Живой ламрим: как жизнь Кхена Ринпоче отразила учение о ступенях пути (2005, Аризона), занятие 11

[Говорящий 1]
Okay, here we go. We were talking about kinds of bias or prejudice or discrimination, which if you could remove, you would be achieving Master Shantideva's Dakshinmyamje. And then we were kind of saying how it seems like Ken Rinpoche had removed them very well, and that I think that at the root of that was his perception of people as his mother, right?

So it's not something I could judge. He didn't go around saying, oh, I see this person as my mother, but based on his lack of prejudice or bias, it seems like he had a very deep ability for that. So I just made a random list.

It's in no order. I just like to tell stories about him. So here we go.

I think one kind of bias that a lot of people do is physical appearance. We judge people on their physical appearance. We tend to want to...

We're more attracted to people who are physically handsome or pretty. We want to be around them more. And then if someone is particularly unattractive, we sort of find reasons not to be.

And oftentimes all these kinds of discrimination are not conscious. They're unconscious, right? They're not conscious.

As far as physical appearance, I remember one day... I was building his house. The story is really sad.

I was really jealous of Art, right? Because Art got more attention than me from Rinpoche. And it was just the two of us mainly in the house.

So Rinpoche came down one day and said, well, we're going to India. I said, great. He said, no, me and Art are going to India.

I'm like, oh. So I'm really mad. And then he says, well, but I have something for you to do too.

I said, what? He said, you can finish the house while we're gone. And I want it done by the time I get back.

And I'm like, I'm supposed to build a house for you and Art. Yeah. And, okay.

And so I'm... We finished it, pretty much finished it before I got back. And then I had still some painting left to do.

And I was up on this ladder. No one came to help. So to get up on a third-story ladder, at the top of the...

If you know his house, I was painting the eaves underneath, with no one to hold the ladder. And so I would get all these concrete blocks and set them around the ladder. And then I'd climb up.

I was really scared of the ladder. And I'd get up there. And it was this extension ladder.

And you get it extended as far as you can. Then you have to reach as far as you can with a roller. And the paint's dripping in your face.

And then you forgot the cloth. So you have to take all the stuff in your arms, go back down the ladder, get the cloth, go back up the ladder. There's nobody else there, you know.

So then this... Rinpoche's up in the window. He's looking out, you know.

And his room, you know. And I'm like reaching for the last eave in this... This comic guy comes, Mongolian, right?

And he was like... I don't know. You've got to understand the Mongolians were...

The ones who survived World War II were the ones who jumped over the concentration camp fences. They got out of concentration camps. The ones who came to New Jersey were the ones who survived either Siberia or the German camps.

So they were like... A lot of them had a lot of mental problems, you know, like from the war, from seeing so much stuff. And kids, kids in the neighborhood, people who were in their 40s grew up in the trenches.

Their parents were taken as slave laborers by the Nazis. And they were required to dig the trenches. They traveled with the army.

Women and men and children. And they dug trenches for them. So these kids grew up, you know, collecting shell casings and playing in the trenches in the middle of World War II.

And so they were really like hurt in their minds. A lot of alcohol, a lot of drunks. So anyway, I'm up there and this...

One of the craziest comics comes up. And he's like, this is... I don't know if you know...

I won't say. It's his father. One of the people used to come to this class.

So the comics were this fierce tribe of Mongolians that got left in Russia after Genghis Khan went home. And comic, some people think it means got left behind. And they did...

You know, they were like going to settle there. And then the empire fell apart, but they couldn't get home. So they were 300 years in Russia.

And so there's this group called the Cossacks. And these are like the Kung Fu masters of Russia. You know, they're the elite bodyguards of the Tsar, of the king of Russia, right?

So there's this elite Christian brotherhood, you see, called the Cossacks. And you couldn't get in unless you dueled somebody with a sword and beat them, you know? Like, that's how you got in.

So... But they accepted the comics because they were such good fighters. So comics were eligible to join.

And they guarded the southern realm of Russia in the area of the Black Sea. So this guy had been through the initiation and he had this scar, like from here to here. And his face was like in two parts, you know, like this.

He survived this duel and he won, but he got his face all cut in half. And he's like this ugly, really ugly. And because he had gone through his whole life that way since he was 20, he was a very bitter and angry man.

And so I'm up there doing this and he walks up, you know, and he says, Oh my! I said, Yeah, yeah. I want to go to the store.

Take me to the store. And I'm like, you know, not only none of the community helps me, they're like, I'm up here. And he's like down there.

And he's like, Take me to the store right now, you know. And I'm like, and I look at Rinpoche. He's like in the window, staring at me, you know.

And I'm like, second story window, right? And I'm like, you know, and he says, Take him. Get down and take him, you know.

And I'm like, Oh, it's the guy. You know, and he's like, you know, he's like, and he's like, Yeah. You know, and I couldn't believe it, you know, and I said, Okay.

And I closed the paint, and I, you know, washed my hands, and he's like, Hurry up. I got to get to the store, you know. And I went down, and we were like the taxi for everybody.

We did everybody's social security work in the town, and we did all the taxi, we put them in the nursing homes and stuff like that. And so he made me go. And he didn't feel any prejudice against, nobody in the community would talk to this guy.

He lived in this house. He never came out. He locked the doors, and he never came out.

And Rinpoche was his friend, and he'd say, You know, I'll take care of you. There's a thing, also his dogs, you know, like he would have a dog, and we would buy him, me and Maria Montenegro drove like four or five hours to go to the special kennel of the movie stars, and they had purebred, certificated, plaza apsos, you know, like with big papers, like legal, it's a legal thing to buy them. You have to have a lawyer to buy all these dogs.

No, really. And so we got him one. It's like the most beautiful, the most perky, little dog, you know.

And then they get old, right? He went through three of them, right? And when they got old, I mean one of them, the first one, her hair fell out, and she got all mangy, and she started crapping in the house, and she stank, and, you know, but he didn't see her any differently.

You see, I mean, I always think about that. And he would bathe her, like he would bathe her and comb her, you know, what was left of the hair, and then he would tear the food apart with his fingers and feed it to her, because her teeth were all rotten, and he didn't see her as being less cute than the puppy on the first day. You see, I mean, it was really weird to me, because we grew up with this expendable dog thing, you know, like when they get ugly, when you need to care for them a lot, then you just put them to sleep, right?

There's a euphemism, right? Put them to sleep. You murder them.

And, but he took care of her, and then the last day, he's like, he gives her a bath, he's got her in his arms, he's like petting her, and she passes in his arms, you see? She passed away in his arms. And then he just, and we had a big funeral service, we went out back, there was a big thing, and he buried her, and he did all these, he did it like he would do for a person.

So he didn't have this thing about, if you're pretty, you know, I want to be your friend, and if you're ugly, I don't want to be your friend. He didn't have this bias, you see? I was thinking about affiliation.

Monks are very affiliated. I don't think you have any conception of what a Tibetan monastery is like. Like, Westerners just don't survive there.

There's the Densa. There's three Densa. Say Densa.

Densa means a major monastery. That's the word in Tibetan for a monastery. They don't call it anything else, really.

It's called a Densa. So Saradaigbung and Ganden are the three Densa. Densa means like seat of learning, major seat of learning, and there's three Densas.

So there's a Densa, it might have 3,000 monks. And then there's a Datsang. Say Datsang.

Datsang means a college, a division of the... So Densa of Sera had three Datsangs, Sera Che, Sera Me, and then Gyupa Datsang, the tantric college, which has been destroyed. There's no survivors of the...

I kind of like to think that we're the tantric college of Sera, you know? So then you're in Sera Me or Sera Che, and there's a green line in the monastery, you know? Like Sera Che's houses might be over here, and Sera Me's houses might be over here, and there might be one Sera Me house over here, but you never ever cross this line, you see?

You never go to Sera Che. You know what I mean? I mean you might go to drop off something or something, but you always come back to your side.

Like the monastery is in one compound, right? I mean it's all in one piece of land. And some houses are mixed in other territory, you know?

But you don't go there unless you go down this alley, or you go down this alley, but you don't... You know, you have your affiliation, your Sera Me, and you're always making fun of Sera Che, or you would never go to a Sera Che Lama or anything like that. There's this affiliation thing.

Inside of Sera Me, there's twelve Datsang, sorry, Khamtsen. Khamtsen is your house, you know? Like Sera...

Girong has maybe 100 monks right now. My house is Girong. And then there are eleven other houses.

By constitution, for the last 600 years or something, there's a certain number of houses. You don't go to other houses. You stay in Girong house.

Your main teacher should be in Girong house. You see, you don't go to Tsangpa Khamtsen or Pomra Khamtsen. You don't...

You know, you never go there. And you don't take someone there as your teacher. You know, there's very strict affiliations.

And then, it's all very... There's all these unspoken rules, you know, about where you go and where you don't go. And then Westerners don't know and they screw up and then they don't stay in the monastery.

And so I had Geshe Lotai to coach me. You know, he's like, No, no, you can't... Yeah, go...

No, no... You know, I'm like, what? And he's like, yeah.

And he's like, don't talk to that. Okay, okay. And, you know, and...

And then Rinpoche came to the monastery and he said, You see, a monk would normally only help their own Khamtsen. You see? If you're going to support some Khamtsen, if you're going to support some monks, you would only support your own house monks.

You would not give a dime to anybody else. You see what I mean? And then, you know, there were Khamtsens like that in Sereme.

They got bigger than the rest of the monastery. You know, like their lama went to Taiwan, collected a lot of money. That Khamtsen had 500 people, you know.

So Rinpoche said, I don't buy it. You know, he just got up and he said, I don't buy it. I'm not going for this.

And everyone's like... You know, he said, I'm helping everybody. So he said, I'm putting money.

Here's a fund. I'm going to help. I'm going to feed every monk.

I don't care if it takes me 20 years. I'm going to feed every monk in Sereme. And they said, Which Khamtsen?

He said, All the Khamtsens. Huh? Yeah, all the Khamtsens.

And then word got out, you know, like Ken Rinpoche, this lama, he was Geshe Tarchen at the time, right? Like, he'll help everybody. You know, like he doesn't have this discrimination.

He doesn't have this bias about his own affiliation. So then the Serajes come. We heard you're not biased, you know.

And he said, Yeah, I'm not biased. They said, Well, would you pay for all the Christians in our new temple, you know? And he's like, Okay.

You know, and then he did, you know. And it was really cool. The ceremony was really cool.

And all the Sereme monks are like looking over the wall, you know. You know, and there's Ken Rinpoche handing out, you know, he's blessing all the... It's a big...

It's expensive. It's for 3,000 monks. You know, it's a lot.

Then, you know, Ganden heard about it. Ganden monks came. So like they come, you know.

They said, Well, you know, would you sponsor some events and some prayers at our... And he said, Yeah, I'll do that, you know. And so we drove.

It's a 12-hour drive. And I remember the drive. I was memorizing some text, Vinaya text, and I was asking him questions about it.

And then he fell asleep. And it was like that. So for like, I don't know, six hours, he's like, I didn't want to bother him.

But then he got this crick in his neck. What do they call that? Rhine Neck.

I learned it in medical class. Is that a Rhine Neck? He got a Rhine Neck.

Anyway, and it took like a year to get rid of that. But he was old, and that drive is very dangerous and hard. And 12 hours in the car, this lousy Indian car like taking...

You see like people dying on this road all the time. And then he took the drive, and he... So of course, you know what happened, Jebung showed up.

And we just sponsored this and this and this. And then he did, you see. So he didn't have this...

He overcame this affiliation bias, which is a big deal for a monk. Like in Sara or those other monasteries, it's a very big deal. You know, nobody does that.

And he was very adamant that he would take care of everybody, and he did. So when he passed, he left enough money that from the interest that all the monks would have food, you know. So he also, because of his reputation for being unbiased, someone came to him.

I remember three or four people came and said, we want to... We want to... What do you call it?

Revive the winter debates. Because in Tibet, there were these winter debates at a place called Jang, which is a tiny little place, like you could say it's not much more than we are now. Like about that many monks.

So you got Debun with 8,800 monks required enrollment. You know, and Sara and Ganden with similar enrollments. And then Jang is like a 50 monks or something, you see.

And it's a branch of Ratte Monastery, if you know Khyong Lama Puched in New York. He's Richard Gere's Lama. So, you know, they would host the winter debates.

And then people from Sara, Debun, Ganden you pack up a knapsack with a month worth of food and you take a sleeping bag. And it's like a big adventure, you know. And so like only the Krim, only the Krem De La Krem, the best debaters, like 50 debaters or 100 debaters from each monastery, you see them like walking to Jang.

You know, I don't know if it's a 10-day walk. It's all like hiking to Jang. And it's like this, it's out in the middle of nowhere and they get to Jang and then they just concentrate for a month and they debate, a winter debate.

It's called Jang Gun Chö. Gun means winter. Chö means like a chö la, debate ground, right?

Jang Gun Chö. So, so these people came to him and said, he said, are you really unbiased? Yes.

Will you support, will you help us revive the winter debates? He took $10,000 and he handed it to them. Do it.

You know, he didn't have any money. That was all the money he had at that moment, you know. And he just said, here, here's the money, do it, you know.

So they revived it. It started with like 30 monks and now it's up to like a thousand monks and, and it's a big deal now in India. It's like, it's unbelievable.

It's like, it's incredible, you know, and the debate is unbelievable and they rotate between the three densas and it's just, you can't imagine what happens. You have all the great future Geshes meet each other in their freshman year, you see. So it, it also breaks down this bias.

It breaks down this, this separate feeling between the monasteries. So the young monks, the young future Geshes are all, get to know each other. So like, I would, I would get to know all the, all the great debaters from the other, other monasteries.

So it's like this, it's like this insidious plan of Rinpoche to break down the, the lines between the monasteries, you know. So now all these young, now they're all grown up, right, the ones from the first winter debates. And then they know each other.

They get posted in, in Switzerland or they go to Florida or, and they keep up ties. And then there's this, it, it prevents this kind of, what do you call it? Sectarianism.

Sectarianism. Yeah. Yeah.

So he like, he really put a big blow to that sectarianism, you know. And, and he was always working like that. The other one I think is a sect, sect bias.

Like in Tibet you have Kagyu, Sakya, Nyingma, and Galupa, right, and Bun, right, the original religion of Tibet, shamanism, right. so Rinpoche like, a Bun, a Bun, a Bunbo, a shaman came to Sara when he was young. And, his name was Jambel Senge.

And he was going to study for a year and swipe stuff. And the Bunbos would come to a Galupa monastery, study for a while, swipe their ideas. And then they, they even made their own kangyur, like they rewrote a kangyur with this, with their own, you know, Buddha in it, shin, shin, shin something.

And, you know, and they, they just kind of, they got, they got sort of pushed out of Tibet by the Buddhists when they got there. So they would, they would sort of adopt Buddhist things and rewrite them. And so this Bunbo came and nobody wanted to take care of him and no one wanted to talk to him.

So Rinpoche said, you can live with me. So he, he took a Bunbo into his home, which is unheard of in the monastery. I don't know, it'd be like a, I don't know, like a Baptist priest taking in a, I don't know, a Christian cult leader or something.

You know what I mean? I don't know, something like that. Something like totally unheard of.

He takes the Bunbo into his own room and he says, I'll help you. He says, I'll help you. And they worked with each other.

And then the Bunbo, every year he'd say, I'm going home next year. You know? And, and he ended up staying for 20 years in the same room.

And then, and they stood for Halambha Geshe together. And between them they got the two highest positions in Tibet that year, he and John Belsange, because they helped each other, you know? And so then, I don't know, you don't know him, but Giuseppe Tucci was the greatest Tibetan scholar in the world at the time.

He recovered Sanskrit texts from Tibet. He took a horse to Tibet in 1958 when he knew the Chinese were coming. And he took a horse and he recovered all these Sanskrit texts from Sakya.

And then he got them out and printed them in Rome. So he asked the Dalai Lama, can you send someone to help me? So he sent John Belsange.

He actually, he took Geshe, he took Ken Rinpoche and John Belsange in the room and said, who wants to go? And Rinpoche said, I don't want to go. So John Belsange, I'll go, you know?

And he went and they printed all these rare texts. It's what we use for, one of them is what we're using for the Bok Chumba class that was printed by Tucci with John Belsange's help. And a lot of those are like that.

A lot of texts were saved that way. Then he made us study, when I started studying Vinaya, he pulls out this huge text called Sotik. This is Sonawa's commentary on Vinaya.

He taught it to me privately. And then I said, who wrote, tell me about Sonawa. He says, he's a Kagyu.

And I said, I thought we didn't study Kagyu texts. He said, don't be stupid, this is the best one. And then when we studied Abhidharma, he got out a similar text and he said, this one's a Sakya, a Sakya text.

And then the very first text he ever taught at Rasogampoline was Shettin, Surlekha, the Friendly Letter of Nagarjuna. And it's commentary by Randhawa, who's a Sakya. And he just said, this is the best commentary.

So he didn't have this prejudice. He just, whatever was the best one, he used it. And that was the first book we ever translated and published, was a Sakya commentary.

So he was very different and he got criticized for that. He was criticized for that sometimes. Religious bias between religions.

So you go from affiliation in the monastery to sect to religious bias. And we had this, we had this, I don't know, system. I didn't have a television.

He had a television. And when he thought there was something I'd like to see, he would like bang on the wall. And then it would come down to the first floor across and then into my room.

We had this place on the wall, if he banged it, it was like, get up here fast. There's something cool on right now. And you have to see it right.

You have to run up right now. So I get this bang on the wall. And I have to move fast because it might be someone, it might be two minutes about to bed on TV or something.

So I run up the stairs. And here's Pope John Paul, this last pope. And he's giving a talk in a giant stadium, 60,000 people there.

And we watch this thing, he comes in, and oh God, there's like 400 nuns over here singing. And there's like 500 priests over there. And then there's this guy, I just couldn't believe, this guy who has to put his hat on and his robes on.

And it's all this big thing, he's got a bulletproof thing around him. And then he starts talking, and he says, I'll never forget, Rinpoche was like, wait, they played this a few minutes ago, watch this. And the pope says, you have to help poor people.

You must help poor people. And then he says, don't give poor people your extra. Don't just wait till you have extra.

Give them your main money. You see, I mean, don't give away your excess. Give away the money, your bank account, give it away.

And Rinpoche's like, that's so cool. And just to hear him spontaneously, he didn't have this thing of, oh, he's a Christian, or he's not the Dalai Lama, or something like that. He's like, this is cool stuff.

Listen to this guy. He was banging on the wall. He kept banging on the wall for a week.

And he said, listen to this one. And he'd play it back. He just didn't have this bias, you see.

And we should pray for a good pope to come. Here's a great pope. Honesty.

Species bias. Sharon and David would like this one, right? Just, we were in class, like one of the first classes, and he was strict in the early years.

We had these, we had these wooden chairs. They were like torture units. They were fold-out wooden, all wooden chairs.

And really painful. And you had to sit there just right, like you're in the army, and you had to sit up straight, and you had to keep your book in your lap a certain way. And you couldn't move around or cough or stand up.

And you had to sit there interested the whole time. And if he felt any kind of people getting sleepy, or if he felt like someone was being disrespectful, he'd just close the book and say, that's all we're doing today. He'd just close the book.

He'd just wrap it up, and he would just stand up and go to his room. That's all we're doing today. So you were like this.

And the chairs were so goddamn painful. And he wouldn't let you have a cushion or anything, and you're just sitting there in these chairs. Then like halfway through one of the first classes, he said, stop the class.

Stop the class. Everybody's like, who did it? And you're looking like this.

Who did it? Who yawned? And he says, there's a spider.

What? There's a spider. There, on the floor.

And we're like, we're all like leaning over, without not being straight. And he's like, yeah, there's a spider, Rinpoche. And he's like, well, take care of it.

And we're like, that's okay, he'll get out. No, somebody might step on him. And we're like, so what do you want us to do?

And he's like, escort him outside. And we're like, what do you mean? He says, they don't teach you anything?

He goes to the kitchen. He gets a cup. He comes back.

He very carefully gets down on the floor. He gets this spider out of the cup. Then he slides this.

He said, look, you can't hurt their legs. They have little skinny legs. They really break easily.

At this moment, you have to be careful. And he's like under there. He's like, come on, come on.

And the whole class is like 20 minutes to get this one spider out of the room. But that's how he felt. And he was like, don't break his legs.

Don't hurt his feet. Be careful. And put him outside somewhere warm.

They like this kind of place. He was like that. So I don't know if you were in his classes later.

It was like still he would do that. He was still like, for 20 years, it was like the whole class would stop. You would stop in the middle of some great idea by Tsongkhapa, you know.

And you had to take the bug out, you know, like that. And they just had equal rights in the class. And he did that with all the animals.

There was a special place for squirrels to eat. And then there was a different place for birds to eat. And then, I don't think you know, there was a secret place in the forest behind that was for the yidaks and for the subdaks.

These are two kinds of spirit beings. So we had a little secret canopy under the trees. And it was cleared.

And you couldn't get back there. You had to go through all these brambles and poison ivy, you know. And then there was this beautiful little spot with sunlight coming through.

And there was a special table. And then we would put all the offerings there for the local spirits. And then up front we had a stump of a tree.

And that was for sacred offerings, you know, like old tormas and stuff like that, or seichu offerings. So you had all these locations around the temple grounds for different species of beings. Each one should be taken care of, you see.

And they had their own permanent eating place, you know, and it was separate. And he didn't even have this division between, you know, spirit beings and physical beings. It was like everybody has to be taken care of.

So he had these like five feeding sites for everybody. It was really beautiful. And this whole mandala, if you lived there, it was like this whole mandala.

Like, oh, the spirits are over there, and the subdak, the local spirits are over there, and the craving spirits are over there, and the enlightened beings are over there, and the squirrels are over there, and the birds are over there. And then during the winter we'd say, go out, you know, what? Break the ice for the birds, you know.

It's too thick. They can't get their beaks to it. He would watch and make sure everybody could eat, you know.

And then we'd have to scrape the snow off the grass. If somebody wanted to eat grass, it's like, go out and scrape the snow off the grass. You know, like, Rinpoche, I'm busy, you know.

He's like, scrape the snow off the grass. So he like cared for all the species and not just the human species. I think also he went beyond that to, what do you call, he didn't have interterrestrial bias.

No, I mean, he frankly believed that people on other planets, that he could affect people on other planets, and he would do special offerings. In his room every twice a month he would do, I don't know if you ever walked in there and there's like 400 offerings in the room. And he had all this planned for other beings on other planets, you know.

It wasn't even restricted to Tara, okay. Social level bias. I don't know if you know, like there were parts of Tibetan society that were not so enlightened.

And I think it's important not to have this pie-in-the-sky idea about Tibet, you know. It was like a Shangri-La and it had some very wrong things about it. And I think it's important to speak frankly about them.

There was a social caste system. There was a system of strict castes. There was like 12 levels of aristocrats, you know.

And social movement was very restricted, except for monks, okay. So, if you were born into a shoemaker's family, it was similar to India, not quite that bad, but similar. And so it was very, there were many levels of aristocrats.

Like a commoner might never meet a Dalai Lama in the old days, until this Dalai Lama. A common person would never have reason to be in the presence of the Dalai Lama. And so Rinpoche's family was kuda.

Say kuda. Kuda means aristocrat, certain level aristocrat. So his family was some level of aristocrat.

So he would be expected not to mix with other monks who didn't come from aristocratic families. And he would be expected to hang out with aristocratic families. And like that.

So I remember, I asked him, and they're called kuno. When you meet a kuda, you have to say, oh kuno. Kuno means your divine presence, you know.

And you're supposed to go, oh kuno, you know. And this is like, you're just so high being, I don't belong in your presence, you know. And you don't look them in the eye, and you offer them tea like this, you know, and like that.

So he'd say like, you know, sometimes kunos would come over, you know. And I'd say, Rinpoche, why don't you hang out with the kunos? There's sort of an ex-kuno society in America.

You know, people who used to be high aristocrats and they kind of hang out with each other because now they're not. It was a big, a big trauma for the kudas when they left Tibet. When they became refugees, it was a big trauma.

His Holiness the Dalai Lama's younger brother, which you never heard of, was a janitor nearby us. He was a janitor in the school nearby. And like that, this former Secretary of State, Kuno Lushar, was hanging out in our neighborhood, you know.

And they kind of would stick together. So I'd say, Rinpoche, why don't you hang out with the kudas? You're a kuda.

You come from a kuda family. And he's like, I'll show you. So one day he invites Kuno Lushar over.

This is the former Secretary of State. We were watching TV. You know, we're eating popcorn or something, you know.

And the news came on and there was some demonstration. I don't know if it was Vietnam or something, but there was a demonstration in Washington. And we were watching it on the news, you know.

And Kuno Lushar is this old guy and I think he was especially hurt by the fall of Tibet because it was partially his responsibility, right? He was the Secretary of State at the time. So he was like, he was looking at TV like this, you know.

And this demonstration comes on, you know. And all these people are like yelling against Nixon or something. And in the Washington Memorial, you know.

And then I said to Kuno Lushar, I said, Kuno Lushar, you know, did stuff like that happen in Tibet? And he said, no way, you know. And I said, why?

And he said, are you kidding? I would take every one of those bastards. I would put them on a stake.

I would nail them up on a stake and I'd whip the hell out of them. You know, and I'm like, okay. And, you know, and I'm like, oh, okay.

And, you know, and, and it was, I mean, there were, parts of Tibet were very cruel. There was a prison under the Potala Palace that was one of the worst in the world, you know. And so, so, you know, so I said to Rinpoche, now, you know, I can, you know.

He said, I don't have anything to do with Kudus, you know. I don't, I don't consider, I don't consider myself a Kudar, you know. I mean, there are Kudus and I, and I, I'm not in, you know, I've broken out of, I don't, I don't follow that thing anymore.

That was an old thing in Tibet and it's good that it's gone. He said that. And then one day a Kudar showed up and he had gotten very sick and he didn't have any money.

And so Rinpoche took care of him for six months. He served him in his bed, you know. And, you know, so he had, he didn't have an anti-Kudar either.

You see, I mean, it's very beautiful. You know, he just took him in. He said, don't worry, I'll pay for everything.

And he, he gave him a room and he fed him and he treated him and he had fallen on, he'd broken something and until he recovered, he stayed there with us and he took care of him, you know. So, I think there's some kind of bias where you don't want to hang out with people who don't have your level of study. You see what I mean?

A monk or a lama in the monastery would very commonly refuse to teach someone who's not up to a certain, it's just considered below you. You see, like if you're a really good scholar in the monastery, to take on a student who was not trained yet would be like insulting. You know, it would be like embarrassing.

Like, like there's a certain level in the monastery where you don't, if someone's not up to your level, it's like an artist or a concert pianist or a ballet teacher. Oh, I only teach, what do they call them, advanced class? What do you call it in ballet?

[Говорящий 2]
Master's.

[Говорящий 1]
I only do master's classes. I don't do beginners. And Rinpoche didn't have this kind of bias at all.

Like any idiot who showed up at the temple, he would train them. And I remember, if you know Steve Foster, he came one day. He's just this guy, you know, and he asked Rinpoche, Rinpoche, I want to learn, I want you to take me through the whole training.

How long will that take? And Rinpoche said, I can teach you 20 years and I still won't run out, you know, and stuff you need to know. So I remember the 20th anniversary of Steve Foster, right?

So after 20 years, he comes in, he's got this big cake, you know, and he says, Rinpoche, he says, yeah, it's 20 years, you know. And he's like, oh yeah, it's 20 years now. Well, I still have stuff to teach you, you still didn't learn anything.

And to imagine, as we got towards the end, I saw he had planned it all out. He had 20 years stuff ready in his head. He was like, I'll teach him this this year, next year I'll teach him that, next year I'll teach him that.

He had the 20-year plan. The day I walked in, you know, the day this little hippie walks in, he looks at you, you don't know ka from ka. A lot of people still don't.

No, he's like, he looks at you and he's got a 20-year plan in his mind for you. And just that kind of, and anyone who showed up, he would do that. You didn't have to have money, you didn't have to be anything special.

Postman showed up one day, a cab driver showed up, you know, a construction worker showed up. He made them all into like Geshes, you know what I mean? But he just had this 20-year plan, and he didn't have any like, oh, this person's too stupid, or, it's like, it's like knowing that it's going to take 20 years for this person to play a duet with you on a piano, but on the first day you're willing to invest in them.

And he had this. Like he couldn't really relate to us for 20 years. He knew that.

He couldn't make certain jokes with us for 20 years. He knew that. But he undertook it.

He wasn't afraid of it. He's just, oh, this is a human being, I have to do it. You know, so.

There's a power bias. Like you meet somebody who's powerful, and you're nice to them. And then there's somebody who doesn't have any authority or power, and you're not so nice to them.

So there was this country that took an interest in the comics, you see, a political interest. And the ambassador was trying to cultivate the comics. So there would be like gifts of money.

You see, like, there'd be like, you know, $500 would show up on somebody's mailbox, you know, if you will do this, you see. It was like bribes, you know. And it was a very powerful ambassador from a very powerful country, which I don't want to say, okay.

And so there got to be this corruption in the community, you know. People were getting free vacations to this place, and people were getting pockets of money, and, you know, it's all getting very weird. And so the, you know, in our temple, it's just like any Christian church, you see.

There's like five people who come to church regularly. There's 20 people who show up on a holiday. There's 50 people who show up on New Year's Day, Christmas, right.

And then there's like a hundred other people who never show up until somebody dies, until one of their relatives dies, and then they show up at a funeral. It's just like any other church. So we never had help.

We never had enough help. You know, people just wouldn't come. People wouldn't come to service.

People wouldn't come to class. People wouldn't come to Modolon. We didn't get any financial help of any major financial help to run the temple.

And so then the board would only show up every two years or something, and it was really uncomfortable. And so one day the whole board shows up. We're like, wow, what's going on?

And they're like, we've got to have a meeting. A meeting? Yeah, we're going to have a meeting.

I said, what? The ambassador's coming. We have to prepare.

And then we had this very long uncomfortable meeting. How are we going to greet the ambassador? How are we going to, you know, have a big meal for him?

And all this stuff, you know. And we're sitting there like, you know, and then we... So they made this plan, and he came, this guy, this very powerful man, in this big black limousine show up, you know, like three, four big limousines show up, like crowding in the driveway.

And then all these people that we never saw before in the temple are running to open the doors for them, you know. And we're like this, you know. And this guy gets out, you know, and he's all like, and everyone's like, oh, you're so handsome, you know.

And then we're like... And then Rinpoche, he just turns around, and he goes up to his room, and I'm like, Rinpoche, what are you doing? The ambassador's here.

He says, come here, come here. And I go up to his room, and he says, I'm locking the door. And I said, what?

He said, I'm locking the door. And I said, who's going to talk to the ambassador? You.

You're going to talk to the ambassador. And I'm like, no, no, I don't know anything. He said, yeah, you're going to be the monk.

You're the priest. Okay. And he locked the door.

He locked the door. And he hid in his room. And he sent me down.

And, you know, I went to the temple. I'm the priest, you know. And he looks at me, like, priest, you know.

And, and there's this very long, embarrassing thing. And he tried to hand me money. He tried to hand me an envelope of money, you know.

And then I didn't take it. it was really weird. But that was Rinpoche, you know.

He didn't like this whole feeling of this power trip going on. And the, what do you call it? The, it's one of the five kinds of wrong livelihood to, to put up a show for a sponsor.

You know. And he refused to buy into it. He's like, he just treated everybody.

If you had power, you didn't have power. He would treat you the same. And most of the students he ever had didn't have any power at all, right?

I mean, they're all broke. They're all half crazy. You know, they all had some terrible home life.

They all grew up in some broken family. You know, they're all like, like just rejects, you know. And he just took us in and took care of us, you know.

So anyway, he didn't have the power thing. There's a family bias, a blood bias, right? Like you do things for your family that you wouldn't do for other people.

Or if you get money, you take care of your family first. And Rinpoche had a sister, two sisters. One was in Lhasa.

One couldn't get out of Tibet. One did get out of Tibet. That's Losantanda's mother, Geshe Tanda's mother, and Geshe Lotha's mother.

And then he had a brother, an older brother. And the older brother actually was a very high official in the Tibetan government. And he found the land on which Jebun, Ganden, and Sara are located.

He found it. He purchased it for the Tibetan government. He was a very great man in the Tibetan government.

But Rinpoche never wrote them letters. He never sent them money to speak of. And he would often get requests, you know, oh, I want to buy a new house, or I need a new stereo system, or like that.

And he just wouldn't do it. Every penny he got, he supported the Sangha. He supported the Dharma.

And he didn't buy into this thing of, oh, they're blood families, so I should, you know. Like if he had a choice between taking care of someone who might become a Geshe and taking care of his sister or his brother, he took care of the first. You see?

He always did that. And he didn't have this thing of, oh, my blood relatives. He didn't have this kind of bias either.

He was just totally free of that kind of bias. I never heard about his brother until he died. You see?

That's how little he had that kind of bias. You see what I mean? There's a household bias.

Whoever's staying in your house, whether they're related or not, right? But there's this bias that ends with the walls of your house. Like anyone staying in your house, you should take care of.

And then people staying outside of the house, you shouldn't take care of. And he didn't have that kind of bias either. And I remember this one time.

This is when I first came to serve him. And we were sitting there and he said, today's a special day. I have to do a special prayer.

And it was some kind of Kongso thing, some kind of New Moon, Paldenhamo thing, Kali. But he did this every month. And it's a big deal in Sara.

It's not the shuktan protector, okay? It's not the... It's good old Paldenhamo.

You know? You know, smeared with blood. I guess that's okay.

But anyway, he did this very elaborate ceremony. And I was like, wow, I was listening. And we used to do it together sometimes.

And we often did it together. So then at some point, it starts to snow really heavily. A big snowstorm came.

It was like snow was coming down. It was already like this high on the ground. And then suddenly he just stops me.

He says, wait. I said, what? He says, go to the store.

I said, what? He said, go to the store. Buy me a loaf of bread.

I said, Rinpoche, we're in the middle of a ceremony. It's like snowing like hell outside. He said, go now.

So I'm like, okay. This is all the time with your Lama, okay? If you live with your Lama, if you're around your Lama, there's always this...

Just when you think things are going smoothly, they ask you to do something you can't do or you don't want to do, right? And so you're like... Then you have this moral crisis and you get headaches afterwards.

How well did I do? Then I refused. And then I didn't refuse.

But I wanted to refuse. But I should have refused. And you get all confused.

So I'm like, okay, Rinpoche. I go down. I get in the car.

It's like snowing heavy. I have to... You know, in New Jersey, you just have to uncover the car.

And then you have to dig the... We had to dig the driveway. I'm digging the driveway out.

I get in the car. And I'm like, God damn loaf of bread. And I'm driving down the road.

It's like on 5th Street or something. And this old man comes out. And he's like...

He stops the car. And it's just like snowing. Nobody's on the road.

And he stops the car. It's this old man. And I'm like...

I stop the car. He comes around. He says, My wife is sick.

Okay. We need to go to the hospital now. And I'm like, okay.

So he got in the car. This old lady. And she's really, really sick.

And we drove to the hospital. And he was just waiting out in the snow for some car to come. And so I took him.

And I got back. He said, Do you have the loaf of bread? I said, no, I don't have the loaf of bread.

And he said, You had a good trip, right? Yeah. So he took care of everybody in the neighborhood.

You see? He didn't have this thing about his house ends here and his property ends here. And he's always taking care of neighbors that I never heard of.

He actually went over to the neighbor's house and introduced himself and asked him what he can do for them. There's this really dangerous Puerto Rican guy over there who's fixing cars in his backyard. He's got 14 broken junk cars.

And he's like drunk every Saturday night. And he's like screaming at his wife and fighting. And he's over there with cup tea.

And he just took care of his neighbors also. We were talking about Ken Rinpoche and I didn't quite finish. We were trying to judge whether or not he saw all beings as his mother because that's not something he would tell us.

But we were sort of judging from his lack of prejudice or his lack of bias that perhaps he had a different vision of other people than we normally have. So I didn't quite finish that list. I think one I would call study level.

These are sort of not like the main ones but I just had them on my list and I hate to waste my list. One was like a study level bias which is it happens in the monastery. Like high lamas, once you get to a certain point you don't even entertain new students.

Like you refuse to even take on new students. It's like a master ballet teacher or something. And Rinpoche, he never had that bias and he kept teaching new people even to the end of his life.

So he's like the greatest teacher in America, I think. And then he's still taking on new students and he's 80 years old. And he doesn't have this thing where you're below my level.

You're below my notice. You're just a new person. He had special classes called rookie classes for new people.

Then I'd say something called a position bias. And this is where once you reach Abbot in the monastery like everyone's required to bow down to you when you walk by. You know the Abbot's coming because you see people just starting to go down.

And they just go down like a wave. It's like a wave at a stadium, you know. And they all go down and you know the Abbot's coming, you know.

And then everyone has to go down. And if you're in the debate ground and the Abbot walks through, like everybody's on their face, you know. And so he got to be Abbot and he was up in the Abbot's quarters.

It's up on top of the temple at Saramay. It's the highest place in the monastery and special quarters and everything. And to even get in the front door or to get up to the stairs you have to have permission.

So when Rinpoche got there, I was his chanzo so I had to be next to him. And then all these kids would show up, you know. Like all these kids.

And he seemed to be attracted to the naughty kids. Not even to the normal kids, you know. Like if the kid was a troublemaker then he had a place to go to play and to hang out.

And Rinpoche would give him candy. And he had this whole courtier of young tough and bad boys. And then he would get like 10, 20 of them up on the roof and they'd be up there.

And then by the end of his abbacy they were like chanting together up there and they were memorizing stuff up there. But he didn't have this thing like he's the Abbot and these are just kids and these are not worthy of his notice or something like that. He didn't have anything like that.

So he searched out the bad kids in the monastery to help them. I call one more kind of bias which is proximity bias which means if you're in a refugee camp in India and then suddenly you get transported to America. When I first went to the camps they had a saying that In America the streets are made of golden bricks.

Just golden bricks. And they have special trees. You can just take money off the trees like that.

And people only use their car for like a week and then they throw it away. And now they believed all this. And no one ever straightened them out because once somebody went to America you never heard from them again.

They just disappeared out of your life. And they would never much help anybody after that. Somehow the West is just so compelling.

You fall into that culture and then you just get lost in money. And then you forget everybody back in the refugee camps. And Rinpoche didn't do that.

He kept to the end of his life almost 35 years overseas. Still all his income was going back to the refugees helping the refugees. So he didn't have this thing that if you're not in my neighborhood I don't have to help you.

He didn't see those people anymore. He hadn't seen some of them for 20 years. He still sent them money every month.

He just had this thing. There's this thing out of sight, out of mind. He didn't do that.

There's a language bias. You tend to... America is different because we all speak one language pretty much.

But in many countries and in Tibet your language or your dialect separates you from other people. And Tibetans until 1959 almost never learned a foreign language except for maybe some Chinese on the Chinese border. But that was one of the reasons Tibet was lost.

No one could speak English to ask for help or anything like that. It was very isolated. And no one would ever learn another language.

So Rinpoche got to America at age 55. And about the age of 60 he began formal English studies. And he just decided he was going to do it.

And a lot of high lamas... In Saramay we tried to set up... We paid for the school at Saramay.

We built it for school. It was $20,000 in 1985 or something. And they didn't have any school.

They were holding classes outside under the sun in this patio. We have some photos of it. Becky has some photos of it.

They just had classes out under the sun in this field. So we built the school. And then we got all this resistance from older monks.

They're like, why should the kids learn English? What's the point of English? Who needs English?

And Rinpoche was very much like, no, they need English. People in the world need to break down the barriers that languages create. So he thought that people should be multilingual.

It's like Gandhiji thought that everybody in India should learn Hindi and Urdu and English and something else. But anyway, it was like, break down the barriers that languages create. Learn each other's languages.

So at the age of 60, he starts learning our language. And he did it. He just thought it was important to break down the barriers that language creates.

I think then there's a cultural barriers. And these are weird things. Like one of the last barriers ever to go in any people's history is food.

You see, like the barrier. Like when I first got to the temple, we had Tibetan food every day. And I remember he came out.

I had a little cold or something. So he comes out. So I'll cook for you tonight.

And I had great. And then he comes out with this bowl. It's a big bowl, like a big salad bowl.

It's filled with butter. All the way to the top, filled with melted butter. And then there's just hamburger in it.

Like a few pieces of hamburger in it. And he says, here I made you, you know, sha-mar-ku. Sha means meat.

Mar-ku means melted butter. Ghee, right? Ghee.

It's ghee, meat ghee. It's like a big delicacy in Tibet. And I'm like, wow Rinpoche, thanks.

And then I tried to eat it. I got really sick. And then he had all these Tibetan remedies for things.

Like if you had a stomach ache, you had to eat three spoons of ginger powder. You know, like raw ginger powder. And he's like, this will fix you up.

But then he adapted, you see. And then by the time you guys knew him, you know, if you showed up there, he'd sent Jampa out for pizza. You know.

Yeah, and he adjusted, you see. He didn't keep this culture up. He broke down, even the most basic thing that people hold on to in their culture, which is their food.

So in order to make us comfortable, he ate like us, you see. I mean, he didn't like American food particularly. But he thought it would break down the...

And television, you see. He kept the television. Why?

You know, I'm like, why do you keep a television, Rinpoche? Why do you got this television on, you know? And he's like, he's like, watch people come in, you know.

So people come in, he turns the TV off. And they're all nervous, and they don't, you know, they're like, oh, Big Lama. And, you know, people can't say what's on their mind.

Then if he puts on some TV, like down low, and there's commercials and everything, and then they come in, then they just, it flows out of their mouth. They feel at home, you see. And it was so weird.

Like, he figured out that Americans, if there's a TV on in the room, they will feel comfortable. You see what I mean? So he gets this TV, and he turns it on, you know.

And he's got it on. Whenever an American shows up, he's got this TV on, you know. And then everybody feels like at home, you see.

And he just broke this, he's just got this cultural exchange, dak chen yam jing, right? He's just doing it for us, right? And like that, acting like us, to make us comfortable.

There's sort of a professional bias or a peer bias where, I don't know, where you don't feel really comfortable around other people of your station. You see what I mean? Like there's this professional jealousy bias, right?

I don't know where you're going to put that. Okay, there you go. So like I would watch High Lamas come, and sometimes a High Lama would come, like Tsong Rinpoche came, or Ling Rinpoche, the Dalai Lama's teacher came.

Or Khun Aung Hlaing Tundut, this is the Dalai Lama's court biographer who stays with the Dalai Lama all day and records what he says and does in Tibetan. He's on like volume 38 now or something. But then he was always so gracious with them, and also, you know, there was no like this kind of line that professional people, you know, like great people tend to draw this line.

We saw that in Vancouver when we saw His Holiness and Bishop Tutu, and they gave a talk together. It was a hockey stadium, and I don't know, 20,000, 30,000 people were there, and they just sat together in easy chairs next to each other, and they joked around for two hours on stage, and it was so beautiful because there was no hint of any kind of jealousy or any kind of competitiveness, you know. They were just like really having a good time, and Rinpoche was like that.

So he broke down this border that people have. It's this professional distance thing. You know, you meet somebody who's on your level in your university or in the monastery or professionally, and you just have this distance from them, right?

And he broke that down. Immediately, whoever came to the temple, he would break down this. And we have it with your peers.

It's peer jealousy, and he just didn't have it. You see, he broke that down. There's sort of a...

There's this Lama bias that people have. They have a... There's a difference between how they act in front of their Lama and how they act when they're not in front of their Lama.

And there's this weird thing where... You see it a lot in Western Dharma centers. The Lama shows up, and like there's six or seven people appoint themselves.

You know, the Lama's representative. They decide what they're going to eat. They decide what car they're going to drive in.

They decide everything. And they're almost like attacking you. Like a person came I saw one day.

I was at a Dharma center. They came in, and they accidentally took the Lama's cup out of the cupboard and started to drink something. And this student is like, you don't do that.

This is the Lama's cup. You know, just grab it. And this is a new student.

They don't know anything. They're like... And it's almost like these senior students like to do this to new people.

And he had this system. He taught us this system. Anybody shows up at the temple.

Anybody. There was this drill. We had this drill.

Person knocks on the door. Person A answers the door, invites them in, puts them in a certain chair next to Rinpoche. And then all the other older students shift down.

You see? The guest gets to be in the big chair. Better than Rinpoche's chair.

And then we run, find out what they want to drink, make them tea, run and get... There's all these cookies, cans of cookies ready for them. Which one do you want?

And there's this big drill he had. Hospitality drill. And he like drilled it into us.

Like if a Tibetan comes, they must have a salad. It must have tomatoes. They must be cut a certain way.

As thin as possible. And he taught us to use this seto. Seto means a huge cleaver.

He just got it razor sharp. And he taught us to use it blindfolded. You go like this with your hand and you just go like this.

And you do your tomatoes. Like perfect. Like Lay's potato chips.

And this is a big deal in Tibet. So a Tibetan guest would get tomatoes cut just so. And we had to practice it.

And then he would call us up and he'd say, this is Michael. He's my helper. And then say, and aren't the tomatoes cut well?

Yeah. The guest would be like, yeah, they're really cut well. He does it with a seto too.

And he had this whole drill. So then the Dalai Lama's going to come. Then His Holiness is going to come have dinner at our place.

This is a big deal. And so I'm like, Rinpoche, what are we going to do for His Holiness? And he says, same thing we do for everybody.

I taught you the drill. It's the same as any schmuck who comes in. It's going to be the same tea, same cookies, and I want the tomatoes cut that way.

You know what I mean? No, but it meant in my mind something clicked. It said like, He doesn't do this Lama thing.

He doesn't treat Lama nice and then turn around and diss the other students or something like that. He's treating everybody like that. It was really exciting.

Those are all the biases I could think of. You can probably think of more. But the end result, what I was going to say is, He really broke down the bias between me and you.

You see? That was the bottom line. Like every student He had, He broke down this division between Him and us.

You see? And I think He did it in the ultimate way. You know, He was always thinking what's the best thing He could do for you.

You see what I mean? His only idea was what was the best thing He could do for you. And that leads us into the first perfection, right?

So like we're almost done with bodhicitta in a way, right? I mean, that's His bodhicitta. And His ultimate act of bodhicitta was to share Dharma with us.

You see? Because that's the one thing that to Him was most precious in the world. Like the one thing you would give someone else that He would give Himself was Dharma, teaching, right?

So He, in a way, His way of... What is it? You see them as your mother.

Think of their kindness. And then what? They pay back their kindness.

So He was constantly... His idea of paying you back... It wasn't so much to set up your place to stay.

When I went there, I asked Him to teach me. He said, I'll teach you. But you got to figure out the place to stay.

Don't bug me about that. I'll teach you. You worry about money.

You worry about... That's not my thing. So His thing was I'll give you the most precious thing.

And that's Dharma. And you can have it. And He did unto you as He would want people to do to Him.

That's the only thing He really cared about was teaching, Dharma, right? He didn't care about money or food or anything else. He didn't care about clothes.

He didn't care about getting famous. He refused to go on these tours or He refused to be recognized. But Dharma.

He said, you got to have Dharma. So I think in teaching... They say the kindest thing that a Buddha ever does is teach, right?

Speak the Dharma. And I think that His mind was constantly focused on Oh, this is how I can pay back my mothers. And this is how I can pay back my teachers.

You see? So He was thinking of who are the kindest people to Him were His teachers, right? And then how can He pay them back?

And it's just... It's always the same shtick, right? The way to pay back your teacher is to learn it well and then pass it on, right?

So the kindest thing, the greatest respect to a teacher's kindness is to learn it well and pass it on.