Махамудра: мысли и ветры (2005, Нью-Йорк), занятие 1

[Говорящий 1]
So, this series of talks is about Mahamudra. And the structure will be like this. Tonight we'll be talking about the meditations for Mahamudra.

There are special meditations to develop Mahamudra. And what Mahamudra means, we'll get into that later, okay? And then tomorrow, at the same time, at six, we will be going into the physical practice of Mahamudra, the asana.

So tomorrow is more, how to say, it's the theoretical part of the physical part, okay? So we're not going to do yoga in the pews, but we'll be talking about how the physical part of Mahamudra works. So today is the mental part, and then tomorrow is the physical part of Mahamudra, okay?

Of the theoretical. And then the following Monday, a week from this Monday, we'll be actually doing the physical exercises together. Anybody who wants to, okay?

And I want to emphasize that it doesn't matter if you've ever done yoga before, it doesn't matter what your age is, it doesn't matter what your physical condition is. Mahamudra is not an absolute posture that you have to get into, it's a relative posture. Meaning, you go to your own personal stretching thing, and stay there, and that's enough for you.

You see what I mean? So it works no matter what your physical condition is. I personally am not a physically oriented person.

I used to fail a President's Fitness Test every year in grade school. I couldn't do a single pull-up. And they would just make me hang there, like torture me.

And everybody would have time to laugh, you know, and I would just drop down. And so, you know, the practice is important for anybody. You don't have to be physically oriented.

You can be a complete nerd, or a bookworm, couch potato. Mahamudra is still good for you. Okay, the asana is still good for you.

So, that's the general idea of this talk. Tonight, we'll do the inner Mahamudra meditations, which are very amazing. And then tomorrow, we'll talk about the theory of the physical exercise called Mahamudra.

And then, a week from Monday, I believe it's in this space. Are we confirmed on that? Yeah.

On a different floor, which has sort of a gym or something, we'll be doing the actual asanas together. Probably you'll want to sign up for that or something. Probably it's a limited space.

So, you know, you'll want to talk to the organizers. Can I say who are up here in the front row? Is that okay?

[Говорящий 2]
Ram is right over here.

[Говорящий 1]
Say again? Info at Godstow.org Register at info at Godstow, G-O-W-S-T-O-W.org. Am I right?

And you register. And there are flyers in the back, which you can do. Okay.

So, tonight we'll be going through the Mahamudra meditations. These come down from Lord Buddha. They began in the Buddha's time, in a scripture called Tengen Tsegye Gyalpo, or Samadhi Vajra.

And in that book, it says that the mudra is the nature of all things. And we'll be talking more about that. Then underneath, it comes down through Nagarjuna, who lived about 18 centuries ago, and taught about the meaning of emptiness.

And we'll talk more about that. Then it comes down through a number of great Indian teachers, especially Chandrakirti, around 650, and then reaches Naropa, about a thousand years ago. Naropa taught it to Marpa, who was a Tibetan, who was out of shit, okay?

He was known for his belly, all right? He was a farmer. He liked to drink beer.

He had a beer belly. He did Mahamudra. So you can't kill him.

And then he taught it to his famous disciple, Nalanda. And then it comes down to our current time. There's several major lineages of Mahamudra in Tibet.

And the lineages are quite different. The presentation of Mahamudra is quite different. So you may have heard Mahamudra, or you may have studied Mahamudra with someone, or you may have read a little bit about it.

And I think you might... A certain number of people who have heard about it before, or had a teaching about it before, it might strike them that this Mahamudra is not what they heard, okay? There's a specific lineage that has come down through the Dalai Lamas and the Panchen Lamas.

So that's what we're going to be going through tonight. It's very much a lineage which came down through the Dalai Lamas and the Panchen Lamas. The great book on Mahamudra that we studied in the monastery was taught by the first Panchen Lama.

So you'll be hearing a specific lineage of Mahamudra, which is very much an inner practice tonight. And then it comes down through the great teachers of the Dalai Lamas. The Dalai Lamas' teacher, who is Khyentse Rinpoche, and then it comes down to his two disciples, Geshe Thubten Rinchen and Khen Rinpoche, Geshe Vassa Thaksin.

And they taught us Mahamudra. So that's the lineage that you're getting, okay? And it's a very specific lineage and special, I think you'll like it.

But it may not... I think it's much more, how to say, it's much more detailed than the usual Mahamudra teachings you might have heard. The point is the same.

I personally like a lot of detail. I like to be taught carefully, almost like an instruction book for a lawn mower or something. I like someone to teach it to me like that.

And this is very much that way. It's very detailed. Some of the lineages of Mahamudra, they stick you in a room, they say something weird to you, and they leave you for six weeks.

And that works for certain kinds of people. And then this works for certain kinds of people. And they're both important and they're both beneficial.

What you're getting tonight is the lawn mower instruction manual, okay? Then tomorrow, we'll be working from mainly the Hatha Yoga Pratipika. Nobody knows exactly if it was written maybe 400 years ago.

And this is... I think it's one of the most amazing books on yoga ever written. We originally were turned on to it by Sharon and David, who are here tonight, our dear teachers.

And we studied it and translated it in three year retreat. And we've been fortunate enough to study in India with people and have the transmission from people. So tomorrow, we'll be working from an old Sanskrit book about the physical exercises of Mahamudra.

And then the following Monday, we'll be grunting and sweating together, but not too hard. And there's an excellent dinner afterwards, okay? So, no one's going to suffer at the asana practice, okay?

That dinner, by the way, is a fundraiser for Godstow Retreat Center. And they offer beautiful programs up in Connecticut. It's like an hour and a half from here.

And every time we're in town, we like to do some kind of fundraiser for them because they're sort of undercharged. And then they don't have money to fix the roof and stuff like that. So, Monday is free.

The asana part is free. But we encourage you to stay afterwards for a nice... I think it's a raw vegetable dinner, which sounded really bad to me, but I tried it.

And it's nearly as good as the donuts and stuff like that. It's probably healthier. But anyway, it'll be a nice dinner and fun.

So, I encourage you to stay after for that. And then we'll charge you, you know, something, and the money almost, to keep this retreat center going. Just a little bit about the theory that Krishna is going to be guiding us through the various...

There are six Mahamudra meditations that we do traditionally in this lineage. And I'll just say one more word about how they work. Like, why do you do a Mahamudra meditation on Saturday night, and then Sunday you're talking about some kind of physical exercises, and then Monday you expect us to get down on this mat and do something.

What's the connection, you see? It's like if they had told you in church when you were a kid, or in the synagogue, you know, the first half will have a prayer service, and then the second half, everybody's going to get out in the aisles and do push-ups, you know. And that will get you to heaven faster, you see?

And that's totally foreign to us, you know, as Americans. That whole idea is very foreign to us. That you should do some inner practice, meditation, and then you should follow it up with some push-ups.

And that's going to get you to spiritual... That's going to get you to heaven faster, okay? And here you believe in what we call the inner and outer methods, and the secret and open methods, okay?

And we can talk about that. Normally you don't get this training until you've been through about 20 years of study. Normally only Geshes are eligible to go to Tantric college.

And then... That's cute.

[Говорящий 2]
Nice.

[Говорящий 1]
Okay, good, good, good. But then you get nervous, especially in college, you know? So...

Okay, I think that was cute. So what's the thing? Normally you don't get this diagnosis on the whole time.

There's two Mahamudras. One is open. One you can teach to anyone.

And then one is secret. And... It's so secret that there was a tradition in Tibet, a God tradition, a Mahamudra, that we didn't have a tradition of Mahamudra.

You see, people would say, Dalai Lama still didn't have a Mahamudra. You know, Patrick Thomas didn't have a Mahamudra. The book was so secret that most people thought it wasn't a Mahamudra practice.

So... We have taught, in the last seven years, we have taught the open Mahamudra practice, which is not secret. And then tomorrow we'll start a secret practice.

So why did we name that a secret practice in the beginning? Because we follow people. We had a chance to speak to our Lamas about...

You know, we learned yoga after... It was after a long, long period of study. And it's taught privately to just small groups of people.

And you don't ask. They tell you. You know?

They tell you to come. Come to the yoga retreat with us. You say, for what?

They say, we're going to teach you yoga. Because you're a regular. You know, and then they say, well, who's going to teach you?

This was my father who teached me, okay? And he says, I can never teach you. And I said, I've known you for 29 years.

You're no yoga master. He said, I'm the yoga master. You see, that's how secret it is.

You follow secret. And they took us into the room, and they trained us in the asanas, in yoga. And then another Lama was made.

And we were kicked out of the United States. And to make a long story short, we went to some very ordinary classes at Jigong De and other places. And we were struck by how similar the lineage was, by how well the lineage was being kept.

The Tibetan lineage and the Indian lineage split a thousand years ago. They were split. They were cut off from each other by the mobile implications of yoga.

Indian yoga went underground. Tibetan yoga flourished in the Himalayas. There was almost no content for a thousand years.

But we walked into a Jigong De yoga class, and we were very struck by the similarities. So we went back to our Lamas as we reported to them. You know, you know that you could practice uttanas after 20 years?

Yeah, yeah. You know that you'll learn some uttanas from Je Tsongkhapa's teachings? Yeah, yeah.

I know. I know. What about it?

Well, you see, it's not so secret anymore here. And they were like, oh, did somebody teach it to somebody? Did you teach somebody?

I said, well, actually, according to CNN, it's about 30 million people out here now. And I told this story many times. We were struck with some kind of negative reaction from the Lamas.

We thought they would say, oh, the secret is being corrupted. People shouldn't be doing that. People are doing self abuse, drug abuse, high activities.

And the Lama wants to know if you cry. And he was crying from happiness, you know. And we were like, aren't you upset?

Aren't you happy? You know, you get something secret after 20 years, and Lama Tsongkhapa tells you, you're the only one who has it, you know. And so he said, I don't know if it's going to be wonderful in your country.

You know, like, people don't hear the word yoga or Mahamudra unless they have practiced it for many lifetimes. You see? People don't even hear the word.

If you walk down the street and you see I, O, G, J, A upon a sign, then you've practiced yoga for many lifetimes. I was in a yoga center in New Orleans. It's called Yoga Sutra.

Really tough place. I was on this side of the window. I was looking out on the guys who were swishing me around.

And the other guy was almost like mad at me. And, uh, I kept on just hugging him. I just keep on mad at him.

And, uh, this was last year, you know. And, uh, you know, and it's very beautiful. He said, people don't see the word agony, or yoga, or Mahamudra.

And I was like, practice it in many lifetimes. What you have in your country now is huge numbers of people who have practiced it in the past are being born in the same country. And I said, no, no, this is not yoga.

This is not like that. He said, give me an answer, Rinpoche. He's 70 years old now.

He's now less than a teacher. And he said, I said, Rinpoche, it's not really like that. People just do yoga to lose weight, I was thinking, you know.

Or you ask. You know, it's an exercise. It's not like, I don't think they have yogis, you know, in their past lives.

He said, no, no, no, no. There are yogis who are voluntary yogis, you see. There are tantric masters who are not voluntary tantric masters.

He was very much like that. And he said, they have to be ceased from their past lives. They think they're going to lose weight, but they're going to ascend some higher purpose, something higher.

And then you start to work on a book or somewhere, on a postcard, and then you thought, oh, I'll go listen, you know. That's because you have practiced Mahamudra in countless lifetimes. You have done it in countless lifetimes.

And then you attracted to it. And then you felt alive. And, you know, this whole thing is like, somebody's true to you.

Sounds good to you, but it's not. You have done it in countless lifetimes. So, they told us it's not only OK, but you should make great efforts in your country to now open these teachings and help people with these teachings, you see.

So they were very excited. They like to send their support. And I said, go for it, you know.

So tomorrow is the first time we will start teaching the inner practice of Mahamudra. I think that's enough of that. I think Krishna also taught us through the meditations.

There will be alternate explanations with actual meditations. The point of this practice this evening is to give you something to take home. So, these are actual meditations that you should try to remember the reading or guiding that you take it home with you and practice it.

So, Krishna is also going to do the first Mahamudra meditation with this. So, I think we had asked this question, so we're giving an answer about that vision of you thinking Krishna just came and was just gone and a rabbi or a priest is telling you, OK, we're done with the marriage. How about we do a push-up in the lab, you know.

And they see it in Congress because of how they were brought up. In the Mahamudra practice, in this image, you work on the body and you work on the mind together, you see. They call it working from the inside or working from the outside.

When you teach your 20 years training as a Krishna, they give it all to the tantra status, tantra knowledge. And our teachers are the other tantra costs. And they give you, you get changed.

Krishna can't be changed. Krishna goes through some kind of emptiness into the divine world, which we'll talk about in a while, right. So they will take you into the divine world.

They will take you in and show you what you can be. You see. If you do this, if you do this, if you do this, this is where you live.

You can live in this divine world. They take you into the divine world. But you try to see it again.

Not because they don't want you to do it, but because you don't have the power to see it again. And you come along and they say, OK, now I'm practicing, see it again, OK. And you make certain pledges.

You know, like you swear to teach certain precepts. Otherwise, the process won't work. So for the first day, you have to teach certain precepts.

If you teach them, you have a chance of entering the divine world and staying in it for the long time. And if you don't, you won't be able to. And that's something you have to do.

Like the Master can't do that for you. You have to know the precepts and you have to teach the precepts. So I'll show you.

This is what we did. See? Some of you are teaching one, OK.

Some of you are teaching one. Just open your eyes. I'm not...

I'm not talking about you, OK. Just open your eyes. Say, chi, nan, ta, la, so, te.

Say, chi, nan, ta, la, so, te. So, te. OK.

We just tried to do it before, but I'm going to do it again. Chi is outside. Nan is inside.

Ta is inside. So what I'm saying is, I promise to follow all of them. So what I'm saying is, From now on, from now on, I promise I will follow all of the I and all of the M references.

So what are the M references? These are the 600 pages that I just remembered, OK. We're going to have to learn it takes a lot of work and a lot of time.

You have to get through it. You have to continue to change some of it. They are necessary for me and for you, but you need to teach yourself some of it.

And then the other references are what you call yoga in this country, right? So, physical exercises and also spiritual breathing exercises. So what is the connection between spiritual prayer and meditation and then some kind of physical exercises?

How can we teach ourselves to be ready to pray in the church? And this is something you need to know about the nature of your being, OK. Your being is both physical and mental, right?

You have a physical body and you have a mind. And in fact, the two are much different than they are here. They don't equate the variety of the brain.

Like when they say, I think so and so like this. They don't say, I think so. They go, I think so.

They don't think of the brain as a center of thought. They think of it, they say, you really upset me. My mind.

And they go like this. And whoever is right, I don't know who is right. I'm not going to argue with you.

I know I'm not bad. I believe that. It doesn't matter who is right.

In that case, it equates us to think it's a good influence, which makes me think it's a typical. You see, you can't point to the mind. You see, your mind is trying to tell you how if you do that, you're not feeling it.

You might feel something. If I see someone get up and walk out before the break, my feelings are there. And then I'm like 100 feet away.

About 100 yards away. And things outside of me affect my my my mind stretches all the way to the back of the room because I can see it. And what happens out there is it feels really bad.

So the way I stretch to the edge of the room, as a Canadian, I heard about it on the radio today. All I heard on the radio was what's wrong today. I don't know what happened to me.

It's always the same thing to me. It's always the same guy who doesn't mean well. And when I go out there, my thoughts are not there.

But my mind is there. You know, I don't know what happened. I feel bad.

It affects me. In a way, I stretch across the globe. You see what I mean?

So where the learning is, is very hard to determine. And if you do that, they would say that if a person unleashed nuclear war on this church now, I've been following you in that way for every time in which you've seen me. You see?

Because you can't have it in line. You can't burn it in line. You can't split it in line.

You see, my choice is different. Some, and always different stuff, but we have both. And yet, anything can happen because it's easy to say to one another that, you know, I don't know if I'm going to make it through that.

[Говорящий 2]
Yes.

[Говорящий 1]
Why is it so? Look at those people who have been here for so many years, you know. And let it die.

Right. The beer is physical. The beer is physical body.

Right. But it also means stupidity, you know. The word for beer in Japanese is yonteshi, which means stupid drinker.

And so it's a powerful debate. It's the alcohol dependence on, you know, yonteshi means stupid. So there cannot be a connection between body and mind.

If you drink too much beer, you get crazy and nervous. You get stupid. Right.

So what's the true connection between your body and your mind? And Mahābhūdha meditation is a fact, okay. The Mahābhūdha meditations are always focused on your own thoughts.

Okay. The Mahābhūdha meditations always take us apart, your own thoughts. There are meditations you can do when you close your eyes and think of a beautiful land.

You can close your eyes and think of a beautiful land, you know. You can close your eyes and think of a banana. You can close your eyes and think about compassion.

But in Mahābhūdha, the object is always the same. You close your eyes and you focus on your thoughts. Now there's a sort of a high quality Mahābhūdha meditation that's sort of a useless part of the meditation.

High quality means you focus on your thoughts but you try to find what you need. You think hard about your thoughts. Like when you're focusing on your thoughts, it keeps you fresh, you see.

If you're focusing on something that you can't stop, with your eyes closed, you can start to go to the heart. But if you watch your own mind, it's sort of a lagging thing there, and it keeps you fresh, you see. It's a trick.

Mahābhūdha is always focused on your own thoughts. After close enough, you always focus on your own feelings. How I feel right now.

And that keeps you fresh. And you can just stay in the meditation for 15, 30 minutes, an hour. You always focus on your own mind.

That's the sort of Mahābhūdha meditation that's done. The Mahābhūdha yoga practices focus on your inner awareness. In Tibetan called bhū, in Sanskrit called brahma, in Chinese called qi.

But it's your inner empathy going to your body, to certain physical channels. It's a subtle form of energy, but it's still physical. It's still part of your physical body.

And inside your body, in certain channels, your thoughts and your feelings are connected. That's where the fear goes, to make it secret. You see, the fear goes to the physical body.

It's ingested into the physical body. Then it makes it into the channels. And it affects the prana, it disturbs the prana.

And because the prana is always linked to your thoughts, they never make it secret. You see? That's where the body and mind meet.

That's where it is de-channeled inside your body. There is subtle winds, subtle energies, qi, prana, bhū, whatever you call it. And they are totally to your thoughts.

And that's the beautiful place where the body and mind meet each other. You know, amazing. Frontier.

You know, that's the next frontier we will discover. That's where we have to go over. It's at that border where the subtle body meets the subtle thoughts.

And then Mahābhūga goes to that. Mahābhūga is the king of that. And then visions affect your thoughts.

And then the ātmā, the yoga practice affects your visions. You see? And all yoga is connected together.

That's all yoga was ever meant to do. It does make it sliver. It does make it stronger.

It does make it healthier and healthier. But the reasons it was first revealed, right, is that it affects your mind. It changes the reasons in your mind.

So I always think of it as a follower who is trying to open the iron sun under a sink, right? I used to do it. For 80 years, people say, how did you know all this stuff?

I was in a monastery. One of the monks served 80 years in a special capacity. Oh, what was that special capacity?

Well, I was a dishwasher. You know? I think that's where dharma comes from, actually.

It doesn't necessarily. But I had dharma as a spirit as a substance, you see? So how do you work with a substance?

Well, you can put it on your head, or you can get it out of the room, and you can try to get it out of the plant. Or you can just take a single iron and go under the sink and start laying on the plant, you know? The secret goes off on its own.

The substance just works on it. Substance in general works on it. But what definitely works well is to use it both ways.

And when you take a vow in the monastery, to look up at the Buddha, I promise to work for you inside and outside, understanding all uses of sin and all uses of good and evil together, okay? So that means I don't use office practices, yoga practices to make up the practice of the outside. I don't do it, and it takes longer.

It takes like an hour to do something. It's sweaty. It's very physical.

But in the end, it's a suffering, isn't it? You can make up all the suffering. You see, it's measurable.

It's so hard to change your meditation. How did you change your meditation? I don't know.

Is this very difficult? I don't know. You see, meditation is very beneficial.

As it is, even though the ground is defective on the surface, they're very concrete, right? It's comfortable for people. You know, I could do a meditation, but I couldn't do one on my studio.

You know, I'm a big Instagrammer. And so who needs that kind of meditation? And it also does certain things in general that it's hard to do inside.

Then in the meditation, you work on the inside. That's just what I've heard. So Krishnamurti's idea there is what I've heard, okay?

[Говорящий 2]
We're going to talk about what the word Mahamudra actually means. You... Say, Maha...

Maha... Mudra.

[Говорящий 1]
Mudra.

[Говорящий 2]
Maha means great, right? It comes from the word Maha, which means to be great. And you see that in words...

M-A-H In key words like magnificent, or magnified, or magnitude, it comes with an N-H-S in that, right? And also maximum comes with an N-A-X. And we also find common Sanskrit words that we know, like Mahayana, is Maha, you know, the great vehicle.

And Mahatma, like Mahatma Gandhi, the great name, right? Then, Mudra... Mudra comes from an Indian word, M-U-K, which means to seal.

And we get the word mute, or Maha, from that, which means to seal your lips, you know, to be silent. And also the word mystic. Because they sealed their eyes, they often had their eyes closed in meditation.

So, that's my job for the world.

[Говорящий 1]
I'm going to finish the word and then we'll take a break, okay? The word in Tibetan for Maha Mudra is Chakrachamol. Say Chakrachamol.

Chakrachamol. Can you write that? And I want you to go through some names of Chakras, okay?

Chakrachamol R... Yeah. Mudra.

Mudra means a seal. And in different senses. For example, there are special books in Tibet called Kanyama.

Say Kanyama. Kanyama is a book which has been sealed shut. And we have teams, like in Bada, looking for special yoga texts in the Tibetan monasteries that have been there a thousand years.

And John Brady's in there. We're going to show some similar books next week. But some of the books on Kanyama, they take a piece of cloth, they wrap it, then they seal wax on it, and then they put a seal on it.

And no one can get through this book unless they've had it in monasteries or something like that. Like, it's too heavy. It's too big for people.

It's called a sealed book. Kanyama means a book which might be opened one or two hundred years or something by someone who's read it a few days. So that's one meaning.

The seal. Also, John Brady, in the old days, I don't know, I always think of Genghis Khan, 700 years ago. He was living in China, right?

And his troops took over Moscow, the Middle East. They made a huge theater outside the theater, and one day they killed all the staff and the men in his troops. We would always see John Brady in it, you see?

But they got a message from the home. It took three years to get a message to the front line. It was like this, see?

And they got a message that Genghis Khan died three days ago. And then Genghis Khan ran out of the home. It's like, Genghis went home.

Except for the comics, that's a whole story. But how do we know that the message was from the Khan? You see, there would be a stamp.

There would be a seal. They would put wax on the message. And then only the Khan had a succession of leading.

And he would practice leading to get the seal. And then you would know that the message was from the king, or from the Khan. So that's why seals are so big in China.

If you collect them in Korea, they're very valuable. Ancient seals that people used to stamp or to practice their magic. They're real, real, you see?

So what's that got to do with this practice that we're talking about? What's Mahamudra got to do with that? There are many, many explanations about it.

Here's the classic one. As far as Mahamudra thoughts. We're going to be talking in China about Mahamudra thoughts, meditations.

And then Sunday we talked about Mahamudra women's right? Prana. So if you're talking about thoughts, then Buddha, what's it got to do with the seal?

What's it got to do with the seal? And it's this being. It's called Gatakichagashi in Tibet.

There are certain concepts which are I don't know how to say it. They seal the world. You see?

There are certain ideas that are underneath everything. Nothing is tied to this idea. Everything in the world is controlled by a certain principle.

And that principle is like a seal. Nothing in the world allows or doesn't allow permission of this principle. There's a certain principle.

There's a certain idea. And nothing in the world can happen without this seal of a principle. Get it?

Mudra. So what is this principle? It's emptiness.

It's the idea of emptiness. So mudra, in Mahamudra, the seal is emptiness. Emptiness doesn't mean not to think about anything.

Emptiness doesn't mean not to be anonymous. Emptiness doesn't mean to close your eyes and think black. Emptiness doesn't immediately mean that you close your eyes and focus on your feelings.

Because that you've been doing your whole life. And it didn't begin anywhere. Like there are some Mahamudra lineages that sort of fall short.

They got out of it. Especially if you focus on your mind. Yeah.

But you're supposed to think something about. You don't just watch your mind. My mom used to say, rabbits watch their minds.

You know? Like, everybody's watching their mind. It has to be a certain kind of thing you're looking for in your mind.

You see? You focus on your mind. You focus on your feelings.

But you're looking for something special. You're looking for something. What are you looking for?

Emptiness. Why? Because that's the principle that Dr. Marx is advocating. Let me give you an example. We went to the Gatlin... I can't pronounce it.

Thaler? Fowler? These are the Aflac...

Aflac gun people? Okay? Like, I don't know what Aflac gun is, but I did learn it.

Aflac gun is the most famous, is the most popular gun advertising campaign in the last 10 years, this company. And this company just reached half a million dollars a year. Right?

And the two ladies who run it, they run it from a book that I remember, called Diamond Cutter. They started the company and they run it from this book that I remember. What's the book about?

It's about emptiness. You see? So, if you get this principle, if you understand this principle, path is bridged, nothing can go.

This is a sealed book, you see? The life is a sealed book. The universe is a sealed book.

You can't be anything here, powerful, unless you understand what emptiness is. So if that's the case, you know, we needed to start a company that was not as well-known actually as A&R. It's a corporation, a large company now.

How? Just get into the groove of being a specialist. Okay?

So, Mahamudra means big emptiness. Mudra means emptiness. It seals all things.

All things are marked with emptiness. If you know how to work with this, you can take a company. This lady started this company in her apartment.

Okay? And now it's a million dollars. Okay?

And she's just a regular lady. But she seeks emptiness. She seeks God.

And she seeks it. It's the key to everything. And we can't tell you what it's all about because we're blind.

Because I haven't heard of this lady. She's mentioned in her book on meditation. And if somebody heard it, they'd ask us to come talk.

So it's like that. If you understand mudra, emptiness, you can believe in it, you see? It's the principle of Tathagatagarbha.

Now why is it called Mahamudra? Mahamudra means you can get the best stuff out of mudra. Okay?

Anything you want, you can succeed. If you know mudra, you can succeed in anything. That's a big mudra.

Okay? That's a really big mudra. That's a special mudra, you see?

So it means like big-time, big-time mudra. Okay? So Mahamudra is a big-time mudra.

Why? Because it's a big-time mudra. If you want a big company, you can have a big company.

Let alone if you can only sit in one chair at a time. Your butt can only be on one chair at a time. Let alone if you want something bigger than that.

Okay? And then you go on to search the drawers or something like that. But it's okay in the best place.

That's fine. It's not a bad thing. Okay?

So you can use Mahamudra. Mahamudra means that. The big mudra.

The bigger than this. Why? Because then it can take you to a bigger self.

Okay? So that's what the word Mahamudra means. Now in yoga, in the asanas, there are ten special practices called mudras.

And that means something else. Those are special locks. Like tingla, abdhala, primordial, you know, different locks, mudras in the sense of feeling part of your body to change the prana.

Why would you want to move the prana around your body? Get this. With certain physical exercises you can force prana to trigger the direct reception of emptiness.

Get it? So there is a deep connection between all these practices. Krishna's also talking about a meditation which is meant to help you see emptiness.

But if you do the exercises at the same time, which are called mudras, you can see emptiness. And then you get a lot of practice. Okay?

Then you get a good chance of self-practice. So you use yoga to see mudra emptiness. And then at the same time you bring on the pleasure of the asanas.

Very crude, but it works. And you do certain locks, mudras, in your body. And then they help you to see emptiness directly.

There is a higher mudra. There is a secret mudra. Chakya, mudra, also means your spiritual partner.

It's a very low spiritual partner. It's a very high practice. A very high method to see emptiness directly.

The woman has the yidam. The woman has the feminine energy. The man has the masculine energy.

And if you can stay together, and I don't mean by people thinking, is that humanism like that? It's not like that. If you can stay together with a person, a spiritual partner, and if you make it your life's goal, if you make it your life's work, to work together, do yoga together, study together, meditate together, eat together, everything, to balance those energies inside your own body, you see.

Everything has a partner. That's also called chakya. That's also called mudra.

Your partner is called your mudra in the higher traditions. So it's a very deep practice. It's a very beautiful practice.

And it has the same goal. Work together, balance the two energies, man and woman, and then you can see enemies directly, you see. It's a very powerful practice.

And you know all the movies you ever saw? The guy gets to go, right? Why is that?

A lama would say, there's a deep desire in the human spirit to balance the two energies, you see. It's one of the deepest goals. It's not for physical gratification.

It's not for emotional gratification. It's not for financial purposes. It's not for family necessarily.

It's that there's this deep desire to balance the two energies in the body. When those two energies balance perfectly, you see emptiness directly. You see?

When they balance well, if you can balance your male and your female energies, everybody has both, then you can see emptiness directly. What's the purpose of that? I'll tell you if you have your $25 cupcakes already.

No, just kidding. When the two energies are balanced in the body, when you see emptiness directly, then Prana moves into certain parts of your body and transform the body. They transform the body.

When you see people who look better because they're doing yoga, that's like 1,000% of what the goal is. If you can do these practices properly, your body begins to change, change in life. I'm comfortable to talk about it because we've all been doing it for countless lives.

If you were here tonight, if you heard the word agony, I mean yoga, then you'd be removed. You just don't remember that you've been doing it, you've been doing these practices, you're a child of these practices. And the goal of these practices is to balance the three energies in you and let the body begin to change into life.

As it changes into what you want, when it finishes changing, there's a millisecond delay. You don't get to go where you're supposed to go in one millisecond. The energies balance.

In the next second, you are the child of countless worlds. Okay? So yoga is finished.

The energies combine. The next moment, you are the child of countless worlds. How many countless people?

You are the Jesus or the Buddha of that world. You see? You will be.

That's what's going to happen to you. Why was I born again? What was I born for?

What's the point? Am I just supposed to eat and sleep and work myself to death? Am I supposed to collapse to death?

And then I die? It's been a year. Come on.

Come on. Don't kick yourself. What's the point of working for my kids?

Come on. You do it with your parents money, they're going to do it with their money. It'll be gone in a year.

All I have to do in five years is play games with my kids. Good boy. Right?

So you work. Is that what I'm supposed to do? Work hard, collect things, die, leave them to their kids, make it all up in a year.

What's the point? You see? You don't have to die in a year.

You have a sense. You have a deep, deep seeking. I'm supposed to do something more than that.

I'm supposed to be Mom. I'm a big guy, somehow. Somewhere I'm a big guy.

The point is, when you balance these energies, when you are teaching Mom, then you become an angel. And all these pictures of angels are not just an angel. They're for real.

You become that. You must become that. You will become that.

You are on a track to become that. That's what you're supposed to be doing right now. If you can have a regular job, have a regular family, you don't have to wear a suit.

That's the point. Within the context of your life, regular job, regular family, regular life, you have to become an angel. When you change, when the body changes, you are on countless planets, you are having countless people.

You are the main, I don't know, you are the main spiritual force on the planet. That's what you are connected to. That's what you practice along with the rest of the people.

But you can't get that unless you have a practice. So, Krishna and I will be sitting down here, and if you have had a chance to talk with us, you might not be familiar with our activities on our meetings. Please feel free to come up.

I need you to see John Brady. John Brady, thank you. My name is Vinay.

It's a pleasure to be here during this spring. So we'll take a break, and then we'll get some rest. Please come back.

Okay, I know this is a bit hard for you. In the Tibetan tradition and the Indian tradition, Mahabharata is another teaching of context. So what does that mean?

We were in recently in the mountains, and we were teaching at a very famous yoga center called Hishimalaya. And I asked a lady in Swami, which is a lady teacher there. He's actually married, but he's worked with high masters for 30 years in his life.

So he's a really fine teacher at another yoga club. And he made this sentence, Swami Swami Nanda. And so I was curious to know how they teach Mahabharata in their lineage.

So I asked him, would you be willing to introduce me because I'm teaching Mahabharata. And he said, well, not so far. The next day he was there, and I saw him again, and I asked him again, and he said, well, the next day he was there, and the last day there I had Swami with me, and he said, well, okay, maybe come in the afternoon.

In the afternoon, he came, and he's not working, he has to die early, and so I'd like to see him again, because that's what happens. And then suddenly, we get to the sentence, we've actually met in a yoga club. Someone comes into the yoga club, taps us in the back, Swami T.J. Sinha, you know, and we ran over there, and he said, we could offer your class as a teaching team, and we made an offering, and we all sat down, and he started to teach us Mahabharata. And he gave an offering like two or three hours, and he gathered up his arms, okay, like he gathered up his arms for the Mahabharata yoga exercise. It was all about how you need to prepare properly. You see, the preparation you need to tackle this entire practice.

And he didn't really tell us how you get there, the preparation, then a little bit of what to do, and then he gave a little bit of conclusions, and he said, look at your thoughts, and that was it, you know. So, in the conventional monastery, it's the same thing. You see, there's a very famous monastery, a very famous monastery, 300 years ago, he was teaching Mahabharata.

Texts on Mahabharata. And, you know, we thought we might just introduce you, because it's from our monastery, and it's very, very rare, but we got the copies, and we started to look up all the existing texts as well. We started to translate it.

We got to a page like 30, and he said, how come it's not Mahabharata? You see, half of his book said how come it's not Mahabharata. And what it means is that to see that it's not Mahabharata, you need to do the preparation.

You need to know the preparation. There are certain spiritual preparations that you need. If you don't have these preparations, you can't go to Mahabharata.

And it won't succeed. I'm just going to talk about the first preparation tonight. This is set your mind up.

It's called shenit. Is it shenit? Tenshul.

And this is kind of obvious, but I think you've heard this sometimes. Shenit means in Sanskrit, kāyā-mukhaṇa, spiritual training. And if you need that, if you want to learn a high practice, if you want to learn a very sacred practice, you need a teacher.

You need a master. You see? And I meet lots of people.

We travel around the country. We're in every country. It's kind of weird.

You don't wake up. You're in every country. And we meet lots of people.

We meet all kinds of people. Very sincere people all over the world who want to learn these things and they want to practice these things. But they can't.

And they're not really practicing. And it's because they don't have a master. They don't have a master.

They don't have someone who can really teach them. Like, even if you just do yoga practices, if you're in a kind of a master, you know it. Like, a day you went to a class.

They gave you a class. A very kind teacher gave you a class. And the teacher won't really talk to you.

You don't ask to talk to you. You know, the teacher knows. The teacher knows everything there is to teach you.

You know, the teacher's not going to come and get the kind of thing you don't want. And it's such an interesting thing. We go to different yoga centers all over the world.

Every time we're in a city, we go on the internet, we go to the various yoga centers. We don't have to know who we are. We can just make a class.

And then, you know, maybe you go and enjoy your yoga and become a master. You know, like, you're actually doing something you don't want to be teaching, or you're practicing on your own already, or you don't really feel like you have to be teaching. And it can be the first step in Mahamudra.

You know, before you do the meditation, before you do the exercise, before you think about it, it's always the same story. Whether you're talking to the Hindu tradition, or the Buddhist tradition, or the Buddha tradition, it doesn't matter. The very first step is always the same.

You must find a teacher who knows what you're doing. You see? You can't learn it without a master teacher.

It's foolish to try to learn piano from someone who doesn't know piano. And you wouldn't do it, right? But it's here to teach you about anybody, whether it's an architect, a subway, a personality, they know, you know.

And you don't have to be like, you know, a scholar, or a creator, or if they can help you or hurt you. We had a man, he said, I'm kind of stuck in my meditation, you know. And he said, OK, let me help you with my meditation.

And he told us his meditation there. And then he just got up and said, well, how long were you doing this meditation that you're stuck on? 30 years.

30 years. He's been stuck on 30 years. You see?

He did it less than five hundred years ago. He got a little teaching, and then he was stuck, he could do anything for 30 years. And he was stuck, you see?

For 30 years, you see? And that kind of stuff happens in spiritual meetings. So the first thing you do is find a teacher who is qualified to teach you about Kundalini.

And then the second half of that is all you have to think about. You're not going to run out. OK?

You have to you have to honor them. And that's very important to the American people, you know? Teachers get paid.

Teachers work for somebody. I don't make any amount of money off of my teacher's yoga class. I owe the teacher.

You know? I have my hands working every day, you know? I'm still got three months to come.

You know? They have to come out to teach me, you know? And if I don't realize you're good enough, I'm not going to be that good enough.

You see what I mean? And in England, the yoga professor in America, the yoga teacher has to get up and say, I really don't know if you're really good enough. I hope you'll do it this way.

I mean, if you see trouble, if you don't know what's going on, if you don't know what's going on, you don't know. You can sit there or you can walk to the other side or you can have a call, you know, you can walk outside, you know, to try to get the teaching. It's a voluntary thing.

I mean, I remember one of the first things that my mom sent to me, you know, he was teaching English classes at Georgetown University. I was his driver. I drove him to his class at the very end of the morning.

And then he would be there later. And then we had Sri Ram and Buddha's monastery in Washington, D.C. So, this night, he came home. He's got one of his pictures in his room.

I said, you've been teaching for a while. He said, this is my mother. I said, so good.

And he said, here, you can take it. And I said, well, why? He said, you don't have to do it for me.

And I said, everyday, you know, usually in America, the student has to do homework. And he looks at me, you know, and he says, I am your teacher. You know, I don't know what you can have.

I don't know what you can have. And he was dead serious. He's like, you don't think he's your teacher?

You don't think I'm something normal to you? You know, and he didn't even know America's affecting religion like that. And he couldn't imagine that a person who was a student who asked someone to teach him something would say they don't believe in things.

And that, he got soft and ready. But honestly, he didn't think, he didn't ask me, oh, good old kind businessman in America. You know.

And that was, I would be like, I recognize. I can't tell the difference between that and figuring out not to do it. Oh, please, please, you know, do your organization more.

It's too much. Don't worry about it. So, really, really, that's all I do is remember that story.

To succeed, I found movement. To see everything that is around me. Which is the fastest way to become an angel to someone like me.

But it's only for business as a meditation. It doesn't make you calm. It makes you more stressed.

It's not a problem to do it, but it's hard to do it. You know, it's not easy to do it because of business. And the normal thing you need to put out about that is that you need to take care of other people in an alternate way.

You can be an alternate servant of other people. And that has to be really hard to do. That has to be really hard to do.

So, you have to try harder, and then you have to honor it. Otherwise, you won't succeed. And it's very much difficult for many people to do that.

But the results are really good. The results of every physical meditation you do. And I have found that every physical meditation that you have, you just have to have the system and you have to honor the meditation.

What does meditation look like to you? She's going to talk about it.

[Говорящий 2]
Yeah, yeah, it's better to me.

[Говорящий 1]
Okay. So, tomorrow we're going to have a meeting at St. Nicholas. And we'll be going to the National Theater of Osteoporosis.

I think we'll stay a little bit late tomorrow, okay? So, be ready tonight. We'll take a walk around the parade.

We'll have a cup of coffee, and we'll meet with your mother. Okay? And then we'll have a prayer tomorrow.

Okay? And we'll meet with your mother. We'll do a prayer at the end where we give away this economy.

Okay? So, if you know the prayer, please do it with us. If you don't know the prayer, please ask them.

Give away this economy tomorrow. Okay? Amen.

[Говорящий 2]
Amen.

[Говорящий 1]
Thank you.