Геше Майкл возвращается в Принстонский университет: просветлённый бизнес (2010, Принстон), занятие 1

[Говорящий 2]
I hesitate to interrupt the lovely spirit. I guess your Michael and Mercedes have ushered us into with this very mundane welcome and invitation to this evening. My name is Allison Hogan, and I serve as Dean of Religious Life and of the Chapel here at Princeton.

And my office, the Office of Religious Life, is so pleased and proud to present this evening's program. I'll keep my introduction very brief. For many of you, no introduction is necessary for Geshe Michael, and for others of you who may have attended the two earlier presentations today, you've heard introductions.

So let me just say that the first Westerner to qualify for the degree of Geshe, that was in 1995, was Geshe Michael Roach, who was at the Sara Monastery in India. In 2004, he founded the Diamond Mountain University in Arizona. He now serves as its spiritual director.

He has also founded the Enlightened Business Institute, among other endeavors. I mention that one in particular because of its pertinence to tonight's presentation. And on just a very subjective and vocal level, I want to say he's a Princeton alum.

I'm thrilled to have him back. Geshe Michael is joined this evening by Mercedes Aleda, the vocalist. It is so wonderful to have you here.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

[Говорящий 1]
I went to the cathedral with some friends. We were here a few minutes early. I said, come and look at the cathedral.

It's really, really beautiful. It's one of the most beautiful spaces in the world, I think. I was telling them, you know, in my time, I came here in 1970, right?

I came from Arizona. My parents bought me a lime green suit. They said, you're going to Princeton.

You've got to have a suit on. And then we flew into New York, New York, something like that. And I got off the plane, and I said, how do you get to Princeton?

And there's this guy standing there, and he said, oh, everybody takes a private plane. And I'm like, okay. And I have all my trunks and my typewriter and everything, and they put me in a private plane.

And they flew me to the local airport here for $100. And then, you know, I got here, and registration was out in the green there. And everybody had ripped T-shirts and long hair and scraggly beards, and everybody was fighting against the Vietnam War.

And I'm looking around in my lime green suit, you know? And I just, like, loosen the tie, throw it away. And then we, I don't know, but we, you know.

I said, when I went to the cathedral, I was thinking, you know, we filled that cathedral. There were thousands of people there. We had these meetings about Vietnam, you know.

We were really doing, you know, it was very passionate. And there were thousands of people filling the cathedral, and people would debate for hours, you know, how do we stop the war, you know, how do we stop the suffering? And we did all kinds of, we tried all kinds of things to stop the war.

I mean, it was really beautiful. Looking back, you know, it was a very beautiful time. And even the professors and the dean and people, they would help us.

They would, you know, it was, it was everybody in the university was trying, you know, to do their part. And it was a very beautiful time. It was a very good time.

And I think, I'm very proud of that. When I look at the cathedral, I think of it full, completely full, people on the floor, and discussing how to stop the war, you know. So tonight I'm supposed to give a business talk, right?

I'm supposed to talk about money and business. But really, for me, it's something bigger than that. You see, I started a business, I started a business because my mama told me to start a business.

And I didn't want to start a business. And then we used the money to help refugees. The money was for helping refugees.

So for me, the exercise of doing business was more an exercise in, can you change the world? Can you save the world? Is there a spiritual way to, in a practical sense, do something to help the world?

Because I think I grew up here, you know. This was my, how do you call it? It was like breeding ground was here, you know.

And it was very much, more than the classes, the war was what we grew up on. And I remember sitting in Proctor Foundation and watching the TV to see what my lottery number would be. You know what I mean?

And it was a very heavy time. But I, so I'm going to talk about business, but what I really, the reason I did business, and the reason I'm interested in business is that you can use it to help people. And you can change the world with it.

So we'll be talking about money, but you can apply it, we can apply it, and we will apply it to the larger questions of suffering in the world and war, which is still happening, right? It's kind of funny. Those of us who were there in Vietnam, we just see the whole cycle happening again, exactly the same thing happening, you know.

Maybe every generation has to go through it one time and then give it up, you know. I don't know. They don't seem to learn.

People don't seem to learn. So the key to our business, I think, is also a key to helping the world in general. And so we'll keep that in mind, you know.

When I see this university, which I haven't been here for a long time, it makes me think of the higher goals. So in the end, we'll tie it together. So I told this story in the afternoon.

If you weren't here, too bad. But anyway, in the bottom line is, after I'd been in the monastery for about 10 years, my mama said, you should start a business. You know, I want you to start a business.

And I said to my mama, you know, that's the last thing in the world I want to do. You know, I came to the monastery. My family had three deaths in a year.

My mother died, my father died, and my brother died. In my senior year here, in my last year here. And then I thought, oh, you know, this is...

Life is more than, you know, being on the dean's list. You know, something's going on. You know, I was very, very, you know, how do you say, shaken by that.

And then I had to know what was going on, you know. And I left. I left school.

And I went to where the dialogue is and started studying there. And then, you know, my teacher was, well, now I want you to go start a business. And I was like, you know, it took me all this work to give up the material life and get here to the monastery, and now you want me to go back?

You're sending me back to that? You know, and in my time here, business was perceived as a very evil thing. You know, all business people were creepy.

And they talked too fast, and they'd cheat people, and they hurt people. The word businessman here in 1974 was a bad word. You wouldn't say it to someone you liked, you know.

It was a bad thing. So here's my lama, you know. Finally I found my Tibetan lama.

The Dalai Lama himself sent me to this lama. And then I thought, oh, I found my lama, you know. And then after a few years, he's like, you go start a business.

And I'm like, why? And he said, you have to prove to yourself that what you're learning here works in the real world. You see, you can't just sit in the monastery for the rest of your life and, you know, meditate and sit on your head and things like that.

You have to demonstrate to me and to yourself that what you learned here, you can use in the real world. And on a deeper level, okay, on a very deep level, we believe that the lessons that you learn deeply in religious life, in a true spiritual life, and very deep meditations, we believe that you can find deeper workings of reality. You can get to a level of reality.

We call the talk The Matrix, okay, Diamond Cutter Matrix on the paper, right? You know, I went to see this movie, The Matrix, and, you know, the lesson of the movie is that of all people, Keanu Reeves figures out the nature of the world, you know? And so he figures out that the world is like a computer program, you know?

I guess it is for him, right? And then he gets into the program somehow. And I used to show this video, I don't have it anymore, but there's this scene where people shoot bullets at him, and then he goes like this, and the bullets stop in the air and they drop on the ground.

And then he, in that moment, he grasped the deeper workings of the program. Somehow he got into the, what do you call it? The code, the code.

And he changes the code. And then the world just changes. A bullet, he can stop a bullet in midair, you see what I mean, and make it drop to the floor.

So, we are trained. In a Tibetan Buddhist monastery, the training takes 25 years. But we are trained.

If you learn it well, and not many people do, okay? Maybe one out of a hundred in the monastery. They really, really get trained on how to go into the computer program itself.

And how to shift, make shifts in reality. You know, that would serve people. You see, it's kind of a thing where you don't get the keys unless you intend to help people with them.

You see, it's very interesting. If you are sincere, and if you really want to change the world, then they will show you the keys. And then you can do weird things.

You can do very strange things. Because you can get into the program. You see?

So, in a spiritual way, through spiritual means, you can affect reality itself. So my teacher said, prove it. I want you to prove it to me.

You go to New York. I want you to prove that you learn what we tell you. You go to New York, and you make a million dollar business.

You know, just with no knowledge, no training, no friends, nobody. I didn't know anybody in New York at all. He said, go to New York, start a business, make a million dollars by tweaking reality.

Okay? Then I'm like, okay. And I went.

I started with seven dollars. Personally, I had seven dollars. And we started a company with three people.

And now that company is ten thousand people. The company has ten thousand employees all over the world. And it's a quarter billion dollars in sales a year.

The sales of my company is more than the sales of half the state that I live in. Okay? And, it was sold last year to Warren Buffet.

Okay? So, and it doubled every year for 15 years. In the diamond business, it's a weird business.

I'm talking wholesale business. We did 30,000 diamonds a day. It's a weird business because everybody pays the same for the diamonds.

So all the competing companies in the world, they buy their diamonds from De Beers and you pay the same price. So it's impossible to have much advantage over another company because everybody's buying them for the same, exactly the same price. So normally, if you make 1%, 2% growth a year, you're doing good.

That's considered good because how can you, how can you sell things for 1% cheaper than someone else because you're all paying the same for the diamonds. Okay? We've had 100% growth for 15 years.

Doubled every year. Doubled the amount of employees. Doubled the amount of office space.

Doubled the operations around the world. Doubled the factories around the world. Every year for 15 years.

So it's the fastest growing company of that type in the history of New York City. Then people would come to me and they'd say, how did you do that? What are you doing?

People would come and say, what are you doing? And I'd say, it's a diamond cutter. It's called diamond cutter.

We have a scripture that Lord Buddha taught 500 BC, 500 years before Christ. Lord Buddha taught, he gave a teaching, very short teaching. He gave it in a place called, what's it called?

Shravasti. In India. In Northern India.

I went there. On the Millennium, I went there. People said, where are you going to go at the Millennium?

I said, I'm going to be sitting in Shravasti where the Lord Buddha taught the diamond cutter because if the world blows up, that's where I want to be. And I went there. Oh, terrible little rickety cabs and terrible journey and terrible, and the place is almost missing.

It was covered by the jungle and someone found it not too long ago. You know, like 30 years ago, somebody found it and you can sit where Lord Buddha gave the teaching of the diamond cutter. The bricks are still there.

The place is still there. Very beautiful. It's a long, it looks like a, what do you call?

Fashion show, runway ramp. And the monks would walk back and forth for exercise on this ramp two and a half thousand years ago. So I sat there and I finished the translation of the diamond cutter there on the lane.

It was really beautiful. It's a very weird book. It's a very confusing book.

Buddha is sitting with one of his disciples named Subuddhi in that place and you can feel it. And Subuddhi is like this nimny, okay? Subuddhi is always bothering him and Subuddhi is always asking, you know, he's always asking dumb questions, you know, so Lord Buddha gets up and he says, Oh Subuddhi, you know, if I fed every person in the world would that be a good thing?

And Subuddhi says, No. And Buddha says, Why? And he says, Because it's not a thing.

It's not a thing to feed all the people in the world. And then Lord Buddha says, So is there something better than feeding all the people in the world? He said, No.

So is it real to feed all the people in the world? Subuddhi says, It's real. We can call it real because it's not real.

And it goes like that. I mean, it keeps going like that. It's very confusing.

So my Lama sends me to New York with this book to start a business. And it's just weird. The whole book is weird.

And I struggled for years. I struggled and struggled and struggled. And then I got it.

I think, you know, I think I wouldn't have gotten it if I was in the monastery. But I was forced to get it because I had to do this thing. And so I want to describe it.

I want to describe how to do it to you. And then you can use it for anything. I told people this afternoon, I had a very serious handicap in my foot.

And then I used the diamond cutter to change the shape of the bone. And now I do ballet on that foot. Two years ago, I got the girl up in the air.

Like, that was really weird. And then you can do things. People are always coming to me, can you help me find a partner?

And then I say, I give them the diamond cutter. And I explain to them. I give them the diamond cutter and I explain it to them.

And they use it. You can use it for many, many things. Actually, you can use it for everything.

We say, nobody in this world understands how anything works at all. We say, every human being who has ever lived in this world up to now hasn't done a single action correctly. They have lived 50,000 years of civilization in this world without understanding how anything works.

And therefore, people get up and they go to work. Imagine sitting in, I don't know, outer space, okay? In some kind of a ship.

And you're looking at this planet and there are 6 billion people getting up in the morning. I can imagine you watch the sun rising across the world, the light of morning and dark crossing the world. And then as that light crosses the entire globe, along the length of the line, people get up.

Right? People get out of bed. They put their feet on the floor and they stand up.

And they try to do something. You have to feel what it feels like from another place to look at this world and look down on this world. And the sun is going.

The line between morning and dark is crossing the world. And in its wake, 6 billion people are rising. And they, you know, Chinese, Vietnamese, Arab, African, North Americans, Mexicans, they all put their feet on the floor and they stand up.

And they go to do something. They go to try something. I have friends who, I have a very wealthy friend who helps some of our charities.

And she used to get depression. And she would call me and I'd say, she'd call me in the afternoon and I'd say, where are you? She'd say, I'm in bed.

And I'd say, well, are you taking a nap? She'd say, no, I didn't get out of bed. I've been in bed since last night.

And then I'd say, well, why? And she'd say, I don't have anything to get out of bed for. There's no reason to get out of bed.

You see? Which is to say, if you get out of bed in the morning, why? You expect something.

You want to try something. You've got to try to make money or start a family or build a house or paint a painting. Or you're going to do something.

People get out. Six billion people, as the light of the sun crosses their countries, they get out of bed. And they do something.

And everything they do is wrong. And so you have people working so hard. Working, working, working.

Get up early. Get to work. Send an email.

Do a financial report. Look for a client. Do some advertising.

And every action they do is the same. If you went up to them and said, will the proposal you just wrote work? Will it be accepted by the other company?

What will they say? They said, well, no. I'm not sure.

I did my best. I spent a couple weeks on this proposal for JCPenney. I did.

I pitched JCPenney. It was a $20 million account for me. And then I went to JCPenney and said, here's my proposal.

I want to make these rings for you. And I'm going to sell you these diamonds. And then you don't know if it's going to work.

Right? You don't know. Do you know that you will get to work?

When you get up and you get out of your bed and you go out to the car, do you know for sure that you will get to work? You don't know. See, even a small thing like that, much less that your business will succeed, right?

Forget it. You don't know if you'll be alive by the afternoon. You see?

You honestly don't know. You don't know that you won't die in your car on the way to work. You don't know.

So we... That's a kind of suffering, right? You have 6 billion people.

Multiply that times 6 billion. Do you get what I mean? One person's anxiety carried through a day is a bad thing.

I mean, one person's struggle to make some money or to raise a family or just to cook dinner or something. That's hard. That's a hard thing.

Because they don't know if they'll succeed. You see? That's a hard thing.

But I think what's worse is all the anxiety that covers those activities. 6 billion people doing dozens, hundreds of activities every day. And the mental pressure of not knowing if anything's going to work out.

You see? On top of that, even if it does work out, you make money. You know?

You build a house. You get married. You start a family.

And then you die. And then they take the house. And then the kids get old.

And then... And the company disappears. General Motors.

You know? And then... What's it mean?

You see? What does it all mean? We are undertaking activities that we don't know if they will work.

And even if they do work, then we lose it all. You see? So what...

Maybe the lady who's staying in bed has got it right. You see? Then try...

Just try to imagine if somebody figured out how to make something work all the time. Okay? Try to just...

It's hard for me to say to you. It's hard for me to say to you. Why?

You got used to, over an entire life, you were born into this world and you have lived your life in this whole world. You have lived your life up to now in this world. And you have accepted the fact that you don't know what's going to happen.

You've accepted it. You know? So it's very, very hard for me to say you don't have to live like that.

You see? It's really difficult to go to people who for 40, 50, 60 years have resigned themselves that this is the way it is. You see?

We try things. We try to make a living. We try to do things.

And we just don't know if it's going to work out. So it's very, very hard to approach those people and say it doesn't have to be like that. You see?

You could do things and they would work every time. You could make a company in your spare time. I did it in my spare time.

I was doing a gig. Somebody came up to me one day, Israeli guy. He says, this is Michael.

I said, get out. You are not possible. Everything you say you did, it's not possible.

I said, why? He says, well, you say you start this company. You work your company 15 years.

You say you finish 25 years. You see? It's not possible.

You are not at all. You know? I said, no, you don't understand.

I did the Geshe and the company at the same time. You know? And he's like, that's not possible.

You know? And I said, no, no. The company is like three days a week and the Geshe is four days a week.

You know? And a quarter billion dollar company. So how do you do that?

I want to show you. I want to. I want to show you.

Because, suppose I figured it out. Suppose due to my lama's persistence with me, I figured it out. Then it would be crazy not to show people.

Do you see what I mean? It would be mean to live in the world and not show people how to do things. Right?

So, tonight I'll try. I'll just try. You listen.

Try to listen. And then, it's just an idea. It's just a single idea.

It's just an idea. A couple ideas. And, and if you get it, then, then, then you can do whatever you want.

You can do everything. You just try to imagine a life in which everything you try works. Okay?

Like, I don't know how to explain it to you. You want to get a friend. You just wake up and you get a friend.

And, you want to get some more money and you just wake up and you get some more money. So he puts it in your backpack. You know?

A hundred thousand dollar check. It happens to me. Try to imagine knowing some kind of method that anything you want will just come.

Okay? And, we'll start. Okay?

We'll start like that. So, you have, you have to tell me, date. I don't know how to start you guys.

Yeah, okay. I'll do a funny way, okay? Because it's kind of late.

So when I got to the monastery, Khenpo Rinpoche, right? You heard this story. My teacher came, you know, it was kind of a difficult relationship at the beginning.

Because he was really, really tough. And I was not very cooperative. And, uh, so he, he, he got me the first day.

The very first day I went there, he, he sat, I remember he sat on the bed, I sat on the ground. And I said, I was going to show off my Tibetan. I said, na sang gi go, which means, I want Buddha.

And I said, I was trying to say, I want to become enlightened. But I didn't know how to say it. And then he goes, what?

You know, and then he said, speak English. You know, your Tibetan is terrible. And then, then he said, what do you want?

And I said, I want to, I want you to teach me. Please teach me. And I gave him my bank book, you know.

I said, here's all my money I have in the world. And I'll do whatever you say. and, you know, let me come to the monastery and let me study with you, you know.

And so he took the bank book and he threw it at me. He said, I don't need your money. And then, then I said, well, can I have a place to stay?

And he said, no. You know, I said, okay, I can find, you know, I'll sleep somewhere. I'll find someplace to sleep.

And he said, good. And then, then I said, will you teach me? And he said, teach?

I'll teach you. You know, teaching I can do. Teaching I'll do.

So he started teaching. He put me in that little room, little room, in his old room. You can almost touch the walls by stretching out your arms.

It's like six by six or ten by ten, something like that. One little window. And he said, okay, you meditate here, now.

You know, and I'm like, okay. And he says, do you know meditation? I said, I know.

I know. You know. And he said, okay, you meditate on, do you know emptiness?

I said, I know, I know. Later he gave me a name. He would not, he refused to call me by my name for a long time.

He called me Mr. I know, I know. You know, so he said, okay, you meditate on emptiness. What I'm trying to say is, if you understand emptiness, it's like cracking the code to reality.

You can do anything. You can make anything happen. Anything.

Very weird, you can change your bone on your foot, you can take away cancer, you can make quarter billion dollars in your spare time. You know, you can finish your Geshe degree. You know, you can learn to play sitar.

You can play Bach on a sitar. Just weird stuff. Anything you want.

But you need to know emptiness. Okay? So he said, do you know emptiness?

I said, I know, I know. He said, okay, you meditate. Then when I ring the bell, you come.

He had a, what do you call it? It's like the kind of bell you call a dog with. He would ring the bell and we had to run upstairs.

So he said, okay, you meditate. So I sat down and I closed my eyes. Then I remember reading books about meditation.

And I remember reading books about emptiness. You know? So I closed my eyes and I tried to think black.

Just black. You know? And I don't know about you, but the best black I know is you go, you pretend you're in outer space between the stars and everything's black.

Just black. There's nothing else there. Right?

Between stars. So I put my mind like I'm in outer space. I close my eyes.

Everything's black, black, black, black. That's emptiness. You know, then the bell rings.

Then I have to run upstairs. You don't know how it is in the monastery. You know, monastery is different.

Okay? You run. It's like West Point or wherever you went.

And you run up and you knock on the door. You know? And then they say, Come!

You know? And you run in and you throw yourself on the ground. You know?

And then you have to get down like this. And then you're not allowed to look at the teacher's face. You know?

And you go, Choo, choo, choo, choo, choo, choo, choo, choo. Which means, Oh, Honorable Master. You know?

I don't know why they slurp to show respect, but they do. That's one kind of emptiness also. So you slurp, choo, choo, choo.

And then they say, Okay. Did you meditate? And I said, Yes, Master.

You know? Thus, thus. Then he said, What did you meditate about?

I said, As you told me, Master. You know, I have meditated on emptiness. And he says, What's emptiness?

Explain emptiness to me right now. He was like that. He was rough on me.

I don't know about you. He was rough on me. He never said one good thing about me my whole life.

Anyway, he said, I said, Rinpoche, you close your eyes and you sit very still and you just think black. Everything black. You know?

He said, Oh, black, black. I said, Yeah, black, black. He said, You know what you are?

I said, What? He said, You are a kukpa. You are a kukpa.

And I said, You know, Master, what is kukpa? He says, In English, you call idiot. I said, Kukpa.

He said, You go back. You try again. You go down.

You try again. You meditate again. Emptiness.

I went downstairs and I, you know, I got in all this meditation posture and I sat before the holy images and then I sat up straight and I closed my eyes. And I thought, Oh, I read a book about emptiness. It said, just empty your mind.

Don't think about anything. If some thought comes to your mind, just watch it come and watch it go and don't think anything. Don't think about anything.

This is emptiness. So, I sat there and I'm like, Okay, think about nothing. Empty the mind.

Then I heard the bell. Then I ran up. You know, you have to run.

He needs to hear the dung, dung, dung, dung on the steps. And then you knock and then you come in and he's like, Did you meditate? Yes, Master.

You can't even look at him. You can't look at his eyes. And then he's like, Did you meditate on emptiness?

Yes, Master. You know, let me, so what, explain emptiness to me now. I said, emptiness, meditation on emptiness is where you, you just empty your mind and you don't think about anything at all.

You know, if a thought comes, you just let it go and you just empty your mind and you don't think about anything at all. He says, He says, You meditated on emptiness, right? I said, Yeah, yeah.

He said, So you are meditating on this. I said, Yes, yes. He said, What is meditation?

I said, Dhingin Zen, Sei Chi Dhingin Zen means one-pointed concentration. He says, Oh, good. So you are concentrating on thinking about nothing.

I said, Yes, yes, yes. He said, Then you are thinking about thinking about nothing. I said, Yes, yes.

So he said, You are thinking very hard and very clearly and very one-pointedly about thinking about nothing. I said, Yes. So he says, You are thinking about thinking about nothing, right?

I said, Yes, Master. He says, Shindukuppa. Shindukuppa means super cool, super idiot.

You are a super idiot. You know. You are concentrating You are concentrating your mind to not concentrate.

This is stupid. It's a contradiction. You know.

So he said, You try again. You go again. Then I tried.

I went down. I started to lose heart, you know. And I sat.

He told me I could have that room for a while. Then he told me I would get a better room. I was in that room for 25 years.

I didn't know it. That was like the first date. And it was ugly because Banya, yeah, he came and painted the dresser banana yellow.

I had to live with this banana yellow dresser for 25 years. So anyway, I sat in front of the banana yellow dresser and I remembered another book that I had written The other book said nothing's good, nothing's bad. You know.

If you feel good, just let it go. If you feel bad, just let it go. Just, what do you call it?

Economy. Right? Don't worry about anything.

If you feel happy, don't get attached. If you feel sad, don't get attached. If somebody punches you or somebody kisses you, same.

Just let your mind be neutral. So I sat there and I was neutral for a while. Then he rang the bell.

Then I rang the bell. Then he said, what did you meditate about? I said, I meditated about emptiness.

He said, what is emptiness? I said, somebody punches you, somebody kisses you, you get a donut or you get a cavity filled, it's all the same. Just put your mind into equanimity.

All things are the same. It's all an illusion. Then he said, oh, yeah, okay, having a donut and having a dentist drill your teeth is the same.

I said, yeah, it's all the same. You just put your mind into equanimity. Then he said, what is the cause of having your teeth drilled?

The pain. What is the cause of the pain of having your teeth drilled? Scripturally, what is the cause?

And then I said, it's hurting other people. You can only have pain at the dentist if you have hurt another person. That's, that's a rule.

That's the way it is. He says, good. Then he says, what's the cause of a donut if you like the donut?

And I said, you help somebody, you fed somebody, you baked something sweet for somebody else. You did a kindness to somebody else. So he said, so the pain of the dentist and the taste of the donut are all the same.

And meditation just means put your mind on in the is, in the is, in the illusion, you know. I said, yeah. So he said, so you're saying it's the same to hurt someone as it is to cook someone a pastry, right?

It's the same thing. If you say pleasure and pain are the same, then you're saying the cause of pleasure and pain are the same. Which means it's the same to cheat somebody as it is to, you know, give them some money or something like that.

He said, then it's the same, right? And I said, yeah, it's the same. So he says, you're saying good, good deeds and bad deeds are the same, according to you.

I said, yeah, that's what it means. He says, saṃgīmi kṣabhe kukpa, which means inconceivably stupid. You know, you are the kukpe chok, you are the supreme idiot.

Yeah, yeah. So he told me that. Then it took me a long time.

It took me a long time to understand emptiness. If you understand emptiness, you can do anything. You can change anything in the world.

You can get anything in the world. You're not like these six billion slobs getting up every morning and going to do something they don't know if it's going to work or not. I mean, from this point of view, they're all crazy.

You know? So, I'll show you emptiness. And then, and then, whatever your dream is, you are even used to not thinking about your dreams because you know you can't get that.

You see? You're used to accepting what comes and not hoping too much because you believe it's not possible to get... If I said, make a quarter billion dollar company, you'd say, well, that's not...

I'm not hoping for that. I'm just going to try to get a paycheck next week. You know?

I'm not trying to start the next biggest company in New York. I'm just trying to get a job. You're...

You've learned to live without hoping for much. Okay? What do you call it?

He calls it performance... What is it called? Yeah, you have another word.

What's the opposite of that? Eh... Anyway, but you said an airliner would fly 18 inches rather than 36 inches.

What's that called? Some kind of like a new vision of what you could be. He's a pilot.

He flew for the Blue Angels. He was the head pilot for the Blue Angels. So he's always saying, you know, normally you have to keep an airliner a mile from another airliner.

That's a rule. You can't fly closer than that. They taught him to fly 18 inches apart.

Five... Yeah, at a closing speed of 1,000 miles an hour. 18 inches apart.

You see? And then he was... he describes to me sometimes the change of...

What do you call it? The change of your vision that you have to go through. That someone tells you instead of a mile you're going to fly within 18 inches.

You see? And then your mind has to make this huge leap to a new... to this as a possibility.

You see other people doing it. He describes other people doing it and him watching them and saying, okay, it's possible. I've seen somebody do it.

So I'll try. I'll give it a try. You have to think a new way.

Right? So try to imagine a life in which you can make anything happen at all if you understand emptiness. So I'm going to teach you emptiness.

Those are three things that are not emptiness. Got it? Thinking black.

Trying to think about nothing. Or thinking nothing matters is stupid. They're all stupid.

He said if that was meditation then you should just get a bottle of whiskey and drink the whole thing quickly and you'll get to the same thing.

[Говорящий 2]
You know?

[Говорящий 1]
He used to tell me that. So it took me a long time, but if you hang with me for five minutes you can get it. And then and then if you if you follow up you can have anything you want.

Really. Anything. You don't have to live like this.

There's nothing about your world which cannot be changed. Even death. Even death itself.

War. Poverty. Hunger.

Death. They can be changed. Okay?

Just understand this one thing. Okay? Here it is.

Mmm. What is this thing? You say pen.

I mean it's not a big philosophical debate. Okay? I mean everyone's nervous at the beginning.

They're like It's a pen. You know? It's a kind of I like these pens.

I found one in New York one time and now I always buy them. I like them. They're from Japan.

I just like the way they're light and they draw and they last for a long time and they're good to chew on. So So suppose a dog came down the aisle there and up the ramp and over here. A puppy.

Want to rib the chick. Probably dogma number 23. My dog, my Our lama had two dogs.

He outlived like 12 generations of the same dog. So we call him dogma number one dogma number two. So anyway If I wave this object in front of the dog what will the dog do?

What will the dog do? Puppy. Yeah, I'm talking puppy.

Yeah, they'll grab it and they'll try to chew it. They'll play with it and they'll chew it like Frankie Francis in New York or Bella. So he would chew it.

Is it a pen to the dog? You have to say no, right? Next question.

Who's right? Who's right? You can say both, okay?

I gave this talk probably a thousand times. I was in Gainesville, Florida? Somewhere in Florida.

I don't remember. There was a guy sitting right where she's sitting and he insisted it was a pen. He insisted the dog was wrong.

You know? But it's the only person in the whole world I've been to like 30 countries. You know?

Same talk. I'm sorry. He was sitting right.

But he insisted the dog was wrong and the human was right. No matter what he said he didn't get it. You know?

So we can say they're both right. I mean, to the dog it's something to chew on. To the human it's a pen to write with.

Right? That's not a problem. You could say they're both right.

Now, next question. If you place this thing here on the stage and all the people leave the room and all the dogs leave the room then what? No, just what do you think?

Don't I'm not trying to trick you. I'm trying to make you money or whatever you want. Say again?

Yeah, he said he's a physicist. We can say a black cylinder. How's that?

It's a black cylinder. Okay? That's fair.

You could almost say it's neither somehow. Right? At that point it's neither maybe.

It's just a black cylinder. Okay? So the human comes back in the room and I hold it up and it's and it's a pen.

Right? To the human. The big, big question for you.

By the way, this will change physics eventually. I have a plan. I'm not kidding.

Just put a seed in your mind for later. Okay? We can work on it.

So can we say that the pen is the penness is coming this way or is the pen coming this way? Where does the pen come from? Yeah.

It has to be. Right? I'll tell you why.

Okay? If it was coming this way, if the pen was coming this way, if it was announcing, All the time. If it were like announcing itself all the time, right?

Then the dog would be compelled to try to write with it. Even if they couldn't do it, they would see it as a pen. They would think, oh, a writing instrument.

You know? Let me try to write a poem to my dog girlfriend. You know?

Ah, you have a beautiful tail. You know? And like that.

I always think of that. A dog. See?

So it proves that it proves that the pen is not coming this way. Really. I'm not just trying to be funny.

I'm trying to save your life or at least get you rich. Okay? So the pen is coming not this way, but the pen is coming that way.

Okay? And when the dog sees it, what? The chewing thing.

Where's that coming from? The dog's mind. Okay?

So we can conclude that there must be something in the dog's mind and there must be something in the human's mind that makes them see it the way they see it. It's not coming from this thing. It's not coming from the outside.

It's coming from... It's coming from my mind. Okay?

Now, next question. Follow me. Okay?

Follow it. It's very important. At least you can make a lot of money.

Maybe you could change cancer in your body. You could do all kinds of cool stuff. And you could help other people do the same.

Right? Follow it. Can I wish that it was something else?

Can I close my eyes and say, I have in my head a huge black diamond. You know? It's the biggest diamond, black diamond in the world.

And I'm going to wish this was a diamond. Since it's coming from me, this is the next argument, right? Since it's coming from me, I'll just decide it should be something else.

So you close your eyes. If you want to, you don't close your eyes, but I'm afraid you'll fall asleep. So, don't do that.

Just think it's a diamond. Okay? And then look at it.

I stand like this, you know? And to me it's still a pen. Okay?

From which we can conclude it's being a pen is coming from your mind, but it's not up to you. It's not voluntary. It's not in the moment you can make it something else.

Right? You can think positively about it. You can say, I wish it was full.

I wish I could write something good with it. You can think like that, but you can't change what it is. It's coming from you, but you don't seem to have control over the process in the present moment.

Okay? That's important. Okay?

So we say there must be something in your mind. There must be some kind of energy or thought or perception in your mind which is born when I held this up. In your mind a certain image was born and it came out of your mind onto this object and you saw a pen.

And the dog has a different seed in its mind. And then the seed in the dog's mind opens when I raise the object and they just salivate. They just want to chew on it.

Got it? And I don't have control over that seed opening. Okay?

It's opening at a certain moment when you held up this thing, but it's not like I can say I wish I had a different seed. Okay? It seems to be that those seeds are planted before.

And then you just have to deal with whatever seeds opening at the present moment. Okay? Like that.

Now the next question is very important. Is it possible to consciously plant such a seed? Could you consciously plant a seed to see any object in a different way?

Because then you could make a quarter billion dollars in your spare time. You see? Or you could change a bone in your foot.

Or you could remove breast cancer from your chest. You see? Or on a larger level you could make a world peaceful.

You could make a whole planet peaceful instead of fighting. You see? If it's possible to selectively plant the seeds to see what you want to see.

You see? By the way, another question for you. Is it real?

Is the pen real? I only had one person say it wasn't. Okay?

And I said, come up here, I'll give you a Hitler mustache. And then you tell me it's not real. You know?

And they came up and I carefully drew a mustache. And they went through the whole thing. They were brave.

And, I mean, that's the test. If it writes, it's real. And you can't say it's not real.

It's real. It writes. That's the test, right?

It's real, so it writes. Is it coming from your mind? We already said that.

Don't back out on me now. We already said that. You said, it's coming from your mind.

You said that. I didn't say that. You said that.

The dog, right? I went like this. He said, right.

You know, right? It's coming from your mind. And it's real.

Okay? It's real. Reality is coming from your mind.

If you change the seeds in your mind, you could change what you see. And what you see is what is real. That's what I'm trying to get to, okay?

What you see is what is real. It's real because you're seeing it. Got it?

And it works. Okay? You can't say it's...

You can say it's coming from your mind and you can say it works. In Buddhism we say, it's real because it's coming from your mind. Okay?

We don't pussy around. You know? We say it's real because it's coming from your mind.

We don't say, even though it's coming from your mind, it's still real. We think that's like NIMBY. We say it's real because it's coming from your mind.

That's all. If it wasn't coming from your mind, then the dog would ride with it. Got it?

We already said that. Don't go backwards, okay? Now, how do I plant a seed in my mind to get a pet?

To see a pet, right? We're not going to say get a pet anymore. We're going to say see a pet, which is to get a pet.

Got it? Alright? If I see it, I got it.

Because that's what makes it real. Okay? How do I plant a seed in my mind to see a pet?

Now, we talked about it this afternoon. And Jesus was big on this, right? You don't get...

Help me out here. Thorns from... I changed it.

I rewrote it. I went to Oxford. I studied biblical Greek.

I decided it should be... You don't get watermelons from cactuses, right? Anyway, Jesus said you don't get thorns from grapes and figs from thistles.

Just basically, it's invariable that the result resembles the cost. That's just the way it is. Thank God.

You know? Then farmers can go out. They can open a watermelon, collect the black seeds, go out in the springtime, plant those seeds, and they can be sure that in the summer, they're not going to have a big garden full of bananas.

It just doesn't work like that. The cause and the result are always similar. Jesus was very big on that, and there's a reason why he was so insistent on that.

He was talking about good deeds and bad deeds, right? It's not possible to get a good result from a bad deed. And it's not possible to get a bad result from a good deed.

And if you want to know how to see a pen, or to see an object as a pen, you must plant a seed in your mind for a pen. And you can only do that by giving a pen to someone else. It's a kind of magic.

It's called morality, or generosity, or charity. It's very beautiful. It's very, very beautiful.

You ready? So he's a lawyer. Let's say he's a lawyer.

And he's writing an important contract. And he doesn't have a pen. I know he doesn't have a pen.

And if he can sign the contract in the next five minutes, he makes a lot of money, or something like that. So he reaches out his hand. Then I want to give him my pen.

And when I let go, when I release the pen, a seed is planted in my mind. Okay? A seed is planted in my mind.

All actions of your life are recorded. There is a witness. What's his name, that guy at the pearly gate?

St. Peter. Your own mind is St. Peter. Okay?

Your mind records everything you do, everything you say, everything you think. It's recorded in your mind, indelibly, forever. Okay?

It's there. I was in a three-year silent retreat, right? And you would think that a three-year silent retreat, not meeting anyone for three years, sitting there waiting for three years, you would think it would be peaceful.

It's not. Okay? So, the first couple months are fine.

You know, you're in that little retreat cabin. I did it in the desert. It was hot as hell.

It was so hot. And no electricity, no water, no toilet, nothing, you know? And I got two gallons of water a day.

And I pooped on the ground outside and I put it in a bag and sent it out. Really, for three years. And so I'm like in there for a couple months, you know?

And then one day I hear this like little voice. You know, it's like, it goes like this. It goes, Uh-oh, SpaghettiOs.

Uh-oh, SpaghettiOs. And I was so, I was like, finally, something's happening, you know? Some divine being is talking to me finally.

I'm just like St. Francis now, you know? And I'm like, okay, say it again. You know, and I hear this, Uh-oh, SpaghettiOs.

And then I'm like, wait, I know this thing. And then I remembered when I was a little kid on the television, they had a spaghetti advertisement. And it goes, Uh-oh, SpaghettiOs.

And then I haven't thought about that for 40 years. I hadn't thought about it at all for 40 years. And it's just popping out of my head.

Everything you've ever seen, everything you've ever done, the witness who judges you is your own, right? Everything is recorded. Even the thoughts in your mind are recorded, right?

Every movie you've ever seen is there complete in your mind. If you got, if you did a three-year retreat, you could play the whole movie back scene for scene, even if you never saw it after that. And you get, you know, on a bad day in a three-year retreat, you play home movies in your head, you know?

And you enjoy them, you know? Deanna Ruiz. So what I'm trying to say is, when you offer him the pen, with thoughts of kindness, right?

Depends, we can talk about that if we have time. There's technique involved, okay? There's ways to plant.

Jesus said seeds act different if you throw them on the stones than if you throw them on the fertile earth. You will get different results. Throw a watermelon seed on the asphalt in the middle of New York and wait for a watermelon?

So there's some technique involved. There's points of technique, but generally, if I give him a pen, when I release the pen, with thoughts of kindness, a seed is planted in my mind. Months later, someone holds up a black cylinder and I see a pen.

That seed ripens in my mind as an image. That image is superimposed upon that. This is very cool.

The image is superimposed upon the black cylinder. I think it's a pen, and I think it's automatic. I believe the process to be automatic.

It's not. In the time I held up this object the first time, and I asked you what it was, there was a very, very instantaneous thing. The seed opened in your mind, your mind produced a small image, and your mind superimposed it on the black thing.

It must be like that, because the dog sees something else. Got it? What's this got to do with making a quarter billion dollars?

So when we started our company, when I was at Princeton, my last year here, we started a charity. 1975. We started a charity.

We put up signs in all the dorms, and we said, if you have extra winter clothing... This was in May, when the students are leaving for home, right? And so, being mostly well off, they just throw out their winter stuff, because it's easier.

So we put up signs in all the dorms. We said, if you have winter coats, throw them in the basement, and we'll come and... And then we got a truck, and we went around and collected all the winter coats.

Then we went to the Proctor Foundation basement, and we kept them there. And then we shipped winter coats to the refugees, the Tibetan refugees. And that was the beginning.

So when I started the company, I started a charity, right? Why? Yeah, it puts seeds in my mind.

You see? It's conscious farming. The Yoga Sutra says, in the fourth chapter, we will be as farmers.

When you get it, you will be as a farmer. You will plant the seeds for the things you want. And that's all.

You know? When you start a business, you have to start a charity in the same week. You see?

Because that's what puts the seeds in your mind. And then you watch the thing double every year. And that's why it doubles every year.

Is it doubling every year out there? No. It's doubling every year from here.

And that means it's really doubling. Got it? It's real.

It writes. You can't say it doesn't write. It also tastes good to a dog.

Okay? Its reality is coming from you. Not from your current wishes.

Okay? You can pray all day that this was a banana, and it's not going to change. Okay?

Maybe if you gave bananas to a lot of people, it might change. You get it? It's a matter of...

What do you call it? Pre-planning. You have to plant the seeds you want ahead of time.

Okay? But let me say something else about the anxiety level of your life. You see?

What if you knew that this system worked, and then you wanted to start a business? Okay, I don't want a quarter billion dollars. I just want to have my credit card bills paid on time.

You know? I don't need a quarter billion dollars. I just want to have the amount of money that I don't have to think about money anymore.

That I don't worry or I don't stress about money. Okay? In this system, then you need to find some needy people somewhere.

The more needy, the better. Okay? If you've got to go to India to find them, go to India.

If you've got to go to China to find them, go to China. Or if you've got to go to Newark to find them, go to Newark. Right?

Find someone who needs something, and serve them, and help them. You see? Then what?

Relax. Just sit there and relax. It will come.

The seed will ripen. Okay? How much...

I mean, I have a garden. I have a beautiful garden. I plant the seeds in the spring.

Then I go inside. I don't sit there and stare at the seeds, you know? I don't sit there.

I go inside. I relax for a month. I come out.

There's flowers. You know? That's it.

You see? It's different from six billion people getting up and struggling through the day. You see?

It's different. Imagine what the world would be like. You want to change the world?

Did you sit in the cathedral in 1970 and talk about Vietnam and wonder how you could change the world? Right? How about this?

What about this? You see? What if it's true?

What if you could teach people techniques to help people who needed money and then that created more money in the world? By the way, I'm not talking about an exchange of money. Got it?

I ain't talking socialism, capitalism, communism. Okay? I'm not talking about that.

I'm not talking about how we split the pie. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about when I give him a pen, the thing about seeds in your mind is they grow, they multiply.

Okay? It's like, what do you call them? Irises?

Okay? Every three years I have to go out and dig up the irises. Why?

They multiply underground. The bulbs multiply underground. If you don't dig them up and split them and plant them in different places, they'll kill each other.

There's not enough nutrients. Okay? These seeds are the same.

Okay? You give one pen, you relax. While you're relaxing, they're making babies underground.

Okay? Under the subconscious, in the subconscious, just like irises, images of pen are multiplying. Because that's what seeds do.

It's like planting bulbs in your mind. Okay? And then more money comes back.

You see? You help refugees. You give them $1,000.

$10,000 comes back. You understand? You could, boy, if that was true, you could maybe double a company every year.

Get it? Okay? It's very cool.

It's really cool. She got to go for a ride. Yeah.

Next question. Okay? If you're a good...

Frankly, if you're a good Christian, you should ask me one more question. You should say, that sounds pretty cold-hearted. You know?

That sounds pretty selfish. You're proposing that we should go give money to... We should start a charity when we start our business so that our business will double.

You see? Right? It sounds kind of self...

What do you call it? Interesting. I mean, selfish.

It's just plain selfish. Charity should be... Lord Krishna tells Arjuna in the Gita, don't hope for the results of your good deeds.

Just do them for the sake of goodness. You see? Couple of answers to that.

One is that if you are generous with knowledge, if you are generous knowing how to do it, you can't avoid the result. It's not possible. Okay?

You can say, I don't want money. You have a choice. You can either not do good deeds, or you can either hurt people or help them.

You can either share your resources, or you can not share them. If it bothers you that you're going to get something, then you better not share them. Because it's coming.

It must come. It cannot be stopped. No power on earth can stop that seed from coming to you.

It's not possible. Okay? You can't be poor if you give.

It's not going to work. Okay? So, it's not really selfish.

You can't stop it. I tell this story. I went to a yoga class.

I don't know if you've ever heard of Dharamitra. He's the guy who made that poster with 500 poses on it. So, he's in New York.

I'm afraid to go to his class, because he always tortures me. It's a really hard class. I went to it yesterday.

Yeah, yesterday, right? It's a really hard class. So, I went...

Day before? So, I went. Anyway, I went one day.

And I always have this backpack that I carry around, because it has my office in it. I have 10,000 scriptures on my laptop that we typed in with the charity. For 23 years.

It started in the basement of the... What is that hall? Behind the...

It's where all the foreign languages are. Russian and Greek. What's that hall called?

East Park. Yeah, East Park. I suffered in East Park for many years.

But that's where we started the project. We started the charity there in the basement. And we've been inputting the lost books up to bed for 23 years.

In the refugee camp. And I think we've finished about a million pages. Okay?

So, anyway, I carry around my laptop with me. And I carry around the backpack. So, I've been done with this class.

Some guy comes up to me. I won't say his name. He comes up to me.

And he says, I want to shake your hand, Geshe Michael. I said, okay. Then I...

He says, I think what you're doing is really good. You know, you're a Buddhist. But you teach in Christian churches.

And you also teach Bhagavad Gita. And you sing Christian songs. But you can also sing Jesus songs.

And I like what you're doing. Then I said, thank you. And then I left.

Then I got this email from him. He said, how come you didn't thank me? You know?

And I'm like... I wrote him back. I said, I didn't even know his name.

I just had the email. And I said, thank you for what? He said, for what I put in your backpack.

Then I'm like, I didn't see anything in my backpack. You know, we're going back and forth. Then he said, you look in your backpack.

And I look in the backpack. There's an envelope, right? And it has a $100,000 check.

Check for $100,000. If you are generous, if you give with a good heart, you can't avoid the result. OK?

It doesn't matter. It's like saying, it's like saying, I'm going to plant watermelon seeds, but I don't want the watermelons. I don't...

I want to plant watermelon seeds, and I don't want watermelons to come up. And then in the scriptures, in the Buddhist scriptures, they say there's no power in the universe which can prevent the watermelon from coming up. OK?

It's very interesting. Then, when the money comes, what will you do with it? You have to give it away.

Why? The growth of a thing destroys the seed. The growth of a thing destroys the seed.

The growth of a watermelon destroys the seed for the watermelon. That's it. Once the watermelon comes up, the seed is destroyed.

The growth of a thing destroys its seed. Always. Acorns are destroyed by?

Oak trees. OK? When they grow, they destroy their seed.

OK? When the money comes, the seed is gone. The coming of the money destroys the seed.

OK? People are always asking me how I find a boy. You know, I want to find a nice boy.

I say, what's the main thing you want out of a boy? Give me one thing you want out of a boy, besides sex, OK? Because I'm a monk.

And then they say, I want... I'm lonely. I want companionship.

I want someone to be with. So I say, OK. Go help a lonely person.

Plant a seed in your mind. Go help a lonely person. Go to a nursing home and help an elderly person.

Plant a seed in your mind. So they go. They come out.

I have all these marriages going on nowadays, you know? Like Jessica and all kinds of people. They all came to me and said, how do I find a boy?

Now I'm an uncle and a grandfather and all this stuff. So... So I said, go to the nursing home and help someone.

So they go. And they find the boy. Do they find the boy?

They don't really find the boy. They make the boy. That's safer.

If you find him, there might be something wrong with him. If you make them, you kind of design everything you want, you see? So...

Anyway, they go. And then the stupid ones do what? The dumb ones do what?

They dump the... the old person. They say, I got the boy, I don't need to hang out with the old person anymore.

You know? But you see, the coming of the boy destroyed the seed of being with the old person. And then the boy will get old.

You see? The relationship will age. The seed will lose its power to create the relationship.

And the relationship, A-A-A-C, which is planted and left untended, must diminish every year. It is the nature of reality that a relationship left without new fertilizer, new sustenance, must and will degenerate. Okay?

It must get worse. It must. Okay?

Because it had a cost. It's like a water mirror. Okay?

It must go downhill. So don't feel bad. It wasn't your fault.

Alright? All relationships must... If they are not recharged with new seeds, they must...

they must degenerate. They must... That's why people constantly say it's not like the first year.

You know? We don't have the excitement that we had the first year. That's because you dumped the old person.

Okay? Got it? In the case of a relationship, then you should go with your newfound...

Sorry. Newly created boy and go hang out with the old lady. Okay?

That's what I do. I have an old lady in Phoenix. And I forget it.

I go every... Every time I'm there, I go to her house and I fix her toilet and I fix her steps and I make her garden clean and I paint something for her. Then I take her out to dinner.

You know? And then that's the part that sustains your relationships. You see?

And I keep doing it. So, I keep planning new things. Now, we were talking about what?

Money, I think. We were talking about selfishness. Right?

Is it selfish? We finally got back to that. So, the money costs.

Someone gives me a $100,000 check. What should I do with it? Yeah, don't use it.

Don't, don't, don't, don't... What do you call it? Consume it.

Don't consume it. Reinvest it. Got it?

By the way, you don't have to reinvest the whole thing or it wouldn't make any sense. You see? I mean, you should have enjoyed some of it.

That's reasonable. You see? I give half.

Or something like, you know? Half is enough. What's 10 times half?

Come on, you're Princeton. It's 5, okay? If you keep half, if you keep half, you still have 5 times more than you had before.

That's not bad. You can use half. I used half the income locally.

I spent half the income in India. Okay? That's okay.

You can do that. You don't have to give up everything, okay? This path doesn't require that you be unhappy or that you not have things that you enjoy.

It's not wrong to enjoy things. A reasonable-sized car, an apartment in which you can meditate, and do your practices, and keep your books, and it's not too cold, and not too hot, and a reasonable amount of food, okay? And bills that you don't have to worry about.

Just the bills you just pay them. And that's fine. There's no problem.

You don't have to suffer to be spiritual. Okay? You just have to be modest, you know?

Have a nice little place. And eat moderately, and taste the stuff that you like. And spend a little bit extra for the organic.

You're not evil. Okay? It's okay.

Take care of yourself. Buy some new clothes once in a while. It's okay.

Have a go-to movie, you know? And then half of what comes to you, you reinvest it. You give it to the poor.

And you help them. And that's enough. And that's just a nice life.

That's a good life. It's not a problem. You can enjoy it.

It's not wrong. Okay? So it's not selfish to do good things.

The results will come to you anyway. When the results come, you actually don't have any choice. You have to give those away also.

So it doesn't become selfish, does it? You can't be selfish and sustain the growth. It won't happen.

You can't stop seeing the old lady. And you can't stop giving money to the poor. You have to keep going.

And you will keep going. When I was here at Princeton, down there, in the little lousy half of a hall they gave to the Department of Religion. What was that hall?

1879. Yeah, 1879. But it's like the 18, because the Department of Philosophy gets...

Yeah. I guess it's still that way. Because we don't bring any income to the university.

So my department was down in... They split this building in two. There was a line.

And the Department of... Sociology? No, I'm sorry.

Philosophy, which is just as worthless as religion. They got the right half. And we got the left half.

The Religion Department. And I remember... I don't remember his name.

What was his name? Christian Scholar. It wasn't John Gajer.

I don't remember his name. Anyway, he got arrested with us in the anti-war stuff. Anyway.

He said something beautiful. He said, the test of a religion is what would happen if the whole world was doing it. Okay?

I'll never forget that. It's a beautiful thing to say. He said the test of religion is what would happen in the world if everybody was doing it.

If everybody was following it, what would happen? So what would happen if your beliefs involved the necessity of giving away money to sustain your own life? To sustain your own home and your car and your way of life?

What would happen in the world? Huh? No, everybody would be giving things.

You see? People who needed things would become precious commodities. You see?

That's a... दानि सेज़न् तापेण आयिशिन् नोबवेदाः देचो तुपेस तभी तातुचे पचिमरशो सिकेमा, right? People who need things are precious.

You would start to view the poor and the stupid and the ugly and the elderly and the lonely... You would start to see them as very precious. You know, oh man, this is my ticket to a court of law.

So... We gave talks in Detroit. We were trying to give talks to the unemployed auto workers.

They asked us to come to Detroit to speak to unemployed auto workers and give these kind of talks to them. And some guy was in the back. He was really cute.

I gave this whole weekend thing. And then he raised his hand at the end. His name was River.

And he said, Kejla, Kejla, I did it. He said, what? He said, I found somebody.

I said, what? And I said, they are lonely. They are sick.

And they're poor. All of them. He's like, I'm going to get a girlfriend and money.

And my yoga will get better. He was so happy. So then we would be looking out for the poor.

We would take an interest in the poor. And what I was trying to say before was that the money that comes back to you is new money because it's coming from your mind. You see?

The pen which comes to you is a new pen. If I have $1 and I give it to him, then according to this system, if you do it intelligently, which takes some training. I have to do that or I don't have time tonight.

We'll have to have some other talk sometime. You have to do it with proper technique. If you follow the technique, which involves kindness and it involves a recognition of him as being equal to me, like that, many kinds of thinking.

You can't just throw money at people. You have to have a certain process going on in your mind. But if I give him $1, and then because of that, I see this planting in my mind, the iris bulb, right?

Which makes babies on the ground. And then that will come back as $10. You see?

Where will the $10 come from? It's very important to say that. She said that.

We were in Vietnam. I don't know. They got it fast.

I don't know why. They were smarter somehow. And it was an honor to go there after the whole Vietnam War thing.

And we've been teaching a lot in Vietnam. And they all go like this now. They're all like this, you know?

They don't speak. They just go like this. It's a new thing in Vietnam.

And that $10 that came back to you is coming out of your mind. So now how many dollars are in the system between him and me, in the ecology between him and me? There was $1.

I gave it to him. Then I planted seeds for $10. How many in the system now?

Eleven. You see? We are talking about an economic system which will raise the total amount of wealth in the world.

It's not a system of how to re-divide the wealth. It's not like communism. It's not like socialism.

It's not like capitalism. It's all dealing with the question of how do you share the limited resources of the world. We're talking about if it's true that stuff comes from you, then you can raise the combined dollar value of the wealth of the world will rise exponentially every year.

Meaning there would be no more poor countries. You don't have to take from America to give it to Sudan. You just teach the Sudanese how to do this.

And then they'll be at America's level. You see? And it's new money.

It's not shared anymore. People say to me, look, there are limits. Marx himself said you are limited by what can be grown in the earth.

Right? The system, his system, was limited to what would grow out of the dirt. Right?

There's only so much oil, Michael. We can't sustain it. If all the Sudanese had cars the way all the Americans have cars, there'd be a problem.

You can't sustain that kind of growth. It's dangerous. When I was in Germany, a lot of people said this is dangerous.

Your ideas are dangerous. What will they do to the ecology? To the environment?

What will happen? You have to understand that what we're talking about here is unknown kinds of new wealth. Currently unknown sources of stuff.

Okay? You can call it that. Currently unknown sources of stuff.

I went into three-year retreat. I had a laptop. IBM ThinkPad.

It actually was faster than the laptops nowadays. And then when I came out, I asked the people taking care of me, I said, you know, I came out of retreat, I don't have a penny. You have to give up all your money when you go into three-year retreat.

So I came out of three-year retreat with nothing. And then I said, can you at least get me to Tucson? You know?

And I'll work it out from there. And they're like, no, no, Mishla, we've been collecting money for you. Here's some money.

You'll be okay for a couple months. You know, don't worry. Then I said, okay, can I have a laptop?

You know? And she's like, okay, we'll get you a laptop. So they gave me this laptop.

She got me a laptop, you know? And I'm like, I'm looking at it and I'm like, I thought she was a pretty generous person. You know?

And then I look at the laptop and I said, this is weird. I guess she's just really hard up for money. She couldn't find anybody to help.

And she said, what's wrong? And I said, I mean, frankly, it's a cheap laptop, you know? And she said, well, what's wrong with it?

And I said, it doesn't even have a floppy disk drive. You know? Like, where do you put the floppy disk?

And she's like, Mishla, they don't make those anymore. You know? And I'm like, well, how do you get a file from one place to another?

What do you do if you can't send a floppy disk in the mail, in an envelope? You know? And she's like, Mishla, I gotta tell you about this thing.

It's called the internet. And I'm like, what's internet? And she said, well, it's a new way to send stuff to people.

You know? Like, you would just send the file across the internet. And here's this little thing here.

And, you know, you get in a room with wireless. I'm like, what's wireless? Well, it's just like radio stuff, right?

It takes your message. You send your message to somebody else on the internet. I said, oh, I don't need that.

She said, why? I said, God, it must cost a fortune. You know?

I mean, faxes used to cost a lot of money. Cables before that, telegraphs before that, in my business, those are expensive. I mean, you're talking, how long does it take to get there?

How many days after you send it does a person get it? And she's like, looking at me like I'm crazy, you know? I said, no, Geshe-la, you don't understand.

You send an email and they get it like 30 seconds later, 10 seconds later. And I'm like, but that must be really expensive. She said, no, no, you don't understand.

It's free. I'm like, well, who's paying for all this? You know?

It's free? And they get it? How many people have email?

She said, everybody. I said, everybody? She said, yeah, every country has email.

You can send a message to anybody in the world for free, instantaneously. I'm like, who's paying for all this? You know?

And she's like, no, you don't understand. It just works like that, you know? And then we would say, we would say that the seeds of being in a deep retreat created the Internet for me, okay?

We would say that the intention with which you started a thousand days of practice, you know, we were trying to do something good for the world. We were trying to help the world. So then the result of that, the result of that is I come out and there's this thing called the Internet, okay?

When I first started my business, there was a transatlantic copper cable. And we had to book a call to India. And then you had to scream your lungs out to push those electrons across the Atlantic, you know, to India.

No, it was like that. We knew when someone was ordering stones from different countries, depending on how screaming they were in the office. So like India, you had to close three doors and then go in the closet and scream.

And so those, you're like, you're very similar to people who are worried about the cost of copper, you see? Like I'm telling you, she's telling me, Geshe-la, you can send a message anywhere in the world. And I'm saying, no, don't do it.

And then she says, why? And I say, do you realize how many holes they'll have to dig for that much copper? And she says, Geshe-la, it's not that way anymore.

It's just a satellite. It's like, I don't know, it's a satellite with a couple of pounds of aluminum in it, you know? That's it.

That's all there is, you know? So don't think. Don't limit your thinking, okay?

Don't be like in a Rip Van Winkle three-year retreat, you know? The way in which Sudan's wealth comes to match America's will be something that we can't even imagine. Because mental seeds are unstoppable.

They are completely unstoppable. You can't stop them. If you plant, if you are kind to enough people in your life, if you share your resources with enough people in your life, the poverty of the world will end in a way you cannot guess now.

And don't think you can guess it. And don't limit it to what you can guess. Because I give you the example of the Internet, okay?

Weird stuff can happen, okay? Weird stuff will happen. We've got like five minutes.

By the way, if poverty ends in the world, what happens to war? I mean, almost all war is due to poverty. I was in Morocco.

I said, I'm going to study Quran. I'm going to see if Arab people are really evil or not, you know? And I wanted to go to an Arab country, and I couldn't think of a safe one.

And then I have a close dear, dear friend who's from Morocco. He said, come to Morocco. I'll set you up with an imam in the mountains.

And you can study for a couple of months. So I went, you know? And I went to the villages, and I saw the unemployment there is like 80 percent.

So eight out of ten healthy, strong young guys are sitting around doing nothing all day, and they get angry. You know? It doesn't matter at what.

They're just angry, and they're bored. Boredom is worse than anything. There are 80 percent of the guys in those villages are bored and angry.

Because they have no... What does it feel like to have nobody in the world think they need anything from you? You know?

They don't even want you to dig a hole or something, or take a garbage can out or something. They don't need you for anything. And then you start to feel like that, like nobody wants me for...

Nobody will hire me for anything for any price. I'm useless. And then there's this anger that builds up.

And you feel it in the villages, you know? And what would happen if everybody had exactly some beautiful activity to serve someone else? You see, what would happen in the world if everyone had enough money?

It'd be great. War would stop, I believe. War would stop.

Okay, you have any questions? Let's do like five, ten minutes of questions. You have any questions?

Yeah. Go ahead. Yeah.

[Говорящий 2]
So, 1995, I spent a day... Where in Virginia are you? In North Carolina.

[Говорящий 1]
North Carolina. And I went running up to you and I said, Hey, my boss, he's a sexist and a feminist and he doesn't respect me. And he said...

And so, for a long time, I used to put flour on his desk and I'd do what he told me to do and I wouldn't fight with him.

[Говорящий 2]
And now I'm a boss.

[Говорящий 1]
I hope you don't pick on him. I just want to make fun of him. It's nice.

How do you plant seeds to give yourself more time? Ah, beautiful, beautiful question. He said, how do you plant seeds to give yourself more time?

So, we were in Vietnam. We were in Saigon, Ho Chi Minh City. And somebody asked the same question.

And I had a dear student who's Vietnamese. And I asked him if he would answer the question. He's Vietnamese-American.

So, he said... There's two points here. One, what do you think?

What would be the seed? What would be something... You see, you've got to find watermelons for watermelons.

What would you provide to someone else to give more time? Give your time. Yeah, okay?

Give your time for other people. If you don't have enough time to get what you need to get done, done. And then the first thought that comes in your mind is, that's going to make me busier.

You know? That's going to mean less time for me. I mean, it doesn't make sense, Geshe-la.

Well, it doesn't make sense to give money to people who want money, does it? And that's why people don't do it. And that's why the world is suffering.

You see? Because the solution is what you thought it couldn't be. Get it?

The way to get money is to give money. Then I have to say to you, it wouldn't work unless of the iris thing. If it weren't for the iris thing, it would be stupid.

I give you ten minutes, I get ten minutes back. Well, let's just cancel it. You know?

What happens is, you give somebody your time, purposely, knowingly, with wisdom, Prajnaparamita. That's the real Prajnaparamita. You take an action with knowledge.

And you give someone of your time, knowing that it will plant a seed in your mind for much more time than you get. Okay? It's very beautiful.

So, find people who are stressed, and find that person you can, who's the most stressed. Okay? That's a trick.

That's one of the technique things, okay? Don't just do it for anybody. Find the most stressed person you can find.

Yeah, besides yourself. And give of them your precious time. And another point, very important, okay?

I'm telling you now technique. This is why some people give money and don't get anything. They don't know the technique.

Part of the technique is that, after you gave someone of your time, of your precious time, that evening, when you go home, and you sit in your room, think, I'm glad I did it. I did a good thing. You know?

This person's very stressed out, and I tried to help them. I spent some time trying to help them, okay? At night, go home and think about the good thing you did, because that plants another seed.

You get almost as much seeds by thinking about your good deeds as you do by doing the good deeds. And that's a trick in the business. That's a good deed business trick, okay?

The enjoying of your own good deeds, and enjoying the good deeds of others, plants new seeds, more seeds. And that's what takes you over the top. That's what gets you to a quarter billion.

And it's so cool. I came home one night. My Lama's like, you know, it's a two-hour commute both ways.

I had a 12-hour day. I had 14 hours. Come home.

I'm like, wiped out. And he's like, come up here. You know?

I ran up. He's like, did you do your meditation today? I'm like, Rinpoche, I got up at 6 o'clock.

It's now 8 o'clock, you know? I've been on the road. I've been working all day, you know?

I think I'm doing my meditation. He says, sit down. Do your meditation.

And I'm like, I just want to watch New York Yankees with you. I don't want to do meditation. And then he's like, shut up.

Sit down. You know? Then he'd get me some coffee.

He'd have Japa go near me. It's not really coffee. It's Tibetan tea.

But I don't want you to drink that. So you'd say, I'm going to teach you coffee meditation. So I'm like, what's coffee meditation?

He's like, you drink coffee. You think about all the good stuff you saw today. You get seeds, big seeds.

And I'm like, that sounds good to me, Rinpoche. And he did that. He made me lay down, actually, and sip tea, and think about the nice things I saw, the good things I saw people do today.

That plants seeds in your mind. That takes you over the top. If I tell you that, I can leave you, OK?

Just that meditation. It's called coffee meditation. I'm trying to get it to you fast, OK?

It's called coffee meditation. You go home at night. You're winding down from the day.

You turn off your TV. You get something nice to drink. You sit in a comfortable chair.

You don't have to be in full lotus at all. He had me on a couch, laying down on a couch, doing it. The yellow couch upstairs.

And then you just think of all the good things you saw people do today. For example, today I heard that Bill Gates was in London. We're going to London tomorrow to train British Airways, right?

And then he came to London. Somebody said, maybe you can see Bill Gates in London. And I started thinking about Bill Gates and how he's giving away all his money, you know, and how cool it is.

Just thinking about Bill Gates giving away his money gives me seeds for the same. Just enjoying other people's goodness increases the seeds in your own mind. So, you go home after giving someone of your precious time that you don't have, but you do it because you're smart.

And you help them and you give them some time. Then you come home and you think about it. Every time you think about it in a healthy way, then it's as if you had done it again.

And I'm telling you, that's the trick I learned. He taught me that. And that's why I did the quarter billion thing.

It was just sitting at home, you know, thinking about how nice it was that I was helping the refugees. The refugee thing gives you a certain amount of seeds. Rejoicing in that goodness and in the goodness of others gives you infinitely more seeds.

And that takes you into the billions range. You see? It's very interesting.

So, in your case of time, it's important to top it off. You give somebody your time, but then the magic trick is that you go home and you think of all the people who are giving their time for other people. And then all these seeds for time happen to you.

And don't try to predict how it will come back to you. Okay? It may not be raw hours.

Maybe something cooler will happen. I mean, like the internet. Just imagine there are unimaginable things.

Like some kind of, I don't know, something that now takes you an hour will suddenly take you five minutes. And you can't imagine how it's going to be. You have no idea how it's going to happen.

Okay? Don't even guess. The time will come back to you in a very cool way.

Maybe three people will volunteer to help you with everything. I have my, I don't know, I have my 50 people helping me all the time. They don't get paid per person.

They just help me. You know? You can create people like that by giving other people of your time.

It's very cool. It's unimaginable results. One more thing we've got to talk about.

[Говорящий 2]
What if you do a tremendous act of kindness?

[Говорящий 1]
Good. It's a good question. I'll repeat it just in case you didn't hear.

Suppose you do a very great act of kindness to someone and they hurt you back or they're angry at you for that. I call it the mother-in-law thing. I forget the example.

You run a bath for your mother-in-law and you tell her it's all hot and ready for her and she goes in and she falls. She slips and falls in the bathroom. Right?

That's the example. Right? It's very important to realize that the immediate results of the actions you do are growing from seeds that you planted months ago.

Okay? The immediate results of actions that you do are coming to you from seeds that you planted months ago. So, you were ungrateful to somebody or you were unkind to someone or someone did you a kindness and you insulted them back.

Okay? Months ago. And now you do a kindness to your mother-in-law and then she gets angry at you.

Something goes wrong and she gets angry at you. Okay? We say it's impossible.

Get this. Try to grasp this. It's impossible for a negative result to come from an act of kindness.

It's not possible. It's like getting something sour from something sweet. It's not possible.

The kindness you showed to your mother-in-law will come back to you in a few months as ten acts of kindness done to you. Her current yelling at you is being born from some kind of ingratitude you yourself committed months ago. They're just happening in the same place.

It's just a coincidence. I'll give you an example. A person came up to me one day.

He said, Gershwin, should I lie at my green card interview? Should I say that I'm married to this lady that I'm not married to because I want a green card? Then I say, if you lie and you get the green card, it's not coming from the lie.

You have to understand that. You have to understand that. It's difficult to understand.

That means that every lie you ever told was a waste of time. Every lie you ever told to get something was a waste of time. If it worked, it's because you didn't lie before.

Got it? And if you lie to people, then people will lie to you later, except ten people will lie to you. So the kindness and the person's being angry are not causing an effect.

They're just happening one after the other, so it looks like one is causing the other. They're not. That's very delicate.

That's very important to understand. Don't be disappointed if you do kindnesses and people don't appreciate it. It's not coming from the kindness.

The kindness can only bring you good things. But also, don't plant a watermelon and go stand there and wait for it to come up. No, really, it takes time.

It takes time. When you are kind to someone, it takes time for the thing to ripen. It just takes time.

No one would plant a watermelon and go stand there and watch the dirt. You come back in a month, and maybe there's something coming up. Right?

So be patient. Understand that's how it works. Thank you for coming.

And maybe we can meet again sometime and we can talk. It takes some time to learn the techniques. There's a lot of free website stuff.

There's a lady, where she made a website. There's 7,000 hours of these talks there for free. There's 12,000 pages of translations of ancient texts there for free.

Never been translated before. And you can talk to her. So you can get, you know, anything you want to learn about, you can go online, you can learn.

It's all free. Right? So talk to her.

Her name is Ora. And she has a thing back there. I'd like to suggest one final thing.

In the monastery, when a teacher teaches, we always spend two or three minutes after the talk, and we close our eyes. Because what happened in this work just now? We all planted a lot of seeds.

You see, the act of talking about seeds is the greatest seed of all. Got it? The act of talking about seeds is the greatest seed of all.

How do you protect a seed in your mind? How do you multiply a seed in your mind? You give it away.

So it's our tradition in our monasteries that after we do some good deed together, we talked about the most important thing together, seeds, right? So then we spend one minute, we think about all the seeds in our mind that we're planting, and we give them away. We just send them away.

Okay? So we're going to do that, okay? Close your eyes.

We'll close our eyes for about two minutes. We'll try to stay very quiet, even the babies in the room. And we'll try to send these seeds, which is the understanding of seeds, and send it to other people, maybe people that you know or you like, okay?

Ready? And I'd like to give a hand for Charles Frank.