Сад (1999, Нью-Йорк), занятие 6

[Говорящий 1]
OK, we'll start. We've been talking about a book named The Garden. And I think, did they get a reading?

No.

[Говорящий 2]
I don't know.

[Говорящий 1]
Supposed to be you'd get a reading from it. I don't know. After class.

OK. Anyway, you'll get it later. It's a chapter in a book about, it's a book about a young man who gets to meet the great masters of ancient Indian Buddhism and early Tibetan Buddhism in a special garden at night.

And we've reached a scene in which he's learning about the way of life of a warrior. And in this chapter so far, I don't know if you remember, but he's been walking with this man. And first they're walking through the garden, and a sangha pushes him, or knocks him a bit.

And he's like a little bit perturbed. And he's like, what are you doing? And he says, look, you almost stepped on this bug.

And then he looks at the bug, and he has this big, he's been studying about emptiness. So I saved the bug's life, right? And a sangha, isn't a sangha?

Anyway, he says, yeah. And he says, no I didn't, because if the bug had the karma to be saved, it doesn't. So then the young man starts to get this wrong view.

And wrong views are the worst, because they have the karma to be saved. So why am I going around trying not to step on bugs? I should just step on them.

And if they had the karma to be saved, they'll get between the heel and then the side. You can't take credit for it. If you see someone being mugged on the street, the mugger would stab you too, and kill them, OK?

Does that ever happen? Yeah, it does. OK, that proves that your action doesn't.

Does that mean we shouldn't have anyone getting mugged? That's the big question. That was the precipice that the young man was about to fall off of.

He almost got this. He says, don't do that. Meaning, yeah, you still have to try to do the right thing.

Why? For your karma. It's the right thing to do for you.

You see what I mean? You have to do it. You have to do it.

What happens if you don't do it? I mean, this is not a reason not to do it, but what happens if you don't do it? You'll get mugged later, OK?

Somebody will watch you as you get mugged, you see what I mean? And say, oh, that's your karma. You know what I mean?

You see what I mean? You have to get used to that contradiction. I'll repeat it.

It's true that if you try to help someone, whether you succeed or not, it's only up to their karma, OK? But that doesn't mean that you don't try. You have to try, because it's the right thing to do, to protect life.

You have a vow to do that. And only by protecting life can you reach your own Buddha paradise, you see what I mean? So you have to do it.

And only after you've reached the Buddha paradise can you really help other people. So you have to do it. But you have to do it with that in mind.

Then you don't get upset about what? When it doesn't work, OK? Then you don't get upset about it.

There's nothing to be upset about if it doesn't work. That was determined by things that happened long before. That was determined by the karma of that person.

It had nothing to do with you. You don't have to get upset about it. You should be happy that you did the right thing.

The karma is the same whether or not you protect them in actuality at all. Get it? OK?

Your karma of attempting to protect life is the same whether or not you succeed. OK, there's this famous statement in Master Shantideva. He says, did the Buddhists perfect giving?

Yes or no? Perfection of giving, yeah, they did it. They've achieved it.

They are the best at giving. OK? So are there no more poor people in the world?

They say, no, of course, there's many poor people. So then they didn't perfect giving. You see what I mean?

That's not the answer. That's not how it comes out. You perfect the act of saving life if you try to save life.

Whether or not you succeed is up to things that happened a long time ago. You still have to do it. And when you're willing to risk your life happily and freely in any occasion, you've perfected the protection of life, respecting life.

It has nothing to do with whether you actually succeed or not in protecting life. OK? Nothing to do with that.

You have to get used to that. That's applicable to about half the Dharma things you ever try. OK, like you're finally able to do something noble and then it screws up.

And then you feel like, well, why should I try? You know, it's just karma is running the show. I can't do anything.

You can't think like that. You have to try to collect the karma to save life. OK?

But that's not what we're talking about tonight. So, then they're walking by this little stream. And is it...

who is it? Master Shantideva or some... I don't know.

Gives him a big shove. And this time he goes falling over the stream, the rocks. He bashes his leg on the rocks.

He gets his pants wet. You know, and he's like, what did you do that for? You know, you're supposed to be this compassionate Buddhist monk.

And you just shoved me across this little river and almost broke my leg. And now you're laughing about it. And he says, don't worry, don't worry.

I'll take care of you. And he goes and sits under a palm tree. Which is like off a few...

maybe like 20 feet away or something like that. And he sits down there and he says, you know, take off your shoes. Let me have them.

I'll take them, you know, I'll dry them for you. And then he says, come on over, sit with me. We'll talk about why I pushed you, you know.

And a young man starts walking towards him. And then he realizes that he's led him through a briar patch. And in the desert, these are called stickers.

They get hard, you know. So he's got him halfway through there. And he starts to get angry.

The young man starts to get angry. He says, you don't even want to... What are you...

And then they start discussing anger. You know, and he wanted to teach him about anger. To teach a student sometimes.

And that gets into the discussion of anger. And this is the fourth... Sorry, the third way of a warrior, okay.

It's avoiding anger. Say, serpa. Serpa.

If you misspell it, it's zopa. Serpa means, it's translated as patience. Just the right way.

Do you get angry or not? At that very moment, when they do the thing that most makes you... You know who I'm...

I'm stopping anger. At the moment that it... You know, in me, when I get angry...

And I didn't used to get angry, you know. Normally, you have one or... One of two problems.

Desire, 40 years old or something. 45, something like that. But you start your capacity to put up...

You know what I mean? In the lay here, it is yelling. You see what I mean?

How to be able to control your... Controlling desire is a long-term thing. Years and years of practice.

You know... Anger, you have... You have like three seconds to do something.

Anger is totally... Only a few seconds, okay. And there's two methods.

And we'll get into the different kinds of sarpa. I'll give you the three kinds, okay. Say, nirbala, jimmy-nyamba.

Nirbala, there's a problem. La means about that. Jimmy-nyamba means...

Don't worry about it. Jimmy-nyamba is an idiom. It's like...

Yeah, I don't mind. Jimmy-nyamba means I don't mind. I don't mind if somebody hurts me.

You see what I mean? And that's a... By the way, a kind of reaction to the things that you would normally be angry about, which can take two forms.

One is aimed at people, which is the most common object of anger. And the second one is aimed at things, like traffic jams, or the weather, or you just broke a cup, or something like that. So, you gotta realize that in Buddhism, anger is defined as those feelings of irritation, both at living creatures and at inanimate objects.

So, it's just as destructive to feel anger about a traffic jam as it is to feel anger about something... What do I mean, destructive? And to really study anger, and to appreciate the study of anger, the first step is to study its destructive effects on a human being.

What's so bad about anger? The opening lines of Master Shantideva's Guide to the Bodhisattva's Way of Life say that one minute's anger at a very holy person can destroy the good deeds you've done for millions of years. I mean, that's...

And then there's this debate in the monastery. We debate it night after night, you know, is this literal? And it's not an exaggeration.

You know that you can have, you know, sort of good relations with somebody for years, and then in one night of true anger, you know, in one night where you really let it out and you say all this... You know, you can't say, can you pretend you didn't hear that? You know what I mean?

You can't... And, you know, you've been wanting to say millions of years of good deeds. They say.

That's what the scriptures say. Then the tantric scriptures say something else, okay, and that's very interesting. I can't teach you the details because tantra means secret, and secret is secret.

But you should know the other effect of anger. And that's that, basically you have some kind of inner spiritual plumbing, okay, you have these pipes all through your body that are invisible to a normal eye. They are physical, but they are very subtle, almost like the body of a spirit or something.

They are physical, but you can't see them very well. And they transmit energy throughout your body. And they form as the fetus forms in the mother's womb, these channels or pipes throughout your body.

So you have a whole separate nervous system, and it looks like the nervous system throughout your body. And there's a central part of it that goes from here down your backbone inside down to here. And that's called central channel.

And you have sort of a vital energy that flows through your body. It's called prana in Sanskrit, qi in Chinese, lu in Tibetan. And there's this energy, and it's almost like a spiritual physical energy that runs through your body.

And if you're thinking sweet thoughts, this energy is flowing very well, okay? Because the energy is connected to your thoughts. As your thoughts go, so goes the energy, so goes the energy, okay?

So if your thoughts are particularly holy, calm, compassionate, then this wind, this energy is flowing very evenly to your body. On the outside, that's reflected in how you breathe, okay? The inner winds are connected to your breath.

And in Tibetan, the word is the same. If you're translating a tantric scripture, it gets a little confusing because the word lung means the inner spiritual energy going through this channel. And it also refers to your physical breath, which are not the same thing.

But if the inner winds are moving in a sweet, normal flow, then the breathing is reflected in it. I always talk about a sitar. I used to play sitar, and it's got all these sympathetic strings under the keyboard.

So to tune it is a disaster. It takes like, to really tune for a concert takes about an hour. And you have to tune all these tiny little strings under the keyboard.

And you have to change them for each raga. So each time you play a different raga, you have to re-tune the whole thing. And they're tuned to a certain scale.

And then you go and tune the top ones. And then you have to test it. And the frets are movable.

They're held on by little pieces of string. So the whole thing can go out of tune. I mean, you have to move all the frets, you know, like 20 frets around and tell the whole thing.

And the way you test it is you hit the top note, and then two sympathetic strings should go off. And that's why it sounds so we-ro, we-ro, we-ro, you know. Because really, when you hit one string, you're hitting three or four strings.

They go off like in an echo chamber. So if it's tuned right, and you just hit one note, three strings go off below. You see what I mean?

Your breathing and your inner winds are the same. You see what I mean? They are sympathetically related.

So if your inner energy is going well, then your breathing reflects that. You see? And then you're breathing nice, calm, deep.

What happens if the opposite happens? If you get upset, and especially if you get angry, then there are these choke points. There are like five choke points in the body.

And they're called chakras. People think it's a very beautiful, sexy thing, chakras. They're actually deadly choke points, where there's a certain like a knot.

And when you get angry or upset, or when you feel strong desire in a wrong way, then, or jealousy or anything like that, then there's this choking sensation on that energy. And the energy gets choked. And then what happens to your breath?

You start breathing, you know, you're getting angry. And that's a sign that that something on the inside is being choked. You see?

It's a sympathetic thing. That gets choked. You have a bad thought.

That chokes. And then the wind chokes. And then the breath chokes.

You see what I mean? And every time you do that, it hurts your body a little bit. Okay?

Every time you do that, every single time there's a one second, or a two second, or a three second constriction in one of those five centers, then you're actually, your body is damaged. Okay? Like another part of a wrinkle appears.

One or two hair starts to change color subtly. And this is real. Okay?

This is very important in Buddhist practice. In the higher stages of Buddhist practice, you have to use these facts to change the process. You see what I mean?

We'll get to that sometime. But what I'm trying to say is that every time you have anger, not only does it destroy, you know, thousands of good karmas that you did through intense efforts. That's one thing.

Okay? But it also destroys your body. You see what I mean?

It actually causes the aging process. Alright? And now I'm not talking about an explosion of anger.

I'm talking about daily intermittent irritation. Which I like to call low-level irradiation. And this is from my days as a diamond dealer.

We used to do diamonds and we did about 40. Topaz is dug up in Sri Lanka and in Nigeria. The Sri Lankan topaz doesn't have...

I forget what it is. It's like iron, but it's not iron. Anyway, it's an element.

It's a trace element of a metal in it. The Nigerian does have this. You see what I mean?

All topaz, most topaz out of the ground is colorless. Okay? And then you radiate it with electron radiation and neutron radiation and then electron radiation to make it this beautiful blue that you find in pennies and Macy's and we used to sell it to them.

Okay? So, you know, I'm searching around the world for nuclear reactors that don't have anything to do. You know, and when you get a big, you get a kilo, 5,000 carats for...

And from... But you don't know if it's from Nigeria or Sri Lanka, see? The Nigerian stuff stays hot.

Then you cut it up into... So I call the Atomic Energy Commission. Why?

I'm curious if this is gonna, like, deform the babies of the women working in my department or, you know, other things like my hands are gonna get worse or stuff like that, you know. So I call them and I say, is this stuff dangerous? Well, it is allowed.

Well, have you checked it? You know, it gives off a lot more than you get from standing in the sun. So I said, well, then it's safe, right?

And they said, no. You see what I mean? And so the long...

So I'm like, so it's really not safe, is it? And they said, well, we can't tell you. And I said, why?

And they said, we're not allowed to say anything because we'd get in trouble. We're not allowed to give an opinion because we could get sued on it. Which means that one moment of irritation during the day is not gonna, like, choke your channels up and you have a heart attack.

By the way, it can happen later, OK? But... But this constant irritation...

And I'm talking... Every few seconds, every few minutes, hundreds of occurrences of low-level radiation, which are cumulative. You see, the effects on your inner spiritual body are teeth, the hearing, the seeing, all your senses, the acuity of your senses and your mind.

What I want to say, what I want you to realize is that it's the low-level radiation. It's the moment-by-moment slight... It creates mortality.

It's responsible for the fact... It's one of the main factors that makes you get old. OK?

And everybody does it. And so everybody's getting older. You see what I mean?

Everybody can't control their mind in that subtle level from moment to moment. You see what I mean? And that's killing you.

That's one of the main reasons why human bodies age. You see what I mean? Everybody was looking for the fountain of youth, right?

Ponce de Leon and all this... You know, looking for eternal youth. It's there, you see?

It's... Don't get angry. Don't have negative emotions.

Every time you have a... So I'm not talking about controlling anger in the sense of don't have a blow-up. Don't be slightly irritated.

Realize that. That's the real reason to study sepa. Do you want to age or not?

You know, do you want to... I mean, the goal of Buddhism is to reach a Buddha paradise. And it's not without cause.

It's not... Your body changes completely. And then shortly after that you become an enlightened being.

And that's the whole goal of this process. So in the short run it's a lot cheaper than cosmetics and stuff. And in the long run you control your anger and your other negative emotions.

So now we go back to... Now that I've interested you in controlling even short-term anger. See, I'm talking small irritation at the temperature in this room.

You know, small irritation at the way somebody else looks in the room. Small irritation with your shoes. You know, small little touches of jealousy in your mind towards somebody in a very subtle way and a constant way.

You know, it's not illegal, right? It doesn't kill you. It doesn't give you cancer in one year.

So you have to... We have to talk about tricks on how to stop anger. Okay, first one.

So how do you get to the point where you don't care so much if somebody hurts you? The first one is just to think about how stupid it is. Okay, do you really want to die?

Do you really want to get old? Or are you willing to just let it go this time? You see what I mean?

And to me, the second one sounds better. Okay? Just let it go.

You know, what's the point? It doesn't help anything, right? That's a kind of...

Nopalajiminyamba means, okay, yeah, he said something to me. It's okay. I don't mind.

It's alright. Just let it go. Easily said.

Okay. Say, dungyel. Danglen.

Dungyel. Danglen. This is a band-aid approach.

Okay, by the way, I'm saving the ultimate approach for after the refreshments, so you come back. Maybe before, in case somebody gets mad. Dungyel danglen means...

Dungyel means pain or trouble. Danglen means take it on happily. Okay?

Accept it. Surrender to it. Use it as a path.

Dungyel danglen means take it on yourself and use it. And what it means is as problems come up in your life, stop looking at them as problems. Okay, just change your world view.

Change your idea. Okay? I mean, there's some bodhisattva vows where you're supposed to see everybody in the world as being already an enlightened being.

It's kind of lonely sometimes. But... I'm trying.

But there's this thing where you view all the other people in the world as totally pure. And then you... And then they do something to you.

You know, they say something bad to you. They say something bad about you. They do things to hurt you.

And then you kick in this world view which is dag nang. Dag nang means decide this person is somebody special. This is not just an accident.

This person... You know, in the old days you'd say, oh, this is to test me. And you're not going to fool me.

I know who you are. You know what I mean? You're too obvious.

You're too obviously an irritating person to be for real. You know what I mean? You gotta be sent on a special...

You know what I mean? And you just take it as an opportunity. You say, I really appreciate it.

They provide the object. I'm talking... It seems to be like make-believe.

And then say, it is an opportunity. Everybody else got enlightened a million years ago. You were in the back of the class goofing.

And... And you didn't catch that last few things. You're a million years behind.

Truly good. Somebody's paid his weight in gold or something to get him to Tibet. And he finally reached Tibet.

What does he bring with him? The biggest dumb head that he has, okay? The most irritating disciple he had.

You know, and the Tibetans are... I always keep him close to me because I want to develop... Pabong means a boulder.

And Pabongkha means... So what I mean is, Dangdutlemba, the second... Thank them.

It's very important to thank them because by being patient, by being good and back to them, the karma to be around them will wear out. You see what I mean? If you react to somebody who bothers you by saying something bad to them, and every time you're more patient, you create karma to lose them.

You see? So if you keep responding happily to... Master Shantideva says, be sure to shake their hand once in a while because you won't see them after a while.

They will do Buddhism well. Which means if you've been keeping... Diary that we keep, like every six times a day, we're amazing.

These amazing things will start happening to you. The low-level radiation's effect on your life is that hour by hour, day by day, it gets worse. You age.

Your body ages. And the condition of your possessions also starts to wear out. Meaning, not only do you lose the vitality of your life, but your ability to earn drops year by year.

And your ability to keep what you've earned drops year by year until finally anything anymore because you're old and you're dying. And everything is going to pass on to other people. You see what I mean?

So you can go either way. Your whole karma can go in a big downward cycle to where all the things you're working for and your ability to work, which is the method, okay? Dunyā-daṅga-lema is nice.

It's a noble thought to think that if I think of all the problems, it doesn't really get rid of them. Say, chela. Chela means life.

Ngetop means make... It's a kind of... It's a kind of patience.

It's a kind of not getting... The important thing on the first one was somebody tries to hurt you and you respond with patience. The second one, someone tries to hurt you and you try to see it as an opportunity.

In the third one, you are dealing with your own capacity to learn how to deal with it. You see what I mean? You're dealing with your spiritual capacity.

And this is where you can think of it as being a tough guy. Spiritual tough guy, okay? It means that you are willing to...

What's it called? No pain, no gain. You're willing to put in the pain it takes to get good at it.

You see what I mean? Ngetop means you're willing to undertake the sufferings necessary to get good at your spiritual life. You see?

kevalobe dūna-dū, dewa-dūna kemi-si, dewa-cungla-cāpa-i, dewa-cungpa-tomiyo, sakya-pāṇḍita. Rinpoche made us memorize it the first thing when we got to his house 25 years ago, okay? First thing he ever taught.

kevalobe dūna-dū means during your study years you're gonna suffer. dewa-dūna kemi-si. Those who want to feel good all the time will never be great spiritual practitioners.

dewa-cungla-cāpa-i, being attached to small pleasures, dewa-cungpa-tomiyo, prevents you from reaching ultimate pleasures. You see what I mean? So, the point is to be willing to undertake the pain like a football player, you know what I mean?

Like in practice, you know, of getting hit over and over again. And the pain it takes to get good at something like a dancer, you know, a really serious dancer, it hurts. You know, I mean, they're a wreck by the time they're 30 or something.

You've been punished so often that that they can't walk after a while, you see what I mean? And you have to be willing to, if you want to be great at something, you have to be willing to take the pain it takes to get good at it. And this third kind of patience is specifically a kind of patience with the time and the effort it takes to get good at spiritual practices, okay?

What does that got to do with patience? It's being willing to put in the hours of meditation and study related to understanding emptiness, because that is the ultimate fix for anger, okay? Number two is like a big band-aid, right?

Patience to be as your teacher. You know, it sounds great. You know, and then you get pissed off the next morning at work and you forget about it.

You know what I mean? It just evaporates in about five seconds, okay? Really, as Arya Nagarjuna said, wise men said, you have to understand emptiness to control your anger, okay?

To avoid anger. To avoid killing yourself, your own body. You have to understand emptiness, okay?

And that's the only way that will really work, okay? This is, number two is a band-aid. Number three, to put in the time and take the pain it takes to get good.

Eighteen ACI courses, you know, eighteen hundred questions later, you know, it takes time and it takes effort and it takes guts and it takes stamina over a five to seven year period or something like that to sit there and get through it all and then meditate for that long on a daily basis from just, you feel... I hear people, it's funny, it's too hot to meditate, it's too cold to meditate, I'm too tired, I'm too wired, you know, you know, or it's an excuse to not practice. And you have to, of aging, you'll never fix the thing in your channels.

Someone attacks you, someone says something bad about you, okay? Someone attacks your character or something like that and it hurts, okay? Then you look at them and you say, I can either respond in an ignorant way or I can...

a stupid way, call it dharma stupid way, okay? Or I can respond in a dharma intelligent way. Stupid way says this person came from themselves.

The reason this person is talking bad about me, the reason this person is saying something bad about me is that they don't like me and they're stupid, okay? Now, what should I do? Talk them out of it?

Punch them? Try to attack them? You see what I mean?

Make up some stuff about them? Then there's approach number two which is emptiness way. What's it say?

This person is neither good nor bad from their own side, okay? What's that mean? This morning, I was walking across the intersection, this guy swerved down the way, almost killed me, you know, breeze go by.

First I heard the take off of the tires with the green light and then I just felt this breeze, you know, I just... And I'm like, man! And then he parked like 20 feet down.

So I just walked down and I stood in front of the window and he rolled down and went, where are you at? You know, and I said, you almost just killed me. You know, and I just stared.

From their own side, okay, that's what emptiness means. From his own side, he's just like... the dog or else two separate beings couldn't have two separate...

me and the dog. Not him, okay? The impression of him as a sweet guy is coming from the dog's mind, deadly killer, you know?

In and of himself, he's empty, okay? What's this got to do with being patient? Why is this the ultimate way not to get angry at the guy?

And I did get angry at 8th Street and First Avenue, whatever. Why? Because I hurt somebody or almost hurt somebody.

I scared the hell out of somebody, okay? And therefore, this guy has appeared in my life, okay? I have hurt someone, therefore this guy has appeared in my life.

He's saying bad things to me and I'm saying... you know, I'm hearing these bad things because I said something bad to someone in the past, okay? The proof of that is that the dog is not hearing at all what I'm hearing.

Apparently, whatever the dog heard, it was worth a lick, okay? It was the same words and they were said with the same emotion. But the dog just made it a point to lick him, you know what I mean?

From the back... And then, I'm having this... I'm perceiving the same object but I'm perceiving it as something very...

That's due to something bad in my mind. So, what would be the only way to get him to come back again? To yell at him.

What's the natural human reaction? Yell at him. And I did, okay?

I couldn't stop it. Now, if I had remembered emptiness about 8 hours ago, I would have stopped it, that's all. Just remember his emptiness.

The last thing a Buddhist wants to do is to have this guy back in your life. You know? The last thing.

Eliminate him, okay? Not with a gun, you know, not by calling the police. Eliminate him how?

Just cut it. Just stop it. Unilateral withdrawal.

You see what I mean? Just stop. Just say, I don't like this anymore, so I'm gonna walk away.

You know what I mean? I don't... I don't wanna see you again, so I'm gonna walk away happy.

So I walked away, but I wasn't quite happy, okay? But just... just stop.

That's the ultimate patience. You see what I mean? That's patience with perfection.

That becomes the perfection of patience. Perfection means using wisdom and knowledge, using your understanding of karma and emptiness. This guy is empty screen, prove it.

The dog sees him as wonderful saying the same things to me, when I see him as miserable, okay? So, how do you get out of seeing this guy again? You do not collect the karma that's gonna make you see him again.

What's the karma to make you see him again? Oh, say something bad to him. Go up to his window and...

You know, something like that. And then you'll be sure to see him again. You see what I mean?

And patience. Patience with wisdom is... is unique.

There's nothing like it, okay? Nothing works like wisdom. You see?

It's one thing to say, Ha ha, you almost killed me. Alright, thanks. I can do a death meditation this afternoon.

You know? That's number two. You know, I'm gonna not...

being patient... Then you've perfected patience, okay? Will that remove all the negative people in your life?

Slowly, slowly it does. It doesn't work immediately. Don't expect it to.

Things take time to mature, okay? But eventually it will. Two short questions and then we...

we really need a refreshment, I think. Yeah. Yeah.

She asked, is the fact that I got angry a result of my past karma? Yes. There are four results of karma.

One of them is called gyutin gyudebu. Uh... I think gyutin gyudebu.

Anyway. One of them is the... What do you call it?

It's the perpetuation of the... of the tendency to do that. You see what I mean?

One of the bad things about killing is not that you're gonna get killed, or that your life's gonna get short. So, one of the worst things about anger is that it sets up the tendency to be angry later. More.

Ha ha ha. What about anger at your own anger? Um...

There is a concept of righteous anger in Buddhism. Okay? Those of you who studied Lojong Sunje Khorlo, The Crown of Knives.

Halfway through the... this beautiful poetry, the guy says, I figured out who's giving me my problems. He turns into a tantric rascal deity and he says, You...

And he... Who's he talking to? You see?

And so he does go into this thing where he does this dance and he... He says, Cham, cham, cham. You know?

And he's going after his own anger. But then the commentators are careful to say, he's not angry. You know?

He's just gonna kick butt in a positive way. You know, he's gonna say, I'm tired of getting almost run over. Therefore, I'm not gonna...

Please don't be stupid anymore. With all respect, you're a real tough guy, but... Please don't be stupid.

Just walk away. Because I don't wanna see this guy anymore. And it's a very calm...

It is a kind of... disgust with your anger. But it's very calm, it's very reasonable, it's very powerful, it's very controlled.

It's very... The breathing is going very sweet. You know, there's no chokes on the...

channel and you're like, Hey, we're not gonna do this anymore. Okay? It's very calm and very powerful.

At the same time, it's very powerful. Okay? Take a break.

And we'll do a little bit after that. Okay, let's start again. After they go through the incident of the stickers, the throat, then they...

They go and they sit in a corner. Leans back and he's thinking... Thinking the lesson is over for the night.

You know? The... You know, and he says...

His mother had died like years before. And... Part of the reason he's going to the garden is to find out what happens.

You know, it bothers him that good people have to die. And that... So, he's kind of thinking maybe if he did it well and he could meditate properly, maybe, possibly, one day, who's died already?

You know what I mean? And... And so, this monk is saying, Come, it's time.

No, you have to get up. And then really, it's sort of a trick because he's not gonna see his mother right away. And...

It's not like his mother is waiting outside. Okay, I'm not gonna spend long on it. It's already late.

But it's worth talking about for a second. Say, Tsundu. Tsundu.

Tsundu. Tsundu. Tsundu is the fourth of the Buddhist Perfections.

But the text says... When you... In the classic form, it's called, Tsun-khang, ge-la, to-wa-o.

Say, Tsun-khang. Tsun-khang. Ge-la.

Ge-la. To-wa-o. Tsundu means...

joyful effort. To be happy to do something. To get up, because you think...

And you're happy to get up. Being willing to... Being happy to make effort.

When it's time to do your Buddhist practice, let me at it, you know? Like, you're just like... Nobody can hold you back, you know?

Stop sleeping. You know, and he said, why do you want to? And I said, I could use the 12 hours, you know?

And is there some... And then years later, it, you know, just stopped sleeping so much. And don't need to sleep so much, because of tsundru.

Tsundru means, just happy. And you don't get weird. You just...

The... You see what I mean? And you're just like...

And you feel great. You feel good deeds, you know? These are the three things you...

Say, chi-shul. Chi-shul means to put it off till later. Chi means later.

Shul means to put it off. Le-lo means... It's one of the few Tibetan words that sounds like...

Le-lo. Means laziness. It took me that long.

And I was a good Buddhist, and a good monk, and I wanted to study, and I was serious about it. But to really get to the discipline of being... of respecting my practice time inviolably, whatever, never breaking it, took 25 years.

You see? Just the decision to say, from this hour to this hour, I do not do anything else. Period.

No matter what, I don't do anything else. And that's just a... That's a kind of tsundru.

That's a kind of decision that you have to make. You can do it now, you can do it later. Sooner or later you have to do it.

Okay? You have to make a time that this is when I'm gonna do my meditation. And it is sacred.

And nothing... There's nothing else I do during that time. And it...

And it takes a lot of blessings, and it takes like... I had some really good help to finally be able to do it. But it's very difficult.

And you know, I'm sincere. I'm a very sincere Buddhist. But it took that long to truly respect that time.

And to make it the most important thing no matter what. And sooner or later you have to do it. Okay?

That's tsundru. And it's kind of a thing where if you keep doing your meditation every day, you get good at it. When you get good at it, you wanna keep doing it.

You see what I mean? So, you just have to go over that threshold to where... for a while.

It's like anything else that you learn. But you have to put in that time. You have to get over that.

And then it's... When you're good at it, you wanna keep doing it all the time. But you have to invest time in that curve.

Okay? To where you get good enough at it that it's what you wanna do all the time. Okay?

There's a very beautiful instruction in a Vajrayogini... tam do drona tam mi kye tam do min drona tam mi... I'm sorry.

tam do drona tam kye tam do min... tam min drona tam kye which means if your meditation's going well, stop. If your meditation's not going well, stop.

Then you're like, what are you talking about? And it says, you should get to the point, make your meditation short enough that while it's going well, you... you call it off.

You know? You're just into the middle of a beautiful meditation. Or let's say you're like 60% through it or 70% through it.

And before you burn out, you stop. You say, let's stop there. It's going really good.

How long does that take for a normal person? 8 minutes? 10 minutes?

I'm not kidding. The great Sakya masters of Vajrayogini said 12 minutes, if you're lucky. Okay?

12 perfect minutes of meditation. Then say, okay, that's enough. Come out of it happy.

You know what I mean? Then rest for a few minutes and then go back. You see what I mean?

The idea is that you never reach a point where you're bored. Don't think that it's... 10 minutes of real concentration is great.

You know? How long does it take to watch a good music video? You know, they've got it down.

We were at CNN. They asked some of us to help translate a video about His Holiness the Dalai Lama, right? And we translated.

It took 3 days to translate 10 minute cuts, you know? And then you guys put the best part. There's this part where, why did you put that like, like 8 minutes into the show?

Why don't you put it at the beginning? You see? You can only keep an American's attention.

What I'm saying is that pure meditative attention to have while you're into it. And you have to take a few minutes off to go back. And they're all like 12 to...

And if you... If that's the point is, do it well. Get into it and be really into it.

And then get out of it before you're not so happy about it. You see what I mean? And then you have this joy.

Then when you see your meditation seat, you'll say, Oh, hi, how are you? You know, and you won't be, uh... You know, don't want to look at your meditation seat.

Don't think you're going to do it later. The minute you put off one session, to think that you can put off one session, one day, tonight, start, tomorrow morning, start, now. You've got to stop, stop that kind of life.

Say, cháng'en. Cháng'en means, uh... lousy stuff to do.

Chá means bad. When you want to insult somebody in Tibetan, you say, I don't remember. It means, uh...

dog face. It's a way to insult somebody in the monastery. Anyway, chá means, uh...

to be attracted to doing evil deeds, okay? But evil deeds means watching TV, uh... enjoying the New York Times.

You know, you can get the New York Times. My students know, who walk around me in New York in the morning. I kind of like to torment this Indian guy.

He thinks he's going to sell me a newspaper. And I glance at the headlines, and sometimes I turn it over and get the thing at the bottom of the front page, and I just let it go and walk away, you know? He's like...

And... I almost feel like I stole the New York Times from him, you know? Uh...

That's all you need. That's all the information. Okay, they got the black box.

They don't know anything more than they knew before.

[Говорящий 2]
You know?

[Говорящий 1]
Okay, and that's all you need. You don't need to read. You know all you need to know.

That's all you need to know. You know what I mean? No, really.

I'm not kidding. You see, that's the choice you make every hour. You know, you're on number 5,436,000, and you've got 1,200,317 left.

Now, what are you going to do with them? You know? Or, how many...

You can't splurge those thoughts. They're like a credit card. It's a debit card, actually.

And you're just going to run out of thoughts. And... So, you got to give up something.

You got to give up, you know, TV shows and... and New York Times, past the front page headlines. Sometimes, okay, you can go to the New York section.

Or you can skip straight sports, but don't do the New York section. Okay? But just get it in one minute, and then let it go, and leave it alone, and go meditate for 5 minutes.

Do something with those hours of your time. Try to change the channels in your body. You don't have much time.

It's hard. Okay? I mean, I make it sound easy.

It's not. It's very, very difficult. And you need to concentrate.

And it's not going to happen that easy. It takes a very, very concentrated effort. It's about as difficult as learning to play.

You got to think in terms of that kind of commitment. Otherwise, you might as well just, you know, I don't know, go to the movies or something. Okay?

All right. By the way, does it mean that you can't go to the movies? Not at all.

It's the right spiritual thing at a special time. There's a time for everything. The Bible's right, right?

There's a time when you have to go to a movie. If you're a spiritual practitioner who's serious, there's a time to let up and go see a movie so that you can be a better bodhisattva for it. You see what I mean?

So, don't think like that. There's a time to relax. There's a time for entertainment.

And Lord Buddha was adamant about it. In the monastery, Gaya is right after Yane. Yane is...

All these... Suddenly all these cassette tape recorders show up in the monastery. Who knows where they came from?

You know? But, everybody's got sting on and, and, you know, playing music. And suddenly all these karim boards show up.

It's like hockey, hockey thing. Like that, you know? Who knows where they were for the whole year, but suddenly they're there, you know?

People can play soccer, you know, people can... And it's like that. And you need that time.

Say, gilug. Gilug. Gilug is a very weird word if you know Tibetan.

Gilug means to think you can't do it. Okay? It's the idea you have about yourself that, oh yeah, maybe Milarepa, maybe Nagarjuna, maybe Atisha, maybe Jatakapa, but me?

You know? I can reach Tantric enlightenment in my lifetime, you know? I don't think so.

You know? I don't see how I could. I'm not being a Tantric deity.

And it's stupid. Okay? If you are in this room, if you heard about emptiness in this room tonight, you are automatically one in a million.

You are already one in a million people. You know? For every person in this room who's hearing about these ideas, if they're true, they can lead you to total enlightenment in this lifetime.

That... And there's... For every person here, there's 999,000, 999,000, whatever, who didn't hear it, and who aren't interested in it, and who don't think it's possible at all, and who could care less about all this stuff.

You see what I mean? You are already, you know, Lord Atisha was adamant that people should recognize, people in a crowd like this should understand, you are one in a million. Already.

You know? You have worked lifetime after lifetime, thousands of lifetimes, you have worked to get here. You are...

Your mind is already extraordinary. You know, whatever job you have, whatever credit card bills you have, you know, whatever people think of you, it doesn't matter. On the spiritual scale of things, every person here is the cream of a million people.

You know? And you are listening about karma and a chance to change your body into something extraordinary. You know, on the spiritual scale, you are way off the, you know, aptitude, whatever.

You know, you are off the scale. You are extremely rare people. To live in a country where these thoughts and these ideas are not even talked about, and to have come in contact with it, and to be a...

to have the karma to make your way through a million people and get to the front of the line and connect with what you are hearing tonight, it truly means that automatically you are... spiritually you are a genius. You know, spiritually you have a...

a... what do you call it? Aptitude.

Your spiritual aptitude is... is... I am not exaggerating.

One in a million. Okay? In the United States of America tonight, how many people are talking about, seriously, about the possibility of not dying and about the possibility of changing into a different kind of being?

It's... You are one in a million. And who has connected with an authentic tradition for doing that?

You know, you are one in a million. You know, Ken Rinpoche is... was the highest graduate out of, I don't know, 30,000 monks in 1954.

Okay? In Lhasa. And he is free giving teachings an hour from here.

And you have it. You know what I mean? You have direct access to this tradition.

There is nobody like that. I mean, those of you who go to Seram monastery this winter, you'll see there is nobody like that. That doesn't exist anymore.

You know, there are, I think, four or five Geshes left from Tibet. And he is one. And you just...

You met him. You know, you hooked up with this tradition. It's...

It's unbelievable. You see, I mean, you've done something that no one else can do. So you don't have to think, oh, I couldn't do that, or I'm not capable of doing that.

You have a unique, the American training so far. To you, you think it's just stupid, you know, grade school was stupid, stupid teachers, stupid people, high school was stupid, college was stupid, my work is stupid, you know. But actually, it's great training.

You have been trained very, very well. You know, your karma got you into a very affluent society. You don't have to work.

You... You've been trained to read and write. And among, in the history of the world, you are unique.

You live in a country where there are absolutely no obstacles to doing whatever the hell you want spiritually. You know what I mean? You're totally free to do what you want.

You can go to Arizona and sit in New York and in a car. You know what I mean? You have total freedom to do all those things.

Just go a little further and you're done. You are very special. If you made it here, that's all...

that's all you need. Okay? Then you just need to push a little bit harder and you got it.

You see what I mean? To some totally different level of being where you don't get old. You don't have to have any kind of suffering and no kind of pain around you.

Totally free. You know, you have all of those things. You just have to do it.

Okay? So that's all. Ah...

See, did I have someone else's scenario? Oh, anybody who would... Where is that lady?

Ah... A few short announcements. We have a a store.

Maybe you know it's a... It turned into an outreach center because we are so lousy at running a store. And ah...

It serves many people very sweetly. And nobody gets paid there. We serve...

Please talk to Ellie. Okay? She's right here.

And we need help with that. Ah... Teaching on the tantric kala chakra is not enough.

Okay? So ah... If you don't know about that, talk to Ellie too.

Did you have something else? Ah... See you...

The last two classes, I think they are the next two Fridays. One is on emptiness. And the other is on sort of like tantric enlightenment.

So I would... Don't miss those two. Okay?

Ah... They are the last two Friday night classes that I'll teach for the next... Is that what it is?

Okay, it's next week and then two weeks after that. And by the way, these courses will go on next year and for the next few years. But ah...

Other teachers will be... Have a steady thing going. And we'll give you the dates.

But we're on for next Friday and then two weeks from Friday, I think. Okay? All right.

We'll do a short prayer.