Мгновенная перенастройка для нового мира: хватит справляться — начинайте преуспевать (2010, Лос-Анджелес), занятие 1

[Говорящий 1]
Hello everyone and welcome to Diamond Cutter Institute's first event in Los Angeles. I'd like to introduce Gesha Michael Roach. He graduated with, I have a little cheat sheet here, he graduated with honors from Princeton University.

He received the Presidential Scholar Medal, Presidential Scholar Medal from the President of the United States, awarded at the White House. He is the first Westerner to be awarded the degree of, the title, the title of Geshe or Buddhist Master in the 600 year history of Sarame Tibetan Monastery after 20 years of study. And then he came to this country, came back into this country, been back and forth.

He founded, helped found, and an international diamond corporation of New York. It is currently a 25, 250 million dollar company that was just purchased by Warren Buffet. His book on enlightened business, which is the Diamond Cutter, is used by over a million people around the world.

It's been translated into 20 languages. He's also the founder of the Asian Classics Institute and Diamond Mountain University, and has been active for 25 years in Tibetan refugee work. He is also responsible for finding, you might say, excavating Sanskrit and Tibetan texts all over the world and making them available to people through ACIP, the knowledge base, and has translated many thousands of pages, which are all made available to, most are made available to people for free on the internet.

He puts the things that he will talk about tonight, I have, he puts them into practice in his own life every day in large ways and in small ways. The large ways are very impressive, working with British Airways and major companies to help them with various projects, and in small ways, like how he deals with the person who is blocking the doorway.

[Говорящий 2]
Like I said, the big ways are very...

[Говорящий 1]
They're very impressive, and the small ways, if you're watching, are very humbling and more impressive still. So, I am very, very happy to welcome Geshe Michael Roach to LA. Applause I need one of these program things so I know what I'm saying.

[Говорящий 2]
Laughter Oh, a cheat sheet.

[Говорящий 1]
Do you have one? Can I use it?

[Говорящий 2]
Oh, yes.

[Говорящий 1]
Okay, okay. All right. So, the way this thing started, we called it our instant retraining for the new world.

And we were in Phoenix. We just finished a 14-year program of training 130 people in the Geshe degree, in the Geshe program. Women and men for the first time in history.

And they graduated in June, which left me with nothing to do. So, we were thinking, I was thinking it would be nice to... I would like to start a community center in...

I have to be near Phoenix. So, we were thinking to start a community center in Phoenix and help, especially the Hispanic people who are having a rough time in Arizona, which we're sorry about. And then we thought also to start a business college in Phoenix to present the ideas that you're going to hear about tonight.

So, I sent out a team to find office space. And they came back and they said, Geshe-la, for once it's a pleasant problem. 80% of the office space in Phoenix is vacant.

80%. And there are just huge office buildings sitting empty. And nobody has any use for them.

Because things have changed. A lot of things have changed. And then, in my idea, the way things are changing...

Oh, and then I saw this construction going on. Like, I was driving through Phoenix. You drive from Tucson to my house, which is up on a secret mountain north of Phoenix.

It's on a mesa, which is the very edge of a mesa. And when you drive from Tucson to there, you have to go through Highway 10 through Phoenix. And when you hit Phoenix from the southern side, there's, I think, five University of Phoenix buildings.

And they're building more. And then you drive through town and you start to drive out of town and there's five more on the northwest side of town. So, you know, I'm thinking, this is kind of weird.

80% of the office space is vacant in Phoenix. And University of Phoenix is building extra buildings. And then I drove around a little bit where I thought we'd like to have our business college.

And there's all these colleges. The University of Ottawa has an office in Phoenix. And then all these weird places.

The University of Iowa has a building there. And they're all booming. The parking lots are full.

This is one business which is booming. And so we were talking about it. A bunch of us were talking about it.

Why is it that universities are doing well and nobody else is doing well? And then somebody else told me, well, everybody's unemployed. And they're looking for something else to do.

So you used to work in an office. You used to be a manager in an office. Or you had a job as a secretary.

Or you did the accounting in an office. Or you did the graphic design in an office. And now nobody needs you.

Because you can send the graphic design to Hanoi. We do. I mean, we send our printing to Hanoi.

Or you can send your... Your accounting can be done by somebody in Puerto Rico. And my company, we did a lot of our production in the Dominican Republic.

And the computer people are sitting in Bangalore, India. And the internet has changed everything. You don't need to have people sit in an office anymore.

There's no reason to have people sit in an office anymore. And you're not... There's no longer any physical boundaries.

You don't have to say, I have to hire somebody from Santa Monica. Your accounting can be done in Delhi while you're sleeping. And then you wake up and the accounts are done.

And they're done well. And they're done cheap. And that's it.

And that's the way it's going to be. The offices, I don't think, will ever be filled up. I saw an office down the street.

I don't know if you saw it on the way here. If you came from the south. There's a big office building.

A beautiful office building. And there's a big... They didn't even bother to put a sign on the front.

There's a big... What do you call it? Plastic poster?

Plastic banner? Tied to the front. It says dental office.

That's something you have to do here. You have to get your teeth fixed where the dentist is. But nobody needs that space for anything else.

So this big office building is now family dental practice or something like that. And they didn't have the money to put a sign up. They just put a plastic...

They went to FedEx. What do you call it? FedEx King Kong and got a plastic banner.

So things are changing. And you can be... I know people who are in denial.

I know a lawyer in Santa Monica who's in denial. He works on Wilshire Boulevard. In that big building.

I went to those big buildings on the 34th floor. And he doesn't have any work. There's no work for him.

Nobody needs him right now. Because you can download all the forms on the web. And you can do your own titles.

And you can do your own deeds. And you can do your own lawsuits. And you don't really need him anymore.

So he's in denial. He's sitting in his Santa Monica apartment. Borrowing money on his house.

He's just living off... Remortgaging his house. And that's all the income he can have.

And then he's just sitting there hoping something's going to change. And I don't think it is. I don't think it's going to happen.

We can sit around, especially in America. We can sit around and hope for the good old days. We were at British Air last week.

We were in London working in British Air's corporate headquarters. And they have a strike. They have 40,000 employees.

And they are a $12 billion company. And they're having trouble. They're having trouble with airlines.

They're trying to run things the way they used to run them. And they're losing $300 million a quarter. They're losing $100 million a month.

And the people are stuck in the past. They want things to come back to the way it was in the old days. What the sun never set on the British...

They're waiting for it to come back. And we're sitting there in their headquarters trying to convince them it's not going to happen. You have to change.

And maybe it's not so bad. I think the people I know... We're going to Hamburg next week.

And there's a woman there that we know. I think it's Beat Ludwig, right? And she was a successful business person.

And then the Chinese came in. And they're selling clothes. And they don't need her anymore.

And then she just changed. And she had a little crisis. She had a little personal crisis.

And then she learned web design. And how to design all sorts of things on the computer. And she's 50 years old.

And it was hard for her. It was a big change. And she did it.

And she retrained herself. And this is time to talk about that. We have to talk about how are you going to be successful in the new world.

It's a new world. There are still international boundaries. We came in from London.

We had to show our passport. But that's just a formality. I mean, there's no boundaries anymore.

At least no company has to respect any boundaries. Our designers in Vietnam. Our printers in Shanghai.

And we're doing our accounts in Dominican Republic. And essentially there's no more borders. So that means it's an open playing field.

And now you're competing with everybody in the world. And how are you going to deal with that? Because if it hasn't affected you yet, it will affect you.

Things are changing. Things will change. So I don't think we should be like the British Arab people and sit there in the office and try to hold things.

Everybody's going to ask for the British Empire back or something. It's not going to happen. I don't think so.

So I think you'd be like the lady in Hamburg. And you just jump into the new world. You say, I'm going to live in the new world.

And I'm going to learn something. I'm going to retrain myself for the new world. And it's a big change.

They say that people have to change their occupation five times in their life or something. They used to tell me that. You're going to have to retrain five times in your life.

But we are facing a bigger change. The people, you and me, we're facing a much bigger change. It's a global, social, and economic revolution that's happening, mostly because of the web, because of the net.

We used to have to send telegrams to our overseas offices. And then after that, it was a telex machine. And I remember, because I was the telex machine operator in the company, because I was the only one who had the patience.

And you had to hit A. And then it would go, ka-chunk. And then this big key would come up.

And it would hit a piece of paper, a ribbon. And it would punch a hole in the ribbon. And then you wanted to say, bah.

And you had to hit T. And it would go, ka-punk. And it would hit a hole in the paper.

And then it would come back down. And you'd wait. And then you'd hit H.

And then you'd hit F. And then you had to start over again. You had to go back to A.

It would take like an hour to send this. And in there, it was a fax machine. And we thought, oh, man, this is the ultimate.

This is it. It'll never get better than this. And like that.

So in our lifetime, in you and my lifetime, the world has become one place. And we have to adjust. We have to change.

So I could get up here. We could have had a web design class and teach all the older people who don't know how to use computers yet how to do web design. Like we're struggling, right?

People like me, I witnessed the invention of the computer in my lifetime. And I thought it was really good because I could use DOS. And now I'm like retarded.

And all these kids are sitting there. And they're like, Jesse Michaels, don't you know how to do this? And they're like, no, can you teach me?

All these teenagers are teaching me. So we could have had a class like that. We could have said, you need new skills.

And we're going to teach you how to work on a computer or something like that. But then that will change one day also. And you have to have that kind of vision.

That will also go away. Facebook will go away. What was it before that?

What was it called? Myspace, yeah. And now you have to be on LinkedIn if you're cool.

And it's going to change. It's going to change in a year. So the big thing is not to learn to use.

It's good to learn to use Facebook. And I wish I could. But I think more important is to retrain your mind.

And what we're going to talk about is to give you a new way of viewing the world. A new way of viewing how things happen. And then just set you loose to do whatever you want.

So we're not going to tell you what to do. We're not going to tell you, oh, you should get into computers. Or you should get into real estate.

Or something like that. You should get into massage because that's the only thing that you don't have. You can't do by email.

So we're not going to go there. We're going to deal with retraining the way you view the world. We're going to talk about retraining the mind to recognize the real way things work.

And the real causes of things. And then whatever you do will be successful. So then you can have any occupation you want.

It doesn't matter. You will be successful. What we're saying in the Diamond Cutter is that if you understand how things work.

How the program works that runs your world. Then you can go into the coding of the program. Like the Matrix, right?

And you can fool around with the coding and you can be successful. So who is this guy getting up? That's why I make her read this stupid thing before the scene.

Because people say, oh, this is some new age guy. He's studying at the Tibetan monastery. And then when I was studying in the monastery, after about eight years, one of my main lamas said, OK, I want you to start a company.

And I'm like, that's the thing I'm least interested in in the world. Out of all the things in the world I don't want to do, that's number one. And I came to the monastery.

I came from America. I got out of America. I got out of business.

I got out of the whole rat race. I'm sitting in this Tibetan monastery because I'm not interested in business at all. And I never will be.

And I don't care about money. They put me in this tiny little room. It was like six feet by six feet.

And I stayed there for 20 years, 23 years, in one room. So I said, I don't need anything. I don't want anything.

I don't need to start a business. And then he said, well, but I want you to prove to yourself that the ideas where we're teaching you work. You see?

I want you to have a laboratory or a test case where you can go into the real world. You can sit in the monastery your whole life. You can meditate your whole life.

And study. And you can just practice. And you'll survive.

They feed you in the monastery. Once you get accepted in a Tibetan Buddhist monastery, the food is free. And the teacher has to teach you for free.

My mom has taught me 20 something years. And they don't charge you. So you can stay there.

And there won't be any problems. But he said, but then you won't be able to speak the language of the world. You won't be able to talk to normal people.

And you'll be some kind of weird person who just sits in a monastery and meditates all day. And when you meet normal people. There's a joke at my monastery.

One of the monks had to go to New Delhi from South India. And he went to the train station. But he didn't know how to buy a ticket.

He was a Geshe. But he didn't know how to buy a train ticket. And he had to call one of the kids from the monastery.

One of the 10-year-olds went with him to the train station to help him buy the ticket. Because he had never bought a ticket in his life. So my Lama said, you shouldn't be like that.

You should start a business. And I said, well, what kind of? First of all, you have to do everything your Lama says, right?

You're not allowed to say no to your Lama. This is a big Tibetan thing. But in the monastery, after a couple of years, you learn how to delay.

So he said, yes, Rinpoche, your wish is my command. And I'll be doing that directly. And I got by for a year or a year and a half like that.

And he kept asking me, what's up with the company? And I'm like, oh, we're researching. What kind of father would be best?

And then I remember he came to the United States. He spoke at Rutgers University. And I was his driver, his cook, his launderer for many years.

And then I drove him back. And I said, oh, Rinpoche, that talk was so good. Just tell me what to do with my life, and I'll do it.

He said, start a company now. And so I said, what kind of business? And he said, you meditate.

So I meditated. And this weird thing came, diamonds. Diamonds came.

And I have no interest in diamonds, less interest in diamonds than in business. No interest in diamonds at all. No experience.

I never touched one. I never was interested. But the message kept coming, diamonds.

So I said, OK, diamonds. And then I asked him, well, how shall I run the business? And he said, you run it according to the Dorje Chupa.

Dorje Chupa means it's an ancient book. The diamond cutter is Sutra. It's the oldest printed book in the world.

There's a Chinese edition, which is the oldest printed, not handwritten book, but printed book in the world, which is stolen by the British. And probably they'll ask for it back shortly, I think. But it's in the British Museum.

And we're trying to take it to China. We're trying to borrow it to take it on a tour to China. But we're worried that they might just ask it to stay.

So anyway, he said, you use the diamond cutter Sutra. So I read this Sutra. If you try to read it someday, it's totally confusing.

There's no information in there at all. It's like, are things big? And he says, yes, Buddha, things are big.

He says, see, I told you. And you're like, what does that mean? And he said, oh, you study it.

I'll help you. I'll teach you. And then we started our business.

I had $7 in my pocket when I started the business. And for my part of the business, I ran one large division of the business, the diamond division, purchasing and processing of the diamonds. And then other people ran factories, and they made things into jewelry.

But I didn't do that. I just did the diamonds. And it's up to $250 million now.

It's $250 million now. And in my division, we just used the diamond cutter principles. We just used the diamond cutter Sutra.

So that's my advertisement to you. So it's supposed to be in your mind right now. You think, oh, maybe he knows what he's talking about, like 50%.

Maybe he has something useful to say that would help me remember. Rebecca, it's too hot in here. They're going to fall asleep.

[Говорящий 2]
All right.

[Говорящий 1]
I learned to keep it at 68 when people get sleepy. So I'm going to teach you something that I learned from the diamond cutter Sutra. You can use it for other things also.

If you're independently wealthy and you don't need any money, you can use the diamond cutter for other things. I had a birth defect. My father, hereditary, he gave me gout, very serious gout.

So in my business, the big deal is if you can meet De Beers, right? If you can go to London and go see De Beers Corporation. So the day I was supposed to go to De Beers, for the first time, I got gout.

And I had to use a cane to walk through De Beers. And then it got worse, and I couldn't walk through the company. And when I got to work, I had to take off my left shoe and walk around like a duck.

And people used to make fun of me. And then I asked my mama, you know, what am I going to do? You know, I can't walk.

There were days when I could only lay down in the bed. And the pain is excruciating. They say it's the most painful thing.

I don't know. Little crystals form in your joints. And it just feels like someone's sticking a knife into your leg.

And he said, use the diamond cutter. And he showed me how to use the diamond cutter. And then I like to tell people, I do ballet now.

No, I do ballet. And I just got up to where I can lift the lady up and swing her around and all that. If she's light, okay?

And so now I can, you know, I can stay up on the toe. And the bone changed shape. The bone corrected itself.

So you can use it for your health. Like, we have friends who have cancer from New York. And they used it 20 years ago.

A friend of mine had breast cancer. And now she comes to our university and she builds buildings. She's like 75?

She stacks the adobe bricks. And she had cancer. And she's fine.

You know, things are good. You can use it to get a... A lot of people use the same principles to get a partner.

You know, if you tell people we're going to have a Buddhist class, like 10 people come. And then if you say we're going to have a class to make you a millionaire, then 100 people come. And then in New York we said we're going to have a class on how to get a better partner.

And 800 people came. So I guess almost everybody would like that. And also monks have the same thing.

We have a special practice where we have either a spiritual partner, either a mental partner, or a physical partner. And so, you know, we design our partner. We use the diamond-cutter principles.

We don't go out looking for a partner. We design a partner. A spiritual partner.

Someone who can take us... We believe who can take you to enlightenment. And then there's that practice.

And you can learn that practice. You know, you can either find a nice partner if you don't have one, or you can fix your ova, okay? And it works.

It really works. And I've done that. So these are beautiful practices.

If you learn the idea of diamond-cutter, then you can learn it. And then, you know, most of us... It's what we call Maslow's theory.

You start with money. And then you go to physical strength and youth. And then you go to, you know, sex.

And then... Then after that, after you get these basic needs filled... You have shelter, you have companionship, you have money, right?

Then you move higher. And we would like to create a world which has no war. We would like to change the world in Iraq and Afghanistan.

We would like to live in a world where people have no hunger. We would like to see a world where there's no poverty. We would like to see a city of Los Angeles where everyone lives in perfect harmony.

And no one has any unhappiness. You see? So you can...

My belief and what the Lord Buddha taught... You start with the physical stuff. You start with money.

You start with food. You start with a nice house, a decent car. And I'm not talking about getting...

You know, having six cars or something like that. There's a joke in Tibetan that you only have one butt. So there's no use to have three chairs in your house.

And, you know, I'm not talking about that. But, you know, it would be good to be comfortable. I like to call it oxygen level of income.

Like when you walked into this room, you didn't consider, as you went to the door, was there enough oxygen in this room or not? It wasn't something you had to think about. You didn't have to pause at the door or ask Rebecca, you know, is there going to be enough oxygen in the room?

And you just breathe, right? And you don't worry. You're not, like, stressed out.

You come in, you sit down, you breathe. You don't have to think about it. And what I would like to see, what people can do with the diamond cutter, if they learn the diamond cutter, money can become like oxygen for everybody.

You see? And then you just have enough and you don't think about it. I don't think about it.

I really don't think about it. Once a year she tells me, she does my account, all my, you know, finances. And once a year she tells me, you have to pay your taxes.

And I'm like, well, how? I don't know what I made. I don't know what I spent.

And she says, well, I have all the records here. But I just don't think about money. It's just there.

And I use it. And it's enough. It's always enough.

Most of the time. So it's like, for me, it's like oxygen. I don't think about money anymore.

I just practice the diamond cutter and the money comes. And it's enough. And I'm not greedy and I don't keep money and I don't worry about money.

It just comes. I pay the bill and I concentrate on the rest of my life. I don't think about money.

You see what I mean? So we didn't charge British Air anything. Last week we went and started negotiations for a settlement with 40,000 workers.

We didn't charge them anything. And it was just, okay, we'll come. If you're having a problem, we'll help you.

And so I would like to see a place where money flows like oxygen. And then your health is just good and you don't think about it. The other day I coughed twice in a row.

I sneezed once and coughed once. And I thought, what's going on? And then I said, I remember I used to get colds.

I was trying to remember a long time ago that I used to get colds. I said, that's weird. I coughed and I sneezed.

And then it just went away. So it should be like that, that you don't have to think about those things. And then you can help work on the bigger stuff.

You can work on making a beautiful world or the big problems of life. But I think you have to start with money. And partly it's because it's an experiment.

Partly it's a, what do you call it? It's a closed environment. You can measure money.

If I say I'm going to teach you how to be happy and then I come back in a year and I say, are you happier? If you are happier, you don't notice it. Like if last year you were miserable and this year you're happy, you don't remember being miserable because you're happy.

And it's very hard to measure happiness. So I like to start with money. So we're going to start with money.

But then we'll expand it to the higher goal supplier. I don't think money is a low thing. We've had 23 years.

We've used the money to support refugees. And many thousands of people have benefited. So we don't, money is okay.

Money is like fire, right? You can burn yourself with fire or you can cook dinner. And money is the same.

Money can make you a miserable person or money, you can help people in the world. So we're going to assume you're going to help people with it. And we'll start off.

What's the next one? You've got the next slide. I guess, yeah.

Got one? Whoa, slow down. That's the couple thing.

You get that later. So I, you know, 10 years ago, Double Day contacted me and they said, would you write a book about what you did in your company so that other people could learn how to do it? And I said, yeah, I'll do it.

I said, I'll do it for free or I'll pay you. They said, no, no, it takes $50,000. I said, okay.

And, but that's how your life is. Once you know how things work, you can just, things happen one time. So they said, would you write a book about what happened?

And I wrote a book called The Diamond Cutter. So there's an ancient sutra called Vajracchedika, which means diamond cutter. But then I wrote a business book called Diamond Cutter.

And then I tried to explain to people how to do that to make success, how to make a success out of your company. And then Double Day contacted me recently and said, will you do a 10th anniversary edition? You know, will you update the book?

And I have this relationship with my editor. In fact, he hasn't answered my emails for a year. But he always suggests something to me, like, would you update the book?

And I wrote it back and I said, it doesn't need any update. Every word is perfect. I told you that 10 years ago and it's still true.

And he's like, okay, okay. And then he said, but would you add a section called success stories? Would you add some success stories?

So I started to collect. I got up to like 150 success stories and he told me, no, no, we can't afford that. We only want 50.

So I like this one. Can you show the next one? This is a lady named, she disappeared before me.

Okay, anyway, she's elusive. And she was a housewife. And she went to the normal thing.

She had three kids. She had breast cancer. She had a job in an advertising agency.

And she and this other lady named Robin Cobol, they decided, they read the Diamond Cutter book. And they said, we're going to start our own company. So they quit their advertising job in New York.

And they rented an apartment, an extra apartment. And then they started their business in this apartment. But they only used the Diamond Cutter principles.

And it's funny because they only hired moms. So the whole board of directors is moms. And the whole management of the company is moms.

And then they got up now to, you have that building? Can you show her building? That's her building.

That's like Park Avenue in New York. And that's the Kaplan Taylor Advertising Company. And they got on, what do you call it?

Today's show. And they said, how did you build a billion dollar company from zero in like five years? And she held up the Diamond Cutter book.

And then somebody called me and said, you've got to meet this lady. Because she's using your book. And I'm like, yeah, maybe I can borrow some money from her.

So anyway, I asked her, I said, if I had to give a talk, we give these talks all over the world. This year we do them in Hong Kong, Singapore, Taipei, Vienna. And we're going to Guadalajara and Buenos Aires, right?

And like that, we just go around and do this. And I asked her, if I had to give a talk to a bunch of new people, what would you suggest to talk about? What helped you the most?

And she said, talk about seeds in the mine. Talk to people about planting seeds in the mine. And to me, that would be the most useful thing to talk about.

So this is the core of the Diamond Cutter approach. This is the essence of the Diamond Cutter approach. It's that the world is not coming from its own side.

Things are not happening to you. You are making things happen. You are creating your world.

You are creating your reality. And you can use that to get rich, or you can use that to have a beautiful relationship, or you can use that to fix a bone in your foot, or like that. The bone in your foot is coming from you.

The disease in your foot is coming from you. You can fix your boss. If your boss is not a very pleasant person, you can change them.

Because he's coming from your mind. He's coming from seeds in your mind. And you know, people can say that.

People can say, oh look, everything is coming from your own side. Be positive. What do you call it?

Positive thinking. Just do positive thinking and your world will improve. You know, you go to work and you say, okay, I'm going to think positive all day.

And then your boss comes in and screams at you and you're like, you know, this didn't help. And there's a technique, okay? There's a technique.

Things are coming from your mind, but there's a certain technique, or there's a way that they're coming from your mind. If you don't understand how it's happening, you can't use it to become wealthy or to become strong or to find a partner. If you don't understand the, what do you call it, the dynamic or the mechanism of it, you can't use it.

I can get up here and say, oh, everything is coming from your mind. The boss you don't like is coming from your mind. Your financial situation, the economic slump in America is coming from you.

And I can say that and you can nod and then you go home and you can't do anything. It's going to be, it's still going to be a slump tomorrow. So I have to, we have to talk about technique.

And if you understand the technique, then you can get the things you want. And not only you, but of course we want you to move onward to the rest of the world, right? You start with yourself to prove that it works, but then you help the rest of the people in the world.

That's part of the whole deal, okay? Nobody learns this technique ever for the last two and a half thousand years without moving on and helping other people in the world. It doesn't happen.

Once you understand how to do it, part of that understanding is the desire to help other people. So it always works that way. You always succeed and then you go make other people successful.

I keep trying to have students who are business people, but every time they learn about this stuff, they quit their business and they start teaching. And it's a problem for me. But you will naturally want to share it with them.

It's a human need to help other people. So you will. But first you have to prove it with yourself.

If you don't prove it with yourself, you can't help other people. If you don't use it yourself and check it out and try it, then you can't help other people. It's not going to happen.

So let's talk a little bit about mental states. And then something else is supposed to happen. Let me see.

I used to get up here and give three-hour talks and half the people would go to sleep. Nowadays I changed it to this variety show. And people will be coming up and people will be leaving and you're going to be all perky.

Like that. And then we'll give you refreshments like lots of coffee and make you more perky. And like that.

So we'll be changing around. The way you plant a mental state, let me see. Usually I ask somebody in the audience to give me money and I forget to give it back to them and that's how I pay my bills.

Gee, I don't have any money. Do I have any? Just one.

That's okay. The biggest one. No.

So I'm going to show you how to plant a state. And you know, people, we have a 14-year course. You can take a 14-year course.

But to tell you the truth, you can get most of it in the first night. Because people are really, really smart. Deep down, everybody's really smart.

If they see something that works, they do it. If you can show them how it works and why it works, if you show somebody how to use a cell phone for half an hour, they're not going to go back to using those old, big things. And everybody's basically very smart.

Once you figure it out, you can keep coming, it's okay, but it's all you need. So the way a seed is planted for money, and I'm talking about doubling the size of your company every year. We've doubled every year, which is unheard of.

The diamond business, normally you're lucky to get 3%, 4% growth. Maybe you get 5%. We had 100% growth every year for 15 years.

It was the fastest growing manufacturing company in the history of New York. So how do you get that to happen? How do you get that kind of success?

How do you get things to double? I mean, 100% growth every year. How does that happen?

So I'm going to show you. It's very basic. I want to make some money.

I'm not a greedy person. I don't want to have a bigger Lexus or whatever they are. I have a 1980 Volvo, okay?

And I like it, and it's fun. But I want my income to be like oxygen. I don't want to have to think about money anymore.

I'm willing to work a not-too-stressful job, maybe 30 hours a week, 25 hours a week. And I want to have a lot of freedom, and I want to take time off. By the way, when I was working in the company, I worked from 9 to 5, 4 days a week.

And I took 6 months off a year to finish my gueshing. You see what I mean? So I did both at the same time.

And I'm talking, you get your time back also. I'm not talking a method which is 18 hours a day or something like that. But I'm also not talking lazy either.

Because that's also not fun. It's not fun to sit and watch TV all day. It's nice to have some kind of challenging work, and creative work, and some beautiful work.

And you help people, and then you rest, and you do the things you want to do, like surfing. So the way to get money, the way it happens is that if I want to make money, and I like to say it in the context of making a company. I want to make a company.

And it's strange. In America, not so many people want that anymore. When I speak in Taiwan, or I speak in Shanghai, or Hanoi, or Ho Chi Minh, people say, I want to make a company.

I want to do something big. In America, it's sort of strange now. You say, do you want to make a big thing?

And they say, no, I just want to work for somebody. But anyway, I'm going to pretend you want to start a company. So if you want to start a new thing, something of your own, then you would have to have a karmic business partner.

You would have to have a karmic business partner. You would have to find someone else in the world who wanted to start something that they could support themselves with. So if you want to have money be like oxygen for you, the first thing you need to do is go look for someone who needs you.

Go look for someone who wants to start something. So in my case, in 1981, when we started the diamond company, we started a second company. We started another company.

We started an organization in India that was helping Tibetan refugees. So they were very, very poor at the time. But just 200,000 people came over the Himalayas into the poorest country in the world as refugees in the poorest country in the world.

And then we, especially in the women refugees, were not allowed to work because they're not citizens. They don't have passports. They can't have a driver's license.

They can't own a store. So we started building computer centers in refugee camps and teaching them to input their ancient literature, which they're still doing 23 years later. They're 10% finished.

They have another 150 years to go. And we're planning for that, and we have a schedule for that. So anyway, we started that company.

So you go to India, you go to the refugee camp, and you say, okay, I'm going to give you money to start your own little thing. Because that's going to plant a seed in your mind which will grow into the fastest-growing company in the history of New York. You see, get it?

So you do it as a business strategy. Like British Air, they had trouble with this. We were explaining it to them.

But we already do charity. And I said, we're not talking about charity. We're talking business strategy.

We're not talking about charity. You don't make money and then give some of your money to poor people. That's not the idea.

You need the poor people to have a successful company. You need them. They are not, what do you call them, extra.

They are not a luxury for you. They are essential to your business. If you don't have them, you can't be successful.

You need someone who needs you to be successful. So your first job in your life is to go out in your world and find someone in need. So we say, what's it called?

Very famous. What is that? It's the opening lines of, you know?

May I see all living beings as being more precious than a wish-fulfilling gem? What is that? It's the eight verses.

Yeah. It's the mind training. It's the eight verses.

They teach it to six-year-olds in the monasteries. It's the first thing they're going to do. The poor people in the world are precious for me.

I need them. I have to find them. And when I find one, I should say, oh my gosh, I'm so happy.

I found a ticket to heaven. This is my ticket. They say, Rinchen, Densho, Jube.

They are a jewel for you. They are a precious jewel for you. So what do you do with this poor person?

You go to the refugee camp. And with technique, OK? With technique.

If you don't know technique, it doesn't work. OK? With technique.

But you will learn today. And tomorrow, there's a little thing. I don't know.

On Sunday or Saturday? I don't know. Sunday.

Sunday? Yeah. You can learn more.

And we'll talk about that. But with technique, you give them money. How?

When you hand the money to the refugee lady, and you say, this is for your first computer, when you release the money into her hand, a seed is planted in your mind. How? Through what medium?

What plants the seed in your mind? Being aware that you gave the money. Watching yourself give the money is what plants the seed in your mind.

Your mind is like a video camera. And the mind is constantly recording what you do. And recording what you say.

Which kind of is a problem, because then you can't do bad things in the privacy of your own home anymore. Because the karmic recorder is here. You see?

So in this diamond-cutter system, you have to be good everywhere. Even in your bathroom. Even in your house.

When no one's there. You have to be good. Because the recorder is on.

It's God. It's not that guy riding up into heaven. What's his name?

St. Peter, I think? Who's the guy that keeps the records up there? The antelopes?

Yeah, anyway.

[Говорящий 2]
It's your own life, OK?

[Говорящий 1]
What did you say? Never mind. Your mind is the recorder, OK?

Your mind is the recorder. So when you release the money, through the medium of your eye consciousness, a seed is planted in your mind. You watch yourself giving the money.

You're aware of your motivation, which is crucial, OK? You record the visual, and you record the motivation in your mind. Two tracks running at the same time, right?

And a record is made in your mind. That record stays in the mind. In 2000, I finished my studies in 1995.

And then in 2000, I did a three-year retreat. A three-year silent retreat. In the desert.

In a hut. OK? Don't talk for three years.

And three years, three months, three days. This is the mission. And, you know, it was really cool.

The first six months were really, really cool. And you're like, oh man, everything is so silent. And everything is so quiet.

And God, I'm definitely going to get enlightened here. You know? And then after, we went in in March?

March 3rd. Yeah, we decided to do it on a three-day retreat. And then around September, OK, six months later, I'm deep in meditation, in the hut, and this thing comes.

I hear this voice of God thing. Like I had my breaks here. And it was very stunning.

It was, uh-oh, SpaghettiOs. You know? And I'm like, excuse me?

And it's like, uh-oh, SpaghettiOs. As if someone was standing in the room. As if standing, yelling in my ear.

Uh-oh, SpaghettiOs. You know, I'm like, God, you know, it's not the best day. And then I was thinking, and I looked around, and I didn't see anybody, you know?

And then I thought, oh, I'm just hearing it in my own mind. You know? It's my own mind.

And then I said, oh, yeah, I remember on television, when I was like six years old, they had this spaghetti commercial. And it was, uh-oh, SpaghettiOs. You know?

But the bottom line is, after that, your retreat goes downhill for two and a half years. Because you replay every movie you ever saw. Every Star Trek TV show.

Everything you ever saw gets played back in your mind. And it's like being in Grand Central Station in New York with thousands of people around you, and there's just noise all the time. And your mind, it keeps throwing up stuff that you heard when you were a kid.

Or stuff you heard when you were a teenager. Or what somebody said to you in college. And it's a riot in your mind.

It's just constant noise in your mind, you know? So your mind records everything. Everything that you ever saw.

And everything you ever heard. Every TV show you ever wasted your time on is going to be played over and over again in your mind. And this seed for money is planted in your mind.

By giving it to someone. And then there's technique, okay? You've got to know your technique.

There's technique for taking care of the seed. There's a certain technique for taking care of the seed. Like, I started gardening this year.

And I started roses. I had ten rose plants. I took a class, and then I planted ten rose plants.

And then I learned all this cool stuff, you know? You're not supposed to water them. If you water them too much, the roots come up to the surface and they die.

And you're supposed to water them only once a week, very deeply. And then they learn to dig deeper for the water. And stuff like that.

So there's techniques about money seeds. And you must learn those techniques. If you don't learn those techniques, you might do a rose root thing, and the thing will fall over.

And just die. It happens. It happens, okay?

So there's a technique. The seed stays in the mine. The conditions ripen.

It matures in the mine. And then it comes out of the mine. How does it come out of the mine?

Then, for example, you might see a business opportunity that other people don't see. You see what I mean? You're staying with five people.

They all want to make some money. They're all trying to get a job. And then suddenly you get an idea of how to make some money.

Or you get an idea of where to find a job. And you go and you try and it works. You see?

We say in the Diamond Cutter, it says nothing is an accident. There are no accidents. If you think of some kind of work, and you go out and look for it, and suddenly you get that job.

It's all the seed that ripens in your mind. And the people around you didn't have that seed. Why?

Why didn't they see the same opportunity? They didn't help somebody. They didn't have the seed in their mind.

It's very interesting. Jesus said, do unto others as you would have them do unto you. As you sow, so shall you reap.

You get what you give. Jesus said that. But he didn't give us any details.

He didn't give us the technique part. So, you know, I grew up as a Christian. I was going to seminary.

I was going to be a priest, right? And I got detouring for 20 years. But then I came back and I said, now it makes sense.

Now the whole New Testament, now all this stuff, I like this stuff. This is good. But you just have to understand the technique.

And then you can use it. Otherwise you can't use it. So anyway, you plant a seed in your mind by being generous to someone.

The cool thing is seeds grow. Seeds grow bigger. Like an oak tree comes from a walnut, right?

Or an acorn, right? You just plant this little three gram thing and you get a three ton thing. And it's the same with mental seeds.

It's exactly the same. That's why you can, like if you want your company to go to 250 million, you don't have to give away 250 million. You can give away a million with technique.

And then 250 comes back. You get it? So mental seeds grow the same as physical seeds.

You have to know that. So we have to be in the business of learning the technique. We have two steps, really.

We have to identify what seed. You have to plan for what you want. Everybody in the room wants something different, right?

Some people say, oh, my husband is cranky. My husband never takes out the garbage. What's the mental seed to get my husband to take out the garbage?

And then we can cover that, all right? And then somebody else says, I want to get a raise. And somebody else says, I just have a problem that the person I live with never picks up after themselves.

Like, what's the seed for that? Teach me the seed for that. So I'm going to teach you the general principles, and then you can figure out how to get your roommate to pick up stuff after themselves, or how to make $100 million, or find a person or fix your husband.

Stuff like that, okay? We'll just identify the seeds, and then you're off on your own. You can do it, okay?

And technique, we have to talk technique. What I'd like to do at this point is, there are some supporting life behaviors that you will need to be successful. Like, we gave this talk at British Air the other day.

Six union people, six management people. Like, management over there, union over there. They wouldn't even sit together, you know?

And we're like, okay, we're going to teach you this diamond cutter thing, but there's got to be some supporting energy. You've got to learn other stuff that will make your mind more open, like music. I mean, that's why we play the music.

It opens your mind slightly. So they said, well, what are we going to have to do? I said, yoga and meditation.

Some kind of, I don't care, tai chi, jogging, doesn't matter. With technique, with understanding, you're going to have to do something to open your physical inner body. And you're going to have to meditate.

Not because I want you to be a Buddhist, I don't care. You can ask them, I don't keep a Buddha in my house. I'm not interested.

It doesn't matter to me. There's some picture of Buddha, there's a picture of John Lennon, or whatever, I don't care. It doesn't matter to me.

I want to see people be successful, and get the things they want, and make the world a peaceful place, and a prosperous place. And then that's the idea, I don't care. It doesn't matter to me, you see?

So we're not talking meditation so that you can go home and focus on the divine void. It doesn't matter to me. It's not interesting to me.

I want to teach you meditation because it will make your mind sharp, and it will make your mind open. And then when I talk about diamond cutting stuff, you'll get it. And if you don't, you won't get it.

So we're going to do a little bit of meditation. And you can use it on whatever you want, I don't care. You can meditate on hamburgers, or you can meditate on the people you don't like, or anything you want.

But at least we'll learn to focus the mind, concentrate the mind. And then we do this with people. We're doing it with British Air in October.

We're taking them off in the country side. And they're going to have to meditate the first part of the day. All these big union guys.

And it opens your mind. And then when somebody talks about seeds, then you get it. And you're clear on it.

So I'm going to ask Loren Benjamin. Loren has been a professor at Antioch College of Political Science. I don't know why.

Political Philosophy. Political Philosophy. It's even worse.

And then she, in the last five years or so, she's been the president of the Asian Classics Institute in Los Angeles, which is a very, very nice place in your city to learn to meditate or to learn about the diamond cutter. They have a place here. And they're very, very fine teachers here.

And I think she's one of the best of them. So I asked her if she would lead us in a brief meditation. And then we'll talk a bit after that, and then we'll take a break, okay?

Because I can see you're starting to get sleepy. Okay, so here we go. Can we have a chair up here?

Maybe two. I get to sit. I'm not standing for this.

So please welcome Loren Benjamin. So I guess I won't be. I've never held a mic before while I'm meditating.

Okay. So sit comfortably, but put your feet flat on the floor and your back straight. And we're going to, just for a few moments, just watch your breath.

Use your breath to bring your concentration in a little bit in a relaxing way. Okay, so just kind of focus your, bring your focus to your nose and the fact that you are in deep breathing. And you don't have to change the pattern of your breath.

Just notice it. We're going to do a meditation on compassion and wisdom. You know what compassion feels like.

Everyone knows what compassion feels like. All you need to do is bring to mind a child in pain or a refugee suffering or a loved one who is upset, suffering or in pain in some way. And you know what that feels like.

And oftentimes, though, we shut down our hearts. We turn away from that, usually one of two reasons or maybe both. One is that you think it's going to cost you too much, either in money or time or extension of friendship or help.

Or the other is that you feel helpless, that you don't really think that there's anything you can do to help. So we're going to do a meditation that will bring the technique, kind of show you what to do in meditation with the technique we're talking about, what Geshe Michael will be talking about. So in the area of your heart, picture a rose, small rose, maybe even just the size of a thumbnail, fully open and beautiful that symbolizes your compassion.

And an open heart. And then see resting in there a diamond, flashing light, and that is a symbol of the wisdom, the understanding of the technique of how this thing works. Very, very powerful at your heart center.

And then just bring to mind someone that you know who is suffering in some way, financially or emotionally or physically.

[Говорящий 2]
And see them in front of you, that they are in pain. They hurt. And first of all, just get a really good feeling, because actually you can help them.

[Говорящий 1]
So first see the pain of whatever sort that they feel as darkness in their body, like smoke. And use your breath to draw it into the center of their body, into their body core. And then use your breath on the inhale to draw it up from the center of their body to their nostrils, through their nostrils, and totally out of their body.

Collect it in front of them as very dark smoke. And then when I, don't do it yet, but when I give you the instruction, when I say now you are going to take a deep inhale, quick inhale, and draw that smoke into your body and destroy it. When that dark smoke hits the diamond that is in the rose, that wisdom that is surrounded by compassion, when the smoke hits that, see a blinding flash of light as the smoke is destroyed, as that pain is destroyed.

So see the smoke collected between you, between the two of you. And then draw it closer to you. And see the rose and diamond at your heart.

And take that inhale in and destroy it. And see the person across from you, you're actually not done yet, but we'll do the rest tomorrow. But for the moment what they feel is relief.

Just absence of pain.

[Говорящий 2]
And that's a good start. So you can enjoy that and relax and open your eyes.

[Говорящий 1]
So, how's it going? I don't want to keep you too long. Here.

Okay. Can I keep you a little bit late?

[Говорящий 2]
Yes.

[Говорящий 1]
Alright. We won't tell them the place. So I'd like to just touch briefly on partners.

A lot of people, I mean, it's one thing to have enough money, where money becomes like oxygen. That would be nice, to have enough money in your life and not have to worry about money, right? But then it's not enough.

You see a lot of wealthy people who are lonely, right? You see people who don't have a nice person to share their life with. And even if you do find a nice person, then keeping them seems to be a problem, right?

Or keeping them from changing seems to be a problem also. So, no, you know that. I don't have to tell you that.

You know that. It's the human condition, right? It's hard to find somebody.

And then you find somebody, and after that first blissful month, then things seem to degenerate almost always. So it would be interesting to talk about how do we treat that with the diamond-cutter method? How do you apply the diamond-cutter method not to making money?

Let's assume you know how to make money. But then it would be nice to be happy with people around you. And it doesn't have to be just a spouse or a partner.

It could be your children, or it could be your grandparents, it could be people at work. But let's talk about finding a partner. In the diamond-cutter system, you have to stop thinking about finding things.

You have to cancel that idea about finding things. Rather, you are creating things. You are not finding more money.

You are not parting someone else from their money to make money. You are creating new money. So in the diamond-cutter method, you are not taking money from somebody else.

It's not a closed system, and you are taking $10 from somebody else, and then you make $10, and they lose $10. It's not like that. You are making new money.

And you are making a partner rather than finding them. And you don't have to take them away from somebody else. You see what I mean?

You create a new partner. You don't find people, you make them. How to do that?

You have to plant a seed for it. And then I would like to talk just briefly about the idea of... We call it a diamond deal.

In my little circle of friends, we have come to call it a diamond deal. And I was at British Air last week, and they were trying to stick us into a diamond deal. It was really cute.

I'm not supposed to talk about all this stuff, right? So you can't tell everybody. So I'm on the airplane flying over.

A stewardess comes and puts a letter on my table. An envelope. And she just walks past.

And I'm like... It's like James Bond. And I didn't say anything.

I just put my book over it and covered it. Because I wasn't sure who are the good stewardesses and who are the bad stewardesses. And then I...

Then when everybody was asleep and watching a movie, I snuck the letter out. And they're like, we're really happy you're coming. And if you need to talk about conditions in the airline, I'll meet you in the kitchen in 10, 20 minutes.

Stuff like that. And so I kind of wander in the kitchen, see if there's any orange juice. And everyone's asleep.

And then they start telling me the stewardess's side of the story about how bad the management is. And then when I get to London, then I get kidnapped by a vice president who tells me the other side of the story about how they're ruining the airline and we're losing all this money. And they're trying to get me into a diamond deal.

What's a diamond deal? This is an old trick in the diamond business. I dealt in wholesale diamonds.

On a good day, we did 30,000 stones. We sold 30,000 stones a day. We sold bags of diamonds.

We didn't do what I'm going to describe. So I'm not describing anything I do. But in a jewelry store, they teach you the diamond dealer's trick.

It's called the two bad choices trick. Two bad choices trick. And what you do is, everybody in the world wants a one carat diamond.

They don't want a carat and a half. They don't want a half carat. Everybody wants a carat.

So carats are rare. Already you have to dig out 30 tons of dirt to get a carat. And then everybody wants one, and they don't want the other ones.

So you always keep behind the counter, you keep one yellow one carat diamond, and you keep one one carat diamond with a huge black spot on it. You see? You keep two junk diamonds behind that counter.

Then the lady comes in with her boyfriend or whatever, and they say, we're getting married, and you say congratulations. And you're like, how long is this going to last? But anyway, they're like, oh, I'm so glad for you.

You want something that's for eternity. And then they're like, do you have any one carat stones? And you're like, oh, we just happen to have one carat stones.

And you pull out the yellow stone. And you show it to the lady, and you say, we have this stone, it's a really good stone. And she looks at it, and they talk about it.

And then they kind of look at you, and they say, yeah, but it's a little bit yellow. And you say, no, no, but you don't understand. This is a clean stone.

There's not a dot in it. There's not any spot in it. It's a perfectly flawless stone.

And it just has a little bit of, you know, special color to it, you know, like that. And then they, usually they talk it over, and then they turn around. Usually it's the lady, right?

And she says, well, frankly, I was hoping for a white diamond, you know, like a pure white diamond. And you're like, oh, you wanted a white diamond, you know, and you say, I have one of those. And you pull out the white diamond with the big black spot in it.

And you say, this is even a better price, you know, and you can have this big white diamond with the black spot in it. And by the way, do you want it wrapped in red paper or blue paper? Are you going to pay credit card or are you going to pay cash?

You know, and then they're like, oh, I already bought the stone. Should I want red paper or blue paper? And then you're like, cash or credit?

Cash or credit? And you get their mind on this bad choice, and you're like, they think you already thought that they're already buying it, so they feel obligated to buy it now, you know? And they're like, but we didn't want the yellow.

I know you don't want the yellow. I know you want the white stone. Here you go, you know, and you push it on them, you see?

And you get their mind, you get their mind caught in a, what do they call it, two bad choices, you know? And you get, and then you double it and then you triple it. You know, white paper, red paper, you know, then you want cash or credit, you know?

And you get them confused with this thing and then they're like, oh, okay, I'll take the red paper. And you say, okay, I'll put it in the red paper. Here's the cash, right?

No, credit. Okay, credit. You know, and then they walk out and it's finished, you know, and you sold one of these lousy diamonds.

So your whole life has been like that, okay? Your whole life has been like that. Why?

Because you want a boy, right? You want to find a boy and you want a, you want a good one, okay? You don't want, you want, there was this movie I saw, what was that movie?

The lady died but her husband left all these notes with her mother. PSI. PSI.

Oh, man, I cried through the whole second time. So, anyway, there was this side thing going on where the lady was looking for a boy and she kept going up and saying, you know, do you have a good job in bars? She would say, do you have a good job?

And they'd say, yeah, I have a good job. And then she'd say, but are you gay? And then they'd say, no, no, I'm not gay.

you know, and she, remember, remember, there was one lady like that. So, yeah, like that. So, it's like, you want to find a boy who's smart, who's self-care, and who makes a good money.

And, you know, you have a list of what you want in a boy. And then you start thinking, how am I going to do it? You start thinking technique, you know, you start thinking, how, how am I going to get the boy?

And then all these things go through your mind. And it's like, should I have, I think on the day I had you, so don't even try, okay? I don't remember.

But, you think, should I, you go to, I don't know, they have Sephora in LA? They have Sephora? Yeah, you go to Sephora, which is the big makeup shop, right?

Cosmetic shop. And then you stand, you walk through Sephora. I used to walk through Sephora, you know, I had to walk with my partner, and it was really, it gave me a headache.

Cos, there's all these, it's not one store, it's like, there's Lancome, and then over there there's something else, and, and you have to look through each counter for the same thing, but different companies, right? And then you're going through, and, and then there's this huge, it comes down to, I remember Mama Christy forgot her makeup bag one trip, and we had to do a total restock in one morning. And I got, it was 300 dollars or something?

And, you know, like, not she didn't have anything, so we had to buy everything over again. And, and this big question came up, like, should we go for the pink lipstick, or should we go for the red lipstick, you know? And this big diamond dill question came up, you know, like, would it be more attractive to a, an audience in Beijing if I was wearing pink lipstick or red lipstick, you know?

Like, we would get into these discussions. You know, should I buy the red or should I buy the pink? She had this Gordian knot thing.

You know what she would say? Both. She'd say, buy them both and we'll be covered.

[Говорящий 2]
You know?

[Говорящий 1]
So I had to put Michelle out double. But anyway, on everything. But I'm not talking about that.

I'm like, you know, most people would be having limited resources. They would be, should I buy the pink or should I buy the red, right? Or, or should I go to a club in Nashville?

What's the way to get the boy? By doing what? And what should the method be?

Should I go online? I have friends, Andrea Lemon and Kev Lemon. I have friends who met there and it's a beautiful person online, you know?

And then I have other people who went out to nightclubs and found somebody in a bar. David Swenson found his, I shouldn't say that. Anyway.

Should I go to a club or should I go online? You see, these, when you say boy, when you're talking about boy, then your mind goes to those things, right? And that's a diamond deal, alright?

That's a diamond deal because it doesn't work, okay? Some people wear red lipstick and get a boy. Some people wear red lipstick and don't get a boy.

Some people wear pink lipstick and don't get a boy and some people wear pink lipstick and do get a boy and some people don't wear any lipstick at all and they still get a boy and some people who don't wear any lipstick and don't get a boy. So it doesn't seem to matter. It's, what you have to say in the diamond cutter philosophy, you have to come to this point where you realize that the things you've tried don't work, okay?

Because they don't work all the time. So they don't work. You get it?

Like if you planted a watermelon seed in your garden and sometimes you got watermelons and sometimes you got bananas, then we'd say you didn't find the right seed. There's some problem with the seeds. You see what I mean?

You have to say there's some kind of problem. If you find the cause of something, you should be able to use it every time and you get the same result. That's what a cause is.

The world would be insane if farmers planted rice and got, you know, cactuses. It would be crazy. The world would be crazy.

You should be able to find the cause of something and then you get it and that's how it should be. What we can say then is that wearing lipstick or not wearing lipstick or going to a club or going online, those are not the causes of finding the boy. That's not how you find the boy.

Those are the, what do you call it, expression of the cause. See? Through the club or through the internet, you found the boy.

But why was he online? Or why was he at the club? Or why did he like red lipstick?

Or why did he like the natural look? Or why did he like pink lipstick? That's a different cause.

And that's the real cause. Got it? So the people who wore red lipstick and it worked, there was something else going on.

And the people who wore red lipstick and it didn't work, there was something else going on. There was a deeper cause. So we have to look at the deeper causes.

What's the real cause of meeting a boy? What do you want out of the boy? I would like to have someone that I spend my time with.

I'd like to have companionship. And it's nice. When it's going good, it's really nice.

So what you really want out of a relationship, you want companionship. You want friendship. You want not to be lonely.

You don't want to go home and, you know, face this huge kitchen and know that you're just going to eat half a can of beans. You know what I mean? By yourself.

You know you're going to go home and open a can of beans and eat half of it. You won't even eat the second half. Not because I just throw it out.

I take out half and I throw the rest out. Because I don't want it to sit in the fridge for three days and then I throw it out. You know what I mean?

So you go home and there's nobody to eat dinner with. It's no fun to cook for yourself. What's the fun to cook for yourself?

So you just open a can of beans or something. You know what I mean? So it'd be nice to have someone you want a relationship with because you want someone to spend your time with.

Right? So what's the seat going to be to get that? You tell me.

You're already a diamond-cutter expert.

[Говорящий 2]
Spend your time with everybody in the world.

[Говорящий 1]
Yeah, well, find a lonely person. You see? If you want money, you have to find a person who doesn't have money.

If you want companionship, you have to find someone who needs companionship. So people come up to me and they say, Jesse Michael, you know, you talk about the real causes and you've got everything you ever wanted and more. So how do I get a boy?

You know, should I go online or should I go to a club? I say, go to a nursing home. And they're like, I'm going to find a boy in a nursing home?

[Говорящий 2]
I said, not exactly.

[Говорящий 1]
You see, you're going to go to a nursing home and serve a lonely person with technique. Okay? Lots of people go to nursing homes and never meet a lonely boy.

Right? You know that. I'm talking with technique.

I'm holding it out on you so you come tomorrow. You see, I'm not giving you the technique. You go to a nursing home, you find a lonely person who becomes your karma partner.

I have one. I have an old lady in Phoenix, she's 80 something, and I go there, what, every couple of weeks, and I fix her toilet, or I fix her light, or I fix her, I gave her a drip system, I worked in your garden. So you find someone in whom you can plant your seeds.

You see? Someone with whom you can plant your seeds. And you cannot find a good partner in any other way.

Okay? That's the way it is. I'm standing up here, you know, telling you that the only way you'll be happy and not be lonely, and have companions, real companions, really true, beautiful, precious, and pure companionship, is if you spend time with lonely people, purposely, with technique, and there is no other way.

And you can cheat, right? You can run on some old camera. You know, you can meet somebody without taking care of lonely people, and it will last for a while.

Because you have an old seed. Okay? But it will fail.

Sooner or later it will fail. The relationship will get old. Something will break.

Something will happen. If you don't know the techniques of helping lonely people, you will be lonely. It has to be.

It will be. So don't get caught up in these bad choices. Don't let people tell you, oh, the pink one always works.

Because you know that's not true. That just cancels all the advertising ever done. You know?

You know it's not true. uh, yeah. Okay?

So that's the real, that's the real cause of finding companionship. And now you just have to learn the technique and then you have to carry it out. If you don't carry it out, it doesn't happen.

Duh! And if you don't use the technique, it doesn't happen very well or it's inconsistent. Okay?

You know that. Um, we're going to, I'm going to take a break, but I'm going to ask you, I hope you will stay. And then we have to talk about an idea called emptiness.

Okay? It's a very difficult, and if you don't understand it, then you can't do a good job. You have to understand the emptiness of your relationship.

You have to understand the emptiness of your bone in your foot. You have to understand the emptiness of five dollars. And if you don't understand that, you can't be successful either.

So stick around, have some refreshments and then we're going to do, after the refreshments, we're going to do a Tibetan-style debate. So in Tibetan monastery, three, four, five hours a day, we do this special debating. It looks like karate or something.

I don't know if you've seen films of it. It's very exciting and loud and obnoxious. And you learn a lot from it.

So we're going to do a little demonstration after refreshments. Take a couple minutes. No, a couple themes.

We're going to put up on the board the rest of the events for this weekend. There's other events happening in different places around L.A. Like there's a yoga and sutra talk and there's a Buddhist talk and there's some other kind of talk. I don't know.

But we'll put those up. We'll put up information about organizations that are in Los Angeles but you can, do you have anybody who can come up and talk about that? Claire?

She's going to tell you about some events that are happening here in L.A. that you can hook into. You want to do it now? Go ahead.

Hi, I'm Claire and I'm part of the Mahasuka Center community. And we're going to be hosting Geshe Michael's Sunday Night Talk on emptiness. And we have a full range of classes.

We have a whole yoga program which incorporates Tibetan heart yoga in the Geshe Michael lineage. We have meditation classes at a number of different levels. From beginner level drop-in meditation to more advanced meditation with Lama Warren Benjamin who led the meditation tonight.

Some of our teachers, I think you'll be meeting Cliff Spencer in the debate later tonight at Mary Kingsley. And we have a weekend coming up that's going to be talking about the different arts, the performing arts, music, visual arts, through the lens of yoga and Buddhist philosophy. It's called the Art Sutra Urban Retreat Weekend.

Venerable Sumatimuru will be opening it up on Friday night with a talk on emptiness. And then we have workshops for the whole rest of the weekend. And it's ending with a Dub Kirtan All-Star Jam.

[Говорящий 2]
So as Geshe Michael talked about, music, a beautiful way to open the heart and open the mind.

[Говорящий 1]
And so if you're interested in any of those things, please talk to me, introduce yourself, Mama Lauren, many members of the Mahasuka community here, and we'd love to get to know you. Also, I'll sit up here on this stage, end of this stage, and if you have a question, like some people want to talk about their husband, but they don't want to do it in public. So if you want to ask about some seeds, you can come up and ask me there.

And let's try to move that line a little bit so I get to your question right away. And I'll do the answer right away. And then other people will get to ask about their wife.

So we'll do that up here. And then I'm going to ask some of the, there's some staff here, seniors, teachers from our staff around the world. And they'll be sitting up here also.

Could they stand up, the people from the MVU? Okay. Yeah.

And Mahasuka Center? Yeah. So these people have all been training, I don't know, many of them for 10 or even 20 years.

And they're very good at answering your questions. What I like to say is look at them, see somebody you connect with comically. You know, like, oh, they look interesting to me.

That one doesn't look that interesting. And then they're going to sit on the stage too. And you can come up and ask them a question or anything like that, okay?

So have some nice impressions. We'll start in like 10, 15 minutes. Okay.

And then we'll start in like 10, 15 And then we'll start in like 10, 15 Okay. And then we'll start in like 10, 15 Okay. And then like 10, 15 minutes.

And then like 10, And then we'll start 10, 15 Okay. And then we'll start in like 10, A little taste of Tibetan style. This is how we study in the monastery.

And this is how we learn things in the monastery. So it looks a little wild, but don't be worried about it, OK? And you learn really fast, and you learn really well.

And hopefully, I won't rip my suit. But we're going to debate emptiness, all right? And it won't make any sense, and we'll talk about it later.

I'm going to just cut all the mics. Is that OK? Can you cut?

Yeah. So the beginning of a debate in a Tibetan monastery, it should be very respectful. That's the last respectful thing you do.

Digita chechen means, let's talk about this. Nyugati chechen. Let's talk about a pen, huh?

No one can tell me what this god damn thing is! Dama dru. Shou!

Somebody could tell me what it is! Yeah, that's right. I could.

Shou! What is it? Well, it's a pen, of course.

Oh-ho! Digita chechen! Did you call me by that?

You're telling me that's a pen? Duh, that's right. I am.

Why is it a pen? Well, because you can write with it, for one thing. Oh, it's a pen because you can write with it?

Duh, that's right. Duh, OK. So if a dog came into the room, up the aisle, a little puppy came up to the stage, and I took the thing and showed it to the dog, would it still be a pen?

Yes, of course. Oh, I suppose a dog would write with it. Dama dru, that's wrong.

Of course a dog's not going to write with a pen. Oh, what do you think the dog might do with it? OK, the dog might chew with it.

Might chew it. So in that case, the pen could maybe be a chew toy? OK, that's right.

It could be a chew toy. So can we say that the pen is both a pen and a chew toy at the same time, in the same place, in about the same time? Yeah, OK.

So this is, let's just get it straight, this is both a pen and a chew toy. That's right. That's right.

You guys take it. So that thing's both a pen and a chew toy. Well, that's what we just said.

It's both a pen and a chew toy, yeah. So if all the people in the room got up and everybody walked out and went out the door, no people in the room, then that thing's still a pen. Obviously, it would not be a pen anymore.

And then if we took all the dogs that might be in the room and chased all of them out, and there's no dogs in the room, then is that thing a chew toy? If there are no dogs in this room, then this would not be a chew toy. So we could say that the thing is both a chew toy and a pen and not a chew toy and a pen.

Yeah, that's exactly right. So then it's nothing. Then it's nothing.

All right, you have to turn your head back. Thank you. Yeah, so do you have time to stay a while?

It's not my fault. They're going to charge somebody. OK.

This is the idea of emptiness, OK. And it's very important. If you want to make money, if you want to change our health, If you want to find a nice partner, if you want to fix your existing partner, you have to understand emptiness, all right?

So I'll give you a 10-minute thing on emptiness, and we'll be done for tonight, okay? Then we'll continue tomorrow. When I went to the monastery, you know, I showed up, and this is your teacher, and he took me into this small room, really small, and it had a very small bed because Tibetans are like this tall.

And he said, this is your bed, and you're going to meditate here. Do you know how to meditate? I said, I know, I know.

Later, he gave me the name Mr. I-know-I-know. He didn't call me Michael, he called me Mr. I-know-I-know. And he said, do you know how to meditate?

I said, I know, I know. And then he said, do you know how to meditate on emptiness? I said, I know, I know.

Then he said, okay, you meditate, when you're done, you come up to my room. He's lived on the second floor, I lived on the first floor, right? So I sat down in the room, and I took the proper posture, and I started to meditate on emptiness.

And I read these books, you know, they said, oh, emptiness is black. You know, emptiness means nothing, okay? So I went, then I tried that for like half an hour, then he rang his bell, he had a bell.

I was like a dog, he was like this. He would ring his bell, I had to run upstairs. Yes, Rinpoche.

So he rang his bell, then I ran upstairs, knock on the door, he says, enter. And then he comes in. Then you have to get down on your knees, right?

He was an old style, you know, very traditional. And then I would get down, and I'd say, Rinpoche! And you have to suck your tongue.

It's respectful, okay? So I said, yes, Rinpoche. And he'd say, did you meditate?

And I said, yes, Rinpoche. And then he'd say, what did you meditate on? I said, emptiness, you know.

And then you can't look at him, right? You have to look at the floor. You never look at their face, you know.

And then he said, well, what is it like? What did you meditate on? I said, I close my eyes, and I pretend everything is black.

Just black. Everything is black. He says, everything black?

I said, yes. Yes, Rinpoche. And then he said, that's emptiness.

I said, yes, Rinpoche. Then he said, Kupa! Say Kupa.

Kupa! Kupa means idiot. And then he said, Kupa!

And then I said, oh, yes, Rinpoche, I'm Kupa. And then he said, you go back. You try again.

So I went back down. I meditated. Those of you who have been to Howell, that's the little room there.

So I meditated there. And this time, I read some other book. He said, do you know about it?

I said, I know. I'll try again. I know it.

And I went back. And then I read this book that said, just think about nothing. Try to think about nothing.

And then that would be emptiness. So I sat there for about half an hour, and I meditated about nothing. So then he rang his little bell.

It's a little tiny bell like this. Ding, ding, ding. And I ran upstairs, knocked on the door.

Yes, enter. I come down, get down on my knees. And then he said, did you meditate on emptiness?

I said, yes. He said, what is it? What is emptiness like?

And I said, emptiness is where you try not to think about anything. You don't think about anything. He says, that's a meditation.

I said, yes. He said, meditation is a focusing the mind. I said, well, yeah.

He said, you're concentrating, right? I said, yeah. So he says, you are thinking very hard.

I said, yeah. He says, you're thinking very hard about not thinking, right? I said, yeah.

He said, koopa. He said, that's also koopa. You're thinking very hard about not thinking, but that's also thinking.

You're a koopa. He said, you go try again. So I went back.

I went down to my room. Then I heard this other thing. He said, do you need any advice?

No, no, I know, I know. I went back. And then he said, I heard this thing that you're not supposed to like anything.

And you're not supposed to not like anything. And you're not supposed to feel happy. And you're not supposed to feel sad.

You just ignore good stuff. You ignore bad stuff. You ignore good feeling.

You ignore bad feeling. You just feel nothing. And don't feel happy.

Don't feel sad. That's meditation. That's nothing.

That's emptiness. So I tried to do that for a while. Then he rang his bell.

I went up. And then he said, so what is emptiness? I said, you don't feel bad.

And you don't feel sad. You don't feel happy. You just don't feel anything.

You don't want anything. And you don't hate anything. And you don't like anything.

And you don't not like anything. And nothing feels good to you. And nothing feels bad to you.

He says, that's emptiness, right? I said, yes, Rinpoche. This is emptiness.

He said, so what makes you feel good? I said, when you help other people, you feel good. That's good karma.

You feel good. The result is you feel good. He said, what makes you feel bad?

I said, when you hurt other people, you feel bad. So he said, and you're trying not to feel good and not to feel bad. I said, yeah.

He said, you're trying to say that feeling good, feeling bad, same thing. I said, yeah. So he said, therefore, helping people and hurting people is the same thing, right?

And I said, I guess. And then he said, shitunine kutpa. He said, this is absolute perfect idiot.

That's like the most stupid thing. And then, no, really, if you think about it, that's the three things you hear. It's either laugh, or you don't think about anything, or you try not to feel good or bad, or want to explain, or don't worry.

You know, that's what you hear. You hear those things. And they're all wrong.

And it took me many years in the monastery to learn what is emptiness. But I can tell you in two minutes, and save you 17 years or something. And you can use a pen.

You can use a pen. And by the way, you need to understand emptiness if you're going to use this system. If you're going to make a quarter of a billion dollars, or find the most beautiful, absolutely perfect angel in the universe, or you're going to fix a bone in your foot, you have to understand emptiness.

So hang in there for five minutes, and I'll let you go. And we'll deal with the bill of the place later. This thing, this pen, and all other things in the world have emptiness.

They have their own emptiness. Everything has its own emptiness. What does emptiness mean?

It means it's not a pen, and it's not a chew toy from its own side. Got it? If you take away, as Eric said, Ningbo said, with, who was your opponent?

Anatole Nguyen. If you take away all the people in the room, and then you take away all the dogs in the room, is this a pen, or is it a chew toy? You would say neither.

And that's the meaning of emptiness. It's nothing weird. It's not like everything is black, or you shouldn't think about anything, or you shouldn't like anything, or dislike anything.

It doesn't have anything to do with that. You should like some things, and you should dislike some things. You should like to help people.

You should like to see people successful. You should dislike pain. You should work against the, you know, you should want things, and you should not want things.

Right? And it's not true that everything is black, and everything is here. And if you think the world is an illusion, then go stand in front of a taxi cab and get your illusory leg broken, and go to an illusory hospital, and you'll get an illusory bill.

Things are illusory in a certain way, but not the way they say. Okay? Things are real.

People are suffering. People are fighting. People are dying right now.

People are hurting. There are things happening. It's sad.

Things are happening. Things are real. Those pain is real.

Right? So, what does it mean to say the pen is empty? It means, by itself, from its own side, it's not a pen.

From its own side, it's not a chupai. From its own side. By itself, it's empty.

We like to say, in business, you can say available. It's available to be either one. It could be a pen, it could be a chupai.

But by itself, without the dogs, without the humans, it's just a black stick. It's not a pen, and it's not a chupai. Neither one.

Okay? And it's both. Right?

Sure? Be careful. In the debate, they said, be careful.

Is it both? Is it both a pen and a chupai? Is Smith right?

[Говорящий 2]
Well, it's whatever you want it.

[Говорящий 1]
Want it? I want it to be a diamond right now.

[Говорящий 2]
No, I guess not.

[Говорящий 1]
There's a good point though.

[Говорящий 2]
Well, I don't know.

[Говорящий 1]
It's a really, really good point. What it is, is coming from me. What it is, is coming from me.

A dog sees something that you aren't. Because of the seed they have in their mind. They have a different seed.

And I see a pen, because of the seed I have in my mind. Okay? Who put the seed in my mind to see a pen?

Me. How did you put that seed in your mind? I provided a writing instrument to someone who needed it.

Okay? I provided a writing instrument to someone who needed it. I gave five dollars to someone who needed money.

I helped a lonely person in a nursing home. I put the seeds in my mind. That's why I see things the way I see things.

Okay? Got it? It's coming from your mind.

But it's not, what do you call it, of matter of willpower. You can't decide. You can't say, today I'm going to see it as a pen.

You can't say, today I'm going to see it as a million dollars. The million dollars is coming from you. The pen is coming from you.

But those seeds have to be planted before. You have to do gardening. You have to plan your life.

You have to plan your world. Now, say, I want money later than give money. I want to have companionship later than help lonely people.

I want the bone in my foot to change than help the sick. You see? You have to.

You don't have a choice. Because you have to put those seeds in your mind. Got it?

So, if this was a pen from its own side, we'd be in trouble. Because then my seeds can't put a new thing on it. Got it?

It has to be available. It's like an empty piece of paper. It's like that screen before you project something onto it.

Right? Everything in the world is like a white movie screen. Everything is available to be anything you want or not.

Can it be anything you want? Yeah, but you have to plant the seeds. You can't just wish it.

I mean, we all wish, right? I mean, everybody would like to make money. I wish I could make some money today.

I wish a person would come that I feel lonely. I wish I had somebody. It's not the wishing, right?

You need to plant the seed. And then it will just happen. You see what I mean?

Then you don't have to wish. And you don't have to fight. And you don't have to work hard.

You just plant the seed. Got it? The seed will have a place to go.

The seed will have a place to be. Because everything is nothing. Got it?

Make sense? Everything is not anything. So, everything is available.

It could be a pen. It could be a chew toy. It could be a method to make a million dollars.

It could be a method to go broke. You see? Everything can be everything.

Depending on what seed is in your mind. So, just put the right seeds in your mind. Because the world is available.

Your whole life is available. Everything around you can change drastically in 10 minutes. Because it's not anything.

It's not a pen. It's really not a pen. Is this a pen from its own side?

One guy in Florida who was sitting there in 1994 on the Heart Yoga Tour. He insisted this was a pen. Only one guy in all these years.

He just wouldn't give it up. He said, that's a pen from its own side. I said, no it's not.

A dog doesn't see it that way. If it was a pen from its own side, a dog would see it as a pen. A dog would write a letter to his dog girlfriend and say, this is a nice nail.

It's not anything from its own side. And everything is the same. If that wasn't the way stuff is, then this stuff won't work.

It has to be blank. Everything is blank. And we can plant whatever seeds we want, and it will be what we want.

But not because we want it to be, but because we planted the seeds there. You can want to meet a nice person, but you're not going to meet them unless you plant a seed by helping a lonely person. It's never going to happen.

You can pray, you can wish, you can whatever you want to do, it's not going to work. You must plant the seed. But if you plant the seed, everything is blank.

Everything is ready to be what you want. Got it? If you say yes, you get to go home.

So now you know what emptiness means. What does illusion mean then? I lied.

What does illusion mean then? Illusion means, it looks like the pen is coming from its side. It looks like that.

I mean, naturally. The boss yells at you. Your husband refuses to take out the garbage.

You get laid off. It looks like it's coming from the other person. And you blame the other person.

You say, why did you yell at me? I'm a good worker. Why don't you take out the garbage?

Why are you so lazy? I always wash the dishes, at least you can take out the garbage. I cook and I wash the dishes, at least you can take out the garbage.

You think that's coming from him. And you think the boss is yelling from his side. And you think you got laid off by some company.

And it's all illusion. It's all a lie. It's not coming from them.

It's coming from you. But from your seeds that you planted. It's not coming, you decided it.

Nobody decided their boss should yell at them. Nobody decided they should get laid off. It is coming from you.

But it's coming without control. Because it's coming from a seed that you put in your mind before. So now just work on the seeds.

Just change the seeds. And then weird stuff happens. I had a guy, last story.

I went to a yoga class. I don't remember if you were there that day. It was a Dharamitra class.

And I went to a class at Dharamitra. And this is some good yoga teacher in New York. And this guy came up to me afterwards.

He said, I want to shake your hand. And I said, you know, thank you. And he said, because you're doing such good work to bring different religious communities together.

And I said, thank you. And then he walked out. And I walked out.

And then I got this email from him. And he said, why didn't you thank me? And I wrote him back.

I said, well, I didn't even know you. I was happy to meet you. But I didn't thank you because I don't know you.

And he said, take me for the thing I put in your bag. Because I always carry this backpack around. And I said, I didn't see anything in my bag.

He said, look in your bag. I looked in my bag. There's a $100,000 check.

And he said, I just wanted to thank you. And I said, now I'll thank you. But what I mean is, if you plant the seeds, you cannot avoid the result.

You can go to a yoga class, and it will bang on your door. It will sneak into your backpack. And I didn't do anything.

I just went to a yoga class. If you plant the seed, the result must come to you. It must come to you.

It will always come to you. So tomorrow, what do we have to do? We just have to talk about the best ways to plant seeds.

We have to talk about how do you make the seed grow faster? And how do you speed things up? And how do you get the right conditions for the seed to grow big?

How do you make it bigger? How do you make it faster? And how do you prevent obstacles to the seed?

How do you get things to happen faster? Tomorrow we do that, and then you're all right. You can do everything else.

So see you tomorrow. Thank you for coming.