Учения Великого ретрита, часть 1: Ветры медитации (2011, Боуи), занятие 2

[Говорящий 1]
Okay, let's start. Just a quick announcement about the retreat meetings. I thought I would name the list one more time, just in case there was some confusion today.

So, please be on time, and please leave on time, whether I want to talk more or not. Venerable Chinzong, 9.30 tonight, Christine Sperber, 10 o'clock tonight, Michael and Melissa, 10.30 tonight, Lama Kristi and Ian, tomorrow evening after the class? After your class.

Rene and Vera, 8 a.m. Sunday, Khun Khan, 8.30 a.m. Sunday, John Brady, 9 o'clock a.m. Sunday, Coco, 9.40 a.m. Sunday, Dvora, 10.10 a.m. Sunday, Liz, 10.40 a.m., Connie, 11.25 a.m. That's all Sunday. Monday, Ann Curry, 8 a.m., Will Duncan, 8.30 a.m., Earl, 9 a.m., Pat, 9.40 a.m., Earl, again, you're lucky. Let's cancel that one.

10.40, Joe and Lisette. Okay? I mean, I have to leave by 12.

Okay, if anyone still wants, then let Chandra know somehow. You didn't catch this? Oh, okay.

So, how about... we put you guys in Earl's second slot? Which is 10.10?

Okay. And then that guy... 7.30 Monday morning?

7.30 Monday morning? Okay. Today we're going to do a silent mandala offering.

Okay? So, picture your bank account. Not your credit card debt.

And offer it to the lama for the teaching. And ask the world, made pure, and all the beings in the world happy and relaxed and free of death itself. Okay?

So, picture the price of the teaching and then we'll start.

[Говорящий 2]
Okay, we will start.

[Говорящий 1]
So, yesterday we spoke about the nine levels of meditation. And we went through them and we talked about the major obstacles to those levels. I think, in my mind, they could be boiled down to ching wang gupa.

Ching wang meaning you feel tired or you feel sleepy, your mind is not clear. It's either because you ate too much food or you're feeling heavy, you didn't do your yoga. Or, I think very commonly, in a long retreat, you didn't sleep enough.

I think a lot of problems in long retreat can be solved by getting to bed early and getting enough sleep. Then, in a very long retreat, there's sort of a fatigue factor. So, the fatigue tends to, let me call it, like toxins in your liver and they don't, they accumulate.

It's accumulative. So, you can't really, even if you get some sleep during a break or something, it still accumulates in your subconscious and you get tired. And that will get worse as time goes on.

So, you accumulate fatigue, meditative fatigue, and also loom. Even if you're a person who's careful, loom means, of course, that it means a disorder of the values of the body that's brought on by meditating a little bit too hard or too, like your forehead is creased up when you're meditating. And then that builds up and it causes a lot of, everybody knows, you get, you feel anxiety, you get a little bit shaky, you have trouble sleeping, you get angry easily, you get upset easily, and like that.

Eventually it will start to affect your physical processes, like your urinary tract and things like that. So, and it's very, it's easy to get and it's hard to dispel. So, you have to be really careful in a long retreat, especially a two-year retreat.

You can't tolerate any build-up of loom at all. And when you start feeling any unhappiness at all or unsettled feeling, then immediately you have to start taking action, because if you don't, it'll just pile onto the pile of accumulated loom. And then a year in or 18 months in, you'll start to, it'll start to fatigue you a lot.

So you have, now that you're about to start the real retreat, after six months of settling in and fixing toilets, etc., now you have to pay attention to your loom levels and not let any build-up occur. So really, to me, the whole name of the game is ching-wa and gupa. Ching-wa meaning dullness and gupa meaning you think about lunch or you think about things you have to do after the retreat.

While you're in retreat, the favorite thing to do is to think about after the retreat. While you're out of retreat, you're always thinking you should be in retreat. So your mind is never with you.

It's always at the other place, right? So those are the two great obstacles of meditation. If you think about it, in terms of Mahamudra, the two great obstacles of meditation are a dichotomy.

So I wanted to start getting you in the mood of thinking about a dichotomy, meaning a division of things. So your mind is hard-wired to see divisions and to perceive divisions in things. And the process of retreat and the process of meditation would be to, what do you call it, unify those divisions that you see.

Somehow unify the polarities that the mind itself and the body itself are prone to. So I thought today we would start with examining the tendency of the mind towards polarities. One of the easy polarities is between cingwa and gupa.

So when you're meditating, your mind tends to it tends to battle between those two extremes. I like to think of it as a country road, like driving down a country road, and there are ditches on each side of the road. So meditation is like threading your way down a road which has ditches on either side.

You see, on the one side, I guess that's dirt, I don't know. On the left side, you can say there's gupa, which is being distracted while you're meditating, thinking about the things you have to do, thinking about lunch. They say that most gupa is desire-oriented.

Most distractions are desire-oriented. There are things you want, food you want, people you want to be with. Things you want to happen in your life.

Most distractions are plans or fantasies about things. But there's a very strong minor category of distraction called the last person who called you stupid, or the person who bothers you, or the person who challenges you. We all have one or two in our lives normally.

And then some distraction can be of one of two kinds. Distraction can be centered on, normally on something you want, which includes plans for the future and what you're going to eat this afternoon or what you're going to do in two and a half years, in three months, in two years, whatever. And then, which by the way, I'd like to say very seriously that I think that fantasizing about how helpful you will be for others in the future is okay.

I think that plants seeds in the mind, deep in the mind, for successful meditation. That comes in my mind under the category of motivation, the seeds of motivation. So to me, to spend a lot of time in your three-year retreat, just sitting on a chair, not necessarily in a full lotus, just sitting on a chair, gazing out the window, and thinking about the beautiful things you'll be able to do once you have a three-year retreat under your belt and how much more valuable you'll be in the world and how much more helpful you'll be to other people.

You are a valuable property. A lot of money is being invested in you. A lot of people's headaches and anxiety.

And then, you know, you're like medical school graduates when you get out, and you're a valuable property. I remember in the Soviet Union they wouldn't let medical graduates emigrate to Israel. It was, you know, they had spent too much money on them.

So you're a valuable property when you get out. I don't think it's inappropriate to fantasize about what great deeds you're going to do and how many people you can help when you get out. That's part of the process, I think.

It helps. It helps the meditation. A lot of people were talking to me about, they felt like they had advanced pretty far through the nine levels of meditation, but they felt like something was stopping them from reaching Samatha.

So we spoke, we were speaking yesterday about nine levels of meditation. We went up through the nine levels, primarily battling against dullness and agitation. Dullness needs some talk.

We should talk a little bit about dullness. Qingwa. In the form which you can easily recognize, for example, on 6th Street in New York when I fell asleep in meditation and hit my head on the closet next to Punto, that's obvious.

He was like, Geshe-la, what are you doing? I'm like, oh man, that closet jumped at me. Then there's the subtle dullness.

That's very, very evil and bad and you have to learn to recognize it. It's when you're doing good meditation, the meditation is going well, the meditation is going smooth, you have your mind on the object, but the retention of the object or the grasping to the object or the holding to the object is flabby and it doesn't have any pizzazz. So, like you didn't lose the object.

If you were supposed to be meditating on your Lama's holy sweet face, then you are still meditating on your Lama's holy sweet face, but it's kind of, it's not that the mind is blurry, I'm sorry, it's not that the face is not clear in your mind, it's that the state of mind holding the face is not clear. So they'll say in the scriptures that subtle sleepiness is a lack of clarity and then people have misunderstood that to mean that the Lama's face is fuzzy in your mind, but it doesn't mean that. It means your state of mind is fuzzy and half asleep.

Like you didn't lose the object, but you're still like half asleep on the object. That's the most serious danger of meditation. You could meditate for years thinking that you're doing well, but you would just be spaced out.

You would feel spaced out. It's a great danger in a long retreat. Since you're staying by yourself, since you don't have a lot of interaction with others and there's no one to mirror back to you that you're getting weird, then you can go for a long time and just sort of semi-drunk state, where it feels okay.

At least you're not having a breakdown or anything, but you're just wandering around. I think one of the signs of that is you walk around your meditation cabin with something in your hand, like a spoon, looking for the spoons. And you just kind of...

You're like drugged. It's like a half-drugged thing. And we consider that a very great fault in meditation, a very great mistake in meditation.

Good meditation should feel like the coolest moments of your favorite movie, or listening to your favorite song. When they get to the good part of your favorite song, like... Cowgirl Lysanne, when he starts the...

you know, the guitar solo. So meditation should feel like the anticipation and the excitement and the fun of being on the edge of your seat and totally, totally locked into the thing, like your favorite part of your favorite movie. The favorite two minutes of your favorite movie is what meditation should feel like.

So let's say you get there. Let's say... I'd like to do a meditation right now.

So we'll start with a meditation. I'd like you to sit up straight, take a pretty good meditation posture. Again, I'd like you to...

This is called Samatha Upanishad. We're going to focus your mind on how you feel right now. Do you feel sharp?

Or do you feel dull? Do you feel a little tired? Do you feel energized?

How do you feel right now? Do you feel pretty happy? Or just kind of normal?

Or did something happen earlier today or yesterday or a few minutes ago that made you a little off balance and made you a little sad? So I'd like you to focus on your own mind. Step back.

Learn to step back from your own mind and watch how you feel. Observe how you feel. We'll do this for a few minutes.

Try to keep your mind on how you feel. Try to observe the slight changes in how you feel. Try to observe whether your mind begins to get tired and the mind becomes a little bit foggy.

Or does the mind go off the object onto something else? Try very hard to picture yourself as a witness of your mind. Try very hard to imagine yourself as a small little man in your mind watching the mind.

Try very, very hard not to be in the mind. Try hard to step back. Try hard to have some of you step back and observe the mind.

Try to feel the difference between having a feeling and observing yourself having a feeling. When you have a feeling, you are in the feeling. What I'd like you to do is step back and watch yourself having the feeling.

So don't just have a feeling, but step back and watch yourself having the feeling. It's almost as if the person having the feeling was somebody else and you're watching them. Stay with the feeling.

Stay with watching your feeling. And then slowly come up and release the meditation. So a lot of people, it seems, I think a lot of us who've been meditating for a long time, sometimes, some of us, we might feel that oh, I'm getting up pretty far in the meditation chart.

I feel like I'm at level four or maybe I'm at level six or maybe I'm even at level nine. And then, I don't know, the last few steps of the chart get a little bit unclear. Like, what would it be like to have perfect single-pointed mind the minute you sit down?

What would it be like to have perfect concentration? Ekāgara, of course, means single point means single object, right? You're only focused on one object at a time.

I used to think, I used to wonder if you got ekāgara, if you would ever come out, you know, because what would ever bring you out? You see, if you were really focused on a single object, like you might just forget to stop meditating, I think, because you wouldn't think of anything else, like stopping, you know, or you wouldn't hear the alarm clock or something like that. So anyway, but that would be, that would save on food.

I'm trying to help, okay? Okay, all right. So then, then somebody comes along and says, hey, that's not enough.

That's not Samatha, okay? I mean, that's not the highest form of meditation. It's kind of frustrating, you know?

Like, you never got there anyway, and then they're telling you it's not enough, you know, and you have to go somewhere higher. And then they say that there's a difference between the end of the nine levels and reaching Samatha, okay? So what we want to talk about today, what I'd like to talk more about is what happened, what's supposed to happen between the ninth stage of meditation and reaching Samatha.

What's supposed to go on there? You know, what are we supposed to do there, right? Because supposedly, Samatha is necessary to see emptiness, all right?

You cannot see emptiness directly without reaching Samatha. So there's no point in meditating, because the only reason to meditate is to reach Samatha, is to see emptiness directly. So if you, if you stop short of the instrument needed to see emptiness directly, then the whole effort, all these years of meditating every day, they don't mean anything.

You see, if we can't get clear in our mind what happens between perfect concentration and then Samatha, then there's, the whole reason to meditate has been lost, okay? So, today I'd like to talk about what happens between the end of, between perfect concentration and Samatha. First of all, you know, the function of Samatha is a level or a platform of meditation which is sufficiently still to see emptiness directly.

The mind is often compared to a lake, the surface of a lake. And then emptiness is sometimes compared to the moon. And if the surface of the lake has ripples in it, or if it's disturbed in any way, then the moon cannot be reflected in it.

And it's exactly a, it's a perfect metaphor, okay? If the mind is not perfectly still, then you won't be able to see emptiness directly. It's not possible, okay?

So, Samatha is the stillness of mind required to reach the direct perception of emptiness, okay? By itself it's only a tool. It's only an instrument, okay?

It's not a goal by itself. There are higher levels of meditation than Samatha, okay? There are higher levels of meditation than the one required to see emptiness directly.

There are stiller states of mind and more spaced out states of mind. But somehow, Samatha is just right. It's high enough that the mind is still, and it's low enough that you're not like melted into the object and you can't see anything anymore, okay?

So it's a little bit difficult to define. You have to reach a certain point, you have to stop and not get caught up in the process of meditation where you're just attracted to the bliss of it and you're not using it as a tool. I like to think of meditation as reading, you know?

When we give talks to business people, then we try to we try to get them to have the feeling that a person who can't meditate is a lot like a person who cannot read, okay? Try to imagine your life without the ability to read. You see?

You would walk around streets of the city and and, you know, you would you would walk through what do they call it? Bars and Nobles. And everything would be just a blur to you.

You wouldn't understand any of the none of the books, the titles of the books would be would be speaking to you. Like, I can't walk through Bars and Nobles. I try to get from the hot chocolate to the bathroom and I can't.

You know? Because the titles of the books are yelling at me. You see what I mean?

And I can't meditate in a room that there's bookshelves. You see? Because the titles are talking to me, right?

So try to imagine a life where you can't read. Try to imagine a life where where you would walk through Bars and Nobles and it just all looked like random marks. You see?

And think how much you would have missed in this life. Right? And then imagine that you can't meditate or you can't achieve Samatha.

That's very similar. You see? To go through your whole life and not reach Samatha is very similar to going through a human life and not learning to read.

You see? Your mind has the capacity to reach Samatha. You can do it.

Everyone can do it. And you just need some work, like learning to read. And then imagine going to Lack Blind and not being able to see higher things.

So how do we get from high states of meditation to shinjang? I'm sorry, to shamatha. And this is what I wanted to concentrate on today.

There's this beautiful teaching in the Lamrim, right? About shinjang, okay? Shinjang prashabda, right?

Shinjang is what separates love of mind from shamatha. If you can get to shinjang, you go from not reading to reading. Okay?

And if you can't get to shinjang, you can't. So then we have to look into shinjang. What is shinjang?

I like the sound of the Tibetan word. And also, there's not a great English word for it. Okay?

It's hard to find a good English word for it. But the full form is shindujangpa. And it means...

It can mean very well practiced, very fluid in that meditation. The jangpa. But the jangpa can also...

Sometimes you see in the Sanskrit prashuddhi, very pure. So, jangpa in Tibetan... The Tibetans made a good choice for the translation because it can mean either very good at meditating or it can mean very pure.

Okay? Purified of something. Okay?

Free of something. Okay? Shindujangpa.

So jangpa can mean jongpa, meaning you are cleansed of something. Then you say, cleansed of what? What is it that keeps me out of shinjang?

What prevents me from reaching shinjang? And that's called ne-nen-ren. Okay?

Very difficult word. Ne-nen-ren. Okay?

In Sanskrit it's dushtula. Dushtula. Okay?

And I wanted to talk about ne-nen-ren. Like you could spend a few weeks just reading about ne-nen-ren in the scriptures. And I wanted to talk a little bit about what it means.

Okay? What is this strange word dushtula? Duh means bad, right?

Like dukkha. Dus means bad. It came into Greek as dys, it came into Latin as dys.

So dysfunctional or something bad. Then sthula, you can see it in, they say sthula sharir, right? In the yoga tradition.

There's the anumaya kosha, right? There's the physical body which is sustained by food. So maya means sustained by, or created by.

Ana means food. And kosha means the sheath or the covering of the body. So sometimes that body is called sthula.

Okay? And it means the gross physical body. I did this, I like to look up the Indo-European, which is older.

And it's a story, which is s-t-e-u, and it came into English as stump, but not stump. Okay? Meaning any kind of a projection, an unmoving knobby thing that gets in your way.

It's a story, okay? And then, really, so stump came from that. And then sthula is related.

So sthula means physical, fixed, knobby, hard thing to move, like a tree stump. So sthula means, in this case, it means dumb. Okay?

It means blockhead, or something like that. It means, sthula can also mean telika, which means black sesame. And the idea is that sthula is evil, sthula is bad.

Okay? It's used in a lot of places that mean a bad smell, like the smell of sulfur, it's called sthula. Okay?

So you get the feeling what sthula can mean, unintelligent, dumb. Stupid conscious sthula. Okay?

Stupid conscious sthula. So it means dumb, it means unintelligent, it means stuck, it means hard, it means block, it means evil. You see, all of those things, so neng neng len, the thing that separates us from shamatha, the last hurdle to jump over before you get to shamatha, is this dark, evil, stinky, hard to move, stumpy thing.

Okay? Called neng neng len. Let's call it sthula, okay?

Just because it's easier than neng neng len. Okay, sthula. But, let's talk about neng neng len.

Okay, neng neng len. The Tibetans chose to translate sthula, du sthula, as neng neng len. Neng means place, neng means bad, and len means to take, or to assume, a bad place.

Okay? To take on a bad place. Neng neng len.

You know, nyan nyen me depa, to go beyond grief, right? Nirvana. So ngen means bad.

So, neng neng lenpa is what separates us from shamatha, and it refers to a prana. Okay? It refers to a kind of prana.

So there's a neng neng lenge prana in the body, alright? There's a subtle negative prana, and that is linked to a subtle negative seeds. Okay?

Subtle negative seeds within the body. So I wanted to give you, maybe go through the history of this idea, or where the idea came up in scripture, okay, or in Buddhist practice. This idea of taking on a bad place, alright?

Taking on a bad place. So sometimes in the long run, neng neng len is used to describe our birth. It's used in the descriptions of suffering, when they list the kinds of suffering.

Like when you say shanti, shanti, shanti at the end of a yoga class, the tradition says that it's may I put to rest shanti, peace. May I put to rest the three kinds of suffering. Okay?

So the reason you repeat it three times is that there are three kinds of suffering. One is called dunyal ki dunyal, which means obvious suffering, and the classical example is a headache or a backache. One is called gyurwa dunyal, which means the suffering of change, and the example is a nice Julia Child French cooked dinner, because you'll get hungry again.

Okay? So that's to eat, to eat her beef bourguignon is to suffer. And then the last kind of suffering is kevudu chigi dunyal.

It means just the suffering which is wired into our bodies. Okay? You have to suffer, because you were born.

You will have to get old and die because you were born. When you say shanti, shanti, shanti, you're praying that we can stop these three kinds of suffering. Neng neng len, to take a bad place, is described as taking birth as a human, and the birth will kill you, and the birth will cause you to change and suffer.

So, in the long run, to take on a bad place, dushtula, refers to the fact that we took birth in a world where we have to die. Okay? That's one basic meaning.

Then in the vinaya, vinaya is like the teachings on monks and nuns' vow morality. Okay? The teachings on the vows, especially with regard to running a monastic community.

Okay? You can see vinaya grow spontaneously in places like Dandenong. You know, spiritual seekers get together, they decide to build some cabins in a valley, and then they trap in on their deep two-year retreat.

The first night the weather drops to five, freezes all their pipes, and then vinaya starts.

[Говорящий 2]
You see?

[Говорящий 1]
So then a note goes out and says, all cabins should have such and such grade insulation on the pipes. Okay? That becomes vinaya rule number one.

Because that was the first problem that came up. Vinaya always derives from a langshi. Langshi means the original incident.

Okay? So you can track all the monks' vows. All 253 vows.

364 for women, because they're worse than men. Just kidding. You can track them all to a langshi, to an original event.

Okay? There are two monks' vows which relate to neng, neng, len. Okay?

There are two monks' vows which relate to taking a bad place. Right? Dushkula.

And one of them is that a fully ordained monk is not allowed to talk to a non-ordained person about another monk's serious offenses, especially those which have been revealed during the twice-a-month sojong. Okay? So originally all monks and nuns had to get together twice a month according to the moon, full moon and dark moon.

And they would sit in a circle and they would confess to each other what they had done wrong. And that was considered sacred. That was considered not to be passed on outside that circle.

Otherwise you can imagine the circle would break down. People wouldn't confide in their other monks what they had done. You see?

So in a case where one monk hears something in a circle or sees something called neng, neng, len. See? Some other monks put themselves in a bad place.

They did something wrong. And then if they reveal that to a layperson outside the circle, without just reason determined by the monk's committee or whatever, then they broke the vow called you're not allowed to reveal a neng, neng, len. A bad situation.

Another case in the Vinaya of neng, neng, len is that if a fully ordained monk becomes aware that another monk has transgressed a serious vow, one of the two highest sets of, up to five sets of vows, then, and if they keep it secret and they don't confide in it to the abbot or to other monks who are in charge, then they break a vow. So that's called concealing a neng, neng, len. Okay?

Concealing a dushtula. Not reporting a serious infraction to the head of the monastery or the head of the retreat valley or whatever it may be. So that's Vinaya, that's how the word comes in Vinaya.

That's how the word or the idea comes in, in Lam Rim. Then there's a beautiful teaching in the Mind-Only School. And I think we should do it someday.

We should go through it someday. It's very detailed, very beautiful. We've never really taken a deep trip through the Mind-Only School.

But in the Mind-Only School they have an idea that's very similar to the Yoga Sutra's idea of karma shaya or a storehouse where your negative seeds stay. So the place in your mind where your karmic seeds stay. And in the Mind-Only School, as opposed to higher schools, especially Tantra, but in the lower school, Mind-Only, they would say that there's a separate part of your mind where the karmic seeds are...

What do you call it? They stain the mind or they are... They call it...

Lhatsi in Tibetan means musk. The musk of a deer. You have to kill the deer to get the musk.

It's a very evil, bad thing. But anyway, they use it for a lot of incenses. And the deers are getting very rare.

People just kill them for the musk. And they don't use the rest of the deer. They just kill it for that.

But if you put lhatsi in a bowl or in a leather pouch or in a bag, that smell... How do you say? It imbues the bowl.

Like you can't get it out of the bowl. In fact, my lama has a rule that my... What do you call it?

Cutting board? I have to use one side for onion and garlic and the other side is for everything else. And I cannot mix it up.

We made a mark on one side. So, I don't know how you want to call that, but alaya-vijnana, the part of the mind where your karmic seeds... What do you call?

Impregnate the mind. Right? They get into the mind like a scent that can't be removed.

There's a separate part of your mind. Okay? Then there's a beautiful, beautiful teaching in the mind-only school on eight kinds of mental seeds, bhagchak.

You can call it bhagchak, you can call it sabun, or you can say bhagpa. There's different words. What do you call?

Vasana in Sanskrit. Sanskrit? So, there are eight different kinds of bhagchaks in the mind-only school.

Okay? There are eight different seeds which can stain the mind. All right?

And they have a beautiful, beautiful presentation. This one category of seeds is responsible for all the people you meet and all the things you see in your life. Okay?

So there's a place in your mind, in the mind-only school, where the seeds are stored which determine who you're going to meet in your life and what you're going to see, what experiences you're going to have in your life. So that's a whole separate part of the mind in their school. And those seeds are all lumped together and they open as you pass through life.

And as they open, you meet new people and you have new experiences. Okay? So that's one kind of mind-only, mind-staining seed.

But they're very big on neng-yen-len kipak chak. Okay? So, karmic seeds for bad states, right?

Like the monk was fooling around. That was neng-yen-len. Or the neng-yen-len wasn't reported.

Or the neng-yen-len was hidden. Or the neng-yen-len was revealed to a non-monk. Or something like that.

So now think of it as a bad state. Alright? In the Lamrim, in the study of suffering, neng-yen-len means taking on a bad place means being born.

Okay? In the mind-only school... By the way, don't forget why we're talking about all this.

This is what separates you from Samatha. Okay? Somehow, this is all going to tie into what keeps you away from Samatha.

It's blocking you from Samatha. So in the mind-only school, there's a beautiful explanation. They say neng-yen-len.

To take on a bad place. Right? It means a bachat or a seed.

Alright? The mental seeds themselves are called neng-yen-len. And that's confusing.

Okay? If you study scripture or you study these things, you're going to come to a place where they're talking about Samatha. It's going to say what's keeping you from Samatha is neng-yen-len.

And then that means to take a bad place. And then you're going to wonder who's taking a bad place and what's the bad place. You know?

But the literal explanation of neng-yen-len is very beautiful. They say neng-yen means your next suffering life. Okay?

Neng-yen means your next suffering life. And specifically, the ignorance which you will carry into your next life. So in the Yoga Sutra terms, second chapter, avidyasmita, ignorance in general and the ignorance you carry into this life is neng-yen.

Stula is a bad place. Okay? Stinky place.

Stinky black place. And then neng-yen-lenpa refers to the mental seeds which will throw ahead of you a world, your next world. You see what I mean?

Neng-yen-len. So, it doesn't mean taking a bad place. It means bad place takers or throwers.

You got it? Neng-yen-len means the bhaktas themselves. The seeds themselves are called neng-yen-len.

The bad place bringers. Okay? Those things which will cause you to take a bad place.

But it's not clear in the name. Okay? It just says bad place take.

So it refers, in the mind only school especially, neng-yen-len is one of the eight kinds of bhaktas that stain the kunshi, the storehouse of karma. And it refers specifically to seeds for klesha, mental friction. Okay?

Because those will cause you to take your next bad place. They will cause you to take your next suffering place. So every time you get angry, right?

Every time you get upset. Every time you get jealous. Every time you go for your fourth biscotti at Starbucks.

You just planted a neng-yen-len. Okay? You just planted a neng-yen-len.

Okay? So you can talk about it like that. You are, I'm planting neng-yen-lens.

What did you do today? I was just hanging out and planting neng-yen-lens. You know?

Okay? Alright. So that's mind only school.

So I'm trying to get you to get the feeling. We've had three sources, right? We had Vinaya.

Neng-yen-len was a monk boo-boo that you can't talk about or you are supposed to talk about. And then, neng-yen-len could mean your next life, taking your next life itself in the long run. And then neng-yen-len in the mind only means the seeds that are put into your mind by your kleshas.

Okay? Now we go to higher schools. Let's go one more higher.

In the middle way school, okay? In the Prasangika high school, neng-yen-len has a different meaning. Alright?

Neng-yen-len has a much different meaning. And it's very subtle. Okay.

Most of you know what nirvana, how we define nirvana in Buddhism. If you could talk, I know three of you could tell me the definition. They're very good at it.

What is it? What is it? Nyen-dre, ma-lu-pa, pang-pa, so-so, tango.

Okay? Nyen-dre means obstacles to your happiness. Alright?

Obstacles to nirvana is called nyen-dre. Ma-lu-pa means all of them. Pang-pa means you eliminate them.

Okay? So-so, tango means you achieve the elimination of those seeds because you saw emptiness directly. And in Buddhism, we say it's not possible to reach happiness without seeing emptiness directly.

It's not possible. Okay? You will never be completely happy.

You will never be able to eliminate klesha, your negativities, if you can't see emptiness directly. It's not possible. Okay?

So-so, tango means nirvana is defined as the permanent elimination of your negative emotions because you saw emptiness directly. And that's nirvana. That's the definition of nirvana.

So, if I asked you, would a person who has reached nirvana, are they capable of having a negative emotion, you'd have to say. Or if you could talk, you'd probably say, no. Okay?

Alright? Because that's the definition of nirvana. When you get to the place where you're incapable of being angry, upset, jealous.

Okay? That's nirvana. You don't change physically.

You could be sitting here right now. You could have some kind of deep realization and you could reach nirvana as we're sitting here. Okay?

And that's nirvana. Now, there's a big difference between that and full enlightenment. Okay?

Samyak Sambuddha. Complete enlightenment. Okay?

There's a big difference. There's a big difference between a person who's just achieved nirvana and a person who has reached Buddhahood. What's the point of reaching Buddhahood?

You've already eliminated your negativities, but you don't have full capacity to help people. Okay? You can't necessarily read people's minds.

You can't necessarily look into their future. You can't necessarily split your body into multiple avatars and serve people, thousands or millions of people in different forms at will. Right?

Seemingly, very stula forms. Okay? Very concrete forms.

But really just mirror reflections on yourself. Okay? Like, a person who has eliminated their ability to get jealous hasn't reached the point where they could help billions of beings by sending out extra bodies at will.

Okay? Or better than at will, spontaneously, according to the needs of all people. Okay?

So something separates a person who has reached nirvana from a person who has reached full Buddhahood. Okay? Sometimes if they say, The difference between a person who has reached nirvana and a Buddhist, they just, they don't know all things yet.

They have four kinds of not knowing, still. They can't see the end of time. They can't see people's futures.

They can't see other planets. They are limited in what they know. But, in the highest schools, the thing that separates, in our heart, a nirvana, a nirvana-er, from total enlightenment is me-ngan-lin.

Okay? It's those nasty little me-ngan-lins. Okay?

So, it's some kind of very subtle seed for negativity. Okay? Let's call it, now, now let's give it a new name.

It's not month-bu-bu. And it's not even the seed of your mental friction, right? And it's not your next birth.

Let's, let's call it in the highest school the very, very, very subtle imprints on your mind that prevent you from getting full enlightenment. There is some, some texts say we don't even want to call it a seed. We want to call it a shadow of a seed.

We want to call it the footprint of a seed. Okay? Some texts call it the footprint of a seed.

Okay? So there's a very subtle seeds in the mind that make the difference between a person who's achieved nirvana and a person who's reached full enlightenment. Some schools say that a person who gets to nirvana, by the way, to get to nirvana you must, it must be the case that you no longer see things as coming from anybody but you.

Okay? To reach nirvana you must have seen directly that there doesn't exist anything which is not coming from you. How would that help you reach nirvana?

Okay? Where does all this philosophy get into dealing with your boss at your office or dealing with your partner in a 14x14 cabin for 1,000 days? Okay?

Like, let's try to get practical here. Okay? So, you know, what is it about seeing emptiness that allows an arhat, a person who's reached nirvana, to not get angry anymore?

Okay? So you're, the classical example is your partner's irritating you. Okay?

Like, the one I can think of is that, what is that? My mom made a big deal about, okay, we were four brothers and no girls. Okay?

So my mom made a big deal about lifting up the toilet seat. Okay? Because otherwise, you know, targeting problems.

And then, she would have to sit on the toilet seat afterwards. So, there was a big strict rule in my house that you had to, you know, if you weren't going to sit down, you had to lift up the toilet seat. I think a lot of ladies, like if they grew up in a house with no men, they would have the opposite rule.

You know, like you've got to put the toilet seat down. Okay? So then, you get into this thing in deep retreat.

In addition to blockages for shamatha, you have toilet seat arguments. Okay? Both levels.

And then you get irritated, you know, like you asked your, your, your boy partner, you asked him a thousand times, you said, look, you know, when girls go potty, they have to sit down. And that means that when they walk into the bathroom, it's better if the toilet seat is already down. You know?

And also, bugs don't drown in the toilet and everything. Of course, you guys don't have water, but they love that, anyway. So, so then your, your wife gets like irritable at you and they start yelling at you and they remind you for the fifth time that you should put the toilet seat down.

And there comes to be a problem between you, right? And then you start to feel bad about that. And then you start, at a certain point, you feel anger at having to be reminded all the time, right?

Because maybe you never agreed in the first place that it was necessary to put it down, because you might be the next one to come in the bathroom. So, if you've been studying emptiness, if you've been studying karmic scenes, then you, you understand that if someone is irritable to you, if someone attacks you, if someone hurts you, if someone speaks harsh to you, if someone does anything to upset you, that they are coming from your own mind, right? That you, you, you were demanding in a silly way last month, you made some unreasonable selfish demand of somebody, and then this month that seat opens up and you get to see your partner telling you either to put the toilet seat up or down, okay?

It doesn't matter. If you've studied karma and you've studied emptiness, then you understand, like the people in the three-year retreat, they never have any of these problems, because they, they, they did like 14 years of courses or seven years of courses, and they understand that whatever behavior the wife exhibits or the husband exhibits is coming from them, right? They understand that.

If you knew it was coming from you, and the only way you could stop it was to stop doing it yourself, you couldn't be angry, okay? You couldn't be angry at the other person. It's not possible.

The better your understanding of emptiness, the more, the more unlikely it is that you could be angry. Therefore, in Buddhism, they say to end your negative emotions forever requires that you understand emptiness, because otherwise you wouldn't understand that your husband or wife was coming for what you did last week, right? There's not some deeper thing than that, okay?

That's it. The fact that they aren't coming from anywhere else is called emptiness. You could have called it they don't come from anywhere else, but it's too many syllables.

Alright? It's just emptiness means that. They're not coming from anything else.

They're especially not coming from themselves. It's not their decision to be irritable. You are forcing them to be irritable, okay?

Because you were irritable last week, okay? If you understood that, you would never be irritable, right? No.

It takes practice. Okay. So what more do you need to get enlightened?

You see, what is there between never getting angry again and being able to split your body into a billion? Youth. What's standing between you and that?

And in Madhyamika, in the highest of the Buddhist schools, they say me, me, me. Very subtle footprints of negativities. You used to have, alright?

And they say that... There's a very funny example of negativity. They say lower arhats, okay?

Lower school people who reach nirvana... You see, to reach nirvana, you have to destroy your misinterpretation of the world. You can't reach nirvana and still think your husband is coming from him.

It's not possible. To reach nirvana, you must destroy. Requires.

To stop your jealousy requires destroying thinking that things could come from other people. Get it? But then they distinguish between how it looks to you and how you take it.

Okay? They distinguish between how the world looks to you and how you take it to be. Okay?

They distinguish between that. We talked about it recently, somewhere. Kim Tung Lama.

He had a nice piece on it. He said there are four possibilities. You take this thing as a wrist...

What do you call it? Wristwatch? It looks to be a wristwatch and you take it as a wristwatch.

Version number one. You take it to be a wristwatch which... Let me get this straight.

It looks to be like a wristwatch that came from its own side and you take it to be a wristwatch which came from its own side. That's possibility number two. So now we got two so far.

It looks like a wristwatch and I take it as a wristwatch. Possibility number one. Possibility number two.

It looks as if it came from its own side. It looks as if it came from a Chinese factory in Guangzhou. Right?

And I take it that way. That's possibility number two. It looks to not...

Sorry. Let's put it that way. Okay?

It looks as if it were made in a factory and I take it to be that way. Number three. It looks as though it was not coming from me and I take it to be that way.

Sorry. I'm sorry. Let me think about that.

Yeah, let's say that. It looks as if it's not coming from me and I take it to be that way. And then the last one would be it looks as though it is coming from me and I take it to be that way.

Okay? Got it? So, question B.

After you reach Nirvana, after you got rid of your anger at your partner because you finally understood that every behavior trait your partner displays is coming from your seeds in your own mind. Okay? Got it?

After you got there, would your partner never seem to be coming from their own side anymore? I'm not talking about how you take it. I'm talking about how it looks.

You see what I mean? Would it continue to look as if they were coming from their own side and you were just so smart you always caught it in time and realized it was coming from you? Or is there a place you can get to where they don't even look like they're coming from their own side.

You see? You can reach Nirvana in a world that looks to be coming from its own side if you've had good retreats and training. Okay?

Because you can remember when the poop hits the fan that this is coming from me. It looks like your partner is running on their own willpower. You know?

My boyfriend refuses to put the seat down because he's just mean. He doesn't like me. Okay?

It looks like that. But if you're well trained and you've done good retreats and your mind is in a good place then you understand that it's coming from me. Okay?

He didn't put the toilet seat down. It looks like it's his choice but it's not his choice. He doesn't have a choice because it's coming from me.

Got it? So then the highest school of Buddhism says between the place that you reach Nirvana and stopped getting angry at your boyfriend's behavior about the toilet seat because you understood he was coming from you even though he looked like he was coming from you. Got it?

Between there and enlightenment you lose the seat which caused the world to appear as if it's coming from its own side. Got it? And those are mengen len.

Ah! Okay? Got it?

We just tied it together, the whole thing. That's mengen len. The settled seats which caused the world to look as if it's coming from itself are destroyed before you reach full enlightenment.

Meaning you could meet your husband he could say he could not put the toilet seat down and it wouldn't even ever occur to you that it was his choice. Got it? It would never appear to be coming from him.

It would always appear to be coming from you. Okay? You can reach Nirvana with the world still appearing to come from its own side.

But you can't reach enlightenment and still have the world appearing to come from its own side. And the difference is that you've removed mengen len, bhaktas, settled seats foreseeing the world the wrong way. Okay?

Got it? Settled seats foreseeing the world the wrong way. What's that got to do with Samatha?

What's that got to do with the passage from level nine to Samatha? Right? We said there was something to do with that.

We said there was a prana, there was an inner wind called mengen len. Okay? That has the same name, got it?

The wind, the inner wind has the same name. Now I'll talk a little bit about this wind, okay? It's supposed to be, in Tibetan, it's called mengen len ki lu.

The lu means prana in Tibetan. The bad taking, taking bad place wind. Okay?

Dushtula vai, vai, prana. It is said to circulate between the skin and the flesh. Okay?

That's just what it says. A lot of this presentation, you can find it in in dozens of Tibetan scriptures. Especially somebody like Jatakapa.

Okay? Like he has a very, very detailed presentation. Not in his Lamrim Chenmo, but in his medium Lamrim.

Okay? He has a beautiful presentation of, which I don't think has ever been translated. He has a beautiful presentation of this vai, of this prana.

Okay? But a lot of what he is saying, and a lot of the nine, and by the way, the nine levels come from the 8,000 verses. The Prajnaparamita.

They are that old. Okay? The Buddha taught the nine levels.

And then there is a famous commentary on the nine levels by somebody named, what's his name? I think it's Kalyanamitra. It's some Mitra.

I'll check. Anyway, he wrote a commentary on the 8,000 verses and that's one of the best places to learn about the nine levels of meditation. And that was picked up on later by this great writer named Bala Viveka.

He wrote a... Sorry. Before that there was a sangha.

Okay? A sangha wrote a text in the 4th century called the Levels of Practice. Okay?

It's called Nyen Sa. It's called Sa De Ngan. Sa De Ngan means five books on the levels of practice.

They take up 5,000 pages of the Tengra.

[Говорящий 2]
Okay?

[Говорящий 1]
His five books on the levels of meditative practice take up 5,000 pages of the Tengra. Okay? It's unbelievable.

He was getting coached by Maitreya, the next Buddha. So he was taking notes from Maitreya. So a lot of the presentation on the winds, the inner winds of gustula.

Okay? These... Now I'd like to call them something like winds from sudden negativity.

Okay? A lot of that presentation comes from a sangha quoting his teacher, the next Buddha. Okay?

Maitreya. Then later, like... What do you call...

500 years later it was repeated by Kamalashila in his Gomra Bhavana Krama. Okay? And then the Tibetans picked it up from from there.

And it came to be part of our language. Okay? But really the place to go if you really want to see cool things about all this is a sangha.

Okay? Master's sangha. And to read his levels.

Okay? To read his text. He has 18 versions of breath meditation.

Okay? 18 different versions of breath meditation. And they're all like sexy.

Like... You pick a problem and he's got a breath meditation for you. And...

You know, we usually rag on breath meditation because we say it's not a very important object. It's not like meditating on your teacher's face or something like that. Okay?

But in a sangha's presentation of breath meditation you start with a breath meditation and then you go somewhere cool. Like in one of them you watch your breath for a while and then you start asking where is this breath coming from? What are the energies in my body from which this breath is being produced?

And then you get into the seeds which created the organs of the body to produce that breath. And then you get into the karmas you must have done to produce the organs that allow you to breathe. You see what I mean?

And then you get into the very subtle karmic seeds of your body. And he calls that a dependent origination breath meditation. See what I mean?

And he's got like 18 of them. And they're so... They're so sexy.

Okay? Anyway... That's where you find a description of the wind.

There's a subtle negative wind flowing through your body which is keeping you from reaching shamatha. Okay? Somebody gave me a special watch.

It's three hours ahead? Is it? Okay, good.

All right. I don't want to mess up and talk an hour too much. So there...

That's called nengen rengen nun. Okay? It is said to travel between the skin and the flesh of the body.

Okay? As you... Then a weird thing happens.

Okay? At level nine of meditation, at the end of the shamatha monkey elephant chart, because your meditation is so pure and so focused, you drop into a kind of mental bliss. Okay?

You drop into a kind of mental bliss. It's pre-shinja. Okay?

It's pre... It's not quite shinja. What do you want to call shinja?

You can call it blissful fluency or something. It has both meanings. Okay?

Blissful fluency. Shinja. Shinja japa.

Because you've reached level nine, you go into a state of bliss. And then, what it says, very beautiful, a very beautiful description in the Prajnaparamita, if you have the intention to help other people, and if you have been serving your lama, right? And if you have been serving all the people around you, then that will trigger shinja.

Okay? That will trigger some kind of high meditative bliss. Alright?

You reach level nine, you already feel blissful, and then the power of latent seeds from serving your teacher, serving other living beings, the motivation to be of service to the entire universe, those seeds of compassion and devotion kick in and throw you into shinja. Okay? They throw you into some kind of extraordinary physical bliss.

Alright? Some kind of extraordinary physical bliss. That starts a new kind of prana moving to your body, which is called le rung.

Okay? Le su rung wei lu. Le su rung wei lu.

Okay? Le rung wei lu. Okay?

So, rituals are laughing because they do le rung. Le rung in tantra means a deep meditation, a deep mantra meditation. So, retreat.

Like, it could be a month long, it could be three years long, or it could be twelve years long. But you do a mantra retreat that's called le rung. Le rung means karmanya.

It makes you fit for duty. It makes you fit for work. It makes you supple for spiritual work.

You see? That's called le rung. So sometimes tantric retreats are called le rung.

In this case, what we're talking about are the very subtle pranas which pass through your body as you start to reach samatha. And those new pranas which pass through the body are called le rung gi rung. Okay?

The le rung pranas. Okay? And they start to replace the ne nge nge rung.

Okay? The... It's cool.

The le rung pranas start to replace the ne nge nge rung ki pranas. The... And that causes a physical sensation of bliss.

Okay? You get a physical sensation of bliss. The body...

shin pan tar yang. The body feels like a feather in the wind. Right?

You feel... Your body feels almost like it could float. You see?

Like... I don't know. I was saying...

Where were we? Paris. No, Montreal.

Sorry, I'm not supposed to talk about these things. We were in a certain city. And we were having a brunch on a special day.

And there was like a cottonwood tree next to us. And the wind blew. And all these little parishes lifted off the tree thousands of little seed things on fuzzy little things.

You feel like that. And they covered the whole Bala and Mandala. It was a mess.

Anyway, it was kind of cool. So you feel like that. You feel very light and like that.

That's ruki shin jan. That's physical meditative bliss. Alright?

Physical meditative bliss. Why are we talking about physical meditative bliss? It's what separates you from the platform necessary to see emptiness directly.

It is the removal of the pranas connected to subtle negative seeds. And the replacement of those pranas by a new kind of seed of joy. Physical and mental joy.

Okay? And then that's what takes you over the last hurdle into samatha. Okay?

Then, just to detail the process, you get physical sensations of high pleasure brought on by the new pranas passing to the body, replacing the old pranas. Then they have this whole story. They keep repeating this whole story.

You get physical sensation of bliss. And then you go overboard. They say, then you go overboard.

Then you go like, wow, I did it. This is so cool. And that kicks you out of it for a while.

Okay? So you kind of like degenerate for a couple minutes, I don't know, hour, couple weeks, years, I don't know. But you get too caught up in the bliss.

You know, look, I'm a little perished here. You know? And then that disturbs your, that actually disturbs your concentration.

And you get kind of kicked out. Then you come back and you say, look, you recognize, you have sheshing, right? You have a watchful mind.

And the watchful mind says, hey, you're going a little too far. Probably that's why there's a bodhisattva vow against getting attached to the pleasant feelings of nature. So part of your mind, which did your book last week, is telling you, you know, chill out a little bit.

Let's get down, you know, it's called consolidation. Your mind says to yourself, let's consolidate this feeling of pleasure. Okay?

Let's consolidate the physical sensation of bliss. And let's have a nice, stable, reasonable bliss. Okay?

And that's called yi gi shin jang, mental shin jang. Okay? So there's two kinds of shin jang.

There's two kinds of, what do you call it? Meditative bliss. All right?

Physical and mental. All right? Then there's a beautiful writer.

If we have time, I'll read some of his description. His name is Changyang Shepa. He wrote some kapha paintings.

He wrote the text for those. He's a beautiful scholar from, I think, Gomong College of Gebu Monastery. He wrote like a 20-page essay on this shin jang, and on shamatha.

And I had it. It's very beautiful. And I was trying to decide what part to cut out, or what part to give you, and I don't know what part to give you.

He quotes other authors, and this is very beautiful, okay? The word shin jang. He says, see, if you know Tibetan, shin jang means very, shintu means very.

jangpa means either purified or good at it, fluent. So we tend to think of shin jang as meaning mental or physical fluency. Being very good at meditation, okay?

But he says an interesting thing. He says, shin jang got its name because you are ne ngen len shin jang. Okay?

You are ne ngen len shin jang. You have very much cleaned out those negative winds. Okay?

The very subtle negative energies in your body. And that's why you feel blissful. Got it?

It's very interesting. You see? You are attacking the roots of your suffering.

Okay? You are choosing to see your husband as coming from you, right? You are attacking the root of your suffering.

So actually you are attacking the deep imprints in your mind which make you believe that your husband's decision was coming from him. The decision to what? Not lower the toilet seat, okay?

It sounds dumb, right? But hey, that's the kind of stuff that's keeping you out of nirvana. Okay?

I mean, practically speaking, that's it. If you can just get over one or two of them, you got it made. If you can get the principle with the toilet seat, you can make it with everything.

You see what I mean? So, ne ngen len, there were subtle negative seeds in your being which even exist in the being of an arhat, a nirvana, a person who already reached nirvana on a lower track, okay? If you're on a lower track and you reach nirvana, which means you must have seen emptiness directly, okay?

And you don't, you no longer have any negative emotions. Nor do you have the seeds for those negative emotions. Got it?

But you still have ne ngen len. They still have ne ngen len. Then there's this weird thing in scripture.

I have to repeat it because we have time. It says, for example, the naughty behavior exhibited by lower arhats, okay? And they were like, what kind of naughty behavior does people who reach nirvana exhibit?

And they have two examples, which are very important. One is called tu tar chogwa, chogwa, okay? Tu tar chogwa.

Tu means monkey. Chogwa means to jump. And it was considered un, what do you call it?

Unseemly for a monk in ancient times to skip. You see? So, like there's monk spells against not, against skipping to the sponsor house.

So it was considered unseemly. It's not evil, okay, per se. And it's not, it's not wrong or harmful to anybody, you see?

But it's a little bit unmindful. You see? I don't know how would you compare it to now.

Like having your shirt tail out when you go to meet Obama. Sorry, whoever's president right now. So, you know, let's say you have your shirt tail out when you go to meet him.

It's not like shooting a gun at him or anything. It's not like a bad deed. But it's a, what do you call it?

Thoughtless. It shows a lack of awareness. So, even if you stopped your negative emotions forever, you could still have nene lens in your mind state, which would cause you to skip like a monkey.

Or to call somebody a mangmo. Then I had to look it up. Mangmo means, it was an insult in the old days that it meant, I'm sorry, it meant a female servant, okay, of a family.

Okay? And that was considered a high insult to call somebody a mangmo. So, thoughtless, can you call it a slip of speech?

Let's say a slip of speech, okay? So a person who has forever eliminated their klesha, their mental afflictions in their mind, right, their negative emotions, they can still possess subtle negative seeds, which would cause them to make slips of speech that might hurt someone's feelings. Or to show some kind of behavior which is slightly unseemly for who they are.

Got it? So they're not, they're beyond kleshas. And they don't have the seeds for kleshas.

But they have neng, neng, neng. They have bhaktyaks. They have deep-rooted ancient imprints for slightly inappropriate behavior.

Okay? And those all tie back to ignorance. Okay?

In the end, in all the schools, the source of the neng, neng, neng, the source of the very subtle negativities that prevent you from reaching samatha are all based on misunderstanding your world. Okay? So the pranas, we're talking prana, why are we talking pranas in Diamond Mountain?

Why do I say this talk in Diamond Mountain? A lot of people here are doing yoga. And in our tradition, doing yoga is aimed at the manipulation of your prana flows.

We talked about it this morning. A lot of the reason to do yoga is a conscious effort to redirect the flow of prana through your body so that you come to purer states of mind. You see?

And so we were talking about yoga asanas or series of asanas that were originally designed hundreds of years ago to direct the flow of prana in such a way that you wouldn't have negative emotions. Okay? So the idea of doing yoga every day for us is that you improve your goodness, your level of kindness, you see?

You redirect prana in the body so that you can reach a higher level of kindness or goodness, you see? Happiness. So in between level nine and reaching samatha, you have to address subtle seeds in your body and subtle seeds in your mind and subtle seeds in your body that prevent you from reaching samatha, without which you cannot see emptiness, okay?

Directly, okay? So now you have some kind of feeling for what nengen len would be. And it means flows of prana that would prevent you from understanding the guy who didn't put the toilet seat down, okay?

It's no more glorious than that, right? Because that's where you get in trouble. That's where you have your mental afflictions.

It's not that you're some evil person, okay? I'll tell you something cool. mukye rengye mongye kunde nambar gyel What's that?

mukye rengye mongye kunde nambar gyel The third Panchen Lama said he's talking about removing the nengengi. That mantra, that praise, that line of the eight praises, the eight lines of praise, mukye rengye mongye, to remove the causes of darkness, to remove the causes of inappropriate behavior, to remove the causes of misunderstanding. The third Panchen Lama says he's talking about removing the nengengi.

He's talking about removing that prana. That line of the eight praises is all about the elimination of that kind of subtle negativity, okay? Subtle negativity for prana.

So, that's all. You just had the one and only bestowal lecture ever given in America probably. I think though what we have to turn our minds to is so then how would you remove those seeds, you know?

What would be the power that would take you over the top, you see? Like, let's say my meditation is pretty good. I'm in a three-year retreat.

I'm getting my 100% organic coconut water from Guatemala picked on Thursdays. And things are good. I have all my conditions are there, you know?

My cabin has propane this year. And, you know, water. And, you know, the kissing bugs aren't kissing me right now.

And everything is good. Like, I'm... Things are good, you know?

Don't get used to it. I mean, all things end, you know? But anyway, maybe they'll be willing to drive and buy groceries for you afterwards, but I don't know about it.

But I have everything, you know? Everything is good. I have everything.

And then there's some kind of wall, you see? There's some kind of block. I can't get past it, you know?

I used to think it was my mom's house, but now I've been here for six months, you know? And I used to think it was that I didn't have enough money and I was stressed about my credit cards. Now there's no credit cards.

And I have a place. Everything's fairly quiet, I think. Reasonably quiet.

And I have nice food. I have nice conditions. I have everything.

I have 36 volumes of translation. You know, I have everything. I have a lama to go to when I have a problem.

I can go bug her. And I have everything, okay? But I have some kind of...

There seems to be some kind of force field between me and Samatha, you know? I've been here six months and I can't get what's... Why is it I can't break through?

What do I need to have to break through, you see? What is it? I used to think it was that I didn't have time or I wasn't eating right or I wasn't doing enough yoga or, you know, I had to worry about my bills.

But now all that is gone, you know? And I still have this invisible force field separating me from Samatha, you know? Like, what can I do to get to Samatha, okay?

And then they give a list, okay? They give a short list, right? One is undertaking actions of benefit to other people.

And, you know, we tend to concentrate on the global ones and the universal ones. But they're pretty clear when they discuss breaking through that invisible wall that it has to be hands-on, you know? You've got to be doing some down-and-dirty help of other people.

It's good to wish the world well, and that's important. And it is a good karmic seed. But beyond that, you've got to get down-and-dirty and help people, okay?

Do some just basic help of people. There seems to be a fail-safe against the disconnect between the universal wish to help all beings and the willingness to help your neighbor fix their toilet, you know? Apparently, you've got to do both, you know?

Like, apparently, if you have such good intentions, but you don't actually walk over and help them fix the compost barrel rotating toilet that was set up to overflow to the front and not the back, okay? I know all these things now. I've been in this hum.

Okay? So, the unwillingness or thinking, you don't have to go over and help them fix their toilet. That would prevent you from reaching Shambhala, okay?

So, practical, hands-on, taking the opportunity to help your fellow human or other creature who needs help when they need it, okay? Apparently, to make the breakthrough to Xinjiang, you need those seeds of helping people, okay? That's one.

Secondly, you would need some kind of vision, some kind of more universal vision, you see, of being able to help other people. You would want to... You would understand that the ability to fix one compost rotating...

It looks like a Volkswagen, actually. They look a lot like a Volkswagen. I thought it was a Volkswagen.

They had it under a cloth in my cabin. And I thought somebody left a Volkswagen in there, but then they told me it was a toilet. By the way, I just saw my cabin for the first time last night.

The retreatants had been working very hard on it. Other people worked very hard on it before. I never went up there once after we picked a site.

I didn't have time to go up there. But I wanted to thank everybody who worked on it. And it's extremely beautiful.

And it's a beautiful yogi's... It makes me want to meditate or something. But I got over it.

But it's just exquisite. It's just really, really beautiful. And it's one of the...

I was talking to this guy whose name I can't mention. But I think it's one of the most beautiful places on earth. I've been to a lot of places.

And that valley and especially that... It's one of the most beautiful places left on the earth. That's not really polluted or overpopulated.

So I wanted to thank you for the cabin. I know Marco and Melissa worked on it. But I'm very grateful for that.

And it's exquisite. It's beautiful. It's really beautiful.

So anyway, then a more universal wish to help other people. Okay? Some kind of vision, all right?

A universal wish to help other people. I'll give you an example, all right? And it gets back into the dichotomy.

You see, the nge nge len, the subtle negative energies within us make us see things in a dualistic way. Okay? They cause us to see things in a dualistic way.

And I would like to talk about the most basic form of that. So, I mean, let's say you wanted donuts. I gave this example before, but I'm going to give it again, because it's dear to my heart.

Okay? Let's say you have a love affair with maple-covered donuts. All right?

The only reason you would go to some countries north of the United States would be to get one. And then you... I like the example that you are...

you are walking into a Dunkin' Donuts, by Tim Hortons or wherever it may be, and you like maple-covered donuts, and you look across the room, and you see a case, a glass case, and inside the glass case, and it's like nine o'clock at night, they're not going to be cooking any more donuts, right? And you see in the glass case one maple-covered donut. And then there's a feeling of eureka, you know?

Like, I found what I've been looking for, you know? And you stand, you pause at the door with this feeling of accomplishment. Then...

you start to walk in. You start to walk towards the donut, right? And you got your hand in your pocket, you're starting to pull the money out.

And then you hear behind you an elderly couple enters the door, right? And the elderly lady says to the elderly man, I hope they have maple-covered. It's my favorite.

And then... Like... Basically, you're faced with a decision, you know?

Either I speed up and get to the donut well... I mean, you're already going to beat them, but you see, you don't want to buy it in front of them. You see, you don't want them there when you buy it.

So you got to speed up so that the transaction is completed and the thing is in the bag and covered before her bleary eyes can can see what kind of donut it's there. You see what I mean? Like, you want to speed up and get to the donut fast, make sure to get it into the bag before she gets to the counter, right?

That's one impulse that you have. You have that impulse because you like maple-covered donuts, okay? The source of the impulse to speed up is that you want and you like maple-covered donuts, okay?

Then there's a... We'll talk about it tomorrow, but there's a counter voice in your mind, okay? If you've been to any kind of Buddhist teaching or if you understand anything about emptiness, then you pause when you hear the old lady, okay?

And you say... And you reflect on where a donut comes from, alright? If you could get a donut, it's not because you have the money for the simple reason that you can have the money and get to the store and there'll be out of donuts.

Or you can go to your friend's house and they have a box of them and you don't have to pay. So money is not the cause of maple-covered donuts. Neither is flour, sugar, water, milk.

Neither is the bakery. Neither the effort of the baker. None of them is the source.

None of them is the true source of a maple-covered donut. The only true source of a maple-covered donut is that you share some sweet round thing with somebody else, okay? It could be a cookie, okay?

You can still get a maple-covered donut. There's some flexibility in the laws of karma, okay? So...

So that person, now, a person with knowledge, right? A person with knowledge of emptiness and dependent origination, they are approaching the counter and they hear the old lady. And because they want the donut and because they like maple-covered donuts, they...

you can't say. I'll say it for you. They turn around.

They rush ahead. They buy the donut. And then they turn around with a flourish and they offer it to her.

Got it? And they say, here's your donut, okay? Out of love for her.

If there's enough love for her, then because they like the donut, because that's going to produce donuts in their mouth, okay? That's the way the world works. It's like gravity, okay?

Whatever you want, you have to provide to others first. That's all. That's the rule, okay?

That gets into some interesting implications. For a donut to pass into the orifice in the front of my face, I mean the mouth, a donut must necessarily pass into the corresponding orifice in someone else's face. Got it?

Like, for a donut to pass my lips, I must see that a donut passes the lips of another person. A donut cannot enter my mouth unless a donut also enters the mouth of another person through my effort. You see what I mean?

In that case, get this, okay? This is important. This is really important.

In that case, then functionally, there's no difference between their mouth and my mouth. Okay? It's a misperception.

It's a falsity to believe that their mouth is not my mouth. Just logically. Because I cannot have a donut pass through this mouth if a donut doesn't pass through that mouth through the efforts of my hands.

Got it? So the idea that their mouth is separate from my mouth is false, okay? It's not true.

Functionally, I cannot get something entering my mouth unless I put something in your mouth. So functionally, on a functional level, not on a visual level, okay? On a functional level, your mouth is my mouth.

Okay? And it always has been that way. Then that draws into question the very concept of you and me.

Okay? That draws into question the concept of you and me. I cannot have any kind of pleasant thing happen to me unless I arrange that it happens to you.

You see? So the search for happiness requires another mouth. You see?

Then what's the difference between you and me? You see? Then functionally, it's a mistake which is reflected in the languages of the entire world.

You see? Every language in this planet has a word for you and it has a different word for me. In every language that I know, there are different words.

You can say your mouth or my mouth, right? I don't think there's any language that I know about that covers both mouths, both visually different mouths, and say us mouth or something like that. There's no word.

There's no pronoun for you, me, mouth. You're my mouth. You see?

There's no such word. That means that in all the places in the world where any language is spoken, they are making a fundamental mistake and they can never be happy. You see?

In any place in the world where a language is spoken, where the pronouns you and me exist, then in that place, real happiness cannot be. It's not possible. Because the way you speak reflects how you think.

And if you think I'm separate from you, then you can't be happy. It's not possible. You see?

If you think my mouths are separate just because they look like they're in different places, then you will never be happy. It's not possible. The nature of neng, ngen, len, the deepest imprints of the mind which prevent us from reaching samatha, which prevent us from reaching enlightenment, are planted by thinking that someone else's mouth is not your mouth.

The deepest obstacles to happiness and enlightenment and meditation are all founded on the neng, ngen, len seed, that negative seed, dushtrila seed. It's founded on thinking your mouth is different from my mouth. It's always that way.

The deepest version of the seed is that. Okay? So we gotta work on that.

If you have some kind of, what do you call it? If you feel like there's something holding you back from reaching samatha, I don't think you need to change the time that you meditate, or I don't think you need to change the food, or I don't think you need a different kind of body in your meditation cushion, or stuff like that. You gotta grapple.

If you're being held back from samatha, the only thing that can hold you back is that you don't have enough love for other people. And the only reason that you could sustain that is if you thought their mouth was different from your mouth. Okay?

You can't sustain that lack of love if you understand that your mouth is their mouth. So really understanding emptiness is the real way to become a compassionate person. And then that's the only way to reach samatha.

And there's probably some reason why you need samatha. There's probably some reason why you have to understand that to reach samatha. And then you need samatha to see emptiness.

Got it? They're all tied together. You can't have compassion, real compassion, without understanding that my mouth is your mouth.

You can't understand that if you don't understand the donut thing. Right? And they will both hold you back from getting samatha and seeing emptiness directly.

Got it? If you don't understand that. So they're all tied together.

So I think you gotta... I think the only thing that could block you if you had everything else you needed would be a real motivation to be doing it for other people. So everybody's motivation is always mixed.

Nobody has absolute perfect motivation. I mean, who's not a Buddha. So our motivations are always mixed up with wanting people to like us or wanting to be in charge of something or wanting to get emotions that we want or feelings that we want.

And then that's mixed up with the desire to help somebody else. Desire to help other people. So I think in a retreat, in a long retreat, you'd have to struggle with...

If there's something holding you away from samatha, it must be to do with motivation. I don't think it's like food or the seed or the temperature or the instructions. It must have something to do with just watching your own mind and wanting to do things for other people.

Doing what you're doing. I don't think you need to change what you're doing. I think everything you're doing is great on both sides of the tent.

It's just a motivation thing. So I'm going to end with a little tiny mini meditation. And we'll look into motivation.

So here we go. Last two minutes. Start by watching your breath.

Now very, very consciously step back from your mind and become the observer of your mind. We'll talk about it tomorrow. You can call it sheshin.

You can call it mahamudra. You can call it dharmanirsha. Step back from your mind and listen.

And just watch it. Listen to your mind, to your own mind. If you don't learn anything else these four days, what I want you to take home is the ability to step back from your mind and watch your mind.

Go back to how you feel. Watch your mind. Watch the shifting moods.

How the mood shifts from moment to moment. How do I feel? How do I feel?

What feelings are going through my mind? What's the general level of comfort and happiness of my mind right now? Then the last question.

Why did I come to here? Why did I come to Diamond Mountain? Why am I in retreat?

Or why did I visit Diamond Mountain? What did I hope would happen here? How much of my coming, how much of my being here is really intended to help other people?

And what other motivations are mixed in? What kind of personal needs are mixed in with that motivation? Watch your mind.

Examine your mind and your motivations and observe the mix and the variety. How much of the motivation was for to come here to serve someone else? The larger we can grow the motivation that what we're doing should help somebody else, the more the invisible force that prevents us from reaching Samatha will be removed.

And that's all. Then release the meditation. Dedicate today.

We spoke about very beautiful, high beautiful things among high beautiful people doing high beautiful practices. I mean, you're the superstars of spiritual medicine. You're doing the coolest thing that I were.

So, be, make a little prayer that other people might have this opportunity to have such a beautiful community of people who care about these things. Each one of you is drawn from about 10,000 people. Each one of you is is one out of 10,000 people who who wanted to learn these things and have this dream to save the world.

I think make a prayer that other people could join this kind of feeling of community of people who would like to serve us. Okay, see you tomorrow. Tonight, if you can, a few times during this evening and tomorrow, a few times, try just to close your eyes and back away from your mind and watch it, especially how you feel.

How happy am I right now? So, just that. It can be like a three-minute meditation.

Try to do it a few times while you're walking down the road or having dinner or whatever you're doing. Just briefly, a few times, try to separate a part of your mind. Step back and watch the mind and see how happy is the mind.

Just observe. You don't have to do anything. Just step back and learn to observe your own mind.

This is the essence of meditation. If you can't do it, you'll never be a great meditator. If you learn to do it, you save yourself a couple of years of work.

Okay? Just learn to step away from your mind and watch your mind as it goes. Okay?

Try it tonight, a few times. Try to develop that capacity. Do you like us to stay still?

Okay. Alright. And you guys are free.