Живой ламрим: как жизнь Кхена Ринпоче отразила учение о ступенях пути (2005, Аризона), занятие 8

[Говорящий 1]
So we're going to continue where we've been going through delam, path to bliss. We've been, we just finished the first method for developing bodhicitta, which is the seven step cause and effect method, right, and we finished that. And in each class before we do the actual next lamrim, the next step of the path, we've been talking about Ken Rinpoche's life.

And I thought the theory of that is that it's one thing to read a lamrim or to hear a lamrim, but it's another thing to watch someone do a lamrim with their whole life, you know. So, I've just been recounting stories of how I watched him practice a lamrim, right, and I think it's, I don't know, I think in a way it's a better lamrim than any other lamrim. So these are just according to my, you know, my filter, right, like I saw him in a certain way.

So we're up, in Ken Rinpoche's lamrim, we're up to a different place, like we're staggering it because we want to, it's a review really, it's a trick, right, of the last lamrim we were on, which is the steps of the path for people of medium capacity shared with people of medium capacity. And really there's two broad subjects there. One is thinking about the suffering of all of samsara, right, not just the lower births, but you want to get out of all of samsara.

And then the second huge section of that part is korwaya jugrim means, how did we get here in the first place? You see what I mean? Like, once you want to get out of all of samsara, you have to think, well, how did I get here in the first place?

You know, so I thought I'd switch them. I thought today I would talk about Ken Rinpoche's practice of how did I get here? You see, how'd you get here in the first place, which is called korwaya jugrim, how you got stuck in samsara.

And then I thought tomorrow we'd talk about how he implemented that knowledge in his own life. And just as far as medium scope, yeah, person of medium scope. So really the teaching on how we got stuck here that Ken Rinpoche most impressed on us was the teaching of the Wheel of Life.

And I just thought you might like to hear about how it happened, how he taught it to us, okay? We were, I don't know, he had me build some shelves. If you know, it's where Jampa used to stay, in the back room there.

And he had me build some shelves there. I was always building something. And I had, I even had a whole outfit and a big tool kit that I wore around my waist.

And you know, I had all these. Then he would say, I need this. Okay, okay, give me three days, you know.

And we didn't have any money at all. So I made the, I bought some steel bars and, you know, banged them with a hammer and made them into, you know, those brackets. Yeah, I didn't have any money, nothing.

We had no money. And so I had to make the brackets. And then I made all these bookshelves for him.

And then he said, I have one trunk that I brought from India. It's down in the basement. Go get it.

You know, it's this old steel trunk. You know, if you've been to India, the steel trunks. And so I bought it up.

And then he digs out all these, these little cheap pamphlets. They look like this big, you know. And they're in Tibetan, you know.

So I'm looking at them and I'm going through them. And they're like, first grade reader, second grade reader, third grade reader, fourth grade reader. You know, I'm like, what's this Rinpoche?

And he said, oh, I he was asked by His Holiness to write textbooks for the Tibetan schools. And so he and, we call him Nyagri Khentrul. They call him something else in the United States.

The Lama in Ann Arbor. Gyalek Rinpoche. Yeah, his real name is Nyagri Khentrul.

He's a reincarnation of a high, of a high abbot. In America, they call him Gyalek Rinpoche. But he and Rinpoche, and one other person, I think, you know, they were assigned to live in Dharamsala when it was only a couple of small huts and stuff, like this place.

And and they wrote these textbooks, you know, together. And so, so I'm going through them and, and they're really nice because they are like, very appropriate for my level of Tibetan. You see, they're first grade readers.

They're second grade reader. The third grade reader had a little bit of script in it, you know, like, and you could, you know, if you've just started script, you could figure it out. And it was really, they were really nice.

And actually, he ended up teaching us at the beginning from those. And I remember, he had thrown in a lot of logic into those, like Chi Chedak was in there. And Tagrek, basic logic, and he had thrown all this pretty heavy stuff in there, but he had cut it down to like three pages each or something.

And, and each book had 10 or 11 subjects in it. And, but he would like drastically cut them down to two or three pages. And so, by the way, the next generation cut them all out.

All of his, all of his philosophy stuff got cut out. Because nobody could teach it. They had a problem teaching teachers, training teachers.

And he spent, His Holiness once sent him a letter, would you donate some money? We're trying to raise $20,000 for teacher training. So he just wrote out a check and sent it that same hour, you know, for teacher training, but they couldn't catch up.

So then, one day, so I put these books up on the shelf, and they sat up there. And then every day, I'd go and look at some more of them, and they were really cool. And then this one, I couldn't figure out, and it was called Udayana Dokja.

Say Udayana? Dokja. Dokja means the story of someone's life story, like, it's a kind of literature in the Kangyur and Tengyur.

It's like a Jataka tale. It's like the story of someone's past lives. And Udayana was a king in India.

And then I got this one, and I was trying to read it, and I was like, Rinpoche, I can't read this. This is weird, you know. This doesn't have anything to do with logic.

It's nothing to do with philosophy. It's just some kind of story or something. Why'd you write a book about a story, you know?

It's so unlike him to write. There's no fiction in Tibet, you see, very little. I think out of about 10,000 books, there might be two books of fiction, you know.

So I'm like, why'd you write a, what's a story, you know? And he said, don't worry, we'll get to that. We'll get to that, you know.

And he had this plan, you know. He almost saw it like, if you were in a tantric mode, he wrote those for us, you see. He wrote them 10, 20 years before he got, 10 years before he got to America, he wrote them.

And so they were just ready for us when he got there. And that was our level, these little things, you know, pamphlets. So then one day he said, well, okay, now we'll do Udayana, you know.

And so we sat down, and this was in the rookie class. Rookie class was Wednesday night. This is for the people who didn't know any Tibetan and you know, couldn't commit themselves to anything at all.

And he called it rookie class because he liked baseball rookies. And so he said, well, we'll do a rookie class. And I remember, like, Chuni La's brother came, Pete, this big construction worker guy, and stuff like that.

People like Mark Chiarelli, he was a postman. And people who just, you know, they're not going to be a scholar. They just wanted to come and hear a little bit.

So they came, and and we started, and he started, and it was just this dumb story. And he's telling this story about King Udayana and King Bimbisara, and they are two kings in ancient India. And I don't know why, but they start sending each other gifts or something.

They're two adjacent kingdoms in India. So Udayana sends Bimbisara a gift, you know. Like, I don't know, like a horse, you know.

So then Bimbisara is under pressure to give something better, you see, which is the custom in India. So he sends back an elephant, you know, which is worth a lot of money in old India, you know. Big deal.

It's like a Sherman tank or something. And and then Udayana is like, oh God, what do I send him now? You know, and he sends him a jewel, you know, like this precious jewel.

And then Bimbisara retaliates with, I remember there's these boxes within boxes of jewels. Like you open the box, there's one jewel, there's another box. You open it, you know, like Russian dolls.

And this went on and on, and they kept sending stuff. Finally, Bimbisara, no, Udayana sends Bimbisara like a priceless jewel. There's nothing, there's no possession he had, anybody has, which is worth more, you know.

Then Bimbisara is all nervous and, you know, I can't possibly repay this. So he tells his ministers, you, you know, dig up stuff in the kingdom, see if you can find anything better, you know. And they went everywhere, and finally someone came to Bimbisara and said, there's this guy, this monk teaching in your kingdom nowadays.

His name is Gautama, you know, and he's really smart, you know. He seems really smart. Let's go ask him, like, your highness should come properly to this Buddhist master and, you know, could you help me like something more valuable than the most valuable jewel in India?

And so they went to Lord Buddha, and he wasn't a Buddhist, Bimbisara, and he asked Lord Buddha, you know, is there anything, like, better than the most precious jewel? So Lord Buddha says, yeah. And he says, well, what?

He says, a picture of me, you know. And he's like, what? He's like, just have your painters draw me, send it to King Udayana.

That's the most precious thing in the world, you know. And so Bimbisara says, okay. And he gets like ten artists, and he gets some canvas and all the paints, and he sets everything up in a big tent, and he says, okay, paint him.

You know, let me know when you're done. So he goes back to the palace, you know. And then, I don't know, like, two weeks later, he calls up.

This is like my Thangka in India. He says, I want a progress report. And they say, well, we didn't do anything yet, you know.

And he says, what? You know, I told you to finish it as fast as you could, you know. Udayana's going to think I'm a schmuck.

He won't give him anything better, you know. So he said, well, there's a problem, you know. And they said, what?

They said, every time the painters look at him, they just... And they can't paint, you see. They can't move.

They're just like, wow. You know, and they can't paint him, you know. And it was this big problem, you know.

Then we got to this thing in the text, which is really complicated. I'm like, Rinpoche, I don't understand what's going on here. Something about a shadow, and something about a light, and a sheet, you know.

What is this, you know? And he says, no, like, the Buddha tells the... Vimassara goes to complain to the Buddha that he's so exquisite that the painters can't paint him, you know.

So Buddha says, yeah, that's a problem. And he says, tell you what, put a big sheet up, and then I'll stand on the other side, and then put a strong lamp behind me. And at least they can get started, because they can just trace my silhouette, you see what I mean?

And so they did, and they traced them. They traced him, and then they, you know, they filled him in, and they succeeded in making this thangka. This is a Wheel of Life thangka with a history.

What's my... What do you call those things that you put a painting on? Where's my easel?

He held this up in Singapore in 1999, then he held it up in Singapore in... Where was that? Most recently.

[Говорящий 2]
Tucson.

[Говорящий 1]
Was it Tucson?

[Говорящий 2]
Yeah, it was Tucson.

[Говорящий 1]
Oh, yeah, yeah. Didn't do it in L.A. It's a really fine one. So this is the total amount that was painted.

I mean, it was bigger, okay? And then Lord Buddha said, well, you know, let's just throw in some more stock, you know? So then he tells them how to paint the Wheel of Life.

And he designed it, he tells them where to paint everything, and then he said... He gives them this verse at the bottom. And then it's a famous verse, okay?

And he tells them how to do it and everything. And they do it. And then they send it to King Udayana.

Vimasara sends it to King Udayana. And... You're going to get tired, but that's okay.

Is that all right? For a while. Okay.

And King Udayana opens the box, he unrolls it, he gets it. He goes into deep meditation, he sees emptiness directly, you know? He becomes an Arya.

It's like that. He like... Like that.

It's this unbelievable story. He just opens the box, he looks at it, he gets it. He sits down in deep meditation, he becomes an Arya, you know?

And it's like... It's like, wow, you know? And so that's how this painting was painted.

And this is the story... Korway Jugrim is from 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, right? And it's a beautiful teaching.

It's a very profound... It's difficult. It's a difficult teaching.

And we'd like to do it right. So Barney has arranged... I don't know.

In Texas somewhere. The other side of the Rio. And I think Austin, I don't know.

But whatever you guys decide. We're going to do it in the next year or so or something like that, right? I know.

So we're going to do it. We'll go through the whole thing. We'll go through the whole explanation of it.

And that's what Rinpoche did. He took us through it very slowly. I think it took like a year or two years.

And then he revealed that he had a slightly longer version of the pamphlet. After we were done, we said, can we translate this and make a book out of it? And he said, well, here's a little bit more detail on it.

And every time we finished it, he'd say, well, here's a little more detail on it. And, oh, Udayana's story is actually in a sutra. It's the Avadana Sataka.

It's the Hundred Dokjas. And, oh, you should get the whole version. So we went to Columbia.

We got the whole version. And then he said, oh, and by the way, there's a monastic textbook about the Twelve Links. And he got a hold of an abbreviated version.

And then we said, well, you know, Rinpoche, frankly, is there a longer one? Because we should just get to it now. Because it kept getting delayed.

And then he said, yeah, there is, but it's missing. It's missing. Like we have it in the monastery, but it's missing.

It was burnt. All the copies were burnt during the invasion of Tibet. So we couldn't get it.

And we had to go with the short one. And then I remember, that was before personal computers. And we didn't have any money at all, so we had to typeset it.

You heard this story. It's funny. But anyway, so I called every newspaper in the county.

And I said, can we use your typesetting machine? And they were like, no, no, no, you can't use it. Because I said, I can only come at night to use it.

And they said, no, no, that's when we do our newspaper. So finally I called this place and said, yeah, yeah, come down Highway 9. And they said, come down and you can use it at night.

So I came down there. And it's this huge, it's a word processor, but it takes half the room up. That was in those days.

That's what it was like. And they taught me how to use it. And I'm sitting there.

And then I'm looking around. I'm typing out Udayana's story. And I'm looking around.

I see there's all this pornography laying around. And then I realized this is a publisher for pornography. That's why they're not busy at night.

And so I was trying to type it. And they had the daytime television shows going on at the same time, like loud. And I just remember having this headache and trying to finish it and working on it.

And it would come out in this film strip. And then you had to take it to someplace else. And they would blow it up.

And then that was the first book we ever used the computer Tibetan for. That was the very first book we ever used computerized Tibetan. Then later, John Brady's crew, they found the copy of the longer one.

And they typed it in. And we published that and all the other missing books. And that was the first book we ever printed in India from the computer project.

And we sent 500 copies to Tibet also.