Вопросы царя Милинды, занятие 2

[Говорящий 1]
I just met Bhante Vilay and asked him to do a prayer to start the teaching tonight. Bhante is from a Thai tradition and a Thai temple in Tucson, which I just met them last night. So, Bhante is going to give us a small chant in Pali.

Bhante.

[Говорящий 2]
Dhutiyampit Putham Saranam Gacchami Dhutiyampit Putham Saranam Gacchami Dhutiyampit Dhammam Saranam Gacchami Dhutiyampit Dhammam Saranam Gacchami Okay, welcome.

[Говорящий 1]
So, just to review what we've been talking about. We're studying a text called The Questions of Melinda. And Melinda is really Menander, who is a Greek king, who has grown up on the border of India, right?

And then, he's decided to take over most of India. And he has advanced with his army into India. And he got as far as, what's that place called?

Patna, Palipatana, in the old days. Yes, and he has captured that town. And that becomes the capital of many great kings.

That's the capital of Ashoka also, okay? So, the king of... The one who really unified India for the first time, King Ashoka.

So, he's reached there. Halfway on the way, he does what all great Greek kings did. He meets some philosophers and he stops his war, so he can have some conversations with this philosopher.

And I thought to talk a little bit... I want to tell you how he got in India in the first place, right? What's a Greek king doing in India?

But we have some unfinished business from last night. We didn't really have time to go through the Buddhist monks' answer to the king. The king said, what causes the time of the past, present and future?

Don't forget that in Sanskrit. Do you know the word for time? Like, what's the wheel of time in Sanskrit?

Kala Chakra, right? Kala, yeah. And what does kala mean in the yoga scriptures?

It means death, okay? Kala, the word for time, means death. So, in a way, the king has asked the Buddhist monk, why do people die, you see?

He's asked him, why is there time? And then, what he's asking is, why is there death? And it's important to know, the yogis among you, that in the opening pages of the Malinda Paha, they say that Malinda had already mastered yoga, okay?

So, Menander was already doing yoga, he's already a yogi, by the time he got to Sakala, where he has this conversation with the Buddhist monk, okay? He's already mastered yoga, it's interesting. So, the Buddhist monk replies by explaining these twelve steps in the process by which we die.

And then later, well, actually earlier, Lord Buddha had designed a painting to describe these twelve steps. We call it the Wheel of Life, okay? Say, sipe?

Sipe. Kualo? Kualo.

It means Wheel of Life or Wheel of Pain. So, what I thought... Oh, good.

Okay. We copped this off somebody's bedroom wall. But, hopefully it won't be back before we get it back.

And you know what? This is not a very good painting. That's what we're stuck with, right?

Okay, this is a corrupt one from Nepal. But, I'll fake it, okay? Lord Buddha himself, in the scriptures, designed this painting.

And we studied it in the monastery for like two years. And outside you see this monster, and he's holding the Wheel of Life. So, there's a tradition in the monastery, they say, that monster is not some creepy guy like Freddy on Friday the 13th or something.

Who sneaks up in your room, and sneaks in and kills you. You know, it's not like that. It's a...

This monster is death. Okay? This being holding the wheel is death.

And my Lama taught it to me, he said, he's inside of you the day you're born. You know, he's like a gremlin or something. He's inside of you.

And he starts chewing. He starts clawing away from the moment you're born. And then at some point he reaches your heart and you die.

You see? So, you're born with this monster inside of you. The Tibetan Lamas were very careful to say to us in the monastery, don't think that we just believe in some weird monsters who come and kill you.

It's not like that. The day you're born, there's this thing inside of you. And it starts clawing.

And some people it reaches the heart faster, like in a week or a day. Some people it takes 70, 80 years. But they always reach the heart.

You see? So, the trick is to get out of this circle. And that's why they draw the Buddhas up here.

And traditionally, there's Lord Buddha up here, pointing over to the other side where there's a moon, which represents freedom from death. Getting out of death. And the idea is that they paint Lord Buddha up in the corner because he's out.

He got out. He busted out of jail. This is like Dharma jail.

Padma said that we put him in Dharma jail for the three-year retreat. But that's a different thing. So anyway, what's crucial for us is that the twelve steps that the Buddhist monk Nagasena has used to answer the king about death are drawn in this circle.

And traditionally, they've always been drawn. And this circle is always, by tradition, kept at the door of a temple to remind people of how did it happen that we got stuck here in this body that's going to die. You know, dead-end body.

Okay? Literally dead-end body. Okay?

And traditionally here, although you can't see it and you're lucky because they painted it wrong, is a blind man. Okay? With a stick.

And that's... Say, Dambo? Marita.

Dambo Marita means the first stage, the first step in your trouble is avidya. Ignorance. Ignorance.

And the scriptures are careful to say it's not just not knowing, it's misknowing. Okay? It's not just not understanding, it's completely misunderstanding.

I always say it's like you come up to a traffic light, you're from a foreign country or something, and you come up to a traffic light. If you have a misunderstanding, you can turn right without stopping, right? If you have ignorance, you fly through because you think it means green.

You see the difference? Ignorance like totally misunderstands a red light. Ignorance thinks it's green.

Okay? So anyway, what is it in real life? I like the example of maple-covered donut.

We talked about it in New York at the Yoga Sutra. Okay? Like you walk into a store, in New York it's Krispy Kreme, and in Toronto it's Tim Horton.

Am I right? And in Arizona it's Dunkin' Donuts or something like that. But it doesn't matter where you are.

I have found them all. I don't get them very often. Don't bring me any.

I can't eat them anyway. She won't let me. But you go in, and there's one maple-covered donut left, and you like...

We always get in there at 11.29 and they're closing at 11.30, and you're like, ah, there's one left, you know? And you see it in the case, you know? And you start kind of walking fast towards it.

And then... If you hear the door open behind you, and there's some lady there... Like, is it wrong to want a donut?

No. If you can get it honestly, and everything's fine, and you haven't hired anybody to get it, that's not sacri... That's not wrong.

That's fine. That's just enjoying something that you earn. That's fine.

There's no... You don't have to feel guilty about donuts, okay? No, really.

Buddhism doesn't mean that. It doesn't mean that. Enjoy.

You're supposed to enjoy. When you get to paradise that year, they're not like having a bad time. Okay?

And they're not like having a neutral time. They're having a good time. Okay?

No, really. So... You go in, but you hear the door open behind you, and you turn around, and there's this lady coming in on a walker, an older lady.

And her husband's like helping her in, and she says, Oh, George, I hope they have maple covered. It's my favorite, you know? You know?

And then you're like walking faster, you know? And then... Then you're faced with...

Then ignorance takes place. Basically, ignorance is a long story, but that's a simple example of ignorance. Ignorance says, if I can get there first, I'll get the donut, you know?

So if you ask that person later, if I'm half eating the donut on the way out, and she's like just getting up to the counter, naively, you know, hoping for one. If I'm like halfway out eating the donut, if I think to myself, I got it, you know? I got there first, and that's why I got it.

I had the money, they had baked it, I got in there before her, and I got it, you know? If you believe that, if you believe that, that's ignorance. That's the first link, okay?

That's what it really means, okay? That's in a real common context for me. That's what ignorance is, okay?

Then, the second link here is, traditionally it's a guy making pots, which is called, say, nipa? nipa dvijayaki le dvijayaki le which means fresh karma, fresh karma, okay? So in that example, I just made a new bad karma, okay?

I took the donut, that I knew this lady wanted, okay? So I made a new bad karma, okay? That's the guy making pots, okay?

Then you switch, go. I'm not going to do the whole thing, but I'm going to. This is Gomukhasana, who doesn't know.

You go over to ten o'clock, and it's called chupasipa. Say, chupa? chupasipa sipa sipa Karma ripens.

Then the karma ripens, you see? And then you just walk in, and there's no donuts. You see?

You walk in, and there's no maple-covered donuts. And you never ask yourself why. You just think they didn't bake them, or I got here too late, or something like that.

It has nothing to do with the donut. Nothing to do with the donut. That's ignorance too.

Nothing to do with it, okay? If you had left a donut for her, there'd be a whole counter full of maple-covered donuts. No, we were there.

We were in North Carolina, Durham. Raleigh, Durham. I don't know if you remember.

But we stopped for a chocolate that I talked her into after a ballet class or something. You remember? And they come up to us with like six boxes full of pastries and say, We're closing.

We're not allowed to keep these after... It's at Kadampa Center. And, Will you take these?

And we're like, Okay, just mine. No, I mean, that's because we left the last donut for somebody. You see?

That's because we left the last donut for somebody in the past. You see what I mean? And so, ignorance says, Let me take the last donut.

Otherwise I won't get it. I got the money. I got here first.

I have the right to the last donut. And then knowledge, wisdom says, Let's leave it, man. Why?

Because it's moral? No. Okay?

Because your mom told you to do that? No. Because your church said so?

No. Because your teachers in elementary school said so? Would tell me?

No. It's the only way to get donuts. Okay?

No, really.

[Говорящий 2]
Really.

[Говорящий 1]
I'm not kidding. You laugh because you don't understand. You laugh because you don't understand.

I'm gonna leave that last donut because I want one. Get it? I'm gonna leave it because I want one.

Okay? If I take it, I just karmically, I just shredded myself out of boxes and boxes of donuts. No, really.

Nothing comes except by giving. Nothing. Nothing.

Nothing in the world. The breath you just took came because you helped somebody. You know?

Nothing comes from anything else. Ignorance believes otherwise. Ignorance says, If I got money, I deserve it.

If I can fight for the oil in the land, I can get oil. You know? That's ignorance.

That's not how you get things. The entire world economy comes from giving money away. And you say, Yeah, yeah, sounds noble.

I'm not saying noble. I built a 250 million dollar a year company with nothing. I was making 7 bucks an hour.

Okay? It's a quarter billion dollars a year now. I think it's more than the economy of Tucson and maybe most of Arizona.

Okay? How did you do that? I hate business.

I don't care about business. And I don't care about money. We live in a unit.

We don't have electricity. We don't have a toilet. We pee in a milk bottle.

No, really. Sorry. No.

No, I just gave him money. We gave him money away. We gave him money away.

That's how we saved the first 300,000 scriptures or whatever. Okay? We gave them.

Every penny is gone. Trust me. But it came from giving away stuff.

You see? We know what makes the world work. We know what makes the world work.

And then we just have to do it. You have to have the courage to jump. I was watching Spiderman.

You know? He's like testing this cord. And he's like, Ah!

Maybe it will work. What does he do? He jumps.

You know? He goes for it. And then he becomes a superhero.

If you don't jump, you don't become the superhero. Right? He doesn't know this thing is going to hold.

If you saw Spiderman No. 1, we haven't had time to see No. 2 because of his dumb glasses.

But he has the courage to jump. He says, This is going to work. You got to go for it.

Okay? You got to go for it. You know?

You got to jump. The only way you get anything is to give stuff. Okay?

And if you do it... If you do it to the extreme, death itself changes. Death itself changes.

Death is just a result of your past karma. Okay? Death itself can be changed.

Okay? So that's what this real... That's...

And then the king says, What does the king say to Nagasena? Now we can start on tonight's class. You're so cool, Nagasena.

Yeah. He said that in Sanskrit. He gets it.

You know? And King Udayana, back in the time of the Buddha, the first time he saw this painting, he reached aya. He saw emptiness directly.

Like that night. He opens up the painting and that night he saw emptiness. It's a...

tradition. Okay? The kings like to see this thing and they get it.

You know? So, we finished up last night's class. Okay?

That's what causes pain. It's taking the last donut. Okay?

Really, all the pain in the world comes from taking care of yourself. Okay? All the pain in the world comes from taking care of yourself.

First. The best way to take care of yourself is to take care of other people. Okay?

Then you kill two birds with one stone. You get what you want and you get what they want and everybody's happy. Okay.

Tonight's class is... Can we put this thing on? How did Malinda get to India anyway?

What's a good king doing in... in the middle of India? I think that...

You have the answer, I think? This one. Here.

You got to twist this enough. This is in your book, okay? I hope.

Is it? Last page? Yes.

Yeah. So, if you want... If it's not clear enough, up here you can see it.

Down there. Anyway, I'll just... You okay?

Okay. Alexander... Well, how to start this story?

This is a long story. We're going to talk tonight about Alexander the Great. Okay?

And how he got to India and how started all this stuff. Okay? And it's interesting because a lot of stuff came back with Alexander to the West.

And a lot of what we believe in our world comes from India. You see? A lot of our culture came from India because Alexander went to India and opened up that link.

And then, basically, tonight and tomorrow night we're going to talk about historically a lot of our culture comes from India. Okay? And from Buddhism.

And then, conversely, how a lot of, like, Tibetan Buddhism came from Greece. Okay? Which is kind of cool.

Right? And we'll talk about that. But up in the left-hand corner, the highest thing, you see Macedonia, right?

This is where Alexander the Great was born. And just below there, although it's not on this map, are the two cities of Sparta and Athens. Okay?

Sparta and Athens. And these... Are you going to do the Ionian thing or am I going to do the Ionian thing?

Well, she's going to do the linguistic thing with you in a few minutes. Okay? But basically, there were two cities, Athens and Sparta.

And this is like 600 BC, 600 years before Christ. And Sparta is full of these tough guys. Okay?

Like, if you live in Sparta, you got to be a tough guy. And all they want to do is fight. And at the age of seven, when a child is born, a male child is born, they check his arms and legs.

If he doesn't look like he's going to be a warrior, they leave it out on the mountain to die. Okay? And then at age seven, you're taken away from your parents and you're put into military camp.

And you're brought up to be a warrior. You see, that's what Sparta was into. Okay?

And then Athens is a completely different emphasis. You see? They are developing democracy.

They're developing the idea that each person... Okay, personally, in those days, it was the male firstborn male in their family. Women were kept very much like Arab women are kept.

Okay? But that's another story. But the basic idea of democracy, that each person is equal, is growing up in Athens at that time.

And then you get Socrates questioning to find the reality. Questioning... The whole system of questioning to find truth, which becomes modern science.

Okay? Which becomes modern science. And then his student Plato.

And then his... Who writes like the best way to start a government, like democracy. And then he opens the...

What is it? The academy in Athens. Okay?

They just start with this dumpy little place out in the countryside that's going to be devoted to spiritual knowledge and spiritual investigation. And, you know, nobody comes there. Not many people come to the first semester.

And they don't have any king supporting them or anything. It's just these guys. It's just Plato out there.

And they start this beautiful custom called an academy, which later became our universities, right? And that academy lasts for 900 years. Okay?

Like well in... 600 years into Christianity, it was still there. 600 years into the Roman Empire, they're still keeping it going because it's so amazing.

You know, this place where people can go to learn great ideas. You see? To learn the ideas that can free you.

It's devoted to that. It's an academy. It's a real academy.

And that's kind of... I kind of have that dream for Denham Mountain, frankly. Okay?

It's like universities to me now have gotten like a big business or something like that. And like we're not offering any degree. People ask me, are you offering a degree?

No. Can I get a degree? No.

Are you accredited? No. You know?

And then John's people, like a few years back, got the only grant given by the NEH, National Endowment, to a non-university. They said, you're better than the universities. And for two years in a row, they gave us 100 grand or something.

You know? They said, your stuff is better than the universities. That's my dream.

You know? Like real, real hard work spiritually. And it's free, okay?

The place is free. David's going to talk about it later, I think, right? But the place is free.

But you've got to work your butt off. And I just want to make a plain old Plato Academy. Okay?

So anyway, his student is Aristotle. Okay? And Aristotle is known for like, you know logic and thinking clearly.

Aristotelian logic comes from him. He's basically the first scientist. Botany, anatomy, like that.

Okay? He becomes Plato's most famous student in Athens. Okay?

He becomes the greatest student in Athens. And then, Athens and Sparta have been fighting for like 20 years. The Peloponnesian Wars.

Okay? Like, these two great cities just can't stop fighting. Okay?

By the way, the city in those days was about the size of Flagstaff. I mean, people don't understand that. Athens was as big as like, Flagstaff or something.

Okay? But it was the first city state. Alright?

That was the idea. So, they fight it out year after year. Then they're attacked by the Persians.

Okay? From Iran and Iraq. What we call Iran and Iraq now.

And that's a different story. Should I go into that? Yeah.

So that whole place, you see Babylonia, for example? Do you see Babylon? Right in the middle.

Stop. Yeah, right around there. Okay?

Which is all Halal now. A few miles south of Baghdad. I suspect the American troops are blasting it away now.

Okay? But, this is a great city. Babylon.

And so, you know, a guy named, what's his name? Sirius? Sirius?

Anyway. And then Darius. Cyrus.

Cyrus the Great. And then Darius and then Zir... Zir...

Xerxes. Xerxes. So Xerxes gets together like half a million guys and decides to go take Greece.

Okay? And he gets as far as the Greek islands. And he takes Athens.

He burns Athens. And then he's defeated in a naval battle and he goes home. Okay?

Like half a million Persian troops go home. Okay? And, meanwhile, in Macedonia there's this guy named Philip.

Philip of Macedonia. Okay? And he wants to wreak revenge.

First he wants to unite Greece and then he wants to get back the Persians. Okay? By the way, the Persians, these are not Arabic people.

These are Indo-European people. They are speaking Sanskrit also. They are speaking a, they are speaking a derivative of Sanskrit.

Okay? Which is really interesting. So, everything from India to Iceland is, is, is Sanskrit.

Basically. Okay? That's another story.

So anyway, in Macedonia, in North Greece, Philip decides he's going to unite Athens and Sparta, finally. He's just going to come from a third place and force them to get along with each other. And he does.

He succeeds. Then he comes home and he has a son, Alexander. Okay?

And, at the age of 13, Philip contacts the academy and says, can you send your best student here to teach my son? And they send Aristotle. Okay?

So Aristotle goes to teach Alexander, who becomes Alexander the Great. Okay? So then, there's a final battle to connect the two cities.

Alexander's father is murdered in the palace. And at the age of 17, Alexander leads a cavalry charge and beats the Spartans and the Athenians and unites all of Greece into one country. Okay?

At the age of 17. Okay? Then at the age of 19, he decides to get back the Persians.

Okay? And he starts this campaign to capture the territory, all the territory from the left side of the map to the right side of the map. Okay?

So, like, the Persians have a half a million guys. How many does Alexander have? 35,000.

The odds are worse than 10 to 1. Okay? And, uh, he starts.

Okay? Alexander, he's been trained by Aristotle. Like, he's got this mind.

You know? And Aristotle's been feeding him for like six, seven years, training him on everything. You know, how to think right.

You know, how to think deeply. So, he says, well, I'm going to take over the whole Persian world. You know?

I'm going to take over everything up to India. And he gets out 35,000 guys. It's nothing.

And he takes off. Right? To take over the world.

And, uh, the rest is history. He does it. Alright?

He does it all the way up to India. All that white space. Everything in white is Alexander.

They're gone for 11 years. Like, they take off and they don't come home for 11 years. And he knows this is going to happen.

Okay? So, before he leaves, he says, we're going to have a... I want sound bites of this thing.

You know? I want somebody to record what's going to happen. This is going to be history.

You know? So, he hires Calisthenics. Okay?

Who is Aristotle's nephew. Because Aristotle is too old to go trotting around the world. Right?

So, he says to Aristotle, give me your nephew. I want him to be my historian. To record what's going to happen.

You know? And then they hire two other guys, Pyrrhus and his teacher. Uh, these are going to be the official...

Uh, now there's going to be a TV crew. Okay? No.

He's taking his TV crew. They're supposed to write all the cool stuff he does. And...

But they're also supposed to advise him as official philosophers. So, every Greek king needs an official philosopher or two to advise him. So, he takes off with these three philosophers.

And 35,000 guys. And, uh, they get all the way to India. On the way to India, uh, Aristotle's nephew dies.

Okay? Actually, he gets, uh, killed by, uh, uh, Alexander. That's a side story.

Uh, but, uh, he records the whole journey up till then. Then, uh, they get to India. All the way to, uh, Alexander by the Caucasus.

You see? Go up. There you go.

To your... Going towards the outside. There you go.

Yeah. They get all the way to there. All right?

They get all the way to there. And, and Taxila. Okay?

And then this cool thing happens. three, three or four yogis walk into camp. Okay?

Like, Hindu yogis. Yoga masters. Okay?

And, uh, one of them is named, uh, Dandamus. And the other one is, uh, Kalanus. And, uh, they're like, we want to debate with your philosopher.

You know? And, and they figure out, you know, the whole world speaks, uh, Aramaic by now. Uh, the language of the Persian Empire, which is Semitic, which is related to Hebrew.

And, uh, also, uh, Greek. So, so they're like, we'll debate you. And, and they start talking.

And these are Jain yogis, uh, in Tibetan, they're called Cherbupa. Uh, say Cherbupa. Cherbupa.

Cherbupa means the naked ones. Uh, these are, guys are so much into Ahimsa, non-violence, that they refuse to wear cotton. Uh, because it involves killing animals.

You see? So they go around naked. And still you can see in India, they're called Dikambara Jain.

Sky-clad Jains. Because all they got on is the sky. Okay?

And, uh, man, they walk around. And they, and they carry brooms. And they wear surgical masks.

And they sweep bugs out of the way as they walk. And they never take a car. and they, they're like, uh, extreme on non-violence.

By the way, in our Buddhist tradition, we believe that's too extreme. You know, that you can live normally, uh, if, if you don't intend to kill animals, and you do the best you can to avoid killing animals, uh, but like you're, you're harvesting a cotton field, and you, by the way, some animals, some insects are killed, that that's not such a heavy karma that it's worth to risk your health and your life to, you know, to avoid that karma. Okay?

That's our Buddhist position. But anyway, Jain is very extreme. So, they meet Alexander, and he says, well, I'm going to send, uh, I'm going to send one of the two philosophers who I love to go take classes with this Jain guy.

So the Jain guy says, he can come, but he's got to wear the same clothes as me, uh, because that's our custom. So he does. And, and they have these cool conversations.

Like, this is the beginning of Malinda, you see? This is five generations before Malinda. And the Greek king has to follow the philosopher's advice.

So they learn from the yogis, and they learn yoga. And then they come back to Alexander, and they say, this guy is fantastic. you got to, Dandamus, you got to get him to, we got to take him back to Greece, you know?

This would be a big thing at the academy, you know? This would be a big contribution to the academy. And they're like all thrilled about Indian knowledge, and they're like really into it, you know?

So they go to Dandamus, they send an official party from Alexander. Even Alexander is there, you know, and they offer him money and, and gifts and everything. He says, please come back with this.

He says, no, I don't feel like it. You know, and they said, well, you're talking to the emperor of the world, you know? This guy's just conquered the whole world, you know?

You can't say no to the emperor of the world. And he's offering you all this, he's offering you basically a kingdom to come. He says, I've watched you guys, you know?

You've, you've walked here from Greece like fighting people, dirt, you know, crud all over you, you know? Who wants to live like that? I'm happy, you know?

You go away, I'll stay here, you know? And they say, well, look, we'll kill you if you don't come with us. He says, you're doing me a favor, you know?

He said, look at this body, look at this body, you know? Who wouldn't want to get away from this body, you know? It's all cruddy body.

Go ahead, kill me, I don't care. So they couldn't get him to go. They left him, random as they left.

And then Kalenas, finally they found some Jain guy who's willing to go with them, right? And this is very much the tradition of Socrates, right? Socrates taught in the streets.

He was a sager. Then when he was old, he taught philosophy. And he just sat and debated with people, you see?

Like, this is how to get to truth. It's gonna be a big part of Diamond Mountain University. Every class you take there, you have to do a debate class to match it, okay?

And it's like, questioning, asking, exploring, you know, not accepting anything, like, you know, figure it out, you know? And this is Socrates' big thing. He's so good at it that he pisses everybody off in Athens.

And then finally, the elders of the city, the city council, like Tucson city council, they send out, they make a declaration, you have to drink poison or leave the city. Hemlock. You either drink this cup of hemlock or you leave the city.

So all his students are like, leave the city, Socrates. And he says, no, I have a right. I'm an Athenian.

I'm a man. This is a democracy. I have a right to say what I want to say.

And if they say, I have to drink hemlock, then I'll drink hemlock, you know? So, he did. And the last teaching is extraordinary.

I mean, you should read it sometimes. they call it the last days of Socrates, but his last teachings, he's got the cup in his hand and he's giving, he knows it's his last teachings, you know? And what he taught was so beautiful, you know?

And then he says, don't forget to give a cock, a rooster, to, to so and so. And that was the ancient gift that you gave to a doctor who had cured you of a disease. You see?

So, he's like, I'm getting out, man. I'm cured. You know, no more body.

So, the Greeks were very much like, oh, the genes have the same thing, you know? They're like, that's cool. So, they took Calamus back on the journey home.

By the way, Alexander was never beaten. Nobody ever beat him. In 11 years, he never lost a battle.

He got to the Indus River, all the way to the right there, near Taxila, and this was the edge of the old Persian Empire. And they're already deep into India, what was India at that time. and then his, his troops say, that's enough.

We're going home. You know? And he's like, are you crazy?

We're just about to reach the ocean, at the end of the world, according to all the books, you know? Like, we must be 20 miles away from the end of the world. You guys are crazy.

We can't stop now. And they said, look, even Alexander's army is a democracy. This is Athenian system, right?

And they had a vote. And Alexander lost. And he waited, he held out for two days, you know?

He said, well, take another vote tomorrow. You know? And the next day, he voted again, and he lost again.

And then he said, okay, we'll go home. And so, right there on the Indus River, they, they build, by the way, this is where the great Buddhist academies are, right? Taxila.

So they build ships, they go down the Indus River, to the Arabian Sea. Then some of the troops walk by land, and some of them go by sea, and they go home. But halfway there, to Babylon, there's this guy, Kalenas, right?

The Jain yogi who went with him, right? And he's in love with this yogi. He's like, he's learning yoga.

Alexander's learning yoga from this guy. And all his generals, all the Macedonian generals are learning yoga from this Jain yogi, you know? And then the yogi gets a little sick, you know?

And they say, oh, we'll call the, the doctors. Like, Aristotle was strong on medicine. And they say that's why Alexander survived so many wars, because he knew medicine.

And he fixed himself. He got, he got hit by many arrows. He was shot by an arrow in India.

He was wounded coming out of India, okay? So, so like, they're all on their way out, and the Jain yogi falls a little sick, and they say, don't worry, we know medicine, we'll take care of you. He says, I don't need it.

You know? I'm leaving my body. Let me go.

You know? And they say, no, no, we gotta take you back to Athens. We need you at the academy, you know?

He says, no, I feel like dying now. You know? And, you can just light a fire.

And, so they built this big pyre, this big funeral pyre, that they still use in India, right? And the yogi tells him, bring my body up to the fire. Put me up on the wood, you know?

And they carry his body up there, and he's like, okay, a little bit over here, yeah, okay. Okay, let me say goodbye to everybody, you know? And he calls Alexander and the generals over.

And he looks at all the generals, he says, you know, it's been good knowing you, and honor, and I love your systems. Many of your things are very enlightened. You know?

You Greeks are really something special, you know? And I appreciate the time we had together. And then to Alexander he says, I'll meet you in Babylon.

Light the fire. Okay? It's so cool.

He says, I'll meet you in Babylon. And then, they light the fire. And they light the fire.

And he burns, you know? And the Greeks are like, no, it's like a lesson in, you know, these Indians have some deeper idea about body, you know? Like, about the body, you know?

Like these Indians, and they had seen in Taxila, they had seen Indian wives join themselves on the fires of their husbands. And, and, there was a famous fight that took place in front of Alexander. A queen, a king died with two queens.

The elder queen was pregnant. And so the two queens are fighting about who gets to be on the pyre with the husband, you know? Who gets to get burned with the husband?

And finally, the Greek general holds back the elder queen, who's pregnant. And the young queen jumps on the pyre, you see? And the Greeks are like, looking at this and saying, these people, these people have a different idea about, they're not afraid of death.

You see, they don't see death, they have a different idea about the body and the soul, you know? And they have something, they're not so attached to things as we are. This is something amazing, you know?

So they brought that back, Pyrrhus brought that back to Athens, and brought this, the yogi's way of life back to Athens. Alexander himself got as far as oh, and he keeps planting cities, okay? All named what?

Alexandria, okay? He even takes Egypt, you see? And there's Memphis and Alexandria.

And even in, this is at the beginning of his trip, he takes Egypt, the richest part of Egypt, which is the delta of the Nile River, and it's got all this wheat-producing capacity. So he takes over that, he names it Alexandria, and he founds a great, a great, ACIP project. Okay?

He says, we've got to save the books in the world, you know? No, he's like, we've got to save the books in the world, this is important. He got this from Aristotle, right?

He had this thing about books, they say he slept with the Iliad under his pillow every night. No, really. And he said, we've got to save the books.

So Alexandria became this huge library, and they began to collect all the books in the world. This becomes important tomorrow, when the Jews meet the Greeks. Okay?

And Christianity develops also. Okay? This becomes important tomorrow.

You've got to come back on Sunday. So anyway, he comes back, names all the cities Alexandria, then he reaches, oh, he leaves the guys who got hurt out of the 35,000. They're like, like some guy gets a bad cut on his leg or something, he's like limping.

You stay here, and you start a city called Alexandria on the Caucasus, or whatever, you know. And they start all these cities, Greek cities on their way. So all throughout the trip, he's like dumping guys to start projects.

Okay? It's like, you do this, you start this project there, and you start this project in this city, and you start this project in this city, you know. And he's like, you get this thing going here, you get this.

So they found all these cities. So anyway, Alexandria gets as far as Babylon, and suddenly he takes ill and dies. Like that.

In like two days. Three days. Okay?

So the yogi's word was very interesting. Okay? It's very powerful.

Very powerful. And then, and then the Greek interest about India continued for, for 900 years. This connection continued between India and, and the West.

Okay? And all, all the Greeks when he died, he died so young, he was 32. Okay?

He's been on the road for 11 years, conquering the world. And he left all these kingdoms and his generals just split it up. Okay?

They just split it up. Okay? One more side story then we'll do, you want?

Yeah, one more side story, okay? Then we'll actually get to some dharma sooner or later. There's this guy, there's this kingdom in middle of India called Magadha where Buddhism was big there.

And, and, and there's this loud mouth kid called Chandragupta. Okay? And, he gets in trouble with the government and he's, he's exiled.

So he goes and camps with Alexander's guys while they're in India. He goes into the camp and he says, you should, if you're taking over kingdoms, you should go take over Magadha, you know? It's big and nobody likes the king.

I can tell you. You know? okay?

And, and Alexander who thought the world ended there, learns that there are all these other kingdoms, you know? And then, in the Greek writings, this young man is called Chandrakatis. Okay?

Chandrakatis. And in Sanskrit, he's Chandragupta. Okay?

Chandragupta. So, anyway, Chandragupta is watching Alexander for the couple of years that he's in India before he leaves, right? And he's like, really impressed with this empire stuff.

Like, this is cool, building empires is cool, you know? And, so after Alexander left and after Alexander's death was announced, Chandragupta started building this empire. Okay?

And he got really big. He united India for the first time. And, and it became a huge country.

The country called India that we know now was built by Chandragupta. And these were called the Mauryan kings. Okay?

So, he got so big that when the Greeks attacked again, he rolled out 9,000 war elephants and like, kicked their butts and sent them back home. And he said, we're India now. We don't need you Greeks alone.

Okay? And he basically defeated them very soundly. And then he started this whole big kingdom.

And he demanded a queen of the Greeks. Okay? This is an old custom.

When you beat somebody, you can ask for a queen of their country. Do you know the one in Tibet? The Tibetans beat the Chinese very soundly about 700 A.D. Okay? And demanded two queens. One of the Nepalese and one of the Chinese. So, the Tsongseng Gombore I think, he had two queens.

But this was a custom. So, Chandragupta demands a Greek queen. And they marry and they have a child.

And then their grandchild is named Ashoka. Okay? So, Ashoka is quarter Greek.

Okay? This is interesting. And then Ashoka builds Buddhism for the rest of history.

I mean, his kingdom becomes... He starts putting up columns. He hires Greeks to put up these Greek columns, fluted columns around India with big signs on them saying, look, these are the ten virtues.

You have to follow these. You know, it's like billboards all over India and we still find them in Sarnath, in Varanasi. He puts up on the back of an Indian coin are the pillars of Ashoka.

You can see them. So, this is like a very big deal in our in our lineage. You see?

We're not so far removed from the Greeks as you thought. You see? And Ashoka begins this huge kingdom which gets overthrown two generations by later.

Melinda. Okay? Now, all tied together, okay.

Alright? So, you got confused, you can listen to the tape. But anyway, the Greeks and the Indians are like fighting for this kingdom.

And Ashoka puts his capital at Pali... whatever it is, Palipatthana, which becomes Patna, which becomes the center for the university where Master Shantideva studied and where Naropa studied. And then you get all that coming into Tibet.

So, I put a timeline in your, I hope. Is there? Could you put it up?

This, for those of you who've been in the yoga class, and this, and then some of you are Dharma students who are here from down the mountain or whatever. I tried to put them both up here, okay? So, 500 B.C., Lord Buddha hits it big in India, okay? 329, Alexander the Great reaches India. And then there's this first love affair between the Greeks and the Indians, okay? Like, I don't know, 150 years later, King Melinda is meeting the Greek, is meeting the Buddhist monk that you're studying, that book.

You know, like 12 Links of Dependent Origination, right? Okay? Then, 150 years later, Jesus is born in Palestine.

We'll talk about that tomorrow, how that ties in. Because our culture comes from, from that, right? Then, those of you who have taken the 18 Courses of ACI, the next few names are very familiar.

Nagarjuna starts the Middle Way teachings. Second wave, right? When was the first wave?

Unknown to the Tibetans. I mean, it's a tradition in the monastery. They tell you, in the monastery, there was a first wave of Middle Way, but we don't have any of the books left.

You know? Nagarjuna was the second wave of Middle Way, Madhyamika. The first wave was Melinda's time, okay?

This book is going to talk about emptiness, and very much Madhyamika, okay? We're going to get to that tomorrow, okay? You got to come tomorrow.

The first wave, missing wave of, of emptiness teachings was in Melinda's time, okay? So anyway, 200 AD, Nagarjuna starts our Middle Way teachings, that come down to Tibet, in Tibetan monasteries. Then, 100 years later, is Vasubandhu and Asanga, Masters, who start the Abhidharma schools and the Mainoli schools, which are two other famous Buddhist schools.

I put Master Patanjali there, okay? Nobody knows when he was born. I think Master, a young guy, says 500 BC.

A lot of modern scholars say 200 BC. Some people say 500 AD. It's a thousand year range, okay?

But just from the style of his writing in Sanskrit, and the, the fourth chapter, which deals with Mainoli school. I throw him in with the Mainoli era, okay? And we'll talk about that in a year in New York, if we all live.

Okay, 500 AD is the Vinaya Sutra, which is the basis of the Vinaya teachings in Tibet, okay? And what we study in Tibet, the monks and nuns' vows, as we study them in Tibet. Then, 200 years later, you have Master Shantideva, writing the Guide to the Bodhisattva's Way of Life, that you studied in New York, last, this summer.

When was it? Like, a couple weeks ago, I guess. It's tough.

Then about, 200 years later, you get Naropa, who's one of the last abbots at Nalanda, and Vikramasila, and, and he's big-time yogi, okay? Like, his yoga, yoga at that time is 50% of a monk's study in the monastery, okay? Yoga, in those days, is big-time, okay?

So Naropa is, is very well-versed in yoga, and the yoga you learned the last four days comes from Naropa, okay? So that gives you a feeling for where it comes from, right? Then, I don't know, 300 years later, you get the basis for this thing, and this thing, okay?

That Nyingma tradition in Tibet, okay? Very big. Many of the asanas you learned in the last four days come from that line, which was very strong around 1300.

1400, you get the teacher of the first dhyalama, and the book of three beliefs, which is the basis of the Tibetan book of yoga, okay? Most of the asanas are in there. The short series, the short version of series one is mostly from Je Tsongkhapa, teaching people Naropa's system, okay?

And then you get Svatmanama, who's writing Yoga of Sun and Moon. What's that called in Sanskrit, Yoga of Sun and Moon? Hatha, Hatha Yoga.

Hatha is, Hatha means Sun and Moon. Hatha Yoga. And then we'll talk about that someday, it's a long story.

200 years later, maybe, or maybe 200 years before, is Gerhard's Compendium. You're going to be learning that in the next series, okay? And then, about 200 years ago, you start getting illustrations done, carvings in Tibet, by Canglong Pandita, and then carvings in Mysore, India, which become the basis of Sri Patabhi Joyce's system and Master Iyengar's system, okay?

So it's cool, you see how the whole thing is flowing up to the first yoga class you ever took, wherever it was. You were, you're in this lineage, you see? And then 1935, as soon as the Dalai Lama is born, okay?

So that's the, and then his teacher teaches my teacher, our teacher, okay? And that's, that's how we learned, okay? That's how you learn.

So you get this whole sense that we're connected back to Alexander, the great. And, and yoga has been in the West for, I don't know, two, two and a half thousand years, you see? It's very cool, I think.

So that's my history spiel for tonight. I just want you to get a sense of, you know, the Tibetan's knowledge of all this kind of stops back at Nagarjuna. And it's all sort of like fuzzy after, before that.

And, it'll be really interesting to go further into it. We, we need to go further into it. I, I want you to look at your reading.

Do you see something that says ultimate love? Okay, that's an 1890 translation. 1890 translation.

Geshe Michael, couldn't you take ten minutes and finish it in, in modern English for us? No. Why?

The book is missing. Okay? The Sanskrit is gone.

Okay? There is no Sanskrit. All right?

We got to find it. All right? It's, since 1890 and up to now, I mean, the Pali is around, you can get the Pali Sanskrit is gone.

It's one of those rotting books in the picture. I'm trying to make you feel guilty, those of you who didn't sign up. Okay, where is John Brady?

Yeah, back there. If you didn't sign up to stand there in Xerox stuff for us in Tucson, okay, or wherever you live, doesn't matter, or you didn't sign up to give him five bucks a month for the rest of your life, or you didn't sign up to introduce him to some wealthy friend of yours at lunch somewhere, then you should feel guilty. Okay?

There's no reading tonight. There's no original reading. You gotta, you got 1890, he says, you're gonna get tranquilized here.

Uh, if you do this practice, you're gonna get tranquilized. You got 1890 version of, of a, of a Buddhist text. Because where is those texts?

We can't find it. Okay? The book's gone.

The original book is gone. Okay? And we have people who could translate it.

You know, we have an extraordinary staff of people. You know? Uh, she's working on, on a tantric book, Mucchadarabhadra.

She's working on a, the only translation of a Vinaya text. Uh, she just did a whole pile of translations. Uh, Karma's going to India to work on a few texts, uh, shortly, and has been working on other texts.

We've got the people to, to translate it. And we're teaching people for free at Diamond Mountain. You can learn to be a translator of the ancient stuff.

We can, we can, we can teach you fast. We just need the books. Okay?

They're, like, rotting in India. We need to get them here. Okay?

So, think about it. Help us out. Okay?

It's like a movie, the cost of a movie. In New York, they said, no, no, it's not the cost of a movie. I said, okay, about the cost of a movie.

And they said, no, no, you can go to, you can't go to a movie for five or ten dollars anymore. It's like, twenty bucks. So, twenty bucks, come on, you know, one movie, two movies, come on.

Okay? So, talk to John, if you haven't talked to him yet. Christy has got to do some Ionian stuff, whatever that is.

And then we'll start on the text. We'll try to take a break and start on the text.

[Говорящий 2]
I think it goes on this one.

[Говорящий 1]
Let's put it down here. Mercedes, you want to hold mine? I, it, it does go on this one, right?

Yeah. Told you. Okay.

So, I'm supposed to talk to you about the word Ionian. And, the Ionians were originally, they were Greeks who got kind of sick of being on the mainland. And they, they kind of left, they were, they were travelers at heart.

And so they left the mainland Greece and they went to the islands. You know? And then they went on to the coast of Turkey.

And those were the original Ionians. And then, later, the, all of the Greeks that Alexander left in India were known as Ionians. The, you know, the traveling Greeks.

The ones, the ones that wandered east. Right? And then, the Sanskrit gave them a similar name.

Yonikas. Or, sometimes it's called Yavana. Yavanas.

This is actually from the Persian. The Persians called them Yavanas. And, in the, the tradition of Malinda in our book, the Malinda Prashna, he's often described as being surrounded by 500 Yonikas.

Which means he was surrounded by all these Greeks that were left there probably from the time of Alexander. You know? This word in Sanskrit originally comes from the root E or A which means to go.

And, we get in English the word Ion. And, initiate. Something that, that moves, right?

And, January January We had this all in the Yoga Sutra, right? Because of, it was the, the god Janus or Janus who was the god of beginnings or the god of opening doors. And that's why it's the first of the month.

That's why they named it January. And, Yana in Sanskrit like Mahayana. Yana means way.

It's the path on which you go. Right? And, these are all the, the words connected to the, the Greek word Ionian.

That, that comes down from, through the Sanskrit into our own English language. Yeah? And, oh, I was supposed to say one more thing.

The Ionians, it was very interesting, the Indians have this, like, caste system where they've got the Brahmins and blah blah blah blah blah blah blah all the way down to like the untouchables. they actually accepted the Greeks as a warrior caste just under the Brahmins. So the Greeks were, they opened their, their arms to the Greeks, the Indians.

And, just took them in as one part of their caste system. So, the Greeks were, felt very much at home in India at that time. You know, it wasn't maybe the way some, some of us feel now.

You know, we're like, you know, it's us and them. You know, it was just, it was one small little community. You know, this, this whole path started becoming traveled.

Very well traveled and the language started, you know, they started speaking each other's language and adopting each other's cultures. And, that's the whole idea. That's my spiel.

Oh, one thing. So, because the empire was, was, because of the empire, you could be a Greek speaking person and you could walk from Palestine to India and not have to change your language. You see?

So, in Jesus' time, Greek, Greek was the language, was the official language. And, you know, like, over Jesus' cross, it's written what? A king of the Jews in three languages, the Greek, Latin and Hebrew.

You see? Because Greek was the official language of the state. So, a person like Jesus could have walked to India and studied without changing their language by official means, you know, on the official highways all the way to India or, or Egypt.

You see, he did go to Egypt. We know he went to Egypt. We're not sure he got to India.

There's a tradition that he got to India. And we are searching for those books now in Ladakh and other countries. Last thing, we'll take a break, but there's a, on the cover of your reading tonight, there's a, I think, let me see.

Yeah, there's this cameo that was found. This is Alexander with his wife, okay? And his wife's name is Roxanne, okay?

Okay? And, she's not Greek and she's not Indian. She's Persian.

So, Alexander had this policy that when he took over a country, they should just integrate completely. Like the Greeks and the Persians, if it's Persia or if it's India, that we should just marry each other, you can help run the government, we're not going to change anything, let's learn your language. His coins have Greek on one side and Sanskrit on the other side, right?

And it's like a whole different idea. His idea was that I want it to be one big happy family, you see? So, to make a point of that, on the way to India, he took a queen who is Persian, not Greek and not Indian, okay?

So, that was the policy of the Greeks in India also. They were looking to integrate into Indian society and they all became Buddhists, you see? And they became yogis.

So, they were anxious to learn and absorb ideas and take great ideas back to the academy and back to the ASI library in Alexandria. So, that's going to make a big, that's going to be important for us as far as what happens with Judaism and Christianity. But that comes tomorrow, okay?

So, we're going to talk now, we're going to go into the text itself. We've been talking about how great ideas cross into different cultures. Our culture has been attacked by yoga ideas in the last 15 years.

It went from zero people practicing yoga or maybe a few thousand and now 100 million people have tried yoga according to the Wall Street Journal. There are more yoga studios than McDonald's now. Seriously.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

And the combined income of the yoga studios exceeds Microsoft's income. Okay? Now, it's not a small thing, it's a big thing, you see?

So, this whole attack or this whole wave of a whole philosophy has come and affected us, you see? And, we're going to talk more about how waves of ideas enter cultures. How do we get cool ideas into our culture?

You know, how can we enrich our culture with other ideas that are available? And, can you do it purposely? Like, can you just set off some ideas as a small group of dedicated people?

I heard once that the IRA, when it was holding England at bay, was only 50 dedicated terrorists you know, and that inspired me. You know, now it's like, you know, 50 guys can hold this whole country at bay. So, a small group of people, if they felt that some ideas were cool, could you just trigger them in your culture, you see?

Could you just set them off in your culture like a virus, you know? Purposely, instead of just by accident. Could you, could you purposely have a small academy at some weird spot, you know, and could you like train people and then could you like set off a certain worldview in your culture, you know?

Instead of waiting for it to leak over from India. You see what I mean? So, maybe you get your taste for what we're here for.

Okay, take it back and we'll talk when you get back. 15 minutes. If you haven't had a chance to say hi, come up.

If you're going to be here in the next few weeks, don't come up because other people need a chance. Okay. Oh, We have all these stupid little projects like Alexander the Greek dropping, The Great dropping projects around, right?

And we have all the directors of the projects that are in town once a year. And they're in town this weekend and they're So, I thought to ask, there's three of them tonight, maybe. Yeah.

To just give like a five-minute spiel. Okay, guys? Five minutes.

Got it? Because the people will fall asleep if I keep them much longer here. And just to tell you what they're up to.

And the idea is two things. We say you get 10% of good karma if you're happy about it. Like, if you just think about what cool thing the Dalai Lama's doing, you get 10% of his karma.

That's more good karma than we do in our whole life, you see? So, you just sit there and they're going to tell you what they do and you can say, that's cool. And then you get 10% of karma, you see?

Seriously. Seriously. You don't have to do anything else.

But if you hear something that attracts you and you say, God, that sounds like what I'd like to do. We're always like, we always want people to come and join and help out, you know? And anything you can do is cool.

You know, like, if you hear some project that strikes your heart, then just talk to the person who came up and gave that presentation and, you know, within three months they'll have you totally exhausted doing, like, we call it the potato chip bag theory. They'll just crumple you up and, you know, you'll be exhausted by, right, Kendall? I've heard that from directors of Vajrapati, like, it's like, people sign up and then, you know, strip mining, like, yeah, okay.

So be careful where you sign up from. But anyway, this is just sort of out of order and no specific order. It'll be four short presentations.

Five minutes, please, guys? Okay. First one is, we started a small press to help get information out, books out, and that was started by this crazy lady from Microsoft in, Washington State, are you?

Who made the mistake of saying, could we start a little thing? And now this is big things, so she's going to talk to you about that. Betz Grier.

There's also the registrar from down in Melbourne, Nicholas Taft. Hi. Is this on?

Okay. Oh, I have to hold it up here. Okay.

I'm Betz Grier, and I'm the managing editor of Diamond Cutter Press, and the only reason I'm up here tonight is because John Cerullo, who's the publisher of Diamond Cutter Press, couldn't make it out here to be with us. He's the soul of our organization, and he pulled it together so that we could publish this book here, and which is called Written by Our Precious Llamas, and thank you so much for giving us this opportunity to do this. We have flyers out there if you haven't purchased the copy and you want to.

You can pick up a nice bright blue flyer out in the front there. So what we're going to be doing since we got this out is next year we plan to do a couple more books, and then each year thereafter do several more. And basically we exist so that we can help you, all of you who are doing wonderful, fantastic things in your practice and in your work with other people, to help you get the word out to folks, whether it's in book form, CDs, DVDs, videos, whatever format you want to use, we'll work with you to get it out.

So please think of us and come see me if you have any ideas. Okay? Thanks a lot.

Wow. Most of you have been here for the yoga teachings, but many of you have not, so I thought to introduce the director of what we call the Yoga Studies Institute, which is Kimberly Bienhoff, and she's going to tell you about what they do.

[Говорящий 2]
Okay.

[Говорящий 1]
Hold on a second. Okay. Well, Yoga Studies Institute is a non-profit organization that is dedicated to providing teacher trainings for yoga teachers, people who want to be yoga teachers and serious yoga students.

Our goal is enlightenment. Let's see. Lots of programs happening.

We're very fortunate to have Geshe Michael and Christy teaching three or four times a year Yoga Studies Institute courses. Twice a year, there are courses happening in New York City on the classics of yoga. Geshe Michael and Christy are in the middle of teaching Yoga Sutra right now, a chapter at a time in four parts.

The third chapter is being taught in New York the last two weeks of February. Chapter one is also being taught in three different places around the country so far in the winter. Denver, if you're in the Denver area, New York, chapter one, and where's the other place?

Toronto. Any idea? In the spring, in May, it will be in Toronto with Geshe Michael and Christy partly will be co-teaching that with other teachers.

And also, so that's one part is the classics of yoga. And then a second part is asana training and hatha yoga training. We're in the middle of doing a course right here at the beautiful Anjali Yoga Studio, series one.

And so, there are ten series. So if you want to learn the asana part and Tibetan poses and also hatha yoga in general, please come and you can check out the website, yogastudiesinstitute.org. Thank you.

Thank you. Sometimes I forget there's a mic on and it's very embarrassing. Okay.

We were going to do this tomorrow but we thought we'd do it now. Can you help me? Yeah.

If you had to choose a more beautiful place to do what we've been doing for the last four days, you'd be hard up. We went around the country on a four-month tour. I think we had, God knows, 300 stops or something.

This is the most beautiful yoga studio we have ever seen. Thank you. Say again.

Yeah. And I'm not exaggerating. It's the most well thought out, most beautiful place I've seen.

Next person to pick on is Diamond Mountain. Who's doing that presentation? Is that you, Stumpf?

It's Stumpf. Who's going to do it? David?

David, I think. If you don't mind. Anything.

It's kind of... Oh, it's okay. Okay.

Okay. Hello. Are you all coming to Diamond Mountain University?

Yeah. Okay. Let's see where to start.

Diamond Mountain. Well, here's something we can announce. We're going to have a small party of people going down tonight after the class.

We're going to try and get down there and show you. If you haven't seen Diamond Mountain before and you're leaving after this weekend, see me afterwards and we'll try and get you down there quickly to at least see it in its moist glory before it gets dusty again. Boy, I can't do this in five minutes, so let's just move on to Dollar Day.

That's how we... That's how we fund Diamond Mountain. That's how we're keeping the land purchased.

If you want to join Dollar Day, and I know you all do because if everybody here did, then we'd be in really great shape. We have some forums outside and I can't emphasize enough how grateful I am that all of you that have donated to Dollar Day have done so. Believe me, it's making Diamond Mountain happen, so thank you very much.

Okay. That's Diamond Mountain. I want to also...

Well, we won't go there. Diamond Mountain University. We start on Monday.

The first class is at two. There are going to be two of them. Amy Pelman's meditation class and the ACI class course 16.

And then that's the start of this experiment in a university, academy, whatever we're going to call it. And I just rejoice that all of you are going to be able to come and help us figure out how to do this right. So, don't be embarrassed.

Get up and tell us what we've done wrong and it'd be nice if occasionally you'd tell us what we did right. And tomorrow at Hogwarts we'll be discussing in more detail on most of this. And the whole reason this is happening is because of these two wonderful people.

I'm kind of speechless. No, thanks a lot. It's going to be really exciting.

A lot of work for about five years. A lot of people. Really, a lot of people making it happen.

And it's going to happen in two days. It's going to launch. It's really exciting.

Andrea says hello to everyone. Yeah.

[Говорящий 2]
So we love you. Thank you.

[Говорящий 1]
If you don't know what Dun & Dun is, it's like an academy and it'll have 15 free courses. We're really going to do it for free. And, you know, we're determined that it should be free, rigorous, authentic.

And so nobody's getting paid. None of the people that have worked there are getting paid. None of the teachers are getting paid.

They're all doing it because they believe in it. And we're going to be really tough on the students. And you will come out knowing something really well.

You know? And the courses are like built around. You could learn classical Buddhism.

You could learn classical yoga. You could learn classical medicine, ancient medicine, classical dance, classical music, whatever. But in the ancient, classical, rigorous, and pure, authentic teaching systems, like that.

And so to make it free, what we do is hundreds of people around the world are paying one dollar a day. Like you sign up, we get your credit card number, and we never let go of it. And it will take like, I think, another eight years to pay it off to land.

We have a thousand acres. And the idea was to be out in the middle of nowhere where you can concentrate and we are building small meditation cabins that you could live in those and stay in those. And that's the idea.

It's the equivalent of the training that I went through. I went through a 20, 25 year training in the monastery. And I don't think that social system will work in America.

You're not going to have 20 of you are not going to live in one small house together and sleep on the floor and like that. My idea is that in America, we're very independent, stubborn people. You need your own ten acres, you need your own...

No, it's the way we are. We're not like Tibetans or Indians. We can't do that.

And it won't work here. I think here, you keep your regular job, you keep your family, you do your normal activities, but you have your little meditation hut out there. You come out.

You know, it's designed so you could do it on a weekend if you need to. You can only come there on the weekends. And master, well, earn it.

Something that's important for people in the world. Something important for our culture. So that's the general idea of Diamond Mountain.

And I really urge you to help financially if you want. It's like nothing, you don't lose it, you don't miss it. We even do it and we're like, poor.

Okay. So next is, last, next and last for tonight. We have like a hundred different organizations and projects going on.

Okay? Around the world. And there's no central office.

Okay? Like there's no coordination of the whole thing at all. And we like it that way.

We want to keep it that way. It's just, we call it the do-gooders club. You know, and just once a year we get together and compare notes.

And like somebody in Alaska starts a little study center and somebody else starts a prison project and somebody else is doing business stuff and somebody else is doing yoga stuff and somebody else is doing a hospice thing or something. And then once a year we get together and we just compare notes. And there's no big guru and there's no office and nothing.

It's just everybody goes out and does whatever they love on these principles. And then once a year we get together and rejoice. You know?

So, the guy who gets us together once a year is here. And I'd like him just to say a little bit about how the thing works. So that's Alistair Holmes and it's Worldview office.

Yeah? So it's very easy really because Worldview as an organization doesn't exist. No, it doesn't exist legally.

We're not, we don't exist legally but we exist as an idea. And as Geshe-la said, the beauty of it is no, no central office, no, we don't have the time, we don't have the money, we don't have the resources or the interest to try to control things from the top. It's not like that.

It's about people like you. Unordinary people like you. Inspired by the teachings of Geshe-la, his students, his students' students, Geshe-la's children and grandchildren.

And you just roll with the, with the, the path and the spiritual teachings that you're attracted to, that you're passionate to. And you go out and on a very, on a very grassroots level you're spreading these ideas into our culture. And that's what we're about.

So, we don't have any overall, overriding organization. The energy is on a very much a grassroots level. And, you know, as an example of what can happen, John Stilwell had the foresight for 12, 13 years ago to bring a tape recorder to one of Geshe Michael's first class in New York City.

And that gave birth to the ACI correspondence courses. I don't know, Bonnie, tens of thousands of cassette tapes around the world. Hundreds of thousands.

Yeah, just extraordinary. And I think Chelsea said the other day from the Worldview website where there are Geshe Michael's teachings on MP3 format, 170,000 downloads. And it all started because it's John.

This was Alistair's way to get me to do the rest of the presentation. So I'll finish. He gave me advance notice, so it's no worries.

I just wanted to pass on a few thoughts about Worldview and the fountain of ideas that flow forth from the wonderful holy people on the stage. I figure since they asked me to talk, I'll say something. There are many, many projects, as Geshe Michael said, and their scope is wide.

Some are very large, some are very small. And Geshe Michael has proven over the years that he's a fountain of creative ideas and energy and enthusiasm and inspiration. And of course as he travels and meets people, everyone gets a task pretty much.

That's why there are 100 projects. So be careful next time you come up to say hi. It's OK.

In any case, just to be brief. Yeah, right, it's a 12-foot rule. But just to be brief, Geshe Michael has asked many people to do many things.

In Chicago, you know, people asked to teach a certain kind of Dharma course. And then in Wisconsin, another different type of Dharma course. And then some of these things take on a life of their own.

People form a board, they form a corporation, a non-profit corporation, a for-profit corporation. Like, for example, EBI, the Enlightened Business Institute, is a for-profit corporation. Godstow, the Three Jewels, non-profit corporations.

You know, they're people who are just working silently on their own. Like Amber, who's working to save animals and do stupas and things like that. And it's not a corporation and it's not an organization and it's just an individual working on their own.

And the thing that I would like to impart to everyone is because there are so many ideas and so much creativity and so much motivation and incentive to go out into the world and help people and do things, that it's important to try to be clear about how and where you fit in the worldview organization. As Alistair mentioned, worldview is a concept, an umbrella concept of everything that Geshe Michael has inspired and initiated. And all the people working on those things.

And it's not uncommon that people will come up and say, well I think I'm part of ACI, but I'm not sure. Or maybe I'm part of Gosto or maybe I'm not part of anything. I don't know.

What do I do? So the thing that I would impart to everyone is that really it's about personal responsibility. You know, if you have something that you want to see happen that you think will help people, then just do it.

You know, do it as an individual working silently or if you can get some people together to help you and you want to have an entity or do it as a group, great. If you can get enough energy and momentum and resource behind you to form a non-profit corporation even better. But the most important thing I think for each of you is to get clear on how you're functioning within the worldview organization.

So that, because as it gets bigger and bigger and bigger, it's inevitable that people will start to work at cross purposes. And it's happened already at times where people are like, well, I'm working on that yoga program. No, I'm working on that yoga program.

So it's really important that, you know, that you think about are you part of an existing project? Are you doing your own thing? And to talk to people in that vein.

Talk to each other in that vein. And be clear about, you know, I'm working with you or I'm working on my own or I'm part of ACIP or I'm not. Because there are a lot of things going on and for these things to be successful, it's important to get clear on how they function and how they can be efficient and best serve people.

So that's what I wanted to put out there. And it's great to just work as an individual and it's great to work as part of an existing project or nonprofit that others have formed or however you want to do it. But I just suggest that there be clarity and communication and everybody go out and do their great work.

Something like that. Thank you. Thank you very much.

Available at the desk in the foyer is this document. It's, just for the record, double-sided recycled paper. And it lists 109 different activities and projects that are happening.

So I invite you to take a copy of this with you if you don't have one and just see if there's anything there that appeals. The names with an asterisk next to it, they're the people who should be here at this teaching tonight and tomorrow. It's a work-in-progress document.

We don't have email addresses or phone numbers on this. And we'll get to that. But you have some names.

If anything grabs your attention, you want to get involved and somebody will know how to find these people. I feel a bit shy. Okay.

This is my idea of what Worldview is. Worldview is just all these guys who work together. And you're going to get Worldview tomorrow at this teaching.

It's the way of viewing the world. But it says our job as all these groups of people and individuals is two things. To find, preserve, and further whatever is good in the world.

So John Brady finds it. And then Diamond Mountain helps preserve it, translate it, keep it. And then all these organizations help further it in the world, like viruses.

Then the second part says to uncover, confront, and remove whatever is not good. Then it says, in ourselves. Okay.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So for good things we go out looking and we help them. You know, whenever someone's doing something cool, we go out and help and give a hand.

And then when we see something we don't like, we come inside, inside of ourselves, and figure out, what kind of bad karma did I do to make this happen? You see? You see?

And it's a very beautiful way to live, you know? You'll be happy about all the good things in the world. And then anytime you see something bad, you just close your eyes, mouth, ears, go home.

Think about what you did to create that, you see? And fix it. You know, it's very hard to uncover your own faults.

And so the second half of Worldview is to look inside, and view the inside, and fix it. Then the outside world follows, right? Anything?

There's a senior, we have two elder statesmen, we call them, who sort of guided us through the years. One of them is here, he doesn't come very often, once a year maybe, because he has to fly from Australia. But throughout the years, he has guided us, very kindly, in many, many projects.

He was there at the beginning of Diamond Mountain. He was there at the beginning of ACI. He's helped with everything.

He paid for the yoga tour, for example. And I always like to ask him to say a few words to inspire us. And then I promise we'll do the teaching, okay?

But I just don't get a chance to hear him very often. And he's, like, extraordinary. So I'd like to ask Salim Lee to come.

Oh, wow. I have three daughters at home. The youngest one, one of her favorite websites is called the moviespoilers.com.

Because she always likes to find out what happened in a movie, and then get the story out. So I'm going to be one of the spoilers. I'll tell you what happened.

It's a little secret. You've been hoodwinked by Jesse Michael and Chris Diller. They have 109 projects, and they talk about this and that.

But you know what is the common thread? Do you know what he really wants you to do? He wants you not to waste this life.

He wants to take the juice out of this life, to get the best out of this life. That's what he really wants you to do. And to do that, he tricks you to do all those projects.

I'm sorry. So I spoiled his mission. He's not telling you that.

But that's actually what he wants you to do. Really, that's the kindest, the greatest gift one can give to anybody, to any beings. It's not to waste your life.

You see, how to extract the best of this life. And that's why Jesse Michael wrote the mission statement there. To some of you, it might sound like a motherhood statement.

It's a nice thing. But somewhere along, somewhere in the teaching that he gave during the retreat teaching, he made one most profound and powerful statement. How do you do all this?

How do you get the best out of your life? What is the best way? You can print books.

You can do yogas. You can do that. But he said, that is just a trick.

The bottom line is serve others. So let that be a colophon of the worldview mission statement. Those two things are great.

But the way you do that is by serving others. And that is really what is dear to his heart and Christina's heart. Don't waste your life.

And, you know, I'm 55 years old. And, you know, I've been living and doing many, many meaningless things. And I have such a thick skull.

All these 55 years, what I do is just try to please me all the time. What I want, I get. That's what I do.

And, you know, I never got sick of it. And yet, I always fail. I never even get anything.

So, you know, and thank to, you know, Geshe Michael, for instance, asked me to do the so-called teaching. I mean, he gives and Christina gives teaching. I give teaching?

No, I just do blah, blah, blah, blah, you know, during this quiet retreat. And they call it teaching. But actually, it's just, if anything, it's just sharing my experience with you.

And every time I have a gathering like this, I always like to sit at the back and just rejoice to see so many happy people. And do you know what, Geshe-la, among so many teachings, obviously it doesn't mean many things, but there is one or two things that people remember, Geshe-la. Some of you came to see me even during this teaching.

I don't know whether that means to be complimented or complained or anything. They say, maybe you don't know me, but I was in such and such teaching before. You know, now every time I walk into the supermarket and choosing my oranges.

And then somebody else came to see me and say, do you know, because of you, even if I stay one week in a hotel, I only use one towel. You see, one of the most important teaching of the whole evening, I'm very sure, is when Geshe Michael brought the maple-covered donut. Really.

You see, most of the time when we do things, we always put what I want first. And that's the best way of not getting anything. That's the best way of losing what you want.

But if we think for others, then it's really thing will change. Now that's what worldview is all about. So for me personally, if you can summarize this thing, if you want to say, well, amongst those 109 projects, maybe none of that interests you, but at least you can do one thing.

When you move in, when you go into any supermarket, I'm going to spread this one. This is Geshe Michael teaching. Remember that all the years that you live, you always think of you first, right?

That's why when you stand in front of these oranges, guess what you think? What's the best for me? I don't care about for others.

You pick the best oranges for you first. And yet you have finished the 18 courses. You are certified teacher, but there you are, standing in the supermarket.

You forget that. And you think for me first. And that's why you always get rotten oranges.

And that's why you always complain the oranges are not sweet, not big enough, not ripe enough, and all that, because of that. So the best worldview, the real worldview, is looking at that and just try, just pick whatever in front of you, knowing that those oranges have been picked by the manager anyway. Just check, make sure they are not bad or rotten.

But if they are rotten, you report it to the manager, just making sure that the other people don't get that. Not because you don't want the rotten one. So you do a service for others.

Then, by doing such a simple thing, buying oranges, it becomes the most powerful dharma activity. Because you think of others first. So that is just, for me, it is on that little things.

So there you are, that's the project number 110. And by the way, Keshe Michael, that's the best way for me to get out of a company in Kasugu doing shopping. My wife now doesn't want me to come with her doing shopping.

Because she still wants to choose the broccolis. I can't choose anything when you come along. Go on, go on.

Anyway, no, that's just what I want to say. Well, Keshe Michael and Keshila and everybody here, you know, I always feel so happy when I'm here. I sit at the back there looking at so many beautiful faces and all that.

And it's just so, you know, so blissful to know that in this tumultuous world, there are so many people here that what they have in their heart is just yearning to become a better person. Of all this trouble in the world, we have at least this group of people. What you want to do is how to make it better for the world.

And isn't it wonderful? No wonder the energy is so good. No wonder it's all the smiles.

No wonder it's all those things. This is what makes your asanas successful. Even I started to do the asanas.

And doing everything there. So you can do dharma and forget dharma. What Keshe Michael is telling you actually, or what John and everybody here, don't even try to be Buddhist.

Really, just try to become Buddhas. Thank you very much. Oh, man.

I get really exhausted. We're going to start the reading for tonight. And we've been talking about...

We said last night... You know, the reason this teaching started out last night, we were talking about, I grew up a Christian, and then I kind of got distracted for 30 years with Buddhism, and now I kind of look back at the precious teachings I grew up with, with Jesus' teachings, and I feel very sad, because many churches are closing, many synagogues are closing. In some places, we're in Boston, half of the churches have been sold for businesses and things like that.

And it's a very disturbing thing to me. And I know not everybody here appreciates Christianity like I do. I know many people had a bad experience in their youth, or they didn't have any experience at all, or Judaism, they don't even care.

Let them close, it doesn't matter to me. I know there's many people like that. But I grew up in it, and it was very precious to me.

And I think the reason I love all of the Dharma I love, is because I was taught that way when I was young. So really it's the beginning of my journey, and very precious to me. So we're kind of looking at why is it that a whole religion or a whole faith might sort of slowly disappear in your world.

And then we were saying that to be vital, or to be helpful, in Buddhism we believe that there are three principles that have to be healthy in a Dharma. Whether it's Christianity or Judaism or Yoga or Buddhist, doesn't matter. There have to be three ideas there.

If those ideas are healthy and strong, then that teaching helps people, and people will keep doing it and keep it strong. And if those ideas are not strong, maybe that teaching won't stay in the world. We might see that teaching disappear in the world.

So it's not just an evaluation of a certain faith or religion. It's also an evaluation of ourselves on two levels. My own spiritual life can never be successful unless it has those three same ideals.

Unless I am living those same three principles, then my own spiritual life will be incomplete and won't make me happy. So a religion needs those three principles, but we need those three principles also to be happy. And a culture, and a civilization, and a whole planet cannot be happy, Buddhism says, unless you are living by those three principles.

So, sort of we have this idea of giving ourselves a score as a culture, America say, or a modern world. So, let's give ourselves a score on those three ideals. So the first idea is to admit that this life is painful.

And it's a moment, but we are just blind. We don't want to talk about it, we don't want to see it. The worst thing about this wheel of life, by the way, John McKee, you have to tell Barney.

He asked me, will we do this in Houston someday? And we will, so you have to tell him that. Now William, he is after Christy, okay?

So, but you have to tell him that, okay? We will do it. We will do the whole teaching in Houston sometime, on this wheel.

But the wheel says, it's just a moment. The end of your life is, if we just do what we are doing now, we will just get old and die. You work year after year, day after day, hour after hour.

You work so hard for stuff that you know you must lose. And that's like the sign of the cigarette package, you know? That's a sign of insanity.

That's a sign of craziness. On a product which is sold to millions, tens of millions of people, it says, this will kill you. If you use this product, it will kill you.

And the fact that we use it, and the fact that we put a sign on it, it's crazy. It's just crazy. If an alien came to our world and said, what is this?

Cigarette. What use? Smoking.

What's the inside? Kills you. I don't understand.

And your whole life is like that. You are struggling. You are trying to be happy.

You are going to work. You are building a house. You are raising a family.

You got an education. Every hour, the effort, every hour, every day, countless concerns, countless work, countless trouble, countless headaches. You know they don't count for anything.

You know you must lose all those things. But we still do it. It's like the cigarette package thing, you see.

So the first principle is, tell the truth about life. It's hard. You will die here.

This is not a good place to be. If there is any other choice, let's experiment. Let's try to find it.

If there is any other option, let's talk about it. At least admit that we are in trouble. The plane is falling down.

You know, we are all on a plane that is falling. Admit that the plane is falling. You know, don't sit there, oh the movie, I don't like the movie.

Are you crazy? The plane is falling down. I don't like the food.

I don't like this bistro thing with the American Airlines. I don't like it. You know.

Yeah, yeah. No, no. Get it.

The plane is falling down. You are going to die. And another thing, the peanuts they give you.

You know. No, and just to struggle to get people to think about something higher. You know, that's the first principle.

We talked about it yesterday. And our score was like negative zero or something. You know.

Why? We are just all tied up. Our culture, we bought the materialist thing.

You know. We are worse than the Persians and the Greeks and the Indians and the Palestinians and the Hebrews and everybody else. We are like the most insane culture there ever was.

You know. No, we have bought 100% into, if I get a new car, I'll be happy. You know.

Like the dumbest idea in history. You know. No, really.

You are looking at great ideas. We bought into the stupidest one. And we are all miserable.

You know. We are all not very happy. Those who live by that.

Okay. So that's the first principle. Second principle.

I think we will go. You want to do this one? Talk about that?

Where? Talk a little bit too? Yeah.

The second principle is what Holy Lama Salim Thay was just talking to us about. Which is the cover. I mean the title in front of your reading.

It's ultimate love. Say karuna. Karuna.

Karuna. Karuna is this idea of ultimate love in Sanskrit. We are going to do a little bit about the word first.

And then we will talk a little bit about the meaning. The root of karuna comes from kar, which means to cover or protect. And we see this coming into English in the word grotto or crypt.

And the basic idea here is exactly what I think the church is really good at. I mean this is the second principle. And it's the principle that we manage to keep of the three.

You know. It's taking care of others. Putting others first.

You know. It's sort of. Although we don't want to admit it.

It's sort of the foundation of our culture. You know. It's the foundation of our governmental system.

It's everything that America stands for in a good way. Right. Before we went all crazy and started fighting with everybody.

But. I was in retreat during that time. So I'm still flashing back to that.

You know. America I used to know. But.

Our foundations are pure. And what the Christian mentality has been in this society. You know.

They didn't say anything about us running around wild with our materialistic culture. But they do say we must take care of other people. We must love each other.

And. Can I go on to the verses? Yeah.

Flip to the second part of your reading. We see in. In the words of Jesus.

Here in the two verses. The first verse. He talks about.

He says. A new commandment. I give to you.

You must love each other. As I have loved you. You must love each other.

You know. This is. This is talking about.

Like. A spiritual master. A spiritual guide that came to this planet.

And. His disciples. Were so sure.

He did so much for. His. Followers.

That he could say this. This line. You know.

There was absolutely no question. In the disciples minds. What they were talking about.

When. When he says. As I have loved you.

Because. The disciples. God damn.

Knew that. He loved him. Then.

Because he. He devoted his entire life to them. You know.

Every waking moment. And every breath. You know.

He lived as a. As a walking example. You know.

And. And then. He turns to them.

Right before. He's about to die. And he says.

Well. Just as. You have seen me do.

Please. You know. Do amongst yourselves.

Love each other. Love each other. As well.

As I have loved you. You know. And that's carried through.

In our culture. I think. We still have this.

This. Kind of. Feeling of.

Of wanting to reach out. And help each other. You know.

We still have this. Feeling of. Wanting to take care.

Of people who are. Hungry. Or people who are.

Elderly. Or people who are. In need.

You know. It's. It's embodied in our culture.

We don't just walk away. From suffering. You know.

It's something good. That we can say. About our culture.

But. In the next verse. It's really.

It's really. Kind of. Interesting.

Jesus. Was being questioned. By.

Some. Pharisees. Some rabbis.

Of his time. And. About.

Him doing miracles. On. At inappropriate times.

According to. The. You know.

Rabbinical scriptures. He was working on Sundays. And.

Saturdays. Yeah. And.

And he was in big trouble. You know. And they were questioning him.

And they were like. Hey. You must be like the devil.

Or something. Instead of. Like a holy person.

Because you're working on the Sabbath. You know. And.

And. And. They were questioning him.

Sort of. Calling attention. To himself.

Or teaching. These. These.

Higher practices. To. To.

The. His disciples. And then.

He says. I said. You are God's.

You know. This is an ancient. Scripture.

That. That Jesus is quoting. We are supposed.

To become. God. And.

Somehow. That. That's like.

The epitome. Of. You know.

We're supposed to. Embody. Ultimate love.

So much. That we actually. Become.

Christ. Or become God. And.

You know. Everybody. Next to.

Jesus. Was saying. Whoa.

Man. You're going too far. You know.

And even in our culture. When. When.

Christianity. Kind of. Got adapted from this.

People forget about this line. There aren't any. Christians around.

Hey. Let's. Let's become God.

You know. It got. It got lost.

It's in the scriptures. Every. Great.

Master. Comes. And says.

The same thing to us. You know. It's true.

Every. Great. Master.

Comes. And says. Exactly.

The same thing. And it's. Us.

Who somehow. Miss it. Miss the point.

Go. Go. Go.

Go. Go. Go.

Go. Go. Go.

Go. Go. Go.

Go. Go. Go.

Go. Go. All.

Of. Christianity. Missed it.

And. Wouldn't. It be important.

To. Somehow. Bring.

It back. To them and share it with them and. Point.

Out this line. To them. It's in your Bible.

It's in the red print. You know. It's.

It's really what he. And it's really what every great master says. We have to take ultimate responsibility and ultimate love so much that we become enlightened beings who can really actually help people.

That's all I think I'm going to say. I was supposed to do some words, but I think, do you want me to? I think it's getting late.

So how do we rate ourselves on love? And people tend to think love means providing comfort to people, providing a house to somebody, providing food to someone, encouraging someone, hugging someone, and this is love. But you see, they'll die anyway, right?

If you give someone a home, they will lose it anyway. If you feed someone, they'll be hungry in two days anyway. If you take care of someone their entire life, they'll get old and die anyway.

You see, this is love. It's a kind of love. And we rate very high on that.

I think our culture rates very high on that. There's never been a culture like ours, like America, that takes care of people. It's amazing.

Within this country, who starts a war and then just leaves, and doesn't take the oil with them or something? You see what I mean? Like in Kuwait, who goes to a country supposedly to help people and then just leaves and leaves billions of dollars of oil there and goes home having spent billions of dollars of their own money to help somebody?

You see, this is very unusual. In the history of mankind, there's never been a country like that. We really do live by this principle, that treating people like we would like to be treated.

And it's hardwired into your mind. You see, it's hardwired. But you think American movies always end with the good guy sacrificing himself or herself for the other people.

That's not how movies end in all the other countries. No, I mean, it's very, very beautiful. It's very, very much a grand achievement of our people.

We should be proud. I mean, we're the biggest materialists in the world and we should be ashamed of stripping the world of its resources. And we're also like the biggest pushover country in the world and we should be proud of that.

We just run around trying to, we don't do it very well and we mess up and we do it violently sometimes, but in your heart, in people's hearts, you're trying to help people. I mean, that's very much what we're about. That part of the teachings, whether it came from India or Greece or Palestine and it probably came from all three, it's a big part of us.

We believe that stuff. You know, we really, we go to see Lord of the Rings. Because we believe in the little good guy giving up his life for the many people.

This is Shantidharma. This is straight out of Shantidharma. To treat every man equally and to sacrifice what you want.

Even the young men in Iraq right now, they're risking their lives. It may be wrong, it is wrong. It may be misleading, but it's certainly courageous.

And at many people's hearts, it's like, I will sacrifice my comfort and even my life to make the other people happy. They believe that. People believe that.

So on that we score big time. I think our culture is, we can really be proud of it. We may not be very good at it, but we believe in it.

So on that side we're really good. But there's a higher love, and then we'll stop, okay? There's a higher love.

There's a higher kind of love. If you could stop death, if you could teach someone not to die, you see? If you could teach them that, then that's a higher kind of love.

You see? If you could teach, if you could change into a being who stands on a billion planets at once and gives kindness and guidance and assistance to the beings on that planet, if that's possible, then that's a whole nother realm we haven't explored yet in our culture, you see? And what Buddhism says and what Malinda gets from Nagasena, what the monk tells to Malinda is, there's a higher love, you know?

You could. It's good to protect people. It's good to give people things.

It's good to protect people's life. It's good to be nice to people. But there's a higher love.

You could teach people not to die, and you could teach people to become the person who teaches people, you see? In essence, in a Christian context, for us, higher love means the attempt to become Christ, you see? And that somehow got missing, you see?

That's not been communicated. You don't go to a church and they say, you will be the next Christ, on countless worlds, you know? It even sounds like egotistical or maniacal or whatever you call it.

Egomaniac? Yeah. But in Buddhism, it's very much assumed that that's what you're working for, you know?

You will. You have the capacity. Every human being, everyone in this room has the capacity to turn into a being who teaches millions and billions of people at once on countless planets.

You have that capacity. That is hardwired into you from birth. You have this capacity.

So how do you realize it? How do you reach that capacity? How do you get there?

And that's love, you see? That's ultimate love. Big difference, right?

Big difference. One thing to be nice to people. One thing to hug people.

One thing to give people food or housing or things like that. But if you could teach them not to die, you know? If you could stand on a billion planets at once and help a billion people at once, it's your, A, you have that capacity, you have that seed.

Two, it's your destiny. It's what you were meant to do. It's what you must do.

It's what you were brought here for. It's why you were born. And you just didn't hear anybody say it yet, okay?

Karmic reasons, okay? Like, either I'm crazy or I'm right, okay? I mean, it's pretty either one or the other, okay?

No, really. Either I'm like a little crazy, benignly crazy, okay? Or, I claim that you can have a direct experience.

And we talked about with yoga, opening your heart chakra. You can have a direct experience of the future. If you do heart yoga or any kind of good yoga, and you open this chakra, you will have an experience one day, in this life, before you die.

You will have an experience that you are looking at the face of countless beings on countless planets at the same moment, because your mind has this power. And you just didn't develop it yet. You need teaching.

And you need to learn the instructions on how to do it. But if you get that, and you practice it sweetly, quietly, gently, modestly in your own home, then one day, one morning, you will be sitting there, the heart chakra will open, you will see countless beings at once. You will look into the face of countless beings at once, and you will know, you will see yourself helping them, serving them, taking care of them.

Countless beings. That will happen to you. It's coming to you.

It's what you were meant to do here. You weren't meant to eat, sleep, poop and die. You know, no, this is not a life.

This is not a life. You were meant to open this heart chakra, you were meant to see that, and then very quickly you will reach that. So, it's very different, right, from how Christianity has been presented to us over the last few hundred years.

You know, it's not like you could go into a church and say, you will be Christ. Right? But Jesus said, ego epa, theo este, you know, you are gods.

You are gods. They are accusing him, what do you think you are, a god? He says, your own book says, we are gods, we are all gods.

You know, we are all meant to be that. You know, and I think the teaching got a little lost maybe. No, no, and I'm not criticizing.

All I'm saying is that, if it could come back, right, then that would be one more reason for that teaching to be healthy. And it would bring people, because everybody knows they are supposed to do that. Deep down inside, that's why you like the Frodo movie, Lord of the Rings, that's why you like that movie.

That's why all the movies end that way. Because you want to be that. You want to be the little Frodo guy who saves the world.

No, you're born to do that. And that's why they keep making movies like that. That's why they are the most popular movies.

You have it in your heart, you know you want to be that. And I think it got lost, okay. Last thing to say, why did it get lost?

Karma. Everything is from karma. Everything is from karma.

Did some evil bishop of the church in the 13th century erase those lines from the Bible? No, they are there, they are still there in the Bible. If anything gets lost in the world, it's my fault.

If I live in a world, and what Jesus said, we are all gods. If that teaching gets lost, if it's sitting there in the Bible, century after century, but no one ever talks about it, whose fault is it? It's not that church, okay.

It's me. It's my fault. So how do I fix it?

What's the karma to fix that? Just think about it. Just think about it.

And just watch during the day, as you go through your day, as you meet people. God, this guy might be an angel. And this lady, she might be an angel.

How do I know? What do I know? You know, this says in the Bible, you know, and the karma of watching, you know, the karma of just allowing the possibility that the person sitting next to you right now is a divine being sent to help you.

Okay? Just admitting the possibility is the karma that makes it happen. Okay?

It's very interesting. So the only people we have to blame for that teaching getting lost is me. Me.

The way to fix that church, the way to fix that world is just to think, just right now, we'll stop. The person next to you could be a divine being who has been assigned to you. Now, to sit next to you tonight, okay, in the central office up there, you know, they were assigned to sit next to you and teach you something tonight.

And just to believe it, Jesus says to Martha, her husband has just died, right? And she said, it's Lazarus, right? And Jesus went out of town for the weekend, and Lazarus is one of his best friends, and Lazarus dies on the weekend.

So Martha's all upset. She called Jesus back. And she says, oh Jesus, this wouldn't have happened if you had stayed in town on the weekend.

This wouldn't have happened, you know? He would still be alive, you know? And he says, oh, don't talk to me like that.

But if he's alive or dead, if he believes, if a person believes, they don't have to die. If a person really believes, they don't have to die, you know? I'm telling you that.

They don't have to die. And then he says, what is it? Pistures tuta.

Say, pistures tuta in Greek. It means, do you believe me? No, he says to her, do you believe me?

That's his last words to her, do you believe me? And then she believes, you see? And the karma of that, Lazarus is like, he's wrapped up in the death shroud, right?

He's all wrapped up. He's like, get this off of me, what's going on? After three days, he's trying to get up, and he's all wrapped up, and he's like, what's going on, you know?

And she's like, and he says, you made it happen, not me. See, it's karma, it's raw karma of the wife raises the husband, you see? Raw karma.

So if you do the same karma, if you believe, you don't have to believe 100%, okay? You can believe 50%, okay? There's 50% chance the person next to me is a divine being, okay?

Then the karma of that makes it happen, you see? Karma is that powerful. The karma makes it happen, okay?

So, that's real love, to teach people who they are, okay? Oh, I'm sorry you went so late, but it's fun, right? Pistules, okay?

Pistules. That happens, karma, okay? Tomorrow we'll talk about how karma works, okay?

Why did Lazarus get up? You could call it that, alright? It's karma, and it's perfectly reasonable.

We'll do a short prayer, okay? Give away the good karma.