Сад (1999, Нью-Йорк), занятие 2

[Говорящий 1]
OK, we'll start. Sorry we're late, we've had some trouble with the readings and stuff like that. If you haven't been here yet, the story goes like this.

We're covering a book called The Garden, and it's a story of meetings with the great Buddhist masters of history. So, this guy is going to a special garden, and in the garden he keeps bumping into... He's waiting actually for his girlfriend, but she never shows up.

Seems like. And these Buddhist masters keep coming to this garden. The ideas that we've gone over so far, the first one was that this story is being written from the point of view of later in this person's life, much later.

And they're looking back on events in the garden, the person who took them to the garden the first time, which is a girlfriend, and they're starting to realize that now what they know about Buddhism and Buddhas is that very possibly, the people that you grew up with, a certain number of them may have been enlightened beings, OK? They start to realize later in his life, this person in the story is starting to realize that one or more of the people that he met early in his life could have been an enlightened being, could have been a Buddha. And he starts to see from the point of view of 20, 30 years later that this was very possible and even very likely.

You know that later on, after you reach some kind of spiritual levels, you can look back and realize that certain people in your life nudged you a certain way. It could have been a pleasant nudge or it could have been an unpleasant nudge, OK? But they were trying to help you, they were trying to get you to go somewhere.

And they did. You see what I mean? And you'll be able to look back later from the point of view of a different state of mind after a lot of Buddhist practice, a lot of Buddhist meditation, that you're in a different state of consciousness and realize that many of the events that happened in your life, good or bad, very good, very bad, that the person involved, someone who died next to you, someone who broke up with you, somebody who was your mother or something, those people all could have been enlightened beings.

You have to realize that we're trying to get to a goal, which is an enlightened being has the ability to be anything they want, anytime they want, anywhere they want, and they have this ability to make multiple copies. So it's called tukku or nirmanakaya. So they have an ability to fill up a whole auditorium so that I can review my practice, you know, like that.

Could be one Buddha, could be two. Usually two don't gang up and make one person. Anyway, this is what the man in the story is realizing in his later years.

So that was the first chapter. The second chapter was about pain. And he was having an argument with...

He's waiting for his girlfriend to come back to his garden, and instead, Je Tsongkhapa comes. Je Tsongkhapa was a great Buddhist teacher in Tibet. He was the teacher of the first Dalai Lama.

And so he's sort of disappointed that it's not his girlfriend, but Je Tsongkhapa is okay. And this great Lama comes into the garden, and they start to have a debate about pain. And Je Tsongkhapa is saying, tell me about your life, and the guy says, oh, my life is pretty good, you know, I got to go to university, I'm pretty well educated, I have a good place to stay, I have a pretty good job, I'm pretty healthy, things are going pretty well.

And Je Tsongkhapa says, well, it's a pity to hear that you're wasting every moment of your precious life. And the guy says, I'm not wasting my life, I'm living a reasonable life. So the guy is trying to say, look, I'm not trying to be the president, and I'm not trying to be Donald Trump, or I'm not trying to be something big, I just want to live a normal, happy life, I want to be medium income, and I don't have to be rich, I don't want to be poor.

But I'm not greedy, I don't have that problem, I know that's a trap. You know, I'm not stupid. I have spiritual longings, I want to be a spiritual person.

But I want to have a normal family, a normal house, a decent job, and then I want to do some meditation every day, you know, just enough to be calm, and stuff like that. And that's my goal in life. And then Jatankapa repeats, it's a pity that you're wasting every moment of your life.

And then the guy says, I'm not wasting my life. And then they start an argument. And Jatankapa says, you are because your whole life is pain, and you're not trying to do anything about it.

You want to have a good house, good house is pain. You want to have a normal wife, this is pain. You want to have nice kids, normal kids.

You want to have a normal, medium income, this is pain, everything is pain. And the guy is like, come on, don't be radical. There is pain in life, I've been sick before, I've been broke before, I've had people break up with me before, stuff like that.

But that's like from time to time, bad things happen. But you can't say my whole life, every minute of my life has been a waste. I've accomplished things, I went to school, I'm a normal person, I'm sensitive, I'm spiritually inclined, I'm not greedy, I like other people, I do good things for people.

And Jetson Crawford says, I'm sorry to hear you're wasting every moment of your life. So, then they get this big argument about, is this Buddhist thing about every moment of your life being pain, is it true or not? Because I know for me as an American, it was like, ok, je gan na chi, je gan na chi, birth, rebirth, aging, sickness, death, this is what Buddha said is your problems.

And I'm 22 years old, and my lama is telling me this, and I'm like, ok, well, rebirth I don't believe in, so I don't have to worry about that. Gala, I'm old age, I'm 22 years old, you know, tell me about it later. Nawa, I get sick once in a while, but I don't have cancer or anything, I don't have a heart problem, you know, it doesn't apply to me.

Chiwa, dying, I still have, you know, 58 years, you know, you know, like medium lifespan, and I'm just thinking, it doesn't impress me, this argument, you know, the Buddha's big pronouncement about the suffering, maybe to somebody in a hospital or a nursing home or something like that, but right now I'm not there. Jatakapa, if he were alive, would say, no, no, no, you don't get it, every hour of your life is total suffering, it's not that you have bad events happening from time to time, the fact that you're sitting in this room right now is suffering, you know, the fact that you're breathing right now is a kind of suffering, you know, and then the guy is like, I don't get it, are you telling me that, you know, we had a nice kid here last time, she went away to Canada, but anyway, by the way, that's, anyway, I'll tell you something about that child, but anyway, the child was sitting here, and in the story the guy says, take the beauty of a sunset, you know, take the beauty of a flower, take a beautiful song, Neil Young, take anything beautiful, the face of a child, you know, like a happy child's face, you know, you can't tell me this is suffering, you know, and then Jetsun Kappa says, so I guess licking razor blades is not suffering, right? And the guy says, come on, don't be gross, you know, licking razor blades, who would do that?

And he says, well, let's say that you have a razor blade covered with honey, and, you know, somebody says, do you want to lick it? And you don't realize there's a razor blade under the honey, so you say, okay, yeah, I like honey, like I have friends who just go around with jars of honey and eating it, you know, especially Leroy's, I don't know if, anyway, Hawaiian white honey. And so he says, yeah, no, eating honey is a pleasure, you know, I'd love to eat some honey.

Anytime I could lick some honey off something, okay? And then Jetsun Kappa says, okay, did you decide licking honey is a pleasure? And the guy says, yeah, licking honey is pleasure.

So then Jetsun Kappa says, well, is it pleasure when you stick it on a razor blade and go like that, you know? And the guy says, well, if I think about it carefully, you know, now the first moment, you know, you probably have an instant taste of the honey, you know, probably for half a second or something, and then you become aware of the pain. So there's like, there's like a half a second of pleasure and then there's just this very, very serious pain, you know.

So, so then Jetsun Kappa says, so are you telling me, oh, oh, then he says, is licking honey a pleasure? The guy says, yes. Is licking honey off a razor blade pleasure?

He says, no. And Jetsun Kappa says, but isn't it a pleasure in the first moment, the very first instant? He says, yes.

But that doesn't make it pleasure. And Jetsun Kappa says, why? And he's playing chess with him, you see, he's about to get him, this is in the monastery, they do it to you all the time.

They ask you questions and suddenly you're trapped, you know. So he says, so licking honey is pleasure? Yeah.

Licking honey off a razor blade is pleasure or pain? Well, you know, the first moment might be pleasure, but you have to call it pain. And Jetsun Kappa says, why?

And the guy says, because the necessary, it's connected. It is absolutely connected to a major pain right after it. You know what I mean?

So licking honey off a razor blade, because it's, I don't know how to say, because it's indubitably, indisputably connected to a suffering, a big suffering, in the next instant, it's not worth it. You can't call it pleasure. It's pain.

So Jetsun Kappa says, oh, are you saying then that if you have some short pleasure and then after that you have some big, you know, suffering, that you can call both of them together suffering. Okay? Get it?

So you take the moment's pleasure and the razor blade cut and you glue them together and you say, now what about that whole event of licking a razor blade that has honey on it? Is that pleasure or pain? And the guy says, pain.

And he says, why? Because the pleasure always comes with a bad ending. A very bad ending.

You know what I mean? In this case. So you can't say that it's like mixed pleasure and pain.

Come on, it's painful to lick razor blades with honey on them. So Jetsun Kappa says, well, think of the child's face. And then he goes, he leaves the garden, you know, and he leaves the guy like that.

And the guy is thinking, what did he mean? What did he mean? And the point is, no matter what kind of good thing happens to you in this life, you must get old.

You must die. You must lose everything you worked for. You know, every single thing you ever worked for, every morning that you got up out of bed, it doesn't matter what you worked for.

And you don't have to be a greedy person. I'm not talking greedy. Every single action that you undertook in this life for something to happen that you wanted is meaningless as you get old and it all starts to fall apart.

And as you die. So it doesn't... We were talking last night about how fast it takes, how little time it takes your children to spend, to sell the house and spend the money, you know.

And you know many people who spent their whole lives. Often you ask them, is life worth it? And they say, no.

And you say, well, why are you still working? Well, at least my children can have something, you know. And then you say, why?

And they'll say, after I die, they'll sell the house and they'll have some money for a while, you know, and then they'll die. So what's the point? So that's the idea.

That's the razor blade. Nothing that you've ever done in this life, collecting friends, having a family, having a house, having a career, getting money together, even a reasonable, spiritual, sensitive person's money, it's all useless. It's meaningless.

It becomes meaningless because it ends in death. It's connected to death. It's always connected to death.

So, according to your own idea, it's the same as licking honey off a razor blade. There's no reason to want those things now. And then the guy leaves the garden, you know, he says, okay, I've proved that you're living in pain all the time.

You're licking razor blades all the time. And he leaves. Okay.

Good.

[Говорящий 2]
At least one person.

[Говорящий 1]
Yeah, I think what you're saying is, what he said basically is this, there are non-Buddhist people who've found chunks of meaning in their life. You know what I mean? It's not meaningless.

[Говорящий 2]
There have been...

[Говорящий 1]
Yeah. This is a good question, you know, like, I agree with the idea that any good thing that happens to me will fall apart. But that doesn't make that good thing invalid, you know.

So, what you're saying is, you know, you can't say that the first moment of the honey is not sweet, even if it's connected to a gash in your tongue. You see what I mean? That's the whole argument.

That's what the young man is trying to say, and that's what Je Tsongkhapa is trying to tell him. But, I think the answer to that is this, is there an option? You see, I call it, is the Buddhist goal, and this is very important, is it the goal of Buddhism to learn to cope with your pain?

You know, is it the goal of Buddhism to be a master coper? Really. You see, I mean, because many people present Buddhism that way or seems to present Buddhism that way.

You know, you can't change your life. You're going to get old. You're going to suffer.

You're going to die. Things are going to fall apart. But learn to be calm.

You know, learn to cope. You know, learn to be peaceful as it falls apart around you. And as your body gets less and less able to sit in meditation, for example, until the final day that you can't sit up anymore, just take it easy.

Watch it flow. Watch the thoughts come in and out of your mind. Be calm.

Be friendly to others because everyone's in the same boat. I mean, that's, often times you hear that. It's not the goal of Buddhism.

Forget it. Okay? It's not to sit there and put up with a world which is falling apart around you.

It's not... The purpose of Buddhist practice is not to sit there with a life which is suffering. It's to remove the suffering.

It's a big difference. You see what I mean? A good Buddhist practitioner is not learning to be peaceful and calm while their life is being torn down by time.

You know, it's to get out of that. It's to stop it. You see, it's very radical.

And I had a lady today, she's a famous author that she wrote a book called Cave in the Snow or something like that. She's the writer of it. The ghost writer.

And she said, I'll write you a ghost writer book for you, you know, but you've got to stop this stuff about...

[Говорящий 2]
And... And...

[Говорящий 1]
Out of every book there is. And she says, yes. Right in the middle, he says, maripame maripase epamepam negasim negam which means you don't have to die.

You know, you don't have to get old. If you just figure out what's happening, you don't have to go through that process. So she says, well, why didn't we see anybody like that?

And the point is, until you get pretty much into the process, you can't see it. But there are people all around who are doing it. You see what I mean?

Then she said, how do you prove that? And then we got into a four hour talk. Anyway, we don't have that much time.

So what I want to say is that the point of Buddhism is truly not to just learn to cope with things. You see what I mean? It's not to learn to enjoy the short time you have or something like that.

The real goal of Buddhism is to actually stop the process of aging and death. And I don't... Sometimes I think I shouldn't say that because then people say he's crazy and they don't come back to class.

If he had talked about meditation it would have been comfortable for me. But really that's the goal. And that's the reason to be a Buddhist.

And that's the reason to... The goal of Buddhism is not to learn to enjoy the short periods in your life where things aren't screwing up. The goal of Buddhism is to make sure they don't stop.

And that's a big difference. Okay? That's a big difference.

I'm not denying that, you know, there are ways of seeing the world in which you can enjoy your good years, you know. But the point is if there's always a razor blade at the other end of it, wouldn't you want... If you had an option, wouldn't you want to try the other way?

That's all. That's all. Okay.

So he leaves the garden. The guy thinks about it for a while. His mother has died in the meantime.

Okay? And he's dealing with this grief subconsciously. And he wants to get out of it.

You know, he's... When you have someone close to you die, you become a real Buddhist. For a short time.

They call it in pusu ngenjung. Pusu ngenjung means goose bump spirituality. Which means for about six weeks you're really spiritual.

You know. And then for about six months you're subconsciously spiritual. You see what I mean?

You are dealing... You're not dealing with the guy at work that you don't like or, you know, getting to the right restaurant or something like that. Subconsciously, you're dealing with Is death inevitable?

You know. Can I speak to my mother after she died? Where is she?

What happened to her? Subconsciously, you're dealing with those issues for about six weeks consciously and six months to a year or more subconsciously. So that's the right time to get somebody interested in Buddhism.

You see what I mean? Because there... For a short time you're dealing with the real problems of life.

So this guy in the story has had this event happen to him. His mother has died. So he's going back to the garden and he's thinking that this girl might come and instead he hears the footsteps of...

This is at night, right? So he's got his eyes closed. She has a distinctive gait like a skipping sort of walk and his eyes are closed and he's listening but he hears this clunk, clunk, clunk, you know, and he's like Oh boy, it's not her.

I wonder who's going to bother me tonight. And in comes this guy named Kamalashila. I'd like you to repeat that a bit because it puts a seed in your mind and it comes out a hundred years later or something.

We'll meet again, OK? This class won't go on a hundred years tonight, OK? Kamala, about 750 A.D. Came from India. Great, great Buddhist meditator. Maybe the best of all time. So this guy happens to be meeting the best of everything in this garden.

He wrote a book called Gomrim. Gomrim means meditation. Rim means steps to how to meditate.

And this is the classic that's been used in Tibet ever since. Gomrim. The steps on how to meditate.

And he's going to get taught meditation by Kamalashila in the garden. And it's going to be this process. Kamalashila is very famous in Tibet.

The Tibetans, for example, before they became Buddhist, they didn't have an alphabet. They didn't write anything. And after they got interested in Buddhism, the king said, You know what?

It might be nice to have an alphabet so we can write down all this stuff that these Indian guys are saying when they come to our country. So he sent like a team of 15, 16 young men to India and said, Don't come back without it. So they went to India.

Tibetans don't do well in India. India is a low plain. And they're used to very little oxygen.

Their lungs are very expanded. They get tuberculosis very easily. Like the refugees in 1959, thousands and thousands died of tuberculosis.

And out of the 16 young men, all but one or two died. One guy made it back, and he wrote a book called Sumtak and Sumjupa, Sanghajupa, and he started the alphabet. Tumi Sambora.

And he came back, and they had an alphabet. Just like that, the Tibetans at some point decided, We want to learn how to meditate. As a nation.

It was really cool in Tibet because the kings were the ones who brought Buddhism to Tibet. It's like having Clinton suddenly get interested and put the whole pentagon on getting Tibetan lamas over here. You know what I mean?

And really, it was like that. Like they'd take the brightest minds, they'd put all their money into it, and they'd send search parties to India. And it was very consciously done.

It was very interesting. So they go to Tibet, they find Kamalaseela, they go to India, come back to Tibet and teach us how to meditate. So he comes.

At the same time, there's a scholar from China named Hua Shang. And he's coming to Tibet. And he's already been teaching this kind of meditation to Tibetans called Jiyangme.

Say Jiyangme. Jiyangme means nothing at all.

[Говорящий 2]
Okay?

[Говорящий 1]
And he came to Tibet and taught people, you know, the way to meditate is Jiyangme. You know, sit down, close your eyes, and try to think of nothing.

[Говорящий 2]
Okay?

[Говорящий 1]
And I remember the first meditation I went to when I was in college. And I heard about this place, and I went. It was off.

I had to walk like a half a mile. Okay, sit down like this. And he says, close your eyes.

I closed my eyes. He says, now think about nothing. And I tried really hard to think about nothing, you know.

But it's hard to think about nothing. This is called Jiyangme. This is a belief about meditation.

And I think it kind of went through America and it kind of died out now, or maybe not. But it's the belief that you should sit down and that this is some kind... Kamalaseela heard this was being taught and he went to the king and he said, he proposed a debate.

He said, take the Chinese master, let me debate him in public for 10 days, 15 days, 20 days, as long as it takes. And then let the people decide what kind of meditation they want to do in Tibet. You know, so this is big stakes.

In ancient India you had debates in the court of the king. And whoever won, that would be the religion of the whole country. It's like having a Catholic and a Baptist debate on TV.

And then you cast votes over the internet or something. And then that becomes the religion of the whole country. This was the system in those days.

Kamalaseela gets into the debate with... Now Kamalaseela, what he's saying is meditation. He's proposing three kinds of meditation.

Say jogam. Jogam.

[Говорящий 2]
Jogam. Jogam.

[Говорящий 1]
OK. Gom means meditation. Jok means fixation.

OK. And this is your, you know, this is what you think of when they say meditation. By the way, it can be an idea or it can be a picture.

OK. It can be like, the classic one to start with, you picture some enlightened being in the room with you. You know, you close your eyes and you imagine, you try to imagine very hard His Holiness the Dalai Lama or Jesus or whoever you want, it doesn't matter.

But you try to get their face right, you try to get their eyes right, you try to get their mouth right, you try to get their hair right. And it's like fixing your mind on it. We do this in our everyday lives.

Like when you're reading a book, you're doing a jogam. You see, because the book is generating pictures in your mind. Like, I don't know about you, but when you're reading a really good book, you already have some pictures in your mind of how it goes.

You know, that's a jogam. When you're sitting there thinking about your girlfriend, you know, and how she looks and stuff like that, and you're, like, spacing out a little bit, that's a jogam. OK.

That is a real jogam. When you're thinking about somebody at work that you don't particularly like, that's a jogam. You know, you fixed your mind on them.

That's a jogam. OK. So we do...

Every creature, by the way, according to Buddhism, every living creature has some ability to concentrate. It's one of those five or ten mental functions that all creatures enjoy. An amoeba, an ant, a caterpillar, you know, have the ability to concentrate for a brief second.

And that's a kind of gom. You have ting and zin. You have the capacity of concentration.

So jogam is like, you develop it, you know, and you get to where you can close your eyes and concentrate and see something clearly. Great musicians do it with sounds. Great artists do it with images before they paint them.

You know, great sculptors, Michelangelo, sees the thing before he starts doing the sculpture. He sees it in his mind's eye. So this is your mind's eye.

That's jogam.

[Говорящий 2]
OK.

[Говорящий 1]
But notice they all have an object. You see what I mean? Whether it's a picture or an idea or a sound, there's an object.

OK. And Buddhism teaches that the mind always has an object. OK.

You cannot have a state of consciousness that doesn't have an object. OK. It can be trying to think of nothing but that becomes the object.

You see what I mean? So the idea that you can have a state of mind without an object is according to Buddhism false. The word for mind is yulchen in Buddhism which means that thing which grasps onto an object.

And according to Buddhism it takes an object to generate a state of mind and to trigger a state of mind you must have an object. So to say that you can think of nothing is impossible. Nothing becomes an object.

You see what I mean? Trying to think of nothing the thought to think of nothing watching your mind and watching your thoughts becomes an object itself. So this is what Kamalashila starts out with.

By the way when they talk about meditating on emptiness that's jogam. Sheer emptiness. But that kind of emptiness is a very specific lack of some kind of quality.

And it's not just thinking about nothing. So you have to remember that. It's never that.

First kind of meditation. Second kind. Say Shargom.

Shargom. Shargom is a special kind of meditation where you review a number of steps of an idea. For example you might review how to set up your room for a meditation which is what we're going to study later on tonight.

What are the steps that you go through when you want to start a meditation. It's very interesting that according to Buddhism you can't meditate properly without warming up first. They say it's very similar to jogging or running or anything like that.

You have to do a special warm-up process. And when they teach you to meditate in a Tibetan monastery they sit you down. You don't meditate for days and days.

First they tell you this is how you get ready to meditate. You have to go through and they go over it over and over again with you before you learn to meditate. They don't let you meditate for quite some time.

They want to make sure you have the warm-up right. And they say if you don't do the warm-up right you'll never be good at meditation. So you have to learn that.

Shargom you could do a Shargom on the warm-up. You see what I mean? All the steps you have to do to meditate.

You could close your eyes and think about ok, first I do that. Second I do that. Third I do that.

Fourth I do that. And that's a Shargom. So Shargom is to review something over and over like a process.

You could say like a review meditation whereas Jogom is a fixation meditation. In a fixation meditation the object doesn't change. The goal is to keep it fixed in front of your mind.

In a Shargom it's like playing cards. You know and you're seeing them one by one and then you put them back together and you do it again. And that creates like a I think in science they believe there's something like if you if a child learns to speak a foreign language certain links are made in their mind that wouldn't be made otherwise.

And after practicing a foreign language and that's the idea. The idea is that you go over a certain list of ideas 10, 20, 30, 50 times and then finally it becomes second nature and it's part of you. By the way the word dom or meditation in Tibetan means to get used to something.

To burn it into your mind. You see what I mean? So the idea is is it better to meditate on the Washington Monument or on a on a picture of a Buddha?

You see what I mean? Can you just close your eyes and think about the Washington Monument and how high it is and get a picture of that. You know that distinctive shape comes in your mind, right?

Like that. You can close your eyes and anyone in this room has enough dom to imagine that shape. You see what I mean?

Or should you start with an outline of a Buddha? You know, or Jesus or something like that. We say start with something that's holy because whatever you put in front of your mind puts an imprint on your mind.

You get a little residue if that object stays with you. So better to meditate on something holy, sacred from the beginning because it rubs off on your mind. Okay?

So don't think about the person who irritated you today. Don't dom on that because a little bit of them will rub off on you. By having them as the object of your mind.

It's very interesting. The minute you put an object in front of your mind certain parts of that object infect your mind. So Buddhism says it's very important if you're going to meditate don't pick a neutral object.

Don't pick somebody you don't like. Pick some holy, holy, holy being. Whatever you think is the holiest being in the world.

And each person has a different one, maybe. But take that one and the word for meditation in Buddhism means to get used to something until you burn that imprint into your mind. Okay?

What's the third kind of meditation? Say cegom. Cegom.

And I think it's what you'll probably do if you try to meditate. Whether it's on purpose or not. Cegom means to take a problem and analyze it.

Cegom is analytical meditation. The problem can be why does this person at work doesn't like me? Why is it they don't like me?

And then you'll go through all the reasoning. You'll say, well, you know, I did say something to them the other day. You know, well, you know, we did bump into each other.

You know, well... And then you start to think of all the reasons why this person doesn't like you. And then towards the end of the meditation you're like, I get it.

I know why they don't like me. You know, and you make a decision. Okay, that's cegom.

So, a good Buddhist cegom would be, you know, is it important to do my Buddhism quickly or do I have time? You know, should I take it sort of at an easy pace or should I get fanatical about it? You know.

Well, you know, there's pros and cons. Fanatical people tend to burn out and quit after a while. On the other hand, about five of my friends have died already, got hit by cars when they least expected it.

And I really should get ready. You know. Then again, most of my friends haven't died.

Then again, the ones who did die really didn't think they were going to die either. You know. And then you go through this.

This is called a cegom. That's a good cegom. That's called cihua mitapa.

That's a death meditation. And you go through all the pros and cons about, you know, do I have some time left or don't I have some time left? You know.

Is there a place where I... Am I more likely to die on the street or in my house? You know.

Is it safer in my house than in the street?

[Говорящий 2]
You know.

[Говорящий 1]
You know what? When I think about it, all the stuff I eat could kill me just as well as a car. You know what I mean?

I mean, it's just as likely that I'll have a heart attack unexpectedly as I will getting run over. So it doesn't really matter whether I'm inside or outside. It could be a car kills me or it could be my heart kills me.

Or it could be the roof kills me. You know, that something will kill me. Oftentimes the things that you use to live kill you.

You see what I mean? Like a doctor kills you or medicine kills you or food kills you. Many people have been killed by food.

Sitting at the table. You know. Seriously.

So that's a cegom. You know, you're trying to decide whether to go to class tonight. And you're doing a cegom.

You know, what are the odds that I won't die before the next class? You know. And I have time.

You know. I've had many students sitting in your seat who've died. Trust me.

OK? I'm not kidding. There was this beautiful man, Thomas's friend.

We just got a letter. She had sent him a correspondence course because he went out to New Mexico to meet his friends and he never got it. OK?

He died. And he was waiting for the correspondence course. Luckily, it was on time.

I mean, what I mean is we didn't send it six months late like we usually do. So we didn't feel so bad. But what I mean is it's going to come.

You know, people didn't expect it. I've had students and that's a cegom. To go through that discussion in your own mind is a cegom.

[Говорящий 2]
OK?

[Говорящий 1]
And then to decide by the end of that cegom, you know what? I'll take care of my spiritual needs now and later if I have some extra time I'll take care of my mental health and I'll take care of my material needs instead of the other way around. It makes more sense.

You know, if I die with money it doesn't help. If I die with some spiritual realizations it does help. So you know what?

I'll take care of the spiritual stuff first and then later I'll get rich. You know what I mean? It's just a logical way to do it.

But if you never cegom about it you'll never do it. You know? Because you just got to roll with it.

I can't hear you. Somebody can tell me? You mean as opposed to an angry state of mind or something like that?

We're going to talk about it. We're going to talk about it. We'll get to that.

What you're asking is what state of mind to go into a meditation and what state of mind to... Maybe we'll talk about it right now. I guess I want to talk about first is the...

You know, what's the use of meditating? Why should you meditate? By the way, this is what the class is about.

This chapter in the garden... By the way, you're going to get two classes on meditating. The guy is learning how to meditate.

And I don't know about you I don't know what your first impressions of meditation were but mine were also uninformed. You know, I was not well educated about meditation. I thought I could meditate.

You know, I saw Kung Fu on TV and everything and I thought I'm supposed... You know, that's your exposure of a normal American to meditation. Somehow, you're supposed to sit still.

Your legs are supposed to be crossed in some kind of... You know... And you're supposed to think about nothing.

And then when you get up you're very calm and when they attack you with sticks and stuff you can just...

[Говорящий 2]
You know...

[Говорящий 1]
And... No really, that's what America thinks. You know, that's the way...

So, what is the real reason to meditate? Is it to get to a point where you become very... What they call equanimity?

Meditative equipoise. I like that one. Is it that you're supposed to reach a point where you're supposed to not care about anything?

You see what I mean? Like someone can spit on you or someone can give you a medal and you still feel the same? You see what I mean?

Is that the point of meditation? Is that just kind of spaced out and nothing bothers you? And then, you know, you get old, it's okay.

It doesn't bother you. You get rich, it doesn't bother you. You get broke, it doesn't bother you.

And these are all like misconceptions about meditation that I was exposed to as a normal American. Time magazine, New York Times, television... You know, these are the myths about meditation that you've been fed.

So what is the point of meditating? Why meditate? And how much meditation is enough?

And what's the use of it? I think the first one we can call samten. Say samten.

Samten. Samten. Samten.

I'm going to start going through the benefits of meditation. What's the use of meditating? First one is samten.

Samten means a general meditative state of mind that you carry around the whole day.

[Говорящий 2]
Okay?

[Говорящий 1]
Like if you meditate in the morning, and I usually tell people half an hour, 45 minutes is a good start. If you meditate that much in the morning, and if you do it every day, you will start to reach a state of samten. And samten is like a heightened awareness of things.

Like as you go through the day, your mind is brighter, your mind is happier, you're generally on an even keel. Things don't bother you as much, life becomes better. Actually, your health improves.

Okay? Your whole body starts to change, and your mind, and you're more calm. This is feeling meditative all day, contemplative all day long.

You know, and I don't mean spacey, okay? You can still work in an office, you know, you can still do some kind of job that requires constant attention, but your general level of peacefulness is heightened. And you go through the whole day being much more calm, much more capable, and the whole day is like on an even keel.

And this is a, this is one benefit of meditation. Okay? If you get into real meditation, it flows through the day.

It's not like you meditate from 8 to 9 and then you don't meditate from 9 to 8. It's like the meditation stretches into your whole day, and your whole day becomes a different level, and your mind is calm, your feelings are calm, you're able to go through the day with some kind of happier atmosphere, and that's, that's a general feeling of samta. Okay?

First benefit. Say, ting yin zin. Ting yin zin.

Ting yin zin. Ting yin zin means the ability to delve into an object.

[Говорящий 2]
Okay?

[Говорящий 1]
And it's especially useful for problems. Okay? I did business for, I was in the corporate world for 16 years, every day, doing business.

And, and I had a large department to run, we had offices overseas, many workers, it was in the diamond business. And, we did 30,000 diamonds a day, in that department. and what, you know, in any operation which you're trying to get supplies from overseas, and, and you're negotiating the price of a thing that has no value, that's worthless, you know what I mean?

It's not like buying steel or something like that, like every time you buy one, there's an argument. Because it depends on how bad you want it. Because there's no price for a diamond.

Diamonds, you can't eat diamonds, you can't drive diamonds, they're worthless, they're little rocks, they're even so hard they're not much use for everything, you know? So, so it's a special kind of thing where you're constantly faced with problems, you know? JCPenney wants 3,000 of this kind of diamond.

You have to go all over the whole world on your phone and try to find it. And in each person you talk to, there's going to be a negotiation and a fight and an argument and, and terms and conditions and shipping and coordination of 10,000 stones coming in by April. And, so you're constantly having to solve problems.

You'd be like a stock market or something. But if you have Ting and Xin, you can just cut through everything, you know? I mean, Ting and Xin you can use for anything.

Ting and Xin is like a special ability to cut right down into a problem and see the solution immediately. It's very interesting. It's a, it's a, it's a, it's almost a steel quality of the mind, you know, where you're just able to focus on that and delve into it, see the end of the problem and execute it.

So, so then obviously, I mean, if you're interested in getting rich, it's very useful. Okay? It really is.

And I, and there's no problem with getting rich. Getting rich is fine. The question is what you do with it.

Okay? There's no problem. Bodhisattvas are supposed to get money so they can help people and they're supposed to spend it all quickly.

Okay? So, so you get this special ability to see into a problem and, and solve it. And that's a second quality of meditation.

What I'm trying to say is a person who is meditating regularly, their life will be much, much smoother. Why? A, all day long you feel better.

B, that's the samtan. B, you have ting and zin which means every time a problem comes up much more quickly than other people you see an obvious, to you an obvious good solution and it's finished. You know?

And people are still trying to figure it out. People who are not meditating can sit there for a couple hours and, and not see what you see. You see what I mean?

I've been with a lama in a car who never saw a car engine before. The car broke down and we opened the lid, you know, the trunk, the hood and, we're looking in, that's how much I know about cars. So he's looking in and he, he says, tell me what this little box here, you know, he says it's a battery.

He says, what's that for? Oh, it connects over there. And after about five minutes he says, the power, you know, and, and he was right.

You know, and it's, it's ting and zin. And I'm not kidding. I mean, a person who's really meditating well, whether it's business or relationships or anything else, you immediately see insights that other people don't have.

So, so even if there's no nirvana and enlightenment, it's still worth it to, to meditate. It's very interesting. Very, very good for your mind.

Okay? Third one. Say, Xinjiang.

Xinjiang. Xinjiang is a very beautiful thing. There's a mental one and there's a physical one.

And it's a very hard word to translate. Xinjiang means, when my lama, he always teaches it the same way. He says, what's this guy in the Olympics, he'll say, you know, the Chinese people are good at that too, you know.

They jump up on that box and bend every which way and, and that's Xinjiang. What's that? Yeah, it's like gymnastics.

But it's the ability to move quickly, lightly, fluently, joyfully and to feel good about it. Sometimes they say pliancy or something like that. It just means that you can go and land on your feet, you know.

And, if you start meditating in a way regularly, you start to get two versions of Xinjiang, mental and physical. Meaning, this is very interesting. I'll teach you some Tantra.

It's secret, ok? Don't tell anybody. Don't tell anybody I told you.

You have a central channel running from here down to there, ok? And it comes down your back and it comes up and it comes to here. And it starts here.

And, and it's invisible. You can't see it. If you cut your body open you'll never find it.

Backbone, that you have. It's like a straw and it has certain energies moving through it. Every time you have a good thought, a wholesome thought, a certain kind of energy comes down, up and down that channel.

And, and it has a certain good effect on your body. You see what I mean? Like it has a, it has a very subtle connection to your body.

This is, by the way, the ultimate connection between body and mind. So, so if you think certain kinds of wholesome thoughts, compassionate thoughts, pure-minded thoughts, then certain energies are passing through your body and then your body begins to change in a very subtle way. And the more you have those thoughts, the more you feel better, physically.

So the first kind of shinjang, if you're meditating frequently, there's a very beautiful thing about meditation, big advantage to meditation, called samten gi dompa se. The vow of meditation. A normal human being, out of a hundred of thoughts that you have in your mind, about ninety are negative.

Okay? And I'm not saying you're thinking to kill the person next to you, although you may be, I don't know. But, there's just this little negative thoughts going on all the time, like I don't feel well, I wish this wasn't, we weren't going to have this meeting tomorrow, you know, I didn't have such a good dinner, you know, that person's bothering me, when is he going to find me at work?

You know, all these thoughts are circulating in your mind, and then about every fifth or sixth thought you have a nice thought. You see what I mean? So on the whole, you're constantly running at a karmic negative.

Alright? When you're in meditation, the situation reverses. You see what I mean?

Like, when you're in deep meditation, you can't have very bad thoughts, or you wouldn't be in meditation. You see, they ruin your meditation. You'd be out of, you'd pop out of meditation.

You know, when you're having a pretty good meditation, you can't be thinking about how someone, you'd like to kill them or something like that. So the more you meditate, the more good karma you collect automatically. And then your body starts to change.

You see what I mean? And so your body will get lighter and lighter. If you meditate regularly, for a while, your body would start to feel the way it used to feel when you were twenty-something.

You see what I mean? It's very interesting. If you meditate on a regular basis, there's this tantric thing.

It starts to actually change your physical body. The purity of your thoughts starts to change your body. And it's the same as true with your mind.

Okay? Your mind starts to feel lighter. You're able to go through somersaults mentally and come down on your feet.

Nothing disturbs you much. You're able to go through very complicated thought processes and land on your feet and be calm and collected and happy. Okay?

And that's called Xinjiang. So people who meditate more, physically they feel better, and then mentally they feel better. It's some kind of...

You feel younger, mentally and physically. And you start acting different. You can physically do things you couldn't do five years ago.

Okay? Your whole body changes. And this is good if you have some kind of illness or things.

If you have a chronic bone problem, back problem, things like that, it's very good. Next one. Say Xinne.

Xinne. Xinne means... I mean the word means quiescence or quietude or something.

Xinne means peace. Mental quietude or... It doesn't have much to do with that.

Alright? It doesn't mean sham, which means peace. It's a very interesting thing.

Samatha is when you get good at meditating, you're able to see other realms that other people are not able to see. Okay? So you can think of the reality as bandwidth.

You know what I mean? Like you can think of reality as some kind of... You know how they say that there's this many kinds of light?

I mean it goes from infrared into x-ray or something like that. And then the visible spectrum is like here to here. And I don't know.

Red is over here and blue is over here. And then the light gets too short. The wavelengths get too short and you can't see them anymore.

Or they get too long and you can't see them anymore. And your eyes are limited to this visible spectrum. What happens with shinne is that it expands.

Your visible spectrum becomes something like that. And you're able to detect other levels of reality that you're not aware of now. Okay?

It's very interesting. You can think of it as like a door that leads into a hallway or something like that. And if you never get...

If you never meditate, you'll never see those wavelengths. It's very interesting. I mean there are people who go to their entire lives to 70 years.

They live a whole human life of 70 years long without meditating. And they don't even know that there are other realities right around them all the time. And they were there all the time.

And they never saw them. I mean it's very possible if you don't meditate regularly, you'll truly believe there's no such thing. You won't believe that these areas even exist.

Okay? And that's... Shinae is the increase in your bandwidth.

You know? Shinae, shamatha means you're now able to see other kinds of reality. Very, very, very interesting.

If you think about it, the odds are very likely that there are thousands of realities. You see what I mean? You've been living one.

You've been on one level of consciousness. And what's cool is that there are literally thousands of other levels. You know?

There are many, many other levels that you can get to if you meditate regularly. And if you don't, you'll never, ever see them. You see what I mean?

They can only be seen by a person who's in deep meditation. Okay? So, very interesting.

There are many, many levels. And by the way, to see your... One sec.

To see your future lives for example is not such a big deal. You know? It's like to move out to this level of meditation.

Once you get good at meditating, things like that, you can see easily. You can see directly. It's not such a big deal.

If you would meditate regularly, you would see them. And if you don't meditate regularly, you'll never see them. It's very interesting.

There are all these other things going on around you. Whole different levels of reality. Beautiful, amazing, unbelievable things going on right around you.

And you're not able to see them because you don't meditate. And as soon as you start to meditate regularly, that bandwidth starts to expand. Very weird things start to happen.

Beautiful things. Like at about here, you can remember everything that happened to you in your past life. And everything you ever learned in your past life.

Get out to about here and you can fly or walk on water. Seriously. Get out to about here and you can see your own enlightenment in the future.

And enjoy it. And think about it. Meet enlightened beings.

All those things are happening out here. And you can't see them unless you meditate. You have to learn to meditate.

Must. Must learn to meditate. I'll say one more thing about meditation.

We'll take a break. And then I'll actually start giving you the background on how to meditate. Right now I'm just a salesman.

I'm trying to convince you that it's useful. I mean, all these sexy things really happen. I think in Buddhism, in the scriptures they say people don't meditate because they don't realize all this stuff.

Nobody ever told them all this stuff. So they're not like, if someone wants to meditate it's for some vague feeling that they'll feel better if they meditate. It's not like that.

And even if there's no other worlds, you go to work, you get rich fast, I'm telling you. I'm not kidding. Whatever you do, even your personal relationships with your family and stuff, immediately it will get better because your mind is clearer, sharper, cleaner.

And I speak from, he came to interview me and he said, how did you do that? We started with three people, we ended with a thousand people. How did you do that?

I said, well part of it is meditation. You learn to focus. And then, if that's what you want, and by the way, it's not a bad thing to be comfortable and to be able to help other people.

You know what I mean? That's fine. There's no problem with that.

As long as it's honest, right? Get some money and use it. Spend it.

And I did. All of it. But you can do it.

To learn to meditate and make your whole life run a lot smoother and you'll be able to do things. Creativity, forget it. You know?

I mean, total sense of creativity that you never knew you were capable of. Want to paint something? Want to write a book?

Easy. It just comes to you. You see what I mean?

But you got to learn to meditate. Last thing I'll say about meditation. We'll take a break then.

And then I'll answer some questions and we'll get back, okay? To meditate well, and not many people talk about this, but this is very, very important in meditation. To meditate well, you have to have a clean conscience.

Okay? And a lot of people come up to me and say, you know, I've been trying to meditate for three years now and it doesn't work very well. I didn't get any of this other spectrum you're talking about, okay?

And my job is actually going pretty bad. And stuff like that. And I say examine your life in terms of what we call ethical living, you know, because this is the primary fuel for meditation.

Your conscience must be totally clear. You see what I mean? You can't be doing anything sneaky or harmful or a little bit improper to other people.

You can't be leading a life which impinges on other people in a bad way and still expect to meditate. It will never work, okay? You've got to clean up your act, okay?

And I'm not saying you're evil and you're out murdering people at night and stuff like that. I'm just saying, like, do you gossip regularly? You know, do you kind of wish that the people next to you at work would fail or get fired, you know?

Do you sometimes use the boss's phone and not tell them, you know? Do you use the photocopier for your Buddhism classes? Stuff like that.

It's this low... It's continual small bad deeds, you see? It's those gray...

What do you call it? Gray areas that ruin your meditation. You will not be able to meditate well unless you purify that gray area.

I don't believe there's anybody in here embezzling thousands of dollars from their company. There may be one or two. I don't believe you go out and mug people at night or stuff like that.

That's not what ruins your meditation. Then what we call low-level radiation, which means constant, continual, sort of, fudging stuff. You see what I mean?

Like, you kind of have an affair going on with somebody or, you know, you kind of lied to your boss last week or, you know, you kind of didn't tell... you kind of weren't frank with people exactly. You know, you didn't lie about the contract but you didn't quite tell about those three things at the bottom and stuff like that.

You know what I mean? And that kind of fudging... What do you call it?

It strips your meditation of any power. Say ngar. Ngar.

Ngar. It's impossible, right? Ngar means a certain kind of intensity to meditation.

Ngar is used in Tibet for a kind of steel that if they have ngar, you can put a good blade on them and if they don't have ngar, you can't put a good blade on them. It's called temper, I think. But ngar means some kind of deep power, intensity to your meditation.

You can't have that if you're living any kind of gray... if there are any kind of gray areas in your behavior during the day. Okay?

That's what I'm trying to say. Ethically, a Buddhist who wants to meditate serially... Seriously has to be, you know, chet, straight, straight person.

Siddhi, you know, saint in Tibetan is a person who's living a very straight life. Very straight, okay? And it doesn't mean Mahatma Gandhi, okay?

It means just simply, I refuse to cheat on my taxes. I refuse to tell small lies to people. You know, I refuse to misrepresent things to my friends.

You know, I'm going to keep my eyes where they should be during the day and not something improper. And those little decisions, then when you go to meditate, boom, it's incredible. You know, the meditation goes like unbelievable.

So, if you're having kind of sluggish meditation, think about that. And I'm not talking about that you're stealing money from people. I'm talking little ethical fudges that you do, okay?

You clean those up and your meditation will take off. One question, then...

[Говорящий 2]
Yeah.

[Говорящий 1]
He said when you come back, okay, when you talk about... You know, there's times when you should be trying to crack a problem with your mind and there's times to lay off. And that's actually two of the problems.

There's a certain number of typical problems that you'll encounter meditating. One is failing to put your mind on something when you should. Later on, you get a problem called overdoing it.

And that's when you should back off and take your mind off the object a little bit. Yeah, so we'll talk about that. So have some refreshments.

Come back in about ten minutes, okay? Two more small announcements, okay? As you may know or not know, after this year's course, that will take place in Arizona, where I grew up.

And we have a person who has donated a large piece of property there to build something on. And we're going to be out there building some retreat cabins out of adobe and things like that for long-term people retreating, like from six-week retreats up to three-year retreats, okay? So there'll be a crew of people traveling between Arizona and here during the coming year to get that ready.

And then people will be starting to do long retreats there. It's a very, very beautiful place south of Tucson in a mountain. It's a very beautiful place.

And it's about 50 to 80 degrees all year long. It's just a very weird plateau next to a mountain. And then twice a year, I'll be coming out for three-week teachings there.

There's some very beautiful natural amphitheaters in the stone that the Indians used to use and the National Park Service. So there'll be very intense teachings twice a year for three weeks, whether you want to build a small adobe place. But it's a university there, modeled after the old Mongolian Buddhist universities.

In Mongolia, we went there and they taught us. You know, I went to the Geshe course. It takes 18 years of philosophical studies.

And then usually you just graduate and then go do your tantric practice or something like that. In Mongolia, you were expected to go to medical school and become a Tibetan doctor after finishing the 18 years. And then after that, you're expected to go to dance, and then you're expected to become a musician.

So we want to revive that custom. And we're starting a university there of eight colleges to study program there. And we have some old masters from Mongolia and Tibet, India who are coming.

So if you're interested in talking about that or being involved with it, it doesn't matter. I mean, you could do something at the hardware store in New York or you could come out there and live for it. But if it's...

We'll have a meeting this Sunday from 5 to 8 p.m. at the Sixth Street Temple, which is 321 East 6th Street. It's between 1st and 2nd Avenue. And you're very welcome to come.

It's just an open meeting. We're going to lay out, show people what it looks like, how to get there, what kind of things that people could pitch in and help with and stuff like that. We're thinking even like people who want to do stained glass, people who can do carpentry, people who like mud to do Adobe, you know, people who like to keep records, finance, you know, all kinds of stuff like that.

So if you have any kind of desire to get involved with that, you're quite welcome to come and help with that. All right? Monday night at...

What is that? 5.30 to 6 in my room. People come over there all the time and hang out.

Like on any given night, we maybe have 20 people hanging out there. Seriously. And we split some project and we do it.

You know, like research on the net about Arizona snakes and stuff like that. So if you want to come and just be there, every Monday night we organize it for the whole week and we can give you a job that you can go do and it's cool. It's a very fun group.

And we meet there every night and we do something together. And we eat Thai food and stuff like that. Okay?

We'll continue now with the meditation. In the story that you're going to get tonight, to put in your notebook, the young man is in the garden, Kamalashila strolls in, he's expecting this handsome, tall, with, you know, intense concentration and serene and severe and instead it turns out to be this roly-poly little guy who's giggling all the time and he's saying, Okay, let's meditate, man. And then he says, Okay, let's meditate.

And he gets down and they start to try to meditate. And this guy keeps jumping up and disturbing him and making fun of him and saying, Wait a minute, you're doing that wrong. You don't know how to do that?

Or they didn't teach you that in school? And during the process of this kind of a funny encounter between the jolly guy and the serious student, right? You get to hear all the methods of meditation.

Okay, so what I want you to know is that while you're reading that simple little story, you're getting Kamalashila's presentation exactly. So it's not just a story. And you have to study the reading, okay?

And all the parts of meditation will be there. What most people don't know about is that you need to warm up to meditate properly. It's very much like running, jogging or dancing or any kind of exercise.

It requires a very intense warm up. And I think Americans often fail in meditation for two reasons. Either they aren't aware that your whole day has to be clean, ethically, you know, that you have to have a clean state of mind to meditate.

Or they don't know how to warm up. They don't know the warm up process. So we're going to go through the warm up process.

Alright? And these are different things that you need to do to warm up for meditation properly.

[Говорящий 2]
Okay?

[Говорящий 1]
Say ching-wa. Ching-wa.

[Говорящий 2]
Ching-wa.

[Говорящий 1]
Ching-wa is... It means dullness, okay? A dull state of mind.

And I'll describe it for you. There's a subtle dullness and a gross dullness. I'm talking...

It's brought on by a couple of factors. One is food. Okay?

And what this means is if you want to be a good meditator in the morning from 7 to 8 o'clock, there's certain other behavior you have to do all day long to be a good meditator. Okay? So it's not enough to sit down all straight and handsome and sit, you know, and look like Kung Fu or something for an hour.

There's certain kinds of behavior that you have to go all day long to learn to meditate properly. One is to avoid ching-wa all day long. You see what I mean?

Don't overeat the whole day. Okay? And especially don't overeat before meditating.

[Говорящий 2]
Okay?

[Говорящий 1]
In other words, you have to get in the habit of controlling your food intake. If you want to be a good meditator, you have to become... What do you call it?

The Greeks called it nothing in excess, you know? You have to learn to do... to lead a simple life as far as your food intake.

You know? You can't like pig out the night before and expect a good meditation the next morning. That's what I'm trying to say.

The food may be digested already. And, you know, you may feel pretty good. But it has this effect on you called ching-wa.

And it makes you dull. And you won't be able to meditate well. So if you're having trouble meditating and you don't know quite why, and you feel like sometimes sleepy or a little dull or something like that, try to watch your food intake.

Okay? The whole day. Okay?

We're also talking, you know, caffeine, sugar, stuff like that. You can have coffee the afternoon before meditation and then sleep, and then get up the next morning, and it will still be affecting you. You see what I mean?

And, you know, if you like a good cup of coffee, and I do, and I have two every morning I sleep, before meditation. Anyway. Try to cut it down.

That's all. If you go into a retreat, you have... The other one is sleep.

Obviously, if you sleep too much, you'll get lazy and stupid, and you won't be able to meditate. But I'm talking about the opposite. A lot of people that I know don't sleep enough.

And this is a big enemy for meditation. You cannot meditate well if you're not well rested. Okay?

And many Americans I know have meditated, have tried to meditate very sincerely. You know, they put in the time, they learned all the preliminaries, they did everything right, the seat was right, the posture was right, and everything else. But something's wrong.

And oftentimes, it's not enough sleep. And you're not even aware of it. You see what I mean?

Sometimes it's just no... There's no intensity to your meditation. And my head doesn't nod that much.

You know, bite. I don't have any intensity to my meditative experience. Okay?

You have to be rested nicely. Okay? Exercise.

And for that, it's something like, you can try yoga, or running, or dancing, or anything that Tai Chi is good. But if your channels are a little bit open, which happens when you're... And I'm not talking weight lifting every day, okay?

I'm just talking like an hour's walk a day or something like that. This keeps... These are all the physical constraints on your body.

Your body has to be in pretty good health to meditate well. By the way, that's also the urgency of the practice. You have to meditate before your body gives out.

And it will. Okay? So you have to start now.

Frankly, once you get to a certain age, it's much harder to meditate. And much more difficult to get into a deep state of meditation. The scriptures say it's possible, but it's difficult.

You know? But why wait? You know, might as well do it now.

So learn to meditate now and get good at it. Second one is gupa. Gupa means to have like a distracted state of mind.

Okay? The word gu in Tibetan, when you connect it to the word for human, becomes the word for gorilla or chimpanzee. Okay?

So gupa means like, you know, like that. And what it means when you're meditating is... By the way, I'm not talking about the hour you're meditating.

I'm talking about the 23 hours you're out of meditation. The Buddhist books say you have to pay attention to your lifestyle in order to be a good meditator. So oftentimes, what makes the difference between successful meditation or a failure in your meditation is how you live the other 23 hours.

So gupa means that you don't tie up your life with too much activities. Alright? And this is totally a matter of capacity.

Okay? Like some people can't handle more than one or two activities. Some people can easily handle 50.

You see what I mean? But you have to judge what you can take. In other words, keep your life within your capacity.

You shouldn't have more things going on than you can do well. And if you do, it'll damage your meditation. If your lifestyle is frenetic, don't expect to be able to sit down for an hour and meditate well.

By the way, it can be busy, but not frenetic. You see what I mean? Like, bodhisattvas are very famous.

There's a clear distinction made in the scriptures between a hermit monk and a bodhisattva monk. You know, like a hermit monk is trying to live quietly in a little corner in a cell. Bodhisattva monk projects that they're doing, you know, and that's fine.

You see, there's nothing wrong with that. It's okay to be busy. Once you get out of your capacity, it will damage your meditation.

So that you have to judge on your own. That's a whole state of mind and it's a way that you live your life, that you have to work. Next one is gīrpa.

By the way, the source for these is Nāgārjuna, 200 A.D. 17. Say, gīrpa. Gīrpa.

[Говорящий 2]
Gīrpa.

[Говорящий 1]
If you know Tibetan, gīrpa normally means regret. Here it has nothing to do with regret. It's called thinking about the good old days.

Okay? Thinking about the good old days, not living in the present. Alright?

This is a special damage to meditation. Okay? It's where you spend any significant part of the day thinking about things that used to be, things that could have been, things that might be tomorrow.

You know what I mean? It's the habit of not living in the present time. Baba Ram Das would say, be here now, right?

And it's that concept. You think too much about how healthy you used to be. You think too much about that business you could have had.

And you refuse to put your mind in the present. And then, equally, you put it into the future. You're constantly thinking about...

By the way, it's not bad to do a cego, an analytical meditation about your future. You have to. But to sit there and make up plans and wishes and could-be's and might-be's is recognized in the scriptures as a special thing that will damage your meditation.

So you have to get in the habit of dealing with the present and being in the present time. And that's a special obstruction to meditation, to not do that. The next one is called...

Say, do you? Do you? Do you?

And there's a little list, okay? I mean, people say... I had a lady today interviewing me, right, about this book she's writing.

And she's like, Buddhism is behind the times because it's hung up on the idea that the body is bad or sinful or dirty. And things like sex are, in Buddhism, are all wrong and it's archaic and they don't recognize that there can be some joy and happiness and beauty in the body. And the same with music and other things, you know.

And then I said, it's not really like that. You see, I think Buddhism would more say, you have to enjoy things in a moderate way. You see what I mean?

And when you start to excess in things, it will disturb your meditation, okay? So the first thing, like something like music, okay? Is music sinful?

You know, do Buddhist monks ever listen to Neil Young? It's not the point. I mean, it's not the point of Buddhism to try to make your life as boring as possible, you know what I mean?

It's not the point. If you meditate well and then you go listen to music, you'll hear things you never heard before. You see what I mean?

The point is not to listen to music all day that it starts to invade your meditation. You see what I mean? That when you get down and when you get silent, that all you can hear is Neil Young.

You see what I mean? There's a distinction. If you meditate well and if you become a good Buddhist, you'll be able to listen to a song and really, really enjoy it.

You see what I mean? But I'm talking about background blabber music, you know, that's on the radio, you're not listening to it and it's invading your brain and then when you sit down to meditate, because you listen to three hours of useless talk, your meditation is lousy and you don't know why. You know, like you say, I don't know if my posture is right, the room is quiet, I still can't concentrate.

I mean, I'm talking about background blabber music or talk radio, stuff like that, okay? So is it sinful? No.

Is beautiful music enjoyable? Of course. I saw His Holiness at a concert.

I was sitting behind him. What's his name? Richie Havens came out and he sang, you know, Woodstock Generation, if you're my age, okay?

He played And I was watching His Holiness to see if he would move, you know, and he was like, you know, and obviously he's enjoying the music, you know, but the point is he's not like letting it infect his mind by listening to babble music for a couple hours and then when you try to meditate, you don't know why you can't concentrate, even two, three days later, okay? So you have to be sensitive to that in your life. It's not that music is sinful.

When you get to Buddha Paradise, there'll be music all the time. I'm sure it'll be Neil Young. But the point is not to let it Next thing is like talk, and it depends on if you're in a retreat, it's good to be totally silent.

Even if you just want to be a good meditator, it's good not to get into long talks that have no goal, you see what I mean? Like talks when you're just sitting and talking to talk, and then a lot of Americans, and me included, will just talk to hear themselves talk. and, and what happens is two or three days later, you try to meditate and for some reason you can't concentrate and blabber, you know, and it will hurt you.

TV I would put in the same, in the same kind of, it's not that TV is evil, and in fact Master Shantideva would say, go watch TV once in a while when you need to relax, you know, when you're totally dumbed out, tired from work, just for relaxation, you know, that's, that's a Buddhist method, and it's accepted in Buddhism, and then two days later you try to meditate and you don't know why it's not happening, that's, that's television, okay? Same with newspapers, and magazines. It's not that it's evil to read the news, you should know what's going on, okay?

It's that we read more than we need or will ever possibly use. If you ask an addicted New York Times reader what they read two days ago, they can't tell you more than one or two articles. Try, you know, check.

That information has, it's just running around in their brain little nonsense syllables, you know, they can't remember what they read three days ago in the New York Times, so it's not having any good effect on you, it's just for relaxation, really. So do a few pages. I always do the cover on the way to my first class, because it's free, you know, I just stare there and look, when it gets to halfway down the sheet I never find out what happened, you know, and that's fine, then you'll be up on World News enough, you know, and that'll be okay.

So if you're addicted to reading the newspaper just to read something, it'll disturb you. You can add here sex, as long as you're not a monk or a nun or anything like that, some sex on a moderate basis is fine, it's enjoyable, I guess, and whatever, you know, it's there, and you can do it and it's fine, there's no Buddhist thing at all that you can't have sex from time to time. The point is, don't do it, or don't think about it to the point, I mean, do it in moderation, you know, don't get hung up on it, don't get obsessed with it, and then it will start ruining your meditation.

Later on, if you can, you might want to experiment with consciously not having it for some period of time, and you get some very nice inner strength, okay, and I'm not trying to make you all celibate, okay, it's not my goal tonight. What I'm saying is, you might want to try it just for some length of time, say, okay, let me try it for six weeks or something, and see what it feels like, and it's a very interesting level of energy if you keep it up for a long time. I can tell you, it's, much of the sexual drive is a learned thing, much of the sexual drive is something that your culture has brainwashed, and it's not necessary, totally, a thing that you have to do all the time.

It's not, you'll learn if you try, if you practice, that it's not a natural drive, you know, it's something that you can turn inward and make some very beautiful energy out of it. I'm not saying sex is bad, or immoral, or dirty, or anything like that, I think it's probably a very beautiful thing, certain things happen with your channels during that time, which are very holy things, great things, but there's also this beautiful advantage to purposely restraining from it for some period of time, and you'll see some really wonderful energy in your body and in your mind, like your peace becomes much more, everything about your body starts to change a little bit, so I suggest try it once in a while. The same thing with silence, you know, a lot of the times when we do retreats, which can go from three days to say, 45 days, we ask people not to speak during that time, and then the energy all turns inward, and you start to store up energy, and all the energy that you spend when you speak becomes inwardly turned, and it's very beautiful, and some of the people on our last retreat in December, it was a ten day silent retreat, told me they had never been silent for a whole day, and then they did it for ten days, and these beautiful things happen to you, you know, your mind gets much clearer, you start to have very beautiful thoughts.

We'll do some retreats up at the Connecticut place, like three day retreats, and you know, you just can go easily. Next one is, what number are we on? Nusim.

Say Nusim.

[Говорящий 2]
Nusim.

[Говорящий 1]
By the way, this is the last one. Nusim.

[Говорящий 2]
Nusim.

[Говорящий 1]
Nusim. Nusim means to hurt somebody, Sim means thoughts. The ancient scriptures, Arya Nagarjuna, 17 centuries ago, he says, durian is a bigger problem, durian comes all the time.

What? Thinking about what you're going to eat for breakfast, thinking about having music go through your mind, thinking about what you're going to do at work today, those are very, very common problems that they pack away at your meditation. They damage your meditation like that, you know.

They bother you. Klesh in Sanskrit, klesha. They pick away at your head and you know, you try to concentrate and it's like that.

This is a different one. Nusram means to start thinking about someone you don't like. Okay?

That's nusram. This one has a different effect on your meditation. It destroys it completely immediately.

Okay? You pop out of meditative state in about 30 seconds. Okay?

So it's much different. Like desire objects kind of enervate your meditation. They suck the energy out of your meditation.

Thinking about someone you don't like. Thinking about someone you want to have a fight with tomorrow at 4 o'clock or something. It will just destroy your meditation like that.

It will just disappear like that. Okay? And you'll be out of a state of meditation immediately.

Okay? The point is, it's very beautiful. Nagarjuna taught these potential problems to your meditation and then he said, by the way, it's not problems that you get when you sit down and cross your legs.

You have to avoid these the other 23 hours. So as you go through your day, if you want to become a real meditator, as you're at work, you say consciously, and do this, okay? Check it out.

If you want to become a serious meditator and see all those other things that I talked about, which you can see if you meditate properly. You can see your future lives. Some guy was trying to talk me into proving future lives the other day.

And I was just dying to say, look, just meditate seriously and you don't have to ask me about it. You'll see it. But you can't tell that to a normal person, you know, unless you're in a class and something like that.

You can see those things. You don't have to ask me, oh, prove it, you know, blah, blah, blah. See it yourself.

But you have to learn to meditate deeply. So what I'm trying to say about this preparation called daily preparation, the other 23 hours of the day, you have to remember, I want to be a Milarepa. I want to be a great meditator.

So therefore, I decide to have a certain lifestyle that will make me a good meditator. So, you know, when you're at work and some guy's starting to piss you off, then you say, look, you're really ugly, you know, and you really irritate me. And you know what?

Let's let it go today because I want to meditate good tomorrow, you know. Or somebody, you know, you get a box of chocolate chip cookies from your mother, which happened to me today. And you're like, well, I could eat the whole thing.

And I'm really not going to meditate tonight because I got that class. But then I'd also have a stupid meditation tomorrow morning. And then you just leave it.

You see what I mean? So I'm talking about very simple method of learning to meditate very sharp, which is just avoid these things. Avoid the newspaper too much.

Avoid food too much. Avoid music too much. Not because it's sinful or wrong or blah, blah, blah.

Just that you won't be able to meditate well, okay? So that's like a lifestyle decision to meditate well. Next class we'll go into the actual how to sit, how to prepare the room, how to prepare this.

We'll do a short prayer and then we'll stop.