Живой ламрим: как жизнь Кхена Ринпоче отразила учение о ступенях пути (2005, Аризона), занятие 13

[Говорящий 1]
We were halfway through Holy Lama's lessons I learned while he was teaching us. It's kind of an excuse to, it's his practice of the perfection of giving, right? And the highest form of that, which is giving the Dharma.

And it would take decades to teach, to tell you what he taught us, right? That's what we're in the process of doing for the last X years, right? But then I think to tell you the deeper messages that were conveyed while he was teaching.

So that's what we've been on. We talked about when he taught us the basic, we call it memorizing, we call it khatun in Tibet. It's swadhyaya in Sanskrit.

The basic memorization, recitation texts. And then I was just so impressed by the accuracy and the precision of the lineage. Then we talked about, that was with the grammar texts.

And then with the shorter lamrims, the shorter lojong texts, that the idea that you could have a practice that you carried around in your head and you did every day in your own room. And you didn't have to go to church on a Sunday. And you didn't have to get permission to.

No one had to intermediary between you and the divine, right? Then when he taught us avidharma, the idea that if they're so much beyond us, which they are, right? Then the way they even present the dharma to us is going to be pretty much unintelligible sometimes.

Like why did they do it in that order? Like the avidharmakosha commentary that we studied, we'd studied that for 12 years together. And he taught it backwards.

I mean, it was basically all taught backwards. This is the first Dalai Lama, right? And then just to learn that you can't really anticipate your lama, right?

Your teacher. Like you just have to go with the flow. And you know, like years later you see the pattern.

Like sometimes we'd be transcribing something Rinpoche taught, 10 years later and we'd see the pattern. At the time we thought it was sort of disjuncted or something. And then we'd see the pattern.

So the next text he taught, the next subject was parcin, parcin paramita. In the monastery that doesn't mean technically perfection in wisdom. It means lower Madhyamika, right?

Lower Middle Way school, svatantrika. And he taught us from two books. One was called Satik, which means, and I was going to look up, I forgot who wrote it.

I think it's K. Dutta Madhagiri or Choney Dhapa Shetty. But it was a text that was missing.

And Rinpoche had it carved. He had it re-carved. And I think it was the last book ever carved at Sarame.

You know, like it was the last carver and he's the last old man. And then we came in with computers and changed it, right? And so he carved it and then we studied it.

And it was very brief and cryptic. Like 8,000 verses smashed into 20 pages. And it was really difficult.

But he taught the whole thing to the end. And frankly, most of us didn't know what was going on very well. Because this subject takes 12 years to study in the monastery.

Perfectional wisdom takes 12 years in the monastery. So he covered it in like, I don't know, six months with this little textbook, once a week or something. And it just went over our heads.

Then he started into Parchintachet, which was our introduction to the monastic textbooks. These are called yikcha. Say yikcha?

So yikcha are this very beautiful invention of the major monasteries, Densasum in Tibet, which are the textbook series. So each monastery has its own textbook series covering basically the five great books, right? And so we went to this yikcha called Parchintachet.

Usually there's two yikchas. One is called Tachet. Say Tachet?

One is called Chidin. You're studying the Madhyamika Chidin in the translation class, which means an overview of Madhyamika. Tachet would mean very detailed.

You rip it apart. You go into it very deeply. Tachet means examine it to the extreme.

So in Prajnaparamita, Perfectional Wisdom, we usually study the Tachet, which is long. The Abhisamankara, which is the root text, it's only like 50, 75 pages. And we memorized it.

I mean, some people memorized it. And then he taught it. And there are eight books in explanation of the eight chapters.

So you go at the rate of about four pages a year of the root text, four pages a year. You could read it in a minute. But that's how you go through it.

Eight great books of that one commentary. Each chapter is a whole book. So it was like massive.

And the thing I learned from that was I always think of doctrine, right? Or what do you call it? Doctrine, right?

Like the party line. What you learn in church or something like that. And it seems to me in Tibet that there are doctrines.

And often it's taught as lamrim, you see. You get the lamrim teachings. There's two kinds of students.

One is called lamrimpa. They do lamrim. And you know, they're good-hearted and they're considered not as analytical.

And then there's sanyipa, which means like it's an analyst. There's some people who need deeper stuff. And the lamrim is sort of a summary of the five great books.

And then oftentimes it gets glommed onto as doctrine. You see, it becomes doctrine. And then people don't remember the basis of it anymore.

They're just, oh yeah, there's three jewels. Like the three jewels thing. There's three jewels.

You have to do this to them every day. And you have to bow down. You have to make so many water bowl offerings.

And it becomes a doctrine, you know. I see it like ice forming on a river. Doctrine.

You know, the river meets the cold air of normal people. This dharma meets the cold air of normal people's minds. And then doctrine congeals on the top.

You know, the party line. And you have to do this and you have to do this. And there's no understanding of it.

It's something you have to do, you see. It congeals on top of the water. Like ice.

And then under the water there's this huge river flowing. There's this unbelievable truth under what has come to be the religion. You see what I mean?

There's the religion, which is like ice. And then underneath is all these truths and all these ideas and all these spiritual realizations. And what struck me with Parchin, what struck me when he taught Perfection of Wisdom was he taught the three jewels, the first thing.

And it just blew my mind. I said, now I'm in the river under the ice. Now I'm in the water.

It's not... Buddha is not... To have a book that...

You open the book and it says, look, that's not Sarasvati. Get it? Nothing to do with Sarasvati.

You know what I mean? This is just a piece of wood. And then it sort of makes you appreciate the Muslim teachings about not making an image of Allah and things like that.

So we were taught the Lamrim. We were taught the three jewels. We thought of it in Christian terms.

There's a Buddha on the altar. You said there's a Buddha on the altar. And then the Prajnaparamita was like, that ain't a Buddha.

That's a takpe. That's a make-believe. That's a make-believe Buddha.

And then there's the real Buddha, which is emptiness. You see what I mean? And you don't hear that...

You don't hear that in the... Not in most Lamrim teachings. You don't get taught, put out water bowls every day for who?

For emptiness. Dharmakaya would appreciate it. The emptiness of the other three bodies will slip up the water.

And it just blew my mind. So the teaching for me of Prajnaparamita, and then I went and did it in the monastery for 12 years, was the truth underlying the doctrine or the religion. The real ideas flowing underneath.

And if you can connect with them, then you grow and you understand things. I'm not saying Lamrim is wrong or something. It's very appropriate for certain kinds of personalities.

That's why it was invented, and it's good for that. And you know the great Lamrims have stuff about emptiness also. But my experience with Parchen was this eight volumes in explanation of the 50 pages.

It just blew my mind. And the same thing with Nirvana. This is Nirvana.

And you're like, wow, natural Nirvana. You're so... It's just so cool.

And you just get into a deeper... So just to see that there was a whole... How do you say?

That there's a whole river of ideas underneath the religion. And most people relate to Buddhism as a religion, right? I mean, in Tibet, one out of 500 people would have related to it on a deeper level.

Frankly. Even in Khenpo's time, he's complaining about it, right? They're relating to it as the ice, as the doctrine and the religion.

And the ideas, I think, flow throughout all religions probably. The water flows throughout all religions, I think. And those are people who can see that deeply, then they don't so much seeing things in terms of separate religions, right?

It's just the water that flows through all religions. You get to it through one religion perhaps until you master it. And then I think you...

you see it in all religions. And that was one thing I wanted to say. Being with Rinpoche, I really wanted to say one thing.

And I meant to say it at the beginning last night. As far as finding a teacher, just do your fantasy. Do your wildest fantasy.

Find the greatest teacher in the world. Just go find them. That's one thing I can say.

By age 19, right? The way I met him was... I heard about him in India.

And then I met the Dalai Lama. My mom was dying. I'm sitting with my dying mother and the Dalai Lama on either side of me.

He made us sit down with him on a couch. And he's like, what are you going to do now? And I said, well, I have to take my mom back home.

She's dying. And he's like, well, what are you going to do? And I said, I want to become an Indian citizen.

I want to live here. I want to stay with you. And he said, yeah, but you got to go.

You got to take care of your mom. What are you going to do? I said, well, I heard about this Lama.

Oh, he said, Gen Tarchen, old man Tarchen. Yeah, and I said, oh, do that. Stay with him.

And so I got this blessing. So I went. And to go to somebody who's the greatest in the world at what they do.

You see what I mean? Like, follow your dream, right? It's this old Elvis Presley movie, right?

Just do it, you know? Like, find the greatest. And go stay with them.

You know, like, go cook for them. Go to them and say, I'll cook for you. I'll be your gopher.

I'll be your gopher. You know, I'll do anything. Just let me stay with you, you know?

And so I was, you had the good fortune to do that. And just to stay with a great man, to stay with a great person all the time, you know? There's nothing like that, you know?

You have to have that dream. There's nothing like that. There's just nothing like that.

He was the greatest Lama, I think, in the world. People used to say, oh, the Dalai Lama's coming to New York, you know? Are you going, you know?

And I'd say, why? You know? Why miss a day with Ken Rinpoche?

You know? Are you crazy? And they didn't really get it, you know?

And I'm like, but I'm just like, you already would do, you're a root Lama. That's it, you know? You don't, I went, you know?

If he went, I went. And, and to honor his holiness. But, but, but I wouldn't have gone to New York and miss a day with Ken Rinpoche, you know?

That doesn't make any sense to me. You see what I mean? So, just to, the whole dream, have that dream, and then go for it, you know?

Because you'll never regret it later. Like, like, any hour you can spend around a person who's like that, you know? If a person has seen emptiness directly, any five minutes you can spend near them, then it's worth the rest of your life, you see?

So, if you can find a, a great Lama, then there's nothing like to stay with him, you see? There's nothing like it to be around them, to be near them. There's nothing, I'm so lucky, I feel so lucky, you know?

That I just fell into it, really. But, then there's this other thing that they, then they take you, you know, and they introduce you to their friends, right? And the weird thing about Rinpoche, even in his later life, if you were around him in his later life, he didn't have any friends.

Nobody, you see? He didn't, never, the whole time I knew him, 30 years, he didn't have any friends. There's no one.

He didn't have any friends, you see? He didn't have any correspondence to speak of. He had one abbot that he wrote to as well.

He didn't write to his family. He didn't hang out with anybody. I think he didn't really have an equal, you see?

And it was uncomfortable for him to be around people. But he had the great men, the great teachers of history, right? And he would hang out with them, you see?

And, you know, books are, books are, I think they are, you know, you're considered a little bit, I don't know, you're not mystical enough if you spend a long time with books, or something like that. Hanging around books is like not, being analytical or reading or studying is considered not very spiritual somehow in the West. I don't know how.

But to me, and to Rinpoche, it was like, God, you know, in one room you can have Nagarjuna, you can have Kiripta Madange, you can have Jatakapa's teacher, Randhawa, sitting there with you, you know? You can have Naropa sitting there with you, you know? And, and you can spend all day with these guys, you know, you can spend all day with these holy beings and at the cream of the last thousand years, you know?

And you can be with them. You can memorize what they said, you know? It's just like, it was like a special club, you know, in Rinpoche's room.

So you go upstairs, you open the door, he's got scriptures spread all over the place, you know? And he's just sitting there, you know, talking to them, you know, and communing with them. And there's nothing like that, you know?

So I hope one day you can get that feeling, like when we're doing the Majjhimika in the Transcendental Course or Bok Jimba, when you meet Master Kamalashila who brought meditation to Tibet, you can meet Master Kamalashila, you should have this thing like, wow, you know, and that was Rinpoche's only friends and he spent all his time with them. And to have a Master who can introduce you to these friends is like, wow, you know, like, you know, like, you not only get the Master, you get all these other Masters because they're hanging out together. So I don't know, to learn from him was like that, to be with a great, you know, for me, the greatest Master in the world, and then have them turning you on to other, their friends, you know, it's like, wow, you know, like, what more could you need, you know.

I never needed anything like that. I didn't have any friends either, you know. I didn't have any friends the whole time.

For 20 years, I didn't have any friends. That's all. I didn't have a dictionary, right?

Just go up and ask, you see, and feeling like, I don't know, fulfilled, that's all, I don't need anything else, you know. So anyway, that was, the next subject we studied was Sema. Sema is logic, right?

And the books we studied were, there are basic books they teach in the monastery, Dura, which means collected topics, which are a summary of Master Dharmakirti's commentary on valid perception, Pramadavartika, and then, Tagrek, Riglam, which are many levels of formal logic, like Aristotelian logic. And by the way, the more we study about the Greeks, the more we think it may be Aristotelian logic, okay? And then, Nambel Talam Seljay, which is Gyaltsabje's great commentary on logic.

Extremely difficult. Extremely difficult. I tried to crack it four or five times on my own.

I never got past the first two pages. And I used to go ask Rinpoche, I don't understand anything of this. This is after like 20 years.

I don't understand anything of this. And he's like, later, later, later. And so people don't really study Gyaltsabje's text until much later.

You see, you study, every year you get a dose of logic for about three months in the monastery, around the winter debate times. If you're good enough, you get trained for a month, you get sent to the winter debates for a month, and then you come back and maybe debate another month with your monastery friends. And so I went.

I went with the team every year. I kind of invited myself. I kind of got in.

I think I was the worst one in the whole team. It's 50 guys. And I kept dropping down classes if I got lost.

But it was unbelievable. You would debate for the whole month, sometimes all night, on one page, one page of Gyaltsabje. So it's like 500 pages.

You'd have to take you 500 years to get done. No one ever gets past the first chapter or the second chapter like that. So anyway, Rinpoche taught us logic and I didn't like it.

So my big experience with logic was I didn't like it. And I wasn't good at it. And Rinpoche was teaching us formal logic before he could speak English.

So he's like, well, there's this kind of concomitant reason for this thing. And we're like, what? And he's like, he couldn't really, or he was emanating that he couldn't explain it.

And then he would just dump like three pages on us. And then we'd go home and we're like, what did he say? I don't know what he said.

Then the next day he'd go on. And then we're like, we're lost in all these reasons and proofs and logic and all this stuff. And I got angry.

You know how you get angry when you don't understand something? Like sometimes he would recite stuff in the temple and he'd go too fast for you. And you're like, Rinpoche, I can't even keep up.

Like I get angry. During a church service with a hundred comics there, I'd just start throwing the pages around. He would skip 14 different places and I'm supposed to, I looked through the hundred pages to see where he is.

And then I'd just go like that. And then, no, it's like that. And you just get angry.

And then I went home and I said, this is the thing I'm worst at. This logic stuff, I hate it. I don't understand anything about it.

And I don't know if he's, I don't know what he's talking about. Nobody understood what he's talking about. And I was like, well, God damn, I'm going to get good at this.

I'm going to figure this out. So I worked really hard at it. I especially decided, I'm going to crack this subject.

I don't understand this thing at all. There's nothing attractive in this. There's no kind of mystical experiences.

There's no kind of deep meditations. There's no kind of deities running around. It's just logic.

And I'm like, I'm going to crack this thing. And I worked really hard at it. I really, really worked hard at it.

And that's when the emptiness thing happened. Right in the middle of that. You see?

Right in the middle of that. That's when it happened. So what I learned from Loddy was I think we avoid the things that we need the most, because they're not comfortable to us and they're not familiar to us.

So we avoid, we tend to concentrate on the subjects that we're already good at because we feel comfortable. And then we really strongly tend to avoid the subjects that we're not good at because we're not comfortable. And what I learned from logic was, oh God, it's the thing you're not comfortable with that you need.

It's the thing that seems to you difficult or it doesn't make sense or it doesn't seem very important to you. There's no Buddhist teaching that's not important. There's no such thing.

Kādampaśāwa. Say kādampaśāwa. You know, kādampa.

You get to a point where every Buddhist teaching just reveals itself to you. Oh my gosh, this is the most important one. This stupid, new-nique little thing about generals and specifics.

This little three-page thing that they teach seven-year-olds in the monastery. This is the most precious teaching. And you're like, but you want to avoid it because it's just uncomfortable for you.

So I really encourage you. What I learned from Logic was go after the subjects you're no good at, especially in the debate ground. Go after the questions you don't understand.

Don't sit there and debate all the stuff you're comfortable with. Bring all the stuff you're not comfortable with. And if there's different groups there and your worst subject is, I don't know, bok chenpa or your worst subject is Chinese medicine, then go sit there.

You see what I mean? Go sit in your worst subject and go debate with the guy who embarrasses you the most, who makes you look the worst. Because then you learn.

It's a deep teaching, especially in the debate ground. Go after the stuff you don't understand. Don't regurgitate what you're comfortable with.

And don't spend your life on the scriptures that are comfortable for you and the subjects that are comfortable for you. Go for the ones that you resist because those are the ones you don't have yet and that's why you're not balanced. Next one was Majjhimika, Uma.

Whereas you study the Thatcher in Parchin, whereas you might study the more extensive scripture for Prajnaparamita, when you get to Majjhimika in Sarame, you concentrate on the Chidam, which happens to be as big as the Thatcher, so it doesn't really matter. But you study the overview of... It's called an overview, but it's very extensive, which you're finding out.

We probably won't finish in the next six years. I don't know. We'll see.

Unless we do something special. I don't know. Which is a commentary on Je Tsongkhapa's Gompa Rabsel, which is the illumination of the true thought of the Middle Way, which is the greatest book ever written on emptiness.

Period. And we're doing that in the translator course. And if you're not coming to the translator course because you're busy on Monday or something, you're crazy.

No, it's the greatest book ever written on emptiness. And they're hearing it from the beginning. So at least get online and listen to it, which is no oral blessing.

Then he taught us Dangdzin Shandap. Dangdzin Shandap is by the first Panchen Lama. It's a beautiful long book of poetry about the wisdom in your mind arguing with the ignorance in your mind.

It's a very funny colloquial punch-out between your misunderstanding and your baby wisdom. And it's very beautiful. And he taught us that.

Nindendrel Thoppa, which I hope we can do someday. We should do that. We haven't done it yet.

It's Je Tsongkhapa's Praise of Dependent Origination, which is sort of like the book on dependent origination. So he taught us those. Gombo Rabsel, he didn't do the whole thing.

So I went to the monastery and got it from Geshe Thubten Rinchen. And it took us eight years. Because Ken Rinpoche didn't teach the whole Gombo Rabsel.

He taught big sections of it, but not the whole thing. What struck me, and I remember the night. I specifically remember the night.

We were studying Tsengol. It's a special subject in Madhyamika. About how your perceptions are wrong.

How every perception is wrong. Every perception you've ever had in your life was mistaken. And I distinctly remember the class finished.

Everybody got up. I don't know, there were like eight people at that point. And we just stood up.

We were all looking at each other. And then we all looked. We're going to walk out into the kitchen.

And I touched the door and I'm thinking, what am I doing wrong? What am I doing wrong? I'm just staring at the door.

I couldn't get past the door. I put my hand on the knob. I said, what am I doing wrong?

How am I not perceiving this right? How is it every time I... Every thought I ever had in my life was wrong.

And I remember that white door at the temple. Between the houses. And just holding on to the doorknob and staring at the door.

What the hell am I doing wrong? What is it? Why can't he just tell me in a few words what I'm doing wrong?

And then I won't do it anymore. But the idea, that's what I learned from Madhyamika. And I learned that night.

I remember the whole idea that every single perception you ever had was wrong. The whole idea that there could be a way of viewing your world which is totally opposite. That there could be a whole new way of viewing the whole world which would be perfectly correct.

And which would make all wishes come true. You see what I mean? Just so massive.

Such a massive idea. That it's possible that there's a way of seeing things that people don't know about. That if they knew about, everything good could happen.

Everything in the universe. Death itself could be stopped. You could travel to countless planets, help countless people.

If you just saw things the right way. That idea is so revolutionary, so massive in your head. It was such a thing to have someone tell you that.

That's like the birth of your enlightenment, right? That's the birth of the tantric angel, right? Is to have someone tell you, you just see things different and then anything can happen.

You see it. And then you're like, then you start struggling. You look at the door.

What the hell wrong am I doing, you know? What am I doing wrong? Isn't there a door?

You know, like that. Just to have that, someone dump that trip on you. And then really it's planting a seed, right?

For tantra, I think. So, that was Madhyamika. I'm almost done.

Next was Vinaya. Dulwa. So I didn't become a monk for eight years.

I kept the vows of a monk for the first eight years. A. I wanted to see if I could just do it before I committed to it.

B. I thought by that time I'll be so old I won't want to be anything else. And no, really.

So I wasn't in any big rush, but I did keep all the vows for eight years. And then it was just sort of formality and it was really beautiful. Rinpoche took me to Sara.

He made me wear a coat and tie in like Sara in the summer. He just wanted everyone to see me like that for like a week. And then he memorized the whole ceremony.

He said, we're going to do it the right, the old way. He memorized the whole monk ceremony. It took him like six months, I think.

I don't know. But he memorized every word of it. And then all these extraordinary lamas came.

Like I saw the list a couple years ago. I wrote the list down and I lost it somewhere and I found it when I was cleaning out. And it was like all these high lamas.

The Vinaya Master was there. The current Gimei Kenser Rinpoche, the current, the ex-current abbot of, the last abbot of Gimei Tantric College was there. Geshe Thubten Tendon was there from Australia.

Pabongka Rinpoche's attendant was there, the original. These are my ordination masters, and Ken Rinpoche and several others. So, I mean, it was unbelievable.

So anyway, he ordains me. We did the Getsal Gelong in the same day. And then I came back and he said, okay, you got to learn Vinaya.

So he pulls out Sotik. Sotik is Sonawa's commentary. It's a Kagyu commentary.

It's the greatest commentary. It's two huge volumes. It's probably 2,000 pages, I guess.

And he started to teach me the vows from Sotik. And we went through it carefully. Then we learned Sojong.

I memorized that, and he taught me Dua Gyatso Nyingbo, which is Je Tsongkhapa's summary of the Vinaya. And we memorized that. And then he kept going through Sotik.

So here's the big thing I learned from Vinaya studies. And I continued them in Sara because I wanted to get more detail. But I, with the Vinaya master, I continued them with him.

But anyway, I remember distinctly one day sitting in his room, and he's got Sotik open. It's just physically the most beautiful book. It's like this big on ancient paper, and just beautiful physically.

And it's got all these little footnotes. It's really beautiful. It's really incredible.

So you learn about Lengshi. Say Lengshi.

[Говорящий 2]
Lengshi.

[Говорящий 1]
Lengshi is like, what was the original incident? You know, like, so-and-so didn't take the mats out of the temple. Or he took them out, and he spread them out, and he went up on the mountain, and then it rained, and the mats got ruined.

And that's why there's a vow that if you've been assigned to watch the mats, you can't go more than 20 minutes walk away, or something like that. So Lengshis were always fun. And it was always the same, like, four guys doing some naughty thing, and then Lord Buddha's like, well, I guess we've got to make a rule now.

It's how the rules will form here at Diamond Mountain. And as soon as they're all formed, we're moving away and starting another one. But anyway, it's like, how do you live together?

And incidents come up. Somebody does something weird, and then you have to make a rule against it. So that's called Lengshi.

Then you do Mixels. Mixels are... Look, generally the rule is like this, but these are Mixels.

Mixel means exceptions to the rule. So he's teaching me about you're not allowed to be separated from your robes overnight, right? And then there's a Mixel, if there's a war.

Like, if you're in Buri, and suddenly Mexico attacks Diamond Mountain, and you can't get back to Diamond Mountain, and your robes are at Diamond Mountain, then you're allowed not to wear them for up to 48 hours or something. And then you just have to walk through the soldiers and get your robes, you know? Like, that's it.

I mean, His Holiness invoked this when he escaped from Tibet. They invoked this rule for His Holiness when he escaped. He was allowed to wear nomad's clothing when he was riding out of Tibet.

So they invoked this Mixel. So I'm like... So I'm like with Rinpoche, and he's like, so you have to wear your robes, right?

And I'm like, well... But you made me go to work. You're making me wear a suit to work.

And then he like... He like picks up the paper, and it's like this one sentence. It's like on fire.

It's like it's burning gold, you know? Like light, you know? And it's just one sentence in the middle of the page, and it says, but the real Mixel is, if your Lama says you can do it until the day you die, that's fine.

You see, that was just one sentence. I'll never forget this sentence, you know? So here's a thousand pages on this kind of rule, and this kind of rule, and what you have to do, and what you have to do, and when was the rule invented, and where was it invented, and how many people commented on this rule.

And then there's this one rule in the middle, and it just leapt out at my eyes, you know? He said, you read this, you know? And it's like, if your Lama tells you not to wear your robes for the rest of your life, that's perfect.

You see what I mean? And I'm like, that's what I learned from Vinaya, okay? I'll never forget it.