Живой ламрим: как жизнь Кхена Ринпоче отразила учение о ступенях пути (2005, Аризона), занятие 9

[Говорящий 1]
So we're talking about Ken Rinpoche and his practice of the Lamrim. And we're on the subject of how did he practice the steps of the path for people of medium capacity, shared with people of medium capacity. And yesterday we pretty much went through how he taught the Wheel of Life, right?

Which is korwaya jugrim. How did samsara start? How do we get into samsara?

What's the mechanism by which samsara gets started and then we get stuck in it, right? So we've covered that mechanism like three or four different times. Like one is in the Wheel of Life, right?

And dambo marikpa. Say dambo. It's like a mantra in my head.

Rinpoche did it for two years, right? Dambo marikpa. So you don't still have that thangka, do you?

Is there one in here? Oh, where? Try to pull it out, okay?

But the first link is not understanding things, right? And we get that in... Yeah, this is one of those sort of...

But anyway, it's mostly for tourists, I think. But still the twelve limbs are still there. But here is the first link is not understanding the world, right?

Avidya in Sanskrit, marikpa in Tibetan, right? And then, because there's a blind man with a stick. He doesn't look...

Actually, he doesn't even look like that anymore. But anyway, nipa duje ki le is somebody making pots, making fresh karma. And then we skip over to gepa sepa gupa lemba different kinds of grasping at karma, not understanding even the karma which causes chupasipa, the lady's pregnant, it gets...

What do you call it? It gets armed, like a nuclear weapon. It's armed.

It gets armed. At number two, the karma is still just planted. At number ten, it's been armed by misunderstanding karma.

And then it can trigger all the bad events of your life, chuchipa kiyawa, chunipa gashi, birth and aging and death, okay? Eleven and twelve. So, we've had it in this thangka.

You can roll it up if you want. We've had it in this thangka. So, we've had it in Maitreya's steps, how we get in trouble.

We misunderstand the donut. Is it a Tim Horton, by the way? Just for...

Is it a Tim Horton? I guess it's not. Like, if you misunderstand the donut, you know, and...

You know somebody else in the room wants it, probably. Then if you misunderstood it, you would eat it yourself, right? If you misunderstood the donut, you would eat it yourself, right?

And so, ignorance... We have it in the third place. We had it in the Yoga Sutra, too, right?

It was in the Yoga Sutra, right? So, first you misunderstand the donut. There's a long story.

You come into this life with misunderstanding. You're born with it. It becomes active in the womb, already in the womb.

You start misperceiving things. And then the third one in the Yoga Sutra is asmita. You're like in the donut shop.

You can smell the thing. You know, it's your favorite maple. It doesn't look like it's been here for three weeks.

And... No, and you want to eat it, right? You want to take it and eat it.

And you know somebody else might want it, right? So, then avidya gets very strong. Under the influence of desire, avidya gets very strong.

And then you decide, I'll just take it and eat it, right? Okay. And then you eat it and you make karma.

And because of that, you go into a downward cycle, right? You go into a downward cycle. That downward cycle is called samsara.

Okay. So... Or with money, you see?

It's the same if there's one donut, only one donut left. And it's the same thing if there's only so much money, right? Like, a lot of us are financially stressed, right?

You almost have to be to come here for five weeks at a time because you can't have a normal existence, right? And then people come to me and they ask me, like, should I get a job or shouldn't I get a job? Should I...

They're giving me this thing, you know, and the two bad choices thing. And then I was thinking, how would Ken Rinpoche, with his knowledge of the Wheel of Life, right, with his knowledge of the mechanism by which things work, once you understand the mechanism, korwaya jugrim, how a downward cycle starts, then what do you do? And his natural reaction throughout his life was...

He didn't concentrate on these two choices, right? He didn't concentrate on should I take an opportunity to get some money or shouldn't I take an opportunity to get some money? He just gave money.

You see what I mean? Like, he was working on a... He was operating at the level of the mechanism and not at the level of the apparent results, right?

And that's a whole... That's a whole thing. He was operating just by his instinct, you know, by his training.

He didn't, like, get up and say, you know, I'm just... Don't you see I'm giving away money and then I don't have to worry about money and maybe I get a stipend from somebody which he got from the temple or maybe I just wait and see if anyone gives me money. But he didn't get up and say, you should have a job or you shouldn't have a job.

You see, he didn't... That's all part of samsara. That's samsaric thinking, you know, that dualism, this thing, you know, which bad choice do you want?

Should I have a job or shouldn't I have a job? It's not the question. You see, he was operating at the level of the mechanism as far as his income.

He just gave away everything he could. You see what I mean? He just constantly gave away as much as he could.

You know, within his other responsibilities he had, not irresponsibly, and not sloppily, and not without careful thought, and not giving away other people's money. Not like having huge bills and then giving away money. You see what I mean?

That's not your money. Not giving away your wife or your husband's money without asking them. Money that you really have, which you have really available to you and that you haven't...

how do you say... defaulted on your promises to other people. If you have, then you can't give away money right now.

You defaulted to somebody. That's not your money. You're stealing it.

You see what I mean? So, you know, as far as you have honestly earned money, then you give it away. And he just constantly did that almost naturally.

You see, just as a natural... where he was operating at the level of the mechanism and not these two bad choices. And then the choices will manifest themselves.

You see what I mean? Then you'll know. Like, if you give away money, if you're truly generous with everything, then one of these two will manifest.

You see? It'll either be a job or people will give you money. You see what I mean?

It'll manifest. There'll be a house for you to stay in. You won't have to pay for it.

Or you'll get an offer for a good job and it's the right thing to do. And you take it and you make more money and you help people with it. So it's not like, don't come and ask me, should I have a boyfriend?

Shouldn't I have a boyfriend? Should I quit my job? Shouldn't I quit my job?

These kind of questions. You should follow the six perfections. You should, as far as finances, you should be generous.

And don't forget that generosity is a mental state. It's not how much you manage to give away. Like if you're not comfortable with it mentally, it doesn't work so good.

If you're just like, oh, Geshe-la said I had to give my money away. Okay. And then like this, or he said the way to get a partner is to respect other people's partners.

Okay. You know, like that. Not like that.

You have to get it mentally and then you have to do it joyfully. The main thing is to do it joyfully mentally. Then the rest will manifest itself.

So it's just you, you just automatically, you just want to give. You see what I mean? And you're just happy to give.

And it's not like formal acts of giving. You're like giving tea. You're like giving a place to sit.

You're like moving your knee over so the other person can have a place for their knee. You're just constantly giving. And then that state of mind is generosity.

And then it manifests itself. You see, people say, should I do yoga or should I do tai chi? It doesn't matter.

Yoga doesn't make you healthy. Yoga doesn't do anything. Everything is a placebo.

Everything is neutral. If you take care of other people's health, yoga will manifest itself in your life. You'll meet a yoga teacher.

You'll click with them. You'll love them. And then you'll do nice yoga and it will make you healthy.

You see what I mean? It's not that the yoga teacher made you healthy and it's not that the yoga made you healthy. And yoga can't make you healthy if you don't serve other people.

Yoga can't do anything. You'll hurt yourself. So work on the level of the mechanism.

You see, that's what... Ken Robichaud was working at the level of the deeper causes. And then the rest will just take care of itself.

You see what I mean? The rest just takes care of itself. So don't get caught in this two bad choices trick.

Don't like... People come to you and they're all agonized. Should I do this or should I do that?

When your mind is in a state of should I do this or should I do that, look, you're somewhere wrong. Something's going wrong. If you have these agonizing or some decision, something's wrong with your thinking.

Lord Buddha, there's like... Say, Lungma Ten? Chushi.

These are 14 famous questions that people asked him. And then he refused to answer. Lungma Ten means refuse to answer.

14, Chushi. And people would come up to him and say, does samsara have an end or doesn't it have an end? And he'd say, don't ask me that.

I can't answer you. Why? Because they were opposing...

In their mind they were opposing these two things. These two things. They were thinking of this one in a self-existent way and they were thinking of this choice in a self-existent way.

So he said, I'm not answering you. Then other people asked him, does samsara have an end? He said, of course it has an end.

Because they weren't thinking of itself. They were working on the level of the mechanism. So if he felt like the student was giving him two self-existent choices, he refused to say anything.

Did he break a bodhisattva vow? We'll talk about that. So I'm just saying on a personal level, like Ken Rinpoche, he never stressed about money.

And there were days when we didn't have any money. The first time I opened his refrigerator, it was empty. He had just served tea and some refreshments to like, I don't know, there were ten students there.

These were the early classes. His house wasn't built yet. We were in the kitchen around the table.

And he just kind of opened the door halfway and got up. What I found out later was the last milk and the last food that he had. And he was, you know, these Americans were all eating it up.

And then they left. And I said, can I help clean up? And then I opened the fridge and there's nothing there.

And he just didn't worry about it. You see, because he's just thinking. Then he's like saying, oh, we've got to send this money to, at the time it was Varanasi, Sarnath.

And there's five monks there. We have to help them, you know. But he didn't like stress about, should I, people invited him all the money, all the time to go talk for money.

And he just refused. He said, no, I'm teaching people here. And then he got an offer from the government to translate Tibetan stuff that had been sent to, what's that Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, during the war, during World War II, and Truman, correspondence that had been sent.

And he just said, I don't have time, you know. And he got offers all the time. He got offers to be a professor here and there.

He just, he just, he wasn't thinking that he needed the money like that. He would just give it, you see what I mean. So you have to, so did Geshe-la say that you should have a job or you shouldn't have a job?

It's not, don't ask me that question. Should you take this apartment or should you take this apartment? It will manifest itself.

Just take care of other people, you see what I mean. Work at the level of the mechanism and then the rest will manifest itself, you see what I mean. The rest will come.

Don't work at the level of apparent results or something like that. You have to garden, right. He was a gardener because he understood the mechanism of samsara.

Last thing about that is, Christy and I have been calling it Opposite Day. We talked about it in Tucson. In Tucson?

But her friend came up, her high school friend came up with a song called, high school or college, I don't know, a song called Opposite Day. And then we kind of took that word in a different way which meant, in general, when you're faced with a difficult thing, like someone comes up to you and hurts you or someone is taking something from you or someone is insulting you or something like that, someone's treating you badly, then you should do the opposite. Opposite from your natural reaction.

Identify your natural reaction which is the one that got you into samsara, which is the one that got you in the desire realm, in this rebirth. It's the reaction you've been following for billions of years and just do the opposite. Just do the opposite.

Someone disses you, say something nice back to them. Turn the other cheek. Someone hurts you physically, ask them if they'd like to punch you on the other side of your face.

Turn the other cheek. Someone takes something from you or tries to take something from you, ask them if they'd like more. Jesus said, right, someone asks you for your coat, give them your coat and your, I don't know, and your cloak or something like that.

It's called opposite day. It's just reacting the opposite way. Sometimes we have a joke, we call it karma suicide.

Maybe it will become, I think it will catch on as a term. Karma suicide. It means like someone's trying to take a position that you want at work and with a little bit of effort you could take it.

You could wrest it from them. So what's karma suicide? Going to the boss and explaining to them why they should give it to this other person.

You see what I mean? And it looks like the stupidest thing you could do. Someone's trying to take something from you and just go to them, thank you, you're so great, here, would you like this also?

You see what I mean? And the idea is like, it'll feel like suicide. It'll feel like giving up the thing you most want and do it.

Do it. And amazing things will happen. Amazing things will happen because you're working at the level of the mechanism and not at the level of apparent things.

You're setting up the future. Like you don't eat the last, that's the idea of giving away this donut, which I really want. You see what I mean?

No, it's like, that's the idea of making sure other people get it. It's like karma suicide. It's suicide.

It seems like the stupidest thing you could do. And we're so stupid that the stupidest thing we think you could do is probably the smartest thing you could do. Get it?

We're so karmically stupid, we're so mechanism stupid that we respond in the exact way that would hurt us. Yeah? To eat a donut?

Then you have to examine your motivation very carefully and I think you have to overcompensate. So okay, the person doesn't seem to have the skills to take the position that I would want, but overcompensate. Generally you have to overcompensate because of your blindness.

So you have a certain degree of blindness. So in deciding whether or not you should go to the boss and talk them into letting this other person have the job, you have to like 50% overdo it because you have a certain blindness that's created by your desire. Like, you know, it's only one donut, so I couldn't share it with everybody.

So why start a fight, you know? If I just eat the whole thing myself. You see what I mean?

And then your blindness biases you. So you've got to give, there has to be a blindness bias compensation. You know?

And it's hard. It's hard. Okay?

So that's all. That was Rinpoche's, that was his thing about money. You see what I mean?

And the way he used the mechanism. He got it, right? He understood the mechanism.

And he didn't, I never heard him once stress about money. I never heard him once mention it. And there were days when we didn't have anything.

We had just nothing, you know? And he never even mentioned it, you know? He's just like, oh, we've got to give this away.

That was his natural reaction to not having enough, is to make sure you give more. You see what I mean? So it's hard.

It's against our whole natural instincts. Don't trust those instincts, right?