came and asked to write a book about it, and that book will be finished this weekend. And sent and published, and it'll come out in the new year.

But they asked, how did you do that, you know? So I... my experience...

I would like to describe a process by which you get the sense that business is a spiritual opportunity, and that business people... my feeling, having been in business, is that the really great business people, the real masters of business, they're like big geishas in the monastery, you know? In the diamond business, there are...

there are about 10,000 diamond dealers between Bombay and New York, but we're talking the top 5, or the top 10, or the top 15. You know, $2 billion of business is done by 15 small families, and they're Jain, and they're very religious. And it's very interesting to me, you know, the American impression of a business person is someone who's greedy, unethical, driven, could care less about other...

no compassion. And these people are the opposite, you see? I mean, they are dealing...

some of them are doing businesses of $500 million or something a year, and they don't feel that way at all about their lives, and they live very interesting spiritual lives. And in my impression, the diamond business is cool, because you meet... it's truly multinational, you know?

It's all... all the language of the diamond business is Yiddish, from the old days. But in every country of the world, they're using Yiddish.

So I say, this is a mitziyya, this is a real mazal, this is a miyakhos, and everybody, Chinese, Vietnamese, Koreans, Japanese, Middle Eastern people, Belgians, they all understand what you're saying. Doesn't matter. Russians...

the business is truly international. So, what I've discovered in the diamond business is that really good businessmen are really smart, and a lot of them are not spiritual, but the reason they're not is that they have a high standard of what's logical and what's truthful, and they're not satisfied with the religions that are available to them, you know? They're not...

they don't think it sounds reasonable at all, they think it just sounds silly, you know what I mean? Like, they see the rituals and they see the... the whole religion that they're in.

And in Belgium it's the Catholicism, you know? In Russia right now it's nothing. In Bombay it's Hinduism or Jainism.

You see, in each country in the Middle East it's Judaism or Islam, you know what I mean? And the Persian diamond dealers are all Islamic. And...

so it's all different kinds of business people, but the one thing in common is they've all rejected the religion they have, because they don't think it makes sense, you know what I mean? Except for the Jains, I could say, okay? The rest really don't follow...

business people don't follow religion, not because they're not intelligent, and not because they're not spiritual, but they're not satisfied with the... with the program that's presented to them by any particular religion. And that's my experience.

And then when they learn a little bit more about... the idea of karma and emptiness, which I'm gonna talk about tonight, okay? Then they...

it's interesting, they've gotten attracted to it, and they've become successful at it. So, quite unembarrassedly, quite baldly, I'm going to talk about three steps, okay? In business.

And this can apply to a $100 million business, and I think it could apply to a family, to running a family. In fact, I found that the best workers in my company, and I hired a few hundred of them, were the people who had to run a family, you know? People who had experience running a family were the best managers.

So, the principles I'm going to talk about are... are applicable to anything from a large corporation to a family, okay? And three steps, I would say.

First one is making the money, okay? We once were asked to write a business... what do you call it?

A mission statement for the company. So, you know, I submitted this little scrap of paper, and it said, make money making jewelry and diamonds. You know what I mean?

It's just that. I mean, that's what you're in business for. And that's why you go to work, you know?

People used to come to me and complain, I ran hundreds of people, you know? And they would... they would get into my office and they'd say, I hate this place, and I hate working here, you know?

And I'd say, that's why we pay you. You see what I mean? You see what I mean?

It's not for enjoyment, you know what I mean? If it was something fun, they wouldn't pay you, you know? And...

it's a blackmail. It's basically blackmail, you know? I give you this paper, you give me your life.

You know? And... that's what business is all about.

So, I mean, first you have to make money. I mean, the purpose of business is to make money. And you can say that sounds un-Buddhist, or un-spiritual, or un-anything.

It's not. It's just an activity. It's make...

the goal of a business is to make money. The goal of a Buddhist practitioner is to reach a tantric paradise in this life. Which is to call...

it's called jornden. Jornden means every kind of wealth you could imagine, at your fingertips. And not just money, but every other kind of wealth.

So, it's not a conflict to say whatever principle works for making money, you could probably extend it to making any other thing. You see what I mean? There's a certain principle behind making money.

Okay? It's not un-spiritual to make money. His Holiness in Central Park, in front of 40,000 people...

If anyone has a tape, I'd like to get it. But he just said, yeah, go ahead, make money, but then use it for something good. You see what I mean?

That's a big difference. But making money is not something you have to be embarrassed about, or anything like that. It's just another means to an end.

What you use it for is another question. So, the first principle I'm going to talk about tonight is how to make money. And quite...

quite directly. Money is useful. You can help lots of people.

We are feeding 2,000 monks with some of the money from the diamond business. We built a lot of the buildings at Sarah Monastery. Things like that.

We saved Tibetan literature. Okay? It's useful.

It's not a bad thing. Depends on how you use it. Okay?

Second thing... second is enjoying it. Okay?

And in Buddhism, it's actually two different karmic causes, you see? There's one kind of... activity you can do which creates money, and there's a different kind of activity you do which creates satisfaction.

You see what I mean? And you can have... We call...

In debating, we say... It means there are four combinations between these two. You can not make money and not enjoy that.

You can make money and enjoy it. You see what I mean? And like that.

You can make money and enjoy the money, or you can... I don't know. You figure it out.

But it's different karmas. You meet rich people who are not having a good time. You meet poor people who are not having a good time.

You meet poor people who are having a good time. You meet rich people who are having a good time. Okay?

And it's not necessarily that money brings you happiness, but it's not necessarily that poverty brings you happiness either. You know? It's just...

We say there are two separate karmic causes going on. There's one karma that creates the money, and there's a separate karma that creates the satisfaction. And they're independent of each other largely.

Okay? Which is why a lot of rich people are miserable, and a lot of poor people are miserable too. Okay.

Number three... Number three is called making it meaningful. Meaning...

Number two is more like, while you're making the money and while you're using the money, are you healthy mentally and physically? You see? That's what I call enjoyment.

Enjoyment means, are you healthy physically? And are you healthy mentally? Okay?

Number three, making it meaningful, is mostly something that you... decide... from...

retrospect, meaning, as you get close to your retirement, as you get close to the end of your career, as you get close to your death, and you look—or the end of your company, okay? These are four possibilities, okay? And you look back on what you've been doing for the last ten, twenty, thirty years.

Are you proud of it? You know? Can you say that my efforts over two or three decades of doing business have contributed to someone's welfare?

Or was it just a greedy thing? You know what I mean? When you look back on your business life, or your work life, especially from the point of view of the end of it, you can look back over those decades and say, this had meaning, or this didn't have meaning.

Because if you get to the end of it, and you look back, and you say it was meaningless, then the first two are crazy. You say, I mean, it doesn't matter if you made money, and it doesn't matter if your body and your mind were healthy while you were making money. If you get to the end of it and look back, and you've made all that money and spent all that money and you're not happy with what you did, then there's no reason to have done it.

You say, I mean, it becomes meaningless. Then business is meaningless. So, we have to cover all three in one night.

And basically the book is a more detailed presentation about these three steps. So, I'm going to go through how to make money, how to enjoy making money, and then three, how to make it meaningful. And I think it's three different subjects completely.

You know, I was in Australia, after the radio talk where the guy yelled at me for half an hour, the next morning we had a... Tara Institute sponsored a business breakfast, and they only had 200 seats, and they filled... all the seats filled up, and then they turned all the rest of the people back.

It was, like, amazing. And these businessmen were there, and they were talking Melbourne, okay? Not as bad as Brisbane, but...

No, okay? No, but very skeptical, and very, you know, sort of hard-headed guys. And, you know, all men, all dressed in these very expensive suits, and looking very grumpy.

And... And then, we went through this thing about business. And about three-quarters of the way through, we're deep into karma without talking about karma, okay?

And then I said, are you ready to go one more level? You know, I was thinking, can they handle emptiness or not? And they all said, yeah, yeah, we can do it.

And... And so we went down to the next level, which was emptiness. And they got it.

I mean, it was great. They got it. So, I'm going to just give you a 15-minute how to make money based on emptiness, okay?

And those of you who heard it before, I apologize for the same old thing, but... It fits my proposal that we change the word perfection of wisdom to the pen thing, okay? Alright?

So, I'm going to go straight to the emptiness of money, and making money, and I'm not doing it to mystify you, or to confuse you, or something like that. If you don't understand what Buddhists call emptiness, you won't really be able to make money, okay? So, here we go, okay?

What is this thing? Those of you who know, don't cheat. What is this thing?

A pen, I mean, okay. She bit, alright. It's a pen, okay?

It's a dry erase miracle marker. Medium tip, okay? And...

And that's, you know, your mind just automatically says pen, okay? Then, I want you to do a step back and say, you know, if you didn't know what a pen was, what would you think it was? It's just like a very shiny tube, or a white and black cylinder.

You could say a tube, okay? I mean, it's just, like if you're an Eskimo from the 14th century, and you come in, and I hold this thing up, you say, oh, you know, interesting stick, very shiny, the color is very interesting, you know, can't believe how smooth you made it, you know what I mean? And for them, it's just a cylinder.

It's just a black and white cylinder, okay? Then I always say, if you had a dog come in here, it happened one night in New York when I was at this point, you know, and so we actually tried it, we went like this, you know, and if it's a puppy especially, they run up, and they sniff it, and then they grab it. So, to them, in their mind, everything is basically either a place to pee pee on, or a place to walk, or smell things, or something to chew on.

I'm talking a puppy, okay? So, for a puppy, when they see this cylinder, they just think something to chew on. They can't cognize it as a pen.

They can't organize that colors and shapes into a pen, okay? If you're a scientist, and I hold this thing up, and you're very strict, objective, you'd say, he's just holding up a black and white cylinder, okay? I can't say it's a pen yet, until I see him write with it, and until I touch it, and examine it, and see if there's ink inside, okay?

If you're really a good scientist, you'd say, no, we don't assume anything. It's just a black and white cylinder right now. Maybe the back of it is purple.

You see what I mean? Or maybe it's flat. Maybe it's a good picture of a pen, or something.

You see what I mean? So, that's the emptiness of this object, okay? Very simply, it doesn't have its own nature, which we call self, or self nature.

It doesn't have its own nature of being a pen, and it doesn't have its own nature of being a dog chew thing, okay? Because if it did have its own nature of being a pen, the dog would see it as a pen. You see what I mean?

If it had its own nature of being something to chew on, I would be compelled to chew on it. You see what I mean? I would be salivating as I looked at it, okay?

And I'm not, okay? So, we say it's empty. It doesn't have an identity of being a pen, from its own side, and it doesn't have an identity of being a dog toy, from its own side, okay?

But we see it as a pen, and I use it as a pen, and you can't deny that to us it's a pen. So why? Where's that pen quality coming from?

If it's not coming from the stick, where's it coming from? There's really only one other choice, it's coming from you somehow. Somehow, the pen-ness of this thing is coming from you, okay?

So I repeat, the emptiness, or the blankness, or the identity-less-ness, the nature-less-ness of this object is that it's not a pen from its own side. You see it as a pen, you use it as a pen, it's logically a pen for you, it's validly a pen for you, it's properly a pen for you, but only because from your side, you're supplying an identity of pen-ness to it. It suggests a pen to you, and then you identify it as a pen, and then you use it as a pen, okay?

And if they made a big pen with a big square thing, and it didn't look like a pen, it would take you like five minutes to figure out that, okay, I'm supposed to write with this thing, okay? You give it its pen-ness, okay? That's coming from your mind, okay?

Now the next question, is it a choice, or is it not a choice, okay? In other words, do you have a choice about seeing this as a pen, or do you have a choice to see it as something else? If I suddenly hold this up and say, this is the magic wand that you can use to touch iron things and turn them into gold, can you just decide that it's that?

You see what I mean? You cannot, okay? In other words, whatever is making the pen a pen, may be coming from your mind, but it's not under your current control, okay?

You can't control that right now. You can't say, I don't like pens, I wish it was a Tootsie Roll, okay? You can't just close your eyes and make it a Tootsie Roll, okay?

So, it's apparently, it's coming from your mind, but you're compelled to see it as a pen. Something's forcing you to see it as a pen. We say that that is called karma, okay?

Karmic seeds in your mind, okay? You have seeds in your mind, we say that they sit in your subconscious for a while, and then they float up to your conscious mind, and they color the way you see things. They help decide how you see things, okay?

So, the minute I held this up the first time and asked you what it was, even though everybody was too shy to say pen, you thought pen, your mind thought pen, and you saw pen, okay? And that, that's coming from your mind, and it's being forced on you by your mind, okay? Something is growing in your mind, some invisible thing, and makes you see it as a pen.

It's not a question of choice, okay? So we can say the following, we can make this following conclusion, this thing is created by my mind in a way, but not in such a way that I can choose, you see what I mean? It's not like, oh, the world is just made by your mind, so...

have a positive outlook, you know? Next time you get in a car accident, just be happy, okay? It doesn't work like that, okay?

It is a production, or it is a result of some kind of mental process. You are helping make this pen a pen. Your mind is making this pen a pen.

But that doesn't mean that you can just make it anything you want, okay? It's not true. Something is forcing you to see it as a pen, okay?

You gotta keep that in mind. How does this apply to money? How does this apply to making money, okay?

We say that your mind is like a VCR... I'm sorry, what's the one that records? A VCR, right?

It's like a movie camera. Your mind is constantly recording. Your mind is on record all the time, okay?

Your mind is like a tape recorder, and every time it comes in touch with an object, that object makes an impression on your mind stream, okay? And there's a moral element here, very interesting. Meaning, if you do anything good for somebody, your mind records it as what we call a good karma.

And if you do something bad to somebody, your mind records it as what we call a bad karma. A bad seed in your mind, and a good seed in your mind. Okay, the rule of mental seeds is that the content is always—what do you call it?

Consistent. Okay? Like, if you do something negative, you're gonna get a negative result.

If you do something positive, you're gonna get a positive result. That's what Jesus meant when he said you don't get figs from thorns, and something from thistles. Dates?

I forget. In Ireland, we had to know this kind of stuff. Okay?

But, he was adamant that you don't get a good result from a bad cause. You see what I mean? From thistles, you can't get figs.

Whatever. Impossible. Just impossible.

Flatly impossible. What it means is as you do something kind to someone, a positive seed is planted in your mind. As you do something unkind to someone, a negative seed is planted in your mind.

Somebody asked me if there's anything like a neutral seed. There is. Okay?

There's what we call the static of your life. The background static of a human life. Meaning, things that aren't very nice, they're not nice and they're not bad.

They're just neutral. Okay? And, you know, like a lot of the objects in this room for you are just static.

Background static. That has its own karmic causes, which is ignorance itself. Free of good deeds or bad deeds.

That karmic result of that is what we call static. Background static of your life. We're not interested in that, we're interested in money.

Okay? No, you want a good result. Okay, flatly.

Okay. Flatly put, you want a good result. Okay?

Now, so the only question boils down to, if you think about that green paper, those green rectangles, okay? They don't have any value, right? They're just paper, it stinks even, you know?

I mean, it smells funny usually, and it's just a green rectangle. The fact that you can conceive of it as a dollar comes from, we say, certain karmas in your mind. Okay?

Certain background seeds in your mind. And then, when you look at that green paper, it has meaning for you. You see what I mean?

It has value for you, and also for other people around here. Okay? That's the nature of that paper.

And something like a business deal is blank, or empty, or neutral. Okay? Like, if you're trying to make a decision, the example I'm thinking of is, we were trying to decide whether to buy a building or not.

We had 15 million dollars extra. There was a building available in Manhattan, downtown Manhattan, and we're talking about, should we buy this building or not? And you go through this question in business, should you take a risk, or should you be conservative?

Okay? Here's the pros and cons. These are pros and cons.

Okay? It happens to every businessman. If we buy the building, we'll have these huge mortgage payments.

Okay? That's a con. If we buy the building, we can get a block grant from the federal government, and we did, and that was worth 10 million dollars.

That's a pro. Okay? If we buy the building, we'll have, you know, it was about 80,000 square feet of extra space, in case we get some huge orders.

Okay? If we buy the building and we don't get any huge orders, we're going to have more overhead, and more expenses, because the building is like a big empty hole. Okay?

So, like, you're making these decisions. So, I ask you, what's better in investment, or in business, or making a personal decision? Is it better to take a risk, or is it better to be conservative?

[Говорящий 2]
Risk.

[Говорящий 1]
Both. Can't do both at the same time. Can't do both at the same time.

I'll tell you what the Wall Street Journal says. Okay? I used to read it.

You have to hold one in your hands as you walk into the office, and, or get one delivered to your room, but you have to make sure part of it is sticking out under the door, so people know you're reading it. Okay? The first page has an article about George Soros, whose family we know.

I mean, they've helped us with some stuff in Tibet. They're helping stuff in Tibet, quietly. So, anyway, there's an article in there that says George Soros takes amazing risk, and makes a billion dollars in a month off the English government's currency rates.

Busted the Bank of England, basically. Made $80 from every English citizen, or something like that, just by playing with British currencies on the right days. Okay?

Billion dollars in a month. Okay? And then, so he took a risk, with his $70 billion and made a billion dollars.

Okay? And, then there's this other guy who was conservative, and he decided not to take a risk, and he was successful also. And then on the third page, there's a guy that took a risk and was a fool, because he ruined his company.

In Singapore, he's on the lam, they caught him in Germany, arrested him, you know, put him away. And they made very similar risks, him and George Soros. You see what I mean?

So, which one is better? You see, we call it blank. We call it neutral.

We call it empty. Okay? You can't answer the question, is risk better, or is being conservative with your investments better?

There is no answer. It's blank. Okay?

It's a blank action. That's the same thing as the pen thing. It's just a cylinder.

The action, the business action, risky or conservative, doesn't matter. It's just blank. Now, whether you see it as coming out successful, or whether you see it as coming out unsuccessful, has nothing to do with the risk or the being conservative, because you see conservative people who get rich, and you can see conservative people who ruin their companies, and the same with risk-takers.

It seems to be totally random, frankly. You heard this thing, they went to Wall Street, they got the four top investment advisors, and then they took some children from third grade, and they put the names of companies on a dartboard, and the children threw their darts on the dartboard, and they invested in those companies, and then they got the four brilliant guys. And after three years, it was exactly the same.

Okay? Totally the same. And if you're honest in business, and if you're honest in your life about how you make your money, it's random.

It's just random. It's apparently random. Smart people make lots of money, smart people go bankrupt.

Lazy people sit there, and some investment makes them rich, and lazy people get broke also. It doesn't seem to matter. You meet in business completely stupid people.

So stupid that they can't sign their names. I mean, in the diamond business we have. I've been there.

In the diamond dealers club in New York, there's people who can't sign their names. And they're incredibly wealthy. You know what I mean?

And then there's other guys who, you know, went to MBA, Harvard Business School. They're working for this guy. You know?

Because they can't figure out how to do it. You see what I mean? And it seems totally random.

It just seems random. And your life seems random. Okay?

And this applies to your life. You know? You go out, try to make money for your life, and it just seems random.

You know what I mean? It doesn't seem to matter whether you are risky, or conservative, or well-educated, or not. It just seems almost random.

Okay? And that—once you've been in business 10 or 15, 20 years, it strikes you very— with great—I don't know how to say—it's upsetting to realize it's random. You know what I mean?

That it doesn't really seem to matter whether you go left or right. You know? It just seems to be some people hit it and some people don't.

You know what I mean? We say that's neutral. Okay?

And the things that you think are making money aren't making money. Okay? So now we're faced with like—we call it the three big choices.

Master Shantideva, in the ninth chapter of the Guide to the Bodhisattva's Life, says hey, we got three choices here. A. Everything is random.

Everything. Okay? You are sitting here in this room, and your nose looks like your nose does, because something blew up a billion years ago.

And those little particles banged into each other, randomly. And your nose came out a billion years later. Stuck to this face, sitting in this room.

That's one possibility. Okay? It really is a possibility.

Okay? And Master Shantideva says Tso'o. Tso'o means the big bang.

You know? Just suddenly something happened, and millions of years later, after little pieces of stuff banging into each other randomly, your nose came out, connected to this face. That's the first explanation of the world.

Okay? The second explanation is a big guy in the sky who's directing everything. So, it's not really random.

It's just his antics. You know? He's like, let's give this guy money.

Don't give that guy money. This guy broke. This guy...

Okay, cancer. AIDS. Your kid can die in a fire tonight.

You know what I mean? Stuff like that. Just this...

Just this... There is a boss. There is a guy running it.

And he's... And a Buddhist would say he's sadistic. You know?

Like, people live in great fear throughout their lives. People live in not any knowledge of what's going to happen next week. Things happen to them.

Disasters happen to people. Everyone is getting old. Everyone is dying around you.

Wars, poverty, people getting hurt daily. And... And there's this guy running the show, and he has a deeper purpose, or there's some reason for that, but in Buddhism we just say it doesn't make...

It just doesn't make sense. Now, I'm not trying to... I'm not talking about that.

I'm going to talk about making money, okay? But, it doesn't seem to... It doesn't seem to make a lot of sense.

It doesn't seem to... that you could use that for anything. You see what I mean?

It doesn't seem like there has been developed a system of prayer or anything else that this person is going to make money, and this person is not. If you say this prayer, you make money. If you don't say this prayer, you don't make money.

If you walk into this church, you make money. If you go into this temple, you don't make money, or something like that. It seems to be random.

It doesn't seem to be that that's the case, okay? What's the third possibility? Money is a good thing.

Getting money is something useful, and so according to this idea, it has to have come from something good in the past. You see what I mean? It's just the thistles and figs thing, okay?

It's just the thorns and... what do they call it? Thorns and figs.

Thorns and grapes. Thistles and grapes? I don't remember.

Anyway, there's two of them, and I always forget. You don't get... figs from thorns?

Grapes from thorns, or figs from thistles, okay? And that's an expression of this principle, okay? Getting money, you know, having a good income, is a good thing, normally, okay?

And, according to this idea, it must come from something else which is good. That's all. It has to come from a similar event, because there is a sense to the universe, there is a logic to the universe.

Good things come from good things, bad things come from bad things, okay? The second thing you have to say is, if it's a cause of a good thing, it has to happen before or after the good thing? Before!

I mean, you don't plant seeds in the fall, and curse that you didn't get crops last summer. You see what I mean? It takes time.

It takes time, okay? And you don't sit there and plant a tree, and then stand there the next morning and say where the hell are you? You know what I mean?

I mean, no one does that. It takes time. You accept the principle that it takes time, okay?

It takes time to grow. And we say that mental things are no different. Mental things are not different, okay?

So how do you get money? According to this idea, any action you undertake in your personal life to make money, or any action you take in a corporate, as a corporate executive to make money, is neutral. In and of itself, it's not going to make money.

Why? It works for some people, it doesn't work for others. Okay?

So, no action is, within itself, profitable or not. Prove it. Read the Wall Street Journal.

Don't forget to read page three. That's where all the failures are. Page one is all the successes.

And it strikes you, if you skip from one to the other real fast, that people are doing the same thing, okay? The action of taking risk, even with your personal finances, and the action of not taking risk, are neutral. They don't have any identity, okay?

Whether or not they're successful is coming from somewhere else, as in the case of the cylinder. A pen, okay? It's exactly the same as a pen.

I call it the pen thing, okay? The same principle holds for money. The same principle holds for business.

There is no business action, which in and of itself, will lead to success or failure. They're neutral. They're empty.

They're just like the cylinder, okay? Now, whether you're gonna see them as successful, or whether you're gonna see them as a failure, depends totally on some kind of seed that's in your mind already, okay? Some kind of seed that you've put in your mind, okay?

And that's, that's the way it works. So, what's the right kind of seed to put in your mind, okay? Buddhism and Christianity say the same thing, I think, so does Islam, you know?

Give to other people, okay? Be generous. Be generous.

Give to others, okay? Give. The more wealthy you wanna be, the more you should give, okay?

Now, where does that leave all of us who have huge credit card bills, and... not enough money to have dinner tonight, okay? But we borrow, no, okay?

No, I mean, where does that leave you? If the only way that your business or your personal finances are gonna be good in the future—by the way, does this work in a week? Absolutely not.

Don't stand there and plant an apple tree and jump up and down and say, why aren't you growing, you know? It doesn't work like that. Physical seeds and karmic seeds are exactly the same.

They take time. They take time to grow. Okay, so actually, anything you undertake today to affect your finances, if you believe this theory, won't work for months, okay?

And don't expect it to. You know, don't go tomorrow and... And also, don't get excited if you happen to get some money tomorrow.

That came from something older, okay? No, I mean, don't think it's working. I had people go home and their cousins sent them a $20 bill, and...I had a guy in Ireland, he left...he went to buy scones, was it? Cups. Cups for the... Cups for the refreshments, which you're going to get.

Do we have...? Yeah. And then he said, I spent an extra pound. I didn't know whether to buy the good ones or the bad ones, but because it was a religious talk, I decided to buy the better ones.

And then I got back to the talk, to the venue of the talk, and I looked down, and there's a 50 pound note on the chair. I love your Buddhism, you know? Okay?

Okay. And then I said, well, frankly, we can't take credit for this one. You know what I mean?

You can't work on the present, okay? That's already like a tree that's come out. You can't push a tree back into the ground.

You can't curse the tree and push it back into the ground. It's too late. Karma's the same.

The perceptions you're having of this pen are a result, and therefore, they've already happened, and you can't change them right now. Okay? It doesn't matter how hard you close your eyes, you know, you tried it when your aunt was sick, when you were nine years old, and you went to the church, and you prayed that the cancer went away, it's not going to go away, okay?

In a day or a week, okay? It's a result, it's too late, you see what I mean? It's like trying to push a tree back into the ground, okay?

But, but you can definitely set up your finances for next year. Period. Okay?

You can just do it, okay? And you can do it, alright? So, how do you do it?

Quite frankly, it's just giving, okay? Giving as much as you can, alright? So, we went back to this question, if I'm broke, am I doomed to be broke forever?

Because I don't have anything to give, you see what I mean? And then the scriptures say, the beautiful thing is that it's mostly the attitude of giving, you see what I mean? 99% is the attitude of giving.

So, for example, I've taught this principle to people whose companies were in trouble. You know, the company is already in trouble, the company is already losing a lot of money. And they come to me and they say, what can you do?

And I say, give. And they say, look, here's my books, I don't have any money to give. And I say, no, it's not the amount you give, it's the attitude of being willing to give, you see what I mean?

If you have a lot, you have to give a lot. If you don't have much, you have to give as much as you can. And they have equal effects, okay?

It's the attitude. So, even if your personal finances are lousy, still concentrate on the mood of giving, you see what I mean? Concentrate real hard on giving.

Finances lousy means you don't have anything to give right now, but take what you have to give, take what you own, and still give as much away as you can. It may only be a few dollars to LMB, okay? Or Vajrapani, or Gyalwa Gyatso Center, okay.

But... It may not be a lot, but it's the attitude, you see, that makes the money. Okay?

It's the attitude which makes the money. It doesn't matter. That's the biblical thing about the old woman with the penny, it's true.

It's true. And a guy who's rich has as much chance as a camel walking through a needle hole. That's true.

Those things are true, because the rich guy will not give 90% of his wealth away, you see? And the poor person can. And they're willing.

It's the willingness that makes the karma. It's not the money. There's this thing called Samsara.

There's this thing called Korwa in Tibetan. It means the self-perpetuating cycle of bad stuff. Self-perpetuating cycle of lousy things.

They say that's what runs our world. Why? Because when you get in financial trouble, what's your normal reaction?

About giving. You shut down. And believe me, in a corporation, corporate giving goes first.

Okay? Then the perks go, and then they start cutting your insurance. You know, you get this notice that says, um, new health plan.

You know, and if you're an executive, you know the company's in trouble. They're saying, we found an even better health plan. And when they voluntarily come up with an even better health plan, you know the company's in trouble, and that they figured out some way to spend less money on it, you see what I mean?

And you get nervous, okay? So, companies and human beings react the same when they don't have enough money. They shut down their generosity, and that creates a perpetual cycle, you see?

Then you don't give, and then in the future you have more financial problems, and then you don't give again more, and then you have more financial problems, and it's what Bill Gates calls the downward cycle of a failing company, you know? It's just, and it applies to humans. From the top, that downward spiral looks like a circle, or a samsara, or a korwa.

That's why they call it that, okay? The natural human reaction to not having enough money is the worst thing you can do, okay? Why?

You're planting seeds in your mind that are gonna ripen later, and make you not see money, you see what I mean? It's watching your hand, it's the cog... cognitive act of watching that hand get smaller, smaller, smaller, smaller, smaller, and then open, and drop a check on somebody's lap, or a dollar or something.

That perception actually is planted in the mind, and comes back later as money coming in. It's amazing. It works.

Not kidding. Not kidding at all, okay? I've lived by that, and I made a joke about the dinner money, but I mean, people give millions of dollars to our projects in the past.

I mean, stuff like that has happened. And it's because we were giving, you see what I mean? I have a perception of a million dollars coming this way, because I had a perception of a few hundred going out that way, when it was all I had.

You see what I mean? And that's exactly how it works. Karma grows like a tree.

If you compare the grams of an acorn to the grams of an oak tree, what's the ratio? I don't know. It's one to millions, you see what I mean?

And karma works the same way. One sincere act of charity, going out, recorded by your mind going out, creates this karma coming back to you. It's amazing.

It's incredible. So where does that apply to us? How does that apply to us?

You have to be generous. You have to be in a giving state of mind. I'm not just talking money.

I'm talking a cup of tea, a small gift to someone, opening a door for somebody. Charity on all its levels, you see what I mean? Charity in the sense of, hey, we're all in this thing together, we're all going to die together, everybody in this room will be a skeleton in a certain number of years, and I want to share my stuff with you, because I love you.

You know what I mean? It's just this attitude like ... giving.

Real giving on all the levels. Your time, your attention, your love, your money, and ... and you just give, you see what I mean?

And then this karma is created of wealth, okay? That's how you get rich, okay? That's how to get out of your financial problems, okay?

And it's no big sacrifice, you see what I mean? Not saying you have to give more than you have. Take what you have, and be very generous, okay?

It doesn't mean that you should be irresponsible. Buddhists are not allowed to ... to not have a right livelihood.

There's this thing called the Eightfold Arya Path, which is the foundation of Buddhism. One of the eight ... folds, okay?

One of the eight parts, is having an honest living, and not grubbing off of other people, okay? I mean, you have an honest living, you ... you don't ...

grub off of other people. You make enough money to live properly, simply, do your practice, have a decent clothes, and nothing much more, and then the rest you give, you see what I mean? And you give it away, okay?

So, it's not the amount, it's the willingness to give it away, and if you have more money, you're at a disadvantage here, you see what I mean? Because it's gonna be harder for you to give more of it, you see what I mean? But you have to be able and willing, or you won't get ...

it won't increase, you see what I mean? It's very interesting. I remember hearing a lecture in Northern India, I went to an Episcopal Church in Missouri, Yuppi, in 1974, you know, I was a Christian still, and I consider myself a Christian who is now a Buddhist Christian, something like that, okay?

I mean, Buddhism to me explains how Christianity works. Just the oral tradition got lost, I think. So anyway, I went to this lecture, and the sermon was about, why do the wicked prosper?

It's this big question in the Bible, why do wicked people prosper? Meaning, why is it that some people can do bad things, and get rich? You see what I mean?

This guy, if what you say is true, then this guy I know can't be rich now. He's like making money hand over fist, and he's the cheapest guy I know. So, I don't believe your theory, you know what I mean?

That's old karma, okay? Get used to that. That's old karma.

His current activities will ensure that he doesn't have any money in the far future, okay? But he can be riding a crest of an old karma, and that's no problem. In Buddhism that's not a question at all, that's not a problem at all.

It doesn't mean anything, okay? You have to, if you want to be financially set, and if you want some company to make millions of dollars, you have to be generous in your thinking, okay? With whatever amount you have, you have to be totally uninhibited in giving, you know?

Just forget it. Make sure there's enough for your basic needs, so that you don't have to impinge on other people, grub off of other people, but beyond that, just give it away, you know? That's how you make money, okay?

We're gonna talk on the third step about how to give it away, because the giving away has to be done intelligently, okay? I mean, you could just leave it on the street and probably somebody would pick it up, okay? That's not very intelligent.

There's good ways to give it away, and there's better ways to give it away, okay? I'll take a few questions, and maybe we'll take a break after that. Yeah?

I'm gonna repeat your question, because some people might not hear it, and it goes into the tape. He said, should a responsible Buddhist, if you want to be a good Buddhist, what about investing, you know, 401k or something like that, to take care of your retirement plan? I would say that, you know, it's society-specific.

A lot of Buddhist ethics are society-specific, meaning, in our society, that's a common thing to do, and that's a sensible thing to do, and that's not a problem, okay? I would put it under the category of right livelihood, okay? Because if you don't make some kind of plan, minor, modest plan, to live simply beyond your working years, you will be grubbing off somebody else.

You see what I mean? So, I would think of it that way, and a lot of this comes from my lama, who's very, he was the abbot of Seramay Monastery, he's very, he was the assistant abbot of the Tantric College in Tibet, so he's really up there, but he would say the same thing, you know what I mean? But to live modestly, in a small adobe house, near Bisbee, okay?

Something like that, okay? Yeah?

[Говорящий 2]
But if what you say is true, why isn't then just giving money away going to ensure that by the time you get to the end of your life that you'll have enough money to live on without taking this risk?

[Говорящий 1]
Yeah, she said, but really though, if you buy into this idea, it'd be more intelligent almost to give it all away, because you'd have a lot more by the end of your life. Karma ripens in three stages, okay? There are three choices on how karma ripens.

One is called tong gyur gyi le, which means before you die you see the result. One is called kye nyen yong gyur gyi le, which means in your next, very next life, and then shen... shen dang yong gyur gyi le means in the second life on.

So the question— not all karmas that you do in this lifetime ripen in this lifetime, but if you do in the right way, if you do them very sincerely, and in particular if you do them with knowledge about the pen thing, okay? Which is what—is the difference between giving and the perfection of giving, okay? Knowing what you're doing, and consciously doing it, normally makes it ripen in this lifetime.

That's the basis of what we call the secret teachings, our tantric practice, okay? That's the whole principle behind that, is to make it happen in this lifetime, okay? So, what I'm saying is that, if you were very knowledgeable, and if you could concentrate on the giving in that way, to understand the pen thing about the giving, and to consciously understand that you're planting karmic seeds, and to have a...

an altruistic motive behind it, ultimately, that you want to be able to help more people, I think you could safely give most of it away, okay? But, to have all those motivations very perfectly is difficult, okay? Ultimately, if you're going to be a hardcore karmaist, you should just give it away.

But you have to understand what you're doing or it doesn't work, okay? Just to give money away, if you don't consciously understand what I'm talking about, it won't help you right away, you see what I mean? It will help you ultimately, but it'd be so slow as to be boring or something, you know what I mean?

Okay, yeah? Did you have a question? Okay.

... Emptiness of karma is a long story, okay? I'll tell you very briefly.

I'll give you the easy answer, okay? Some people in this room consider what I'm saying right now to be highly unlikely, you know what I mean? I have said a certain number of words, and some people in this room were bored, or they thought it sounded just like a pie in the sky, you know what I mean?

I mean, they understand what I said, but it doesn't seem to make much sense to them, and they're not going to act on it at all. They don't have any intention of acting on it at all. Other people in this room are kind of intrigued, they're like, maybe it's right, maybe it's not.

I see a few big holes in the argument, and he doesn't seem to be that rich, does he? Okay? And then, you know, you have some hesitations.

The theory sounds fairly solid, but you have some big hesitations. And there's other people in this room, when they walked in, they were on the verge of thinking about this stuff, and these words have thrown them over the edge, and they're like, now I understand everything, you know, now I can make anything happen. I have finally figured out how to control my life, and how to control my credit cards.

You know what I mean? No, like, I finally get it, now I just got to go out, and again I repeat, and I emphasize that it's not a question of how much you give, it's a question of your willingness to give, and your sensitivity to being a giving person, all the time, with everything, okay? With your time, in traffic, in coffee, with the toilet paper, you know what I mean?

Everything. Just be in this total mindset of taking care of other people, giving to other people, everything you have. They say, lü long chu gye tsar che, means, my body, my time, my life, my things, and even my good deeds, you know, I give them away to other people, you see what I mean?

And, if you're in that state of mind, it'll work. So anyway, there's three possible reactions to what I'm saying right now, and some people will have been polite enough not to stand up yet, but as soon as the break starts, they're out of here, okay? That's the emptiness of the karma.

That's the emptiness of my expression of the laws of karma, meaning, to some people they seem totally valid, to some people they seem maybe valid, and to some people they seem irrelevant, you see what I mean? That's the emptiness of karma on one level, okay? Meaning, is there a karma which is inherently, which inherently explains everything?

Now, for some people, yes, for some people maybe, for some people not, okay? That's the emptiness of karma. You could have three completely different perceptions of the same law in this room at the same time.

How's that? Okay. Yeah.

Yeah, you gotta think about it. Yeah. Excuse me, one more thing.

Which is right? You see, is this a pen or a dog toy? That's its emptiness.

You see, that question triggers off your understanding of its emptiness. It's none of the above. It's neutral, okay?

The laws of karma are like that also, you see what I mean? It's very interesting. Well, yeah, you could do that.

I mean, the more you understand the emptiness of karma, the more you understand how karma works, and then the more you're able to use karma to make money. Yeah. The more you understand the theory of what I'm saying, the more it works.

How's that? And that we call the difference between giving and the perfection of giving. That's the difference between ordinary giving and the perfection of giving, because the perfection of giving is done knowledgeably, knowingly, understanding how it all works, understanding emptiness, understanding how seeds work in your mind, and then you consciously are going to be generous to these three Dharma centers tomorrow.

Okay. Yeah.

[Говорящий 2]
If you're part of a group, a family, or a corporation or something, and you're in like an executive position, like you were saying, and you're seeing that the company is probably in financial difficulties because there's a contraction going on, and you're trying to play this other game, what's the karma to be kind of part of a group that's not in sync with that reality?

[Говорящий 1]
Yeah.

[Говорящий 2]
And how do you change that?

[Говорящий 1]
Yeah. She's saying like, okay, suppose you're in a company that's having trouble, and you go to the owner and you say, I'm only one of five vice presidents here. This has really happened to me.

We're sitting around a board table, and I say, I'm only one of the five vice presidents here. But I think our reaction to having a bad year should be to pool as much money as we can, and help the homeless people in this block. You know what I mean?

And then, you know, what kind of reaction are you going to get from the other board members? It's like, get real, Roche, you know? Okay?

Okay. Yeah. Now, your question is, what's the karma of being in that chair?

You know what I mean? What's the karma of being a lonely voice in the wilderness saying, you know, give and ye shall receive, you know? And they're like, yeah, okay.

You know? You know, frankly, that karma comes from creating division in the past, okay? That particular karma comes from creating division in the past.

I gave you a sheet with 18 business problems on it. I don't know if you got it. You're going to get it during the break.

18 business problems. I actually defined 46 in the book, and then we used the lojong, the crown of knives, and we actually identified the business causes of each business problem, based on lojong, based on the ancient teachings of karma. And that particular one is that most of those ones where you're trying to express a spiritual idea and everybody else thinks you're crazy, or silly, or something like that, and I've been attacked frequently, is that you mentally are critical of other people, okay?

And that comes in two flavors, what we call bad deed number 8 and bad deed number 9, okay? Number 8 is, you don't like it when other people have success, you know? Oh, such and such a westerner is a great monk and a great teacher, you know?

And you're like, really? Okay, and ... I'm not you, right?

Somebody else. And you're like, oh, good to hear, you know? You know, and you get this ...

jealousy comes up, and that's the first ... that's the first cause, that's bad deed number 8 actually, out of the 10. And then number 9 is, when you hear that so-and-so had some trouble, especially your competition in business, seriously, and you rejoice in it, and you're happy in it, that creates some kind of division in your own company, you see?

And it's interesting, one of the greatest early businessmen in America was Benjamin Franklin. Interesting rules of his business, he didn't open till 11 o'clock, you know? He didn't open till a certain time.

He said, I'm not gonna let my business run me, I'm running the business. And if people want to talk to Ben Franklin, they'll have to call me afternoon, because I'm doing my experiments in the morning, and I'm doing all my other stuff, my writing, about philosophy, my thinking, and ... it's basically his practice.

And he said, they can just get used to that. Then he kept the book, he had a list of virtues and non-virtues, and when he did something bad, he wrote with a lead pencil, and he made a dot there, and then he would erase it if he thought better later in the day, and he had all these dots on as a grid, like that. He tried vegetarianism, and failed.

And stuff like that, but he had this, and when he got to be 40 or something, he got his main assistant, and he said, if you give me 20% of your profits after this, I'll give you the business in five years. You see what I mean? He gave the business to this assistant who didn't have any money at all.

He gave him this business, and he said, for the rest of my life, you have to give me 20%. But you can have it, you can run it. And that's why he could just sit around and win the Revolutionary War and stuff.

Okay? Really. So, anyway, the reason I brought him up was that he invented this thing called Chamber of Commerce.

So, instead of competing with everybody else, he got all the printers in Philadelphia would meet together once a month, and discuss how to make the market bigger for everybody. You see what I mean? Like, he wasn't out to kill all the other companies.

He was like, how can we serve more people, and all get more money? You see what I mean? And that kind of thinking results, like being generous to other Dharma centers, when your Dharma center is not doing so good, is a big reason to get financial stability in your Dharma center.

Okay? And thinking the opposite way is a reason why even in your own Dharma center, people won't go along with you when you propose something. You see what I mean?

How's that for an answer? Okay. Two more questions, then we gotta take a break, or some of you are mad at me.

We still have to enjoy the money, and to make it meaningful. Yeah? About the perfection of giving?

You mean about the emptiness part of it, or just in general about the perfection of giving? Master Shantideva. ACI courses...

10, 11, 12? 10, 11, 12. Mainly 11.

10, 11, 12. 12. Do the ACI course, 10, 11, 12.

The neat thing about Master Shantideva is he demands that you understand emptiness. Chapter 9, which is in Course 12, before you can do the other perfections, he demands that you understand the karma and the emptiness of everything you're doing, and very powerful. By the time you get out of that, you're like really doing perfections.

Yeah?

[Говорящий 2]
And in regard to, let's say in family, four children, all extremely different, in terms of their apparent ways of being in life, and there's an inheritance, which is divided between four of them. How... is that...

[Говорящий 1]
You see, that question, she's saying there's four kids in a family, the parents die, leave them money, and they all get a quarter. Some of them are schmucks, some of them are nice. She didn't say that part, okay?

But, you know, they're all four much different people. What you're asking me is, why are there four trees out in the lawn there, when we just planted the grass seed? It's exactly the same question.

Those came from something long ago. I mean, alright? Now check back with me in a couple years to see how the four are doing with their inheritance.

Okay? You see, that's something that's already grown, it had to have come, according to Buddhism, from acts of generosity in the past. There is no other source of money.

Okay? That has very interesting implications. What?

The supply of money in the world is... The supply of wealth in the world is resources. It's unlimited.

You can forget sharing resources. You forget the hassles and the theories about how to distribute the world's resources. It's not true that they are limited.

Okay? It's not true at all that there's not enough for everybody. That's not true at all.

Some people have not been generous, so they don't get the resources. Some people have, and they do get the resources. If the people have resources and are not generous with the resources they have, they'll switch over to the other side shortly.

Okay? What do you mean? Are you saying that, you know, suddenly, if everyone did what you're teaching tonight, that there'd be enough money for everybody in the world?

That everybody could have a $50,000 income? It's exactly what I'm saying. How could that be?

Okay? How could that be? I'll discover a new source of energy.

Period. You know, if fusion succeeds, San Francisco can be run on a teaspoon of salt water. Okay?

They're working on it. You know, where I used to go to school, they're working on it. It's interesting.

And then you say, no, that kind of stuff's impossible. I don't see how that's possible. What about the invention of the personal computer?

What about the invention of a car? You see what I mean? Of course those things are possible.

Where do you think those things came from? Who created the personal computer? You see what I mean?

Suddenly, you know, hundreds of thousands of people don't have to sit there on calculators all day. And before that, it was written, and I remember both. Okay?

No, this is a... what we call a collective karma. Okay?

Everyone who uses a personal computer did something in the past to make other people's lives easier, and that created the personal computer. Get used to that kind of thinking. That created the invention of the personal computer.

Get used to that. It's awesome. It's mind-blowing.

Every person in the world could have plenty of money, no problem. Everybody could be comfortable. Because it's not true that wealth is a certain percent of the dirt, and it comes up, and you dig it out, and you share it with people.

That's not true. That's a fallacy. And all the economic theories that exist don't mean anything.

And that's why a different economic theory goes to the White House every six months. Really. Really.

I mean, they're vastly different every six months, because they don't work. They are truly random. It's just how generous have the people been.

You see what I mean? So, think about—now you can have refreshments. Think about it.

Everyone in the world could be comfortable. Period. This is the real way to make it happen.

It's very profound. The implications are mind-blowing. If you could convey this information to, like, corporate leaders, and if one out of ten bought it, something very interesting would happen.

You know what I mean? So, you have to think about trying to infiltrate, okay? Corporate life.

Pose as a VP. You know? Anyway, take a break, okay?

And I'll do questions when we get back. We'll start again. And it's getting late, so I won't go very long.

Okay? You can get the book when it comes out. Just send your—no.

Probably it'll come out and die in three days. You'll have to keep an eye open. No.

I think the second most important thing to talk about is, you know, I have made money in business, and I've been around people who were very, very successful, and it becomes obvious fairly quickly that if you don't enjoy it, there's no point to it. You see what I mean? And so, the second whole part of that book is tricks about how to make yourself have—be healthy physically and mentally while you're in corporate life.

I mean, when I was working in that corporation, you could easily work from— I would leave home from the monastery at about 5.30, 5.45. I would get home around 7.45, so that's a 14-hour day. And that was very typical. You know what I mean?

And that was when I didn't have to work overtime. And overtime—in the diamond business, 60% of the business is done just before Christmas. In the two months before Christmas.

So, the company goes up to like 2,000 people, and then by January it shrinks to 2,000. You see what I mean? That's the way it works.

And the pressures on you are intense for three, four months. So, the second part was how to, you know, not die under those conditions. And people do die.

Friends of mine died. People that I started in business with and was fellow vice president are dead now, you know what I mean? And the question is how to maintain your health under a stressful schedule, and then how to maintain your happiness under a stressful schedule, okay?

The first thing—and I don't have a lot of time to talk about that—is that in Buddhism we have the higher teachings, the secret teachings, describe a subtle body which underlies your gross body, okay? So, you have a gross body of blood and flesh and skin, and then you have a subtle body inside of it that if you cut your body open you couldn't see it, but it's like energy's running through the body, okay? And you've heard like chakras and channels and drops and all this stuff.

The word chakra— and I can't go into it in detail because that's secret. Tantra means secret, but I can tell you the general principles. Chakra, which is this beautiful little flower thing around the main energy channel, is actually this evil choke point, okay?

What makes the little flower thing is a big knot, and as that knot constricts or loosens, you feel better or worse, you see what I mean? When you get angry or upset, that knot constricts slightly, and then the energy running through your body is jammed, and that affects your health, okay? So, that's why businessmen or people who are under stress start to display typical health problems like ulcer, bald spots, seriously, hand shaking, this nervous twixt, you know?

And all of these come from subtle disturbance of their inner body, caused by emotional stress, okay? So, every time you get irritated with a customer, every time you get slightly hot about something, you know, every time you look at a secretary's dress or something, there's this little constriction of your channels, and it hurts you. The composite effect on a normal human being is aging and death, okay?

Like, no one occurrence of those is gonna kill you, but over the length of a lifetime, having minor irritations and minor desires, wrong desires throughout the day, chokes your channels and starts to affect your health. And, so, this part of the book is a whole description of how to handle those things and how to prevent them, you know what I mean? And that also gets into emptiness, and I'll say it very briefly.

Everything in Buddhism boils down to emptiness in the end, okay? And I'll give a very brief saying and then you have to think about it. There are two ways to deal with those emotions.

We call them the band-aid way and the ultimate way, okay? Arya Nagarjuna talks about this in his famous book Surlekha, Letter to a Friend. And, he describes the band-aids, and then he describes the ultimate solutions, okay?

The band-aid is, you know, be aware of this effect on you, and try not to get upset at work, okay? I mean, do all these tricks to get... to not have a problem.

And there are many tricks you can do. If someone comes in and starts yelling at you, you can go to the bathroom. You can, you know, smile at them.

I found dropping a cup of something works well to break the tension, you know what I mean? No, just glass shattering all over the floor and everyone's down and everyone forgot about what they were yelling about. And then, you just need something to break the tension and distract people.

These are basically just little tricks to distract people, you see what I mean? Somebody comes in and starts yelling at you, and you consciously start talking about something else that you know that they enjoy to talk about, or something like that. These are what we call mental affliction management tricks.

Emotion management tricks. And there's a list in there, and you can use them. These tricks don't remove the source of those problems.

You cannot overcome anger, jealousy, desire, pride with those tricks. It just delays them, or it suppresses them. Buddhism is more interested in eradicating them altogether.

And that comes from the following way. I'm going to take me two minutes, and then we'll go on to the third step, okay? When the boss comes in and yells at you and says something unkind, that's the same as the pen thing.

Meaning, and I'm sorry for those of you who've heard it a thousand times, well, this is a thousand and one nights. Okay? He is the same as the pen, or the cylinder.

Meaning, whether his yelling at you sounds... bothers you or not, whether it upsets you or not, is only up to your impressions in your mind. Meaning, your mind has a certain set of karmas in it, karmic seeds, and whether or not his yelling at you disturbs you, or makes you upset, is completely up to your mind.

You see what I mean? The proof of that is that the person sitting next to you may find his criticism of you quite interesting and fun. You see what I mean?

And you know that happens. That's the pen thing, okay? It's the same principle.

His words, technically speaking, are just consonants and vowels going off. You know? It's just nonsense sounds, you see?

The fact that your mind interprets it as criticism, and then dislikes it, is only a result of your own karmic seeds in your mind, okay? And the person sitting next to you, who's been irritated that Michael Roach keeps going to all these kala chakras, and see this lama, and see that lama, and is never here to work, you know, to them, that same criticism sounds great. You see what I mean?

It's the same consonants, it's the same vowels, it's the same tones and decibels, but to them it sounds great. That's a proof of the pen thing. The boss is blank, the boss is empty, the boss is neutral, the sounds are neutral.

Whether they hurt your feelings or not, only depends on your karma, okay? In other words, you've caused the yelling. How?

You yelled at somebody in the past, that's all. No yelling in the world ever came from anything else. The fact that you are...

What do you call it? The fact that you are compelled by your mind to hear it as criticism comes because you criticized someone in the past, and that put a seed of criticism in your mind, you see what I mean? That's karma.

Okay? So, what's this got to do with anything? Next time you get criticized by a person at work, you just, instead of criticizing back, you just think, okay, it's my karma, I criticized someone in the past, that's why my mind is forcing me to organize these random sounds into criticism, and I won't do it again.

Okay, what's the normal human reaction? Criticize back. You say something back, it's almost uncontrollable human reaction.

Now, interesting question, what's the only way to get this guy to come back in your face in the future, according to this theory? Criticizing back. So, the natural human reaction is the only thing you could have done to make him come back that way.

And it's the stupidest thing you could have done, you see what I mean? At the same time. And that's again, the reason why this stuff is called samsara, or the circle, you see what I mean?

Self-perpetuating pain. They criticize you, you're driven to respond with criticism, then you create the seeds in your mind to hear yourself criticized again, and it just keeps going, and going, and going. There has to be this unilateral surrender.

You know? Okay, I don't care, you can keep criticizing me, I refuse to respond with anything negative. Okay?

I just refuse. What will happen? In the short run your mind is clear, clean, happy, and whatever he's criticizing you about, you can fix faster.

Because your mind is not messed up by worrying about being mad. So, if you keep your cool, you can fix the problem faster. In the long run, you won't meet him again, in that mode.

You know, Master Shantideva, in the Bodhisattva's Guide to ... Guide to the Bodhisattva's Way of Life says, go and kiss him goodbye. You know?

The yelling boss, the critical person in your life, you can eliminate them, you see? You don't need ... I always say, the post office method is to take a gun to work, okay?

You don't have to do that. You can consciously, purposely, knowingly ... eliminate ...

irritable ... irritating people from your life. Okay?

Very consciously. Pick them off one by one. How?

Don't respond to them, okay? Be kind in response, okay? And the karmas will just wear out, and they'll leave.

And I'm not kidding. You know, the most impressive thing that they put on the advertisement for tonight is a hundred million dollars a year. To me, the most impressive thing was that I had a division with a few hundred people from eighteen different countries, and they all were getting along like, unbelievable.

You know? People begged to stay there. People got offered ten thousand dollars more a year, and they would not leave, you see what I mean?

Because we were running it this way. So, it was beautiful, it was fun, it was like a family. We had fun all day long.

People didn't want to go home. You know? It was weird.

It was very weird. A hundred people, you know? Two hundred people.

And that ... what I'm saying is that if you keep up this kind of non-reacting long enough, you eliminate the undesirable people from your life. Those supervisors will be transferred.

Okay? I'm not kidding. Okay?

It happened. I can say that. You know, when I got there, there were five or six people that were really making me miserable.

And by using this principle, which is more fun than making money, see? We refused to respond to violence with violence. You know?

And then they just disappear. They get transferred. They move to another company.

And then suddenly, the whole chain of command above you is clear. And you don't know what that feels like, you see what I mean? Suddenly, everyone above you is cool.

And then suddenly, everybody working for you is cool. And you just ... And you like to go to work.

It's really ... And this can apply to anything. This can apply to your family.

Just don't respond with anything negative. It changes your reality. Because your reality is run from those seeds.

Okay? So, that's how to enjoy it. If you get to this place mentally and emotionally, according to the laws of the inner body, you'll start to feel better.

Okay? Instead of getting ulcers and wrinkles and gray hairs, you'll actually start to feel younger. Okay?

If that's taken to its ultimate extreme, for those of you who are into Buddhism, you reach a tantric enlightenment. Okay? Your body actually transforms into a different kind of body.

That's how that works. That's how you get there. The winds are connected to your emotions.

Okay? As you clean out your emotions, the winds straighten out, and you actually don't age at that point. Okay?

That's a very profound thing about enjoying the money. You see? Then you can really enjoy the money.

Because you're healthy. I mean, mentally and physically, you're just totally healthy. It's no fun to get into a big corporate position.

I made $150,000 a year for four days of work a week, and then, you know, leaving to study at the monastery half the year. You know what I mean? And I was healthy.

You see what I mean? Mentally and physically. Very healthy.

And then you can enjoy the money. So, it's one thing to make money, but if you can't enjoy— if you're not physically healthy, then what's the point? You see what I mean?

If you're not happy, what's the point? So, that's the second stage. Now, third stage.

Third stage is undertaken from the point of death meditation. Okay? And, very simply, people have heard it before, but in Buddhism we have this neat thing called death meditation.

It's not... sitting down on a cold sidewalk and trying to pretend you're dead. Okay?

It's not like that. I mean, sometimes people think that. You know, try to pretend that there's tubes stuck down your nose, and that your family's crying, and that the beepers go off on the heart monitor, and...

You know, it's not that. That's not a death meditation. Okay?

There's this beautiful thing in Buddhism called death meditation, which is that when you wake up in the morning, you sit on your back, and you don't open your eyes yet, and you're conscious, and you start thinking like this... I'm going to die today at six o'clock. Now what would I like to do?

You know what I mean? And you plan your day. You plan your last day on earth.

You know? Like, your eyes are closed, and you just say to yourself, I'm going to die at six o'clock. Now what should I do?

What's important to do today? If you do this for one day, it's kind of interesting, you know? If you do it for six months, the effect on your mind is profound.

You know what I mean? It's very, very profound. Slowly, you begin to get your priorities in perfect order, okay?

And I think the immediate result is that within a few days, you start to drop all the very stupid activities you do that don't mean anything, okay? Within a few weeks, you start giving away your stuff. Okay?

Either throw it out or give it away. Seventy-five to eighty percent of the stuff you own, you don't use. And you haven't used for the last six months.

It's just in your apartment, or in your home. And... and...

keeping a mental inventory of where it is and what it is and who gave it to you and blah blah blah, uses up your precious time, okay? Do you remember... where the photos are from your last vacation?

Do you remember how many sets of shoes you have? You see what I mean? And you have to...

you do remember, roughly, and to remember means that that has to be taking up part of your mind. And that pushes out other useful space. Your mind is like a hard disk on a computer.

It only has so much space. You can only have so many thoughts. And if you can remember where your sixth pair of shoes is, you should throw it out.

Okay? Because it's just wasted space, okay? And so, I think if you do this death meditation every morning, you'll start to...

eliminate stuff, okay? Then I think after about eight months to a year there'd be this profound thing where you would cut down on your work, simplify your expenses, and spend more time meditating or helping other people or something meaningful, okay? That would just be a natural result.

It's... it's a lie of our culture that it's in any way worth it to work for fifty weeks to get two weeks of your own. You know what I mean?

Even in the diamond business no one would make you an offer like that. You know? Even the most shameless dealer on this planet wouldn't come and say, here's a diamond worth two dollars, will you give me fifty for it?

You see what I mean? You just wouldn't even consider it. You'd say, you're nuts, you're crazy.

But you do that, you see? And you don't think it's weird. Somehow, by this weird karma, right?

We live in a country where no one questions that much, you know? It's not considered... You're negotiating between two and three weeks.

You're not saying, how about twenty-six and twenty-six? You see what I mean? You know what I mean?

It doesn't even occur to you. I mean, it's a total brainwash, okay? And I lived it, I know, twelve years like that, you know?

It's not... If you believed that you're gonna die today, you wouldn't accept that arrangement. You know what I mean?

And you can live in America on the twenty-six weeks pay. I mean, if you have any brains at all, it's not a big deal. Your expenses balloon to exactly your salary or a little more.

No matter how much you make. I'm talking a guy who went from seven dollars an hour to probably three hundred dollars an hour. And...

And my expenses expanded just beyond my pay. Always.

[Говорящий 2]
You know what I mean?

[Говорящий 1]
And... And that's the way we are. So, just drop it and take back the time.

You see what I mean? The point here is that finally... Oh, you get to another point.

You'll start trying all the things you always wanted to try. You'll do skydiving. You'll do that last drug you didn't try.

You know? You'll do... You know, you'll write poetry and actually...

Or you'll go to a karaoke place and sing. You know what I mean? I mean, you'll do all the things...

Who cares? If you're dying at six o'clock, who cares if they throw things at you? You know what I mean?

Okay. No, I mean, you do all the things you dreamed of. And then after that, you'd go through this maturity.

I mean, you would drop all those things because they don't really satisfy the human soul. And then slowly, you would gravitate towards the ultimate satisfaction, which is helping other people. That's why rich people who get old start being philanthropists.

Philanthropist almost means a guy in a nice suit with gray hair. You know what I mean? No.

And you know that. Why? They've taken care of their immediate needs.

They know they're going to go soon. They have more money than they know what to do with. And they suddenly discover that the thing that makes a person happiest is to give to other people and to take care of other people.

You know what I mean? And Buddhism is very big on the concept that there's nothing meaningful to do in life except to help other people. You see what I mean?

And there's nothing that will really make you proud of yourself or satisfied or contented with yourself until you discover that. And some people have already discovered it, and some people it takes longer. You know?

But sooner or later, you have to discover that the only thing that gives you any real personal satisfaction is to devote a lot of your life to helping other people. You know? And caring about what other people mean.

Now, I don't mean working on the board of United Way or something like that. That's, to me, a cop-out sometimes. I mean helping other people on every level.

You know? If you're a manager at work, just putting yourself in the minds of the people who work for you and seeing what they would like. You see what I mean?

We call it exchanging self and others. You put your mind in their body, you look at you, and you try to remember what you might like you to do for me. You see what I mean?

Okay? And do it. And actually it's the ultimate, I call it the ultimate management tool.

Okay? If you have a department of a hundred people and you want them to get along with each other, and you want them to work well, if you do this exercise, like, to you, the most important thing about this young employee is that they finish their college. And you don't care if you lose a couple hours of their time a day.

Or, you see what I mean? You put your concerns back and you put their concerns ahead, and then suddenly they're this incredibly ... they all become incredible employees.

Because you are in the mode of thinking about what would be good for them before you think about what would be good for the company. And that's very hard for most managers. You know what I mean?

I'll say it again. You're ... you're thinking more about what would be good for their careers and their life and their happiness than you are thinking about your own production.

I mean, in the height of the busy season in the diamond business, I would be giving people leave to go home for three weeks to India to see their dying mother, and the boss would tear his hair out. You know, he'd be, are you crazy? You know, and I'd say, just take it easy, watch what happens.

And then they come back and they're like the best employee for 18 years, and now they're vice president, and ... this is true stories. You know, because of that ...

because you're worried about them before you're worried about the company. And ... what happens is, the company starts to get wildly successful.

It's really weird. Okay? And ...

and on top of that, I say, when you get to the end of your career, okay, everyone's oblivious to the end of their career. You know, there will be a last meal that you cook for Vajrapani. You know, there will be a last check you sign as director of LMB.

You know, there will be the last problem you have at LMB. Okay? Personally, you know, there will be ...

No, there will be the day that ... that Kent locks the door at ... at Gyalwa Gyatso Center, and that's it, it's closed.

You know what I mean? Forget it, it has to come. Don't be naive.

You know what I mean? There will be the day that you say ... that you meet the last person from your Dharma Center, and say your last goodbye to them.

There will be the last song you hear on the radio. You know? What, are you naive?

You know, come on, it has to ... it has to happen. It will happen.

So, this death exercise is you put yourself there now. You put yourself ahead in time to the day that you're closing the door to the last event at Gyalwa Gyatso Center, and then you look back and say, did I do the most meaningful thing? You see what I mean?

Was my behavior back in 99 what I would have wanted it to be? And then ... you'll find out that it's judged on how much you were serving other people.

You see what I mean? How much of your effort, how much of your time and your brains and your money were directed at serving other people? Because at the end, that's the only thing that has any meaning.

And you'll look back, and you won't say, I made so many million dollars, and you won't say, I had so many employees, and you won't say, I made 30,000 rings a day. You know, you'll look back and say, I had this effect on these people's lives, and they were happier for it. And that's really the only thing that matters, you see?

And if you live like that now, put your mind ahead to the day you close the place, look back, and then now act on that knowledge, you see what I mean? Now. Before you get there.

And you just look back and say, what really makes you happy, what really gives you contentment, what really makes your life meaningful, is only what you did for other people. And the rest is meaningless. I don't almost remember anything from my diamond business, okay?

I do remember the people though, and I remember the sweet moments, you know? I remember the things I did for them that I wasn't supposed to do, you know? And I remember paying for somebody's baby, although her insurance was a day later, and you know, and they still come with their kids, and I remember the baby, and these are the things that will matter when you look back.

So, why not do them now? You see what I mean? Have more things now that you do, so you can have more to look back at.

And then what you'll find is, after you've made money, and after you're healthy physically and mentally, you get the final dessert, which is that it all had some great meaning, you see what I mean? Otherwise, it doesn't have much meaning. The more time you spend, and the more effort taking care of other people during this wild business years— and they're wild, you know?

I had four phones at the same time, you know? But not to forget the main point, which is to make other people happy around you. Then when you get to the end, you can look back and be proud of it, you know?

And you have this intense feeling of contentment, you know? Why is His Holiness the Dalai Lama giggling all the time? I mean, almost every newspaper article I read says, and he laughed his big booming laugh, or you know, he giggled his little giggle, and you know, it's because he's happy.

And you only get that from being good to other people. So what I mean is, work like a dog— I mean, don't work like a dog. Give a lot.

Give a lot. Get into the mode of giving, no matter how much you give, okay? A lot of us are not— we don't have any money, but everything your hands touch, consider giving it to someone, you know?

Especially if you like it. You know, just be in this mode of giving, giving, giving, giving, you know what I mean? And then you won't be able to stop the money from coming in.

I mean, the big problem that a lot of people I know who do this practice well is keeping their books. Keeping track of the money that comes in. You know what I mean?

That's their only major problem, is trying to figure out, responsibly, the answer for all the money they're getting. You see what I mean? Then secondly, enjoy it, you know?

Use that pen thing on the boss. Use that pen thing on all the irritable customers and suppliers and employees and supervisors and— just use the pen thing on them. Refuse to respond to negativity with negativity.

And then slowly they'll all turn into this paradise. You know what I mean? And then finally, do something meaningful with that money.

You see what I mean? And while you're making the money, just keep helping the people around you to watch out for what they need. And then you're just— you're rich, you're healthy, you're happy and you're contented.

Okay? And that's the whole goal, I think. And those of you who are Buddhists, it's not a worldly thing, because it's based on emptiness and karma.

And if you keep this kind of behavior up, if you perfect this kind of behavior, it causes a tantric paradise. Okay? So, you know, I'm not saying— this isn't limited to financial matters.

We're talking enlightened realm. And that's exactly how you cause it. Okay?

They call it shingdak jorwa. Say shingdak... jorwa.

shingdak... jorwa. Shingdak means...

an enlightened realm or a Buddha land, pure land. And then jorwa means... creating it, consciously, building it.

You know, like construction. Get the permits from the Lamrim department. You know?

Okay? No, I ain't like that. And then...

you need other people. You must go find a busy office to work in, whether you have money or not. I had money, I didn't have to work.

And then go work there. And they are your... that's your laboratory.

You can't do it without other people. DANG NYID SEMS CAN THAMS CAD LA YI SHING NOG BOS DE LA BAS First verse of the eight verses. Okay?

You need other people, because this karma stuff mainly works through interactions with other people. Okay? So, if you were really smart, you'd go find the worst, busiest office you could find.

Because there's much more karma to be collected there. And then... hard, okay?

No. And then the rest, you just glide, on emptiness and karma. Okay?

That's your two... your two tickets. Okay?

I think we'll stop there, because it's very auspicious to leave it, having talked about a tantric paradise. Debbie Boye reminds me that... if you didn't get this one, this is part of the book.

It's like typical business problems and how to solve them, according to Buddhist teachings. So... the first 18, I think, are there, and then there's about another...

25. It's just too much to print out. So...

you'll get that later. Okay? Yeah?

What's the name of the book? Oh, it's called The Diamond Cutter. Because what we did was...

the structure of it is The Diamond Cutter Sutra. And then... we used the diamond business as...

as the model. So it's actually a combination of The Diamond Cutter Sutra. A lot of selections from there, and then...

diamond business. Okay?

[Говорящий 2]
Anybody who didn't get one of these, they're on the table.

[Говорящий 1]
If you didn't get one of these, it's on the table in the back. Okay? So I'd like to thank Kent.

He's this beautiful man that I met, I don't know, first time I came here, and we fell in love, and... he's been doing this beautiful center, and I really hope your center is successful. I think you have the best people starting it, and...

I hope you keep doing it. I think... I have this idea that Dharma centers should proliferate like weeds.

And... because each one has its own personality. Each one attracts a different kind of people.

And... like in New York, our center has basically spawned... five or ten different groups who have their own interests.

And... I think it's very healthy. I think it ends up serving more people.

So, you should help each other, like support each other, with the knowledge that you each have a market, you know? You each have your own group of people that are attracted to your approach, and then be happy that there's someone else to supply it to other people who need a different approach. You know what I mean?

And... and be happy, and try to spread as much as you can. Okay?

Alright. We'll do a dedication prayer. Okay?

That's just a short offering prayer. Okay. Who wants to...

Can you do that, Eleanor? Okay. Okay.

Thank you very much. Okay. Good night.