Учения Великого ретрита, часть 1: Ветры медитации (2011, Боуи), занятие 4

[Говорящий 1]
So we'll start this time with a meditation, okay? And start by watching your breath. Just try to imagine pushing your mind up against your breath so that it's making contact with your breath.

And you continue to push your mind up against your breath as if you were pushing something up against something else. And try to keep pushing your mind up against your breath so that they never lose contact. Your mind is constantly touching the breath.

Bring your mind to your heart teacher, your personal teacher. It doesn't have to be a formal lama or monk or nun or formal teacher. Just bring to mind the person who is your heart teacher in your life.

Ask them to come and sit with you, be with you. And think of the quality that you most admire about them. It's probably the reason why you ask them to be your teacher.

There must have been something special about them. Usually it's something that we are not, something we would like to be. So, bow to your teacher and pay them respect by thinking of the quality that you love the most about them.

Then make an offering to your teacher, something kind you've done in the last day. For a retreat, this is often mental kindness, kind wishes. Then admit to your teacher the most negative thing you've done in the last day or two.

Then whisper into your teacher's ear the good news of the very best thing you've done in the last few days. Then tell your teacher about the most beautiful thing you saw someone else do or heard about someone else do or knew about someone else having done in the past. Express to them how much you appreciate seeing goodness in other people.

Try to imagine some improvement you'd like to make in yourself, something you'd like to become, maybe in the next few weeks or a month, maybe by the end of the next deep retreat period here. Try to imagine some change you would like to see wrought in you with your teacher's help and ask them to help. Very clearly try to picture what your face would be like, how would you move, how would you be different, and ask them for help, guidance to become that.

Then ask your teacher to stay in your life and guide you, directly or indirectly, visible or not, constant presence in your life, and guiding your hand and bringing you to be with them. Then slowly come back to your breath. Push the mind up against the breath.

Keep the mind up against the breath. Bring your mind to watch your mind. Bring your mind to your mind.

Step back from your mind and start watching your mind. There will be, if you're watching closely, there will be thoughts flashing through the mind, feelings, impressions. Start to watch the general sensation of your mind.

How does your mind feel? Are you happy? Do you feel happy right now?

So we're not listening to the thoughts or watching the thoughts. We're just trying to step back and watch the level of happiness in your mind, and how that shifts from moment to moment. Small changes in your mood from moment to moment.

Get in touch with your mood and not your thoughts so much. So really you're watching you have your mood. There's an observer, then there's a subject, and then there's the feeling.

And you're the observer, you're behind the mind, and you're watching yourself have a feeling. Then slowly release the meditation. Think for just a second about the happiness of all the people in the world.

Is this something achievable in our lifetime? Can it happen that everyone in the world is happy? Okay.

When you're ready, open your eyes. So I was in ... I can say it because it happened before the retreat started.

I was in China, in a town called Guangzhou. Guangzhou is sort of a strange town. It's ...

When Hong Kong first came back to China, and just before that, a lot of the manufacturing of things came back. Things were being made in Hong Kong, and then when Hong Kong and China were reunited, then my company and a lot of other companies started to manufacture things there, because Hong Kong has tremendous financial capacity. There's more gold in Hong Kong than in North America.

And it has tremendous administrative capacity. They're very, very capable people. And then you would order something.

It could be a ring, it could be a car, it could be a tent, and you just call somebody in Hong Kong. And then they would take a subway to Guangzhou, cross the border into Guangzhou, and start a factory, and start producing tents in like three weeks. And they're extraordinary people.

There's a town there called Shenzhen. I think it's 12 million people now. It didn't exist until China decided to start factories.

It was a piece of vacant land. And now it's one of the most beautiful cities in the world. And it's one of the largest in the world.

So Guangzhou is sort of ... Everything you ever use is made in Guangzhou. The chair you're sitting in, the carpet you're sitting on, the clothes you wear, a great percentage of the world's goods are made in Guangzhou.

So we decided we would go to Guangzhou and Shenzhen and give talks. And we didn't know anybody there. Someone came to us in Hong Kong, and they said, can we bring you to Guangzhou and Shenzhen?

Can we start a program? They were connected with Guangzhou Television. So we said, okay.

And we didn't know these people. And they were just doing it as a business. They just wanted to make some money.

But we figured it was a good way to get into Guangzhou. So they set up business talks. And it was pretty well attended.

Maybe a few hundred people, maybe 300 people came. And so we had a couple of days of talks, and then we had a retreat, like a three-day retreat for all the people. And these are business people.

These are people who own their own businesses. Everybody in Guangzhou owns a business. They say if you don't make a million dollars in the first year, you're a fool, that you get to Guangzhou.

So they're pretty tough people. And we were being observed by the government. So it was a very straight, non-religious business talk and business retreat.

Then I remember on the last day of the retreat, we spent the whole week talking about karmic seeds, like how to plant your future, how to make the things you want happen. In their case it was money, they wanted money. Or they wanted some kind of success in their business.

So we spent like five days on karmic seeds for money, which for me is very much of a strain to talk about money for five days, and I don't get to talk about anything higher than that. It's a little bit of a mental strain to try to keep focused on money for five days. So then on the last day, I remember we were sitting there, and they were getting it, and they were happy, they were really happy, and they were really wired.

We got them doing yoga, and they were doing meditation, and they got the whole thing about the seeds. And we were close to the final hours of the program, and then I thought, oh, let me see what happens. And I said, so now you know how to make money.

You would make great efforts to help others to make money. You see what I mean? You would make money by, for example, supporting some poor people to start their own business.

If you wanted to start a business, then you would help poor people to start their business, and then the karma of that is that you would be successful. And then I popped the question on them. It's like, I don't know, I guess if you're ever going to get married.

It was like that. It felt like that momentous moment. I popped this question on them.

I was kind of waiting, and I paused, and then I said, what do you think would happen in the whole world if everybody really believed that the only way to make any money at all was to help other people make money, or give money to other people? What would happen? And then, I don't know, there was this magical moment.

You know, like one of the special moments in your whole life. And the whole place got quiet. The whole auditorium got quiet.

And even Geshe Michael was quiet for a minute or two. And there was this intense emotion flowed through the room. And you could feel hundreds of people thinking the same thought.

The whole week had led up to this one moment of hundreds of hardcore communist business people having the same thought, or the same vision in their mind. I think all of us had the same vision. It was like 300 minds were forming the same picture in their mind at the same time.

And it was a very clear picture of half the people of the world handing money to the other half. You know, like half the people in the world actually physically handing something to the other half of the people in the world. And then everybody being happy, you see?

Because the people who got the money are happy. And the people who are giving it, you know, they know what's going to happen. And then there was this intense feeling of love in the room.

Like hundreds of hardcore business people, suddenly this wave of love went through the whole room. And then later I thought, oh, that was kind of like Bodhichitta. You see?

SEMS SKYES PA NI GZHAN DU CHER, YANG NA RDZOGS PA'I PHYAG TU DU All of us in the room, I think we had a moment of Bodhichitta, okay? Everybody would like to be a bodhisattva. Everybody would like to have Bodhichitta.

And I think there was this vision in the room among all these hardcore business people of a world where everybody was taking care of everybody else. Because they understood that that was not just the right thing to do, but it was the, what do you call, the functional thing to do. Like that's what would make everybody, make everyone have enough food, enough money, enough house, you know?

And enough love. It was a very strange moment in my life. And I still remember it very strongly.

And it made me think that if you really, really understood where things came from, if you had an intense understanding of where everything in your life is coming from, then it would automatically lead to Bodhichitta. You wouldn't have a choice. You wouldn't have to have some separate practices to try to get love or something like that, because naturally you would want to give things to everyone.

And then love would be manifested just through raw understanding, and not through trying to be a nice person or something like that. The more you understand where the world comes from, the more compassionate you become. That's all.

You can't help it. So we come back at the end now to nengen lempa, the subtle negative seeds, right? And that was the theme of the whole four days.

It was subtle negative seeds. Some people told me, they said, I kind of got in touch with them somehow, like I felt them. After you talked about them, I felt them.

And that's like, let's say you're angry with somebody for a while, and then you work on it, and you change the anger, and you get over the anger, and you stop the anger, right? But then if someone has just told you about nengen lempa, subtle imprints, right? Then I think you could feel, in your own mind, you could be aware of the tiny ...

In Tibetan they call it lak je. Lak means hand, and je means a print. So like if you have a clean window and your hand is oily, and you touch your hand on the window, and then you take your hand away, and then you see the imprint of your hand, or you walk across the sand and you see footprints of boots.

So in your own mind, it's one thing to have active emotions of anger or jealousy in your mind, but even if you overcome them, right? Even if you, on a conscious level or a manifest level, you overcome them, there's still all these slight ... What do you call them?

Energies in your mind. Bak chak is like an energy. It's an unmanifested energy, right?

And then if you ... If someone comes and talks to you about nengen lem, bak chak, sees in your mind old ... What do you call them?

Footprints of old emotions, okay? Footprints of old emotions that are not even there anymore. You got over them.

But the footprints are still there, okay? And we have them. We have lots of them.

And don't forget that in this school, these are even more subtle than karmic seeds. You see, they're not the seeds that are going to ... that are going to turn into the next person who yells at you.

These are the shadows of those seeds, okay? These are even more subtle, okay? They say that these seeds will not open.

They will not manifest. You have stopped those already. Those seeds are gone.

I'm talking about very high states, right? But then you still have this shadow across your mind, right? And that prevents you from getting fully enlightened, okay?

It's the shadow of seeds that are never going to open anyway, right? And then we said that when you get to very high stages of meditation, when you're about to reach samatha, then the pranas related to that kind of seeds are switched out in your body, okay? And then we described it as, they said, śāpakīpāra, which means between the flesh and the skin, the winds move, that are related to those shadows of seeds.

And then they don't actually open or manifest into different forms. They just cast a shadow on your life and on your joy, right? And when you switch them out for le rung gi lung, right?

By the way, those of you who know or care about Tibetan, sometimes in the text, le rung gi lung will be shortened to le lung, okay? And there's also a le lung, which means karma vayu, karma wind. So you've got to be careful, okay?

Sometimes you'll see le lung, and it means le rung gi lung, which is a good thing. And then sometimes you'll see le lung, and that means the foundation winds for karma, right? So completely opposite things.

And they're both abbreviated to le lung, so be careful. Then there was an interesting thing. When the switch-out occurs, there are texts which describe how the switch-out feels, physically.

Like, how do the early stages of shinjang, or meditative bliss, the bliss that results from good meditation, how does it feel as those pranas under the skin are switched out, right? And then they say there's a sensation almost like laya, or dissolution. What do you call it?

The absorption of all things. And then there's a famous passage in Master Sangha's work, Sravaka Bhumi, right? The stages of listeners, stages of disciples.

There's a very famous paragraph, which is also used by Je Tsongkhapa a lot, and it describes how it feels when those winds switch out. And he says, first it goes through your body, you feel like a passage of prana through your body, and then it starts to withdraw towards the top of the head, okay? Towards the upper part of the head.

And then, there's a lama, I think it's Kusalama, he wrote a book about that, and he talked about it, and he said, he said, when the body forms, as the body forms in the womb, they call sawa, or trangwa in Tibetan, murti, murti in the yoga tradition, meaning solidifies, as the body begins to solidify in the womb, right? As bones and flesh and skin start to solidify inside the womb, that that process takes place from the navel and then moves up. So the area of the navel forms first, the hardening of the flesh from the mommy's juice, and then you start to form, your physical body starts to form.

And then the top of the head forms last, all right? It's a good sign. Then, this is very, very beautiful, okay?

So then Master Sangha, Maitreya, they are saying, when the pranas begin to switch over in the body, a very strong sensation begins at the top of the head. And that is, they describe it as a heat which is not, it's always the same, they always say it's a heat in the upper part of the head which is not necessarily unpleasant. Like a really strong sensation of heat which is not really unpleasant, you know?

And then there's this discussion of what does that mean to feel not unpleasant, right? And then in Tibet they used to say, when they taught this subject, they would say, okay, you're a monk in Tibet, or a nun, I guess, and there's a big, what do you call it, a big bonding experience in the monastery is shaving each other's head, you know? So it's not like the hair just falls off, you've got to get some other monk to cut your hair.

And it's like going to the, what do you call that place? The hair salon. It's like a chance to relax.

And you go outside, because you don't want the stuff all over the floor, that's like extra work, right? So you go out in your front yard and you set up two chairs, and it's like scratching each other's back or something. So then the other monk will cut your hair for you, shave your head for you, because you can do it yourself, but you'll cut it all up.

And then you see these guys, they're out like, especially older monks, they like to go out in the sun and hang out and shave each other's head and gossip, you know, about the disciplinary of the monastery. And so, in Tibet it was kind of cold. You know, you go outside and there's a cold razor on your head.

You're at, I don't know, 12,000 feet? 20,000 feet? It's cold.

And some guy's dragging a razor blade across your head, and you feel cold. So then there's a custom that after you finish shaving the guy's head, you dump ice-cold water all over his head and shaved it, right? And then you go like this with your hands.

It's like the last touch of the barber, you know? And then you put your hand on his head, like that. And it feels like really cool.

It feels really, this very pleasant sense of warmth, okay? So, that's what they call chidme mewa. Your best friend monk's hot hand on your head on a cold day is how they describe the beginning of the dissolution at the top of the head.

When the winds switch out, when the pranas switch out, you get this really pleasant warmth in the top of your head. And Je Tsongkapa goes into it and he says, you know, if you think about it, it's like a precursor. It's like a, what do you call it?

You can't say, this is just drag. It's a, what's another? It's a precursor, nga te.

It's like a sign of what's to come, right? It's a sign of what's to come. Meaning, your body in the womb formed around the channels and the chakras, which themselves have formed around your neng ngen leng gyi bak chak, right?

Your seeds, for misunderstanding the world for countless billions of years, right? Inside of you, in your mother's womb, your inner body formed around those seeds, right? Those seeds produced your inner body.

And then that produced channels which were tangled and knotted because of your kleshas, right? Your negative emotions. Even in the womb, all right?

Even in the womb you misunderstand the sensations that you're having, right? Then around those knotted areas of channels formed chakras. From the chakras sprout out extra channels.

Around those channels form meat and bone and skin, right? The biggest bones of the body are around the chakras, the heart chakra. Around the heart chakra is all the ribs.

Around the svaristhana, the pelvic area, the biggest bone in the body, around the sarasvara, forms the skull, which is the biggest bone in some of us. So when you are reaching this high state of samatha and you're about to go into samatha and the direct perception emptiness, right? And you feel this sensation in your head.

It's a foretelling of your body changing back to the way it was before. Like you are undoing the process of the formation of bone and meat inside the womb, okay? You are reversing.

Through yogic effort, they say, nyonjor kyi chöpe, through yogic effort, through your effort in your sadhana and your yoga practice and your meditations and your long retreats, which by the way everybody here has to do, right? Like you have to be over here next time. And they promised me they were going to cook for you and go make the money and everything.

Okay, so it's just going to be a switch out in three, you know, okay? Except they'll have to do more people than you have to do. So because of your yogic effort, then the process is reversed, okay?

The process is reversed. The knots in the channels open. The extra channels which created the chakras withdraw into the central channel, sushumna.

And then the sushumna itself withdraws. And then the body's meat and flesh and bone withdraws and is replaced by light, okay? What do you call it?

Avatarable light, okay? That's a new adjective, okay? Avatarable light.

Meaning a body of light which can be split at will, okay? So that sensation at the top of the head as the winds switch out is said to be the first inkling of what's coming as the corporeality of the body is reversed, okay? And you begin to change the light.

So that's cool. Then the le rung gi lung is said to be related to the elements, the four elements, and they have a capacity of sustaining life. And then they will switch out, eventually they will switch out the gross elements with the subtle elements, and you will tattvas, right?

And you will become light. You have still physical elements, but they are subtle, and your body changes into light. So that's the goal of all the yoga that you're doing, and that's the goal of all these teachings, and that's the goal of the three-year retreat.

We want to reverse the process of the mortality of the body. Reversing that process, because it changes the movement of wind in the sushumna, the central channel, jongmay. It also changes your attitude, right?

It changes your emotions, and it changes your motivations, and then they become purely compassion, okay? So I'd like to do another meditation, all right? Then come back to your breath again.

Push your mind up against your breath and hold it there. The breath is sliding back and forth. The mind is held strong against it.

Come back to watching your mind. Step back from your mind. Try very hard in the coming weeks to learn this.

It's very simple. The first time you get it, then you're okay. You can do it anytime.

Once you get it, you can repeat it anytime. Step back from your mind. It's a simple trick, and it's one of the most profound things you can do in your life.

Step back from your mind. Watch how your mind feels. Watch you feeling.

Watch yourself feeling. Now make a conscious attempt to pretend that what you're seeing is a mind which is perfectly happy, completely happy. So even if you don't feel completely happy right now, as you watch your mind, try to imagine what it would be like to watch your mind being perfectly happy, perfectly at peace, perfectly quiet, perfectly quiet, perfectly loved and loving, perfectly contented.

Your mind is perfectly contented. Then picture your heart teacher sitting in front of you, and imagine sitting with them and being perfectly contented. Lama Christi talked about just looking into someone's eyes in a moment of silence.

Imagine trying to sit, sitting with your teacher, just maybe gazing at each other, and your mind is perfectly contented in that moment, willing to stay there because there's nothing else to do. As Lama Christi said yesterday, you have nothing else to do but to look into your teacher's face and their eyes and be contented, be in that moment with your teacher. So try to imagine just sitting quietly with your teacher and try to imagine spying on your mind and seeing that it's perfectly, completely contented.

Then slowly come out of the meditation. Relax. I wanted to do something different now.

I wanted to share with you some traditional texts about the conditions for successful retreat, or a successful meditation. Most of you had the teaching in the sections of the Lamrim on meditation. You've had all the teachings on the Tsog Druk.

These are the six conditions for a successful meditation. The beginning of the Hatha Yoga Padipika has something similar about what the place should look like and what kind of food you should be eating. The most important line, of course, is Mano Bilasita, which means, eat whatever makes you happy.

That seems to be the only line I remember. Okay. But there are two beautiful teachings on the various conditions that would help you have a successful retreat.

And I thought I would just go backwards and go back to them. And then we have one more meditation to do. This is from Jamyang Shepa, who's that famous writer from Debu Monastery.

sumpa tsog ni shi ne kye pa'i yenlakam gyu tsog chur chen du ma yod de So he phrases it as a debate, right? Consider the causes you need to reach Samatha. Du ma yod de?

There are many of them. Why? gom rim le shepa'i ne gom rim le shepa'i tun khen Okay?

So gom rim means bhavana karma, means Master Kamalakshila's famous work. In there are listed some of the things you're going to need, some of the conditions you're going to need to have a successful retreat. And I don't think it hurts to go over them, okay?

In a way, you guys are just beginning retreat. You just really got settled down. Six months of rattlesnake, getting to know your local rattlesnake, figuring out how to stop the overflow plug on your compost toilet, and other important things.

So, I think you're ready to start now. Okay, so he says, tun yul means hold your retreat in a place which is conducive, right? And, I don't know, I travel around the world constantly, and this is the only place where I can't get cell phone reception.

It's in your valley. So, it must be like, it must be like the place, you know? Okay, this is the...

Other people would call it God-forsaken corner of the world, but I would call it a... What do you call it? Tun yul means like a...

What do you call it? Conducive place, okay, for developing samatha. So, really you have one of the last really quiet places in the world, just population-wise.

It's a beautiful, beautiful valley. To see it at night, they were kind enough to put my cabin up on a high spot there, and it's stunning. It's just stunning.

It's one of the most beautiful views I've ever seen in the world, both to look over all the retreatants and to look over the outside world. It's a really good place to do both. So, you have a tun bay yul, you have a beautiful place.

It's conducive, it's quiet, mostly. You have that. You already have that.

You have to have a nice place, okay? You have to have a nice place to meditate. The choice of where to meditate is crucial.

So, if you get lazy and just take the first person's cabin who they offered to you, without checking it out, right? So, one year I did the cicada retreat. This was in Flagstaff, and there were 20,000 cicadas around my cabin, and it sounded just like being in Manhattan.

So, you have to check the place out, and you've got a tun bay yul, okay? Dö Chöng means, Dö Chöng means, don't think up new things to need, okay? Don't think up new things to need, okay?

Just for your information, the retreatants, I mean, on the outside, the whole support group, which is over here, every single person, by the way, he's going to get an e-mail from me asking for more support. Everybody on this side of the tent is, their, what do you call it? Their commitment, or the buzzword out here is, pamper the retreatants.

You know, like, anything they ask for, give it to them, you know? And you've got people driving long distances, and gas being $13 a gallon. Oh!

Just kidding. No, their commitment, especially the full-time stuff, is to pamper you and give you anything, give you your heart's desire, because they figure it's rough and it's traumatic to have come in here and you should get anything to eat that you want, and stuff, you know. And that's, on their side, they're doing what they should do.

That's their commitment, and they're doing a really incredible job. Like, no one ever took that good care of me, even my mom, I hate to say. Then over here you got...

Yeah, yeah. Then over here you got... Then your job now, now that you're settled in and the traumas are over, your job is du chung.

Du chung means cut down your needs, just so it doesn't become a distraction, right? So it's not that... They'll keep pampering you indefinitely, but your job is to reduce your needs to what's best for your meditation.

So that's du chung. Chok she means be satisfied with what you do get. So that's different, right?

Du chung means don't demand new stuff. And chok she means whatever generic organic food you get delivered, just be satisfied. Say, God bless, you know, I got some organic food.

And just be content. Whatever you get, whatever they deliver, be content. Be content with it.

Don't freak out and write them a note and say, I didn't want Guatemalan, I wanted Ecuadorian, something like that. Just hang in there. No, be content.

Because it's good for your meditation. I mean, if they make a big mistake, like they forget a propane tank, you can write them a letter. Be content with what comes and be grateful for what comes.

And that applies to this side of the room also. Be grateful with the things that come to you. Don't be dissatisfied.

Dissatisfaction is a disease. It's a terrible disease. You can always convince yourself that you're not quite happy, or you don't have quite the partner you wanted, or if you had just $500 more a month.

Dissatisfaction can ruin your whole life. Materially, you are one of the top 0.01% of the entire globe. You are using up 30% of the world's oil just to maintain your lifestyle.

So, no reason to be unsatisfied. Teaching-wise, meditation-wise, practice-wise, you're in a country where you can do anything at all you want. No police are going to come.

You don't know what it's like to be in a country and watch what you say. I have to have sheshin on Geshe Michael's uncontrollable mouth in many countries, because I can't say... I have to watch out that I don't mention certain things and I don't say certain things.

And you're not in a country like that. You can do anything. You can do any weird practice you want.

People will probably send money to you. You know? So, you're like...

I hate... It breaks my heart to see people unsatisfied. You make your own life.

You have power now. You know how. What you want, provide it to somebody else.

But if you're dissatisfied constantly, no matter what you get... There's a joke in the scripture the guy had a gold cow that peed gold and shat gold. And he was still unsatisfied.

You know? And you got... You're better than him.

Okay. Jawa-mi-mangwa. Jawa-mi-mangwa means don't do too much stuff.

Okay, don't do too much stuff. I think in the sense of a three-year retreat... I know I drove Lama Kristi crazy last three-year retreat, because I scheduled every 30 seconds, you know?

Like, this is the time we're going to walk to the toilet. You know? And if you don't have to go then, that's your fault.

You know? Because right after that, we got to start this other Dzogchen practice. You know?

And, you know, being able to see it from another viewpoint now, I feel like a lot of retreatants... It's important to schedule your time, but it's important... Lama Sharon always talks about don't miss the milkman, right?

Like, Sharon Gannon always says, don't miss the milkman, right? So, I mean, if Vajrayogini comes to your cabin, but you're scheduled to do this sadhana, you know? You know?

You're scheduled to do your Vajrayogini prayers, and then this lady is, like, interrupting. You know? Like, you got to cut some slack on the schedule if she shows up, okay?

Okay. What I mean is, you are such a devoted group and such a dedicated group that you're not going to fail for lack of dedication or schedule. You're going to fail...

You're not going to fail, but you could fail by over-scheduling and putting too much pressure on yourself. So, just let up a little bit on the pressure. These guys are satisfied if you walk out in red light in 24 months.

Like, 16 is... You don't have to do it in 16 months. Like, 24 months is okay.

Like, don't... Don't, like... If you feel unhappy, or you feel tight, or you feel anxious, or you feel like, I'm not doing enough, then that's going to hurt your retreat.

You got to back off a bit, you know? You're the only 40 people out of 300 million who are willing to do a three-year retreat, even a pampered one. So, you know, probably you're okay.

All right. Suttim dhagpa. Suttim dhagpa, very important.

If you hope to meditate well, you must follow... In yoga terms, you must follow yama and niyama, okay? That's the karma for a quiet peace of mind.

Quiet mind. The karma to hear your mind be quiet when you step back to watch your mind is being kind to other people, right? You go to Dharmamitra's class, he kills you for an hour, and then he's got the same old joke.

He goes, Now we start the asanas. And you're like, Oh, man. And then he does another hour, and you know, it took you an hour to get there and get home.

You're like, This is going to be a four-hour thing, you know? And then at the end, you're ready to go home, and he says, Okay, everybody sit down. And you have to listen to Sita Ram which I'm going to set to tuba shortly, and Indian clarinet.

You'll see, Venerable. It'll be good. So you have to listen to that.

But then he always, at the end, he always sits down and he tells you, you know, you're waiting for some profound thing, and he says, Be nice to other people, okay? Like before he'll let you go, you have to promise to be nice to other people, you know? And that's the karmic cause of meditation, you know?

That's real yoga. The last five minutes of his class is the real yoga, right? He tells you, Be nice to other people.

Don't hurt other people, okay? So that requires some kind of sensitivity about, you know, how you impact on other people, right? You have to watch.

As you flow through the world, as you walk through the world, and as you interact with other people, you have to try to be sensitive to how your actions and what you say and what you do, how they affect the people around you. So you have to be very observant of the people around you and see how does what you're doing impact on them, how do they feel after meeting you, right? And it should be that you want them to be more and more happy, that what you are watching, right?

This is another form of stepping back. You step back from your own mind and you say, What percentage of my mind is dedicated to making sure I'm happy? And then what percentage of my mind is dedicated to making sure other people are happy, right?

And then, you know, any fool can see, once you get to a certain age, the people in the world who are happy are the ones who are taking care of other people. And the people in the world who are still like 50, 60, 70 years old and still unhappy, it's because they're just concentrating on themselves, okay? So, tsultrim dakpa means if you have any hope of high meditative states, you must be kind to other people because that's the karma which creates that state of mind, okay?

There is no external force, like a new practice, or a new asana, or a different kind of coconut milk. There's no external thing which will give you samatha. It's only kindness to other people.

Döpa shenpa do-way ngenjung. Döpa shenpa do-way ngenjung. Ngenjung means, I don't know, in my experience, everybody on this side of the room, and I don't know a lot of you as well as I know them, but I know them, and I know their personal stories, and I know my story.

And the reason we're here, the reason you were attracted to a spiritual path is most often that you had some kind of tragedy in your life, okay? It could have been when you were young, it could have been later, but I would say that almost everyone I know who is committed to a spiritual path has been through some kind of tragedy or trauma in their life, and that's what brought them here, okay? And sometimes people come here and they claim not to have a trauma, and then after a year they remember, you know?

And it's some kind of pain that brought you here, right? It's some kind of need that was born. And you were the lucky ones who saw early on that the pursuit of physical, what do you call it, pleasure, or material pleasure wasn't enough because you saw people who failed.

You saw people who had material wealth or material pleasures and you saw them fail. You saw them die or you saw them get wounded somehow, or you saw all these things, so you're here, okay? So don't ever lose that motivation.

As you move on through your life, as you continue through your practice, the impetus which got you here, the original tragedy, gets older in your mind and older in your life, but try to revisit it, okay, from time to time. There was somebody died in your arms or your father left your family, or there was some kind of tragedy in your life, and revisit it once in a while in a healthy way. The reason you came here was that you thought maybe there was something here that might prevent that pain for other people, right?

So don't forget why you're here, the pain that brought you here, okay? Those are the conditions according to the Bhavana-karma of Kamalashila, which most of you know. I'd like to cover some other conditions.

He says there's also an explanation in Master Sangha's Shravaka Bhumi, the text we've been talking about. Probably some of you should translate it. I mean, it's the ultimate meditation manual.

It's probably a thousand pages, okay? And it's beautiful. It's really beautiful.

So, he gives a similar list, but I thought it would be useful to go through the list of things you need in order to meditate well, okay? The first thing he says is dak jor dan shen jor sok chu. Dak jor means five conditions that you possess that relate to your personal self.

And then, shen jor means five conditions that relate to your outer conditions, okay? And I'll list them for you, okay? These are very traditional.

Rang jor nga ni, mi nyi u kye wangpo tsang, le ta ma lok ne la de. Mi nyi means you've been blessed to take a human form. You have a healthy body, you have your senses intact, and you have a human intellect, okay?

You have the ability to think clearly and to use your understanding to change your world. You have the capacity to understand karma. You're in a mind-body, what do you call it, configuration.

You're in a mind-body configuration which is very suitable for enlightenment, okay? You have a good mind and you have a strong body, okay? Mi nyi.

U kye means you were born in the central land, jong go, which means, in Buddhism, it means you were born in a country where these teachings exist, okay? So you're not like living in some country where they never heard of karma or they never heard of yoga, or you're not in a place like that. Traditionally, the central land is India.

The center of the central land is Vajrasana, the seat of the diamond, Bodhgaya. I think it has moved, okay, to Diamond Mountain. Maybe it's that Diamond Mountain over there is the center of the spiritual universe, right?

But you are in a central land. You are in a place where these teachings exist, and you've heard them, okay? U kye.

Wangpo Tsang, Wangpo Tsang means you're not blind, you're not deaf. All your physical senses are complete. Leda Ma Lok, Leda Ma Lok means you didn't do any super nasty karmas that would just disqualify you from spiritual progress, okay?

All right? Super nasty karmas are like killing your father, killing your mother, trying to harm an enlightened being, things like that, trying to split a spiritual community. These are very, very heavy karmas which would block your spiritual progress, okay?

You haven't done anything like that. Leda Ma Lok, Ne La De, Ne La De means you believe this stuff, okay? You believe this stuff.

You live in a culture, you're surrounded by people who believe in this stuff, and it's not normal, okay? Like, this is about one of the few places in the world where you can sit down and have a heart-to-heart talk to somebody about nge ne len kyi bak chak, okay? Like the subtle negative seeds, or something like that.

People around here care about this stuff. Somebody asks you, what kind of prana moves when Lady Ruth crushes you into this pose? Then people are interested, and they want to know, and they want to know what it's going to do, and that's very rare, okay?

Most people are just watching TV, okay? I saw the numbers, which just came out again. It's 2.37 hours per day watching television, which is about all your free time, okay?

Average. Okay, those are the five conditions that relate to yourself, okay? Shenjor, the five which relate to other, to outside circumstances, more outside circumstances.

One is called sangye jen. Sangye jen means, you live in a world where an enlightened being has walked on this planet, okay? You live in a world where an enlightened being has walked on this planet.

Once an enlightened being has walked on this planet, it's a cool place, and all sorts of good things can happen. And you don't appreciate it because two and a half thousand years ago, or whichever religion, it doesn't matter, Muhammad or Jesus or Moses, it doesn't matter, but you have to appreciate that we live in a planet where there are major religions, and where in each major religion it's considered that an enlightened being has walked on this planet, okay? So we are on a blessed planet, you know?

Just to get born here, you're already doing something right, okay? All right. Sangye jen and dam chod tun.

Dam chod tun means, not only did an enlightened being walk on this planet, but they taught holy things. They taught the real source of where things are coming from, right? Someone hurts you, someone makes you angry, someone disappoints you, then you know enough now, you already know that it's coming from what you did, right?

You know that there's a justice. Thank goodness there's a justice to the world. Imagine if...

I like to have this vision nowadays in my mind. Living in a world where there wasn't any justice, and causes and results weren't similar, and I was thinking of all the corn farmers in Wilcox having meetings at the... what's it, Pizza Hut?

And they're all sitting around. You've seen those guys. They got cowboy hats, and they're all dirty, and they got boots on, even though it's 110 degrees.

Some of them carry guns, kind of scary. And then imagine they meet at the Pizza Hut to discuss what crop might come up in their fields this year, you know? And they're like, what'd you plant this year, Sam?

He says, I planted soybeans. Well, you got any idea what's coming up? He says, God damn, looks like bananas again.

And they just die right away. Then little bananas stick themselves out, the grasshopper jumps on those things. They ain't got bananas, they ain't got soybeans either.

Just imagine what would happen if seeds and their results were not similar, okay? If it was random, okay? So, you got it.

What you do is what comes to you. And thank God, you know? Because if it were random, there would be a problem.

You'd be nice to somebody, and then something bad would happen to you. Got it? We're lucky.

That's like a miracle. That's some kind of miracle, okay? Stuff resembles their cause, all right?

So, ney la de. You have, say, Dhammachittin. Somebody taught that on this planet.

What you do is what you get, okay? Tenpa ney. Tenpa ney means, and there are communities of people who are still following, I'm sorry, those teachings still exist in this planet.

Somebody granted us this blessing. It could be the tablets on Shavuot, you know? Or whatever.

And somebody granted us yamas and niyamas, and we have them, okay? And they're still here. Der je juk means there are still people practicing those teachings, okay?

Perfectly or imperfectly, there are still people trying, you know? Like we're still trying, right? We're not very good at it.

Our four times spoke, but it went down from yesterday. I was busy. I had to meet with...

Hang on, okay. Shen kye nying ney tsewa o. Shen kye nying ney tsewa o.

This is a very beautiful line. It means there are people who care for other people, okay? Nying je means karuna, right?

There are people who care for other people. And in the sangha's text, it refers to people who are willing to support other people who are trying to practice, okay? It's specifically people who are willing to support...

I don't know. They're very attracted to what you're doing. It's very sexy, you know?

You stay three years, and before you finish retreat, they got their wallet out, you know? And there's just something beautiful about it, you know? It just really captures people's heart, you know?

So we're lucky to live in a world where that's the case, okay? So we have... Those are from Master's sangha, prerequisites for good meditation, okay?

He's got more. Okay. This is something that Mahajushri said to Tsongkhapa, okay?

The Angel of Wisdom said to the teacher of the First Dalai Lama, His Holiness the First Dalai Lama, and this was the beginning of his teaching, de drognam kun la bet, means... How do you say? Tomar dampa...

Lama... I'm saying it wrong. Tomar dampa len, de drognam kun la bet, try to learn the conditions you need for successful retreat, and then try to assemble them.

For example, spending a year trying to learn from YouTube how to build a toilet, okay, without pouring cement down the pipes, which somebody actually did. seru tabur neprjan, stay like a rhinoceros, okay? That means...

Rhinoceroses don't like to be around other rhinoceroses. They're very... What do you call it?

There ain't room enough in this pond for both of us, okay? They like... So, it means don't...

It's good to do your group activities, but don't go overboard. Like, your lama will help you not go overboard, and then you have to cooperate, okay? Which I hate to do.

Okay. dundzi dakyan pangwa jang, don't get too busy, don't like... What do you call?

Get too social. Social good. Support is good.

Blah blah is not good. Whispering when no one is listening is dumb, because your... your kunshi-nubar-shepa is always listening.

Your storehouse consciousness is always... You can't hide. Okay.

dundzi dakyan pangwa jang, nandun-nyam-par-shab-pa-ja, and then put your mind into your... Put your mind inside. Bring your mind inside.

Okay. He says you can also find other examples of meditation instructions in Master Shantideva's Bodhicaryavatara, and in Master Shantideva's Sikṣāsambhuchāya, which is a text we should do someday. It's his other great text, which is not taught much, aside from the bodhisattva's way of life.

All right. yeway chu la dunpa, have a good time doing good things, you know? Like...

I like to see that you are doing music, and that music is a big part of your retreat, and yoga, doing yoga together, and then I imagine dance, and, you know, do... Be happy about your retreat, and rejoice in it, and party a little bit. I mean within limits, no reason, okay?

tsultrim gyi donpa. tsultrim gyi donpa is interesting, right? It's...

If you spend a lot of time on your cushion, your mix of karmic seeds will improve, because you're not walking around, and you're not interacting with anybody else. You see? The assumption is that anytime we interact with others, we are creating bad karma, okay?

You're judging people constantly, you know, we're always thinking negative things. If you stay in your house, and on your cushion, the mix of good karmas will increase, just because you're not around other people to be bad to them, okay? That's called tsultrim gyi donpa.

Samaya, the samaya of... What do you call it? Kindness, all right?

Morality, okay. Wangpo donpa, he makes a joke, okay? Asanga is making a joke.

He said, samaya of your behavior, and samaya of your sense organs, okay? So, samaya of your behavior means you're meditating and you're keeping your... You are restraining yourself as far as your vows.

Yama, the meaning of yama, restraint. You are restraining yourself as far as your behavior. And then he says, now do yama of your sense organs.

Like, don't go crazy about... You know, when you're in deep retreat, keep your eyes to yourself. Don't try to figure out what they're doing in the next cabin, especially when the wind blows down all of the fences.

And, you know, don't try to listen to what's going on. If you hear something, just ignore it. If you run into somebody, look at the ground, okay?

Keep your senses to yourself, okay? Tse kyi tsu rikpa. Very important.

Tse means food. Tsu means the proper measure. Rikpa means try to figure it out.

It means don't eat too much and don't eat too little. It's another one of those float, toilet float things. Okay?

You can hurt yourself if you don't eat enough, and some of you are doing that. You can hurt yourself if you eat too much, and maybe one or two of you are doing that. So then you have to judge for yourself.

You have to eat well, okay? You have to eat well. It's kind of dangerous to have somebody sending you any food you want, and so that means your control is going to have to increase proportionately to the pampering that's being done.

And, you know, it's a great spiritual accomplishment in your life if you can learn to eat properly, and if you can't control your appetite, then you'll never really be a good yogi, right? It's hard. It's hard to eat poorly and then do your practices, okay?

NAM GYI CHA LTOS DANG I don't think that's enough. Let me see. Oh, yeah.

No, I'll give you two more. NAM GYI CHA LTOS DANG NAM GYI CHA MA'I LA MI NYAL BAR SBYOR BA'I RJES SU TSUN PA NYID When it's proper, when your yoga is good, when your health is good, when your state of mind is good, when you don't have lung, right? When you're eating well, then you can fool around with your sleep, okay?

You can cut the sleep in the evening and then you can cut the sleep in the morning. You can reach deeper states of consciousness. You will connect with your dreams better.

And it's very dangerous practice. It's a two-bladed sword, right? And if you get the slightest indication that you are getting a lung, a prana condition, then you have to stop it and go back to sleeping more, okay?

So, it's like retaining the breath. It can be overdone in a few days, okay? So, be very sensitive to your state of mind.

Learn to step back from your mind and watch your mind. If you don't feel happy, if you don't feel relaxed, if any practice doesn't make you feel relaxed and happy, then maybe you should change to something else. I hate to say, because ain't that why you're doing it, right?

So, if you've put up with a practice that doesn't make you happy, that makes you cuckoo, like not sleeping, then change it. Don't put up with practices that don't make you feel happy, okay? And I mean honest happy.

I don't mean, you know, eating six Tim Hortons maple doughnuts that they shipped in to you from Toronto, okay? Okay, last two and then we can wrap up. Śeṣiṅgī-chöpa, śeṣiṅgī-chöpa.

Master Sangha and Maitreya, they identified the need to watch your own mind. Śeṣiṅgī-chöpa, right? The ability, the capacity to watch your own state of mind.

There's a couple of things you can watch for, okay? And that will segue us into the last part, the final requirement of a successful meditator. There's a lot of things you can watch your mind for.

When you can do this, now you have a bunch of choices about what you can watch in your mind. Okay? Step...

Learn... Please, if nothing else, you came here, you spent a lot of money, Diamond Mountain spent a lot of money, you know, you traveled here, you got cooked, top and bottom. Like, if you don't go away with anything else, you know, learn to watch your mind, that's all.

Learn to watch the condition of your mind. Learn to observe your mind talking to itself, all right? Learn to observe the condition of your...

your level of happiness, all right? I'm going to give you a short list of things you could watch for in your mind, okay? These are like TV channels in your mind, okay?

When you go surfing, here are your selections. All right? Do you have chingwa or do you have gupa?

Okay? Like, is the mind dull or is the mind distracted, right? Like, the two great extremes of meditation and of life itself, okay?

Am I too busy or am I too lazy? Okay? And then you're...

the challenge of a person in life, but more specifically, a challenge of a person in deep retreat is to draw that fine line between doing too much stuff and not doing enough, right? So then, you have to struggle with that. That requires session.

That requires the ability to step back and observe your own mind, you know? Is this level of activity making me happy and contented? And is it making me a kind person, right?

And if it's not, then either you got to crank it up or you got to tune it down, right? And don't maintain even for 24 hours a state of activity which makes you unhappy because it just accumulates. One bad day is the first of a bunch of bad days, so don't put up with it.

Adjust your schedule. If there's some practice that makes you unhappy, then adjust it. Don't be lazy.

Watch your mind. See how happy you are. And if it's not happy, then change something because that's why you're here.

Okay. That's one thing you could watch out for. What could decide the question of whether you're happy?

Oh, so we were talking, are you sleepy or are you thinking about food, right? Learn to watch your mind for that. I would say another important thing to watch your mind for is, why am I here, you know?

Step back from your mind. Watch your mind and try to figure out why your mind thinks you're here. Listen to your mind.

Observe your mind. And you're back there behind your mind now, right? And you're going to yell to your mind over there, why are you here anyway?

What did you expect to do here? And then you're going to have a small list. You're going to have a short list.

And it's mixed, okay? Let's be honest. For everybody, it's mixed.

I'm hoping they'll like my talk. I'm hoping they'll give me more flowers next time. Maybe somebody will...

And then somewhere down about number sixes, I hope I can help them in some way. And then you've got to try to get number sixes up to number one. And that's all.

But if you're not aware of your mind, you can't. You see? It's a kind of honesty about what your own mind is thinking.

If you develop the skill to step back from your mind and observe your mind, you will succeed. Because that's an honest appraisal of your own motivation, right? Which you can't do if you're in the motivation, right?

So now there's a couple things to appraise. You're going to appraise your state of mind. Am I too busy or am I not doing enough?

Am I happy? Am I really happy with this practice or am I not? I mean, be honest with yourself, right?

That's going to always be connected to am I doing this for other people or not? Okay? So those two are always going to be connected.

If you don't feel happy from some practice, it's probably not the practice. It's why you're doing it, right? If you change why you're doing it, probably you don't have to adjust the practice, okay?

Is Yoga 7 better or is Yoga 9 better? I mean, come on. You know?

They're both good if you're doing it for other people and they both make you bored, or ... if you're not doing it for other people, okay? That's all.

Okay, last thing. Then I'll be quiet, maybe even early. They're all hoping.

Probably not. I mean, don't hope. Okay.

The last practice I want you to practice. You ready? Let's do a meditation, okay?

Last meditation. Last meditation. Then please watch your breath.

The last requirement for all retreat and meditation listed by Master Sangha and Maitreya, the coming Buddha, is a teacher. It's a heart teacher. DGE BA'I GZHAN YIN Then, the final and most important requirement for successful meditation or retreat is your teacher, your heart teacher.

Whoever it is. You have to find your own heart teacher. It's like a glove.

Different hands need different gloves. Bring your heart teacher to mind. Bring a vision of your heart teacher into your mind.

Watch your mind trying to visualize or bring into the mind or invite into the mind your heart teacher. Watch your own attempt to bring your heart teacher here, in reality. If you don't have a heart teacher or you don't know who's your heart teacher, then try to bring up an image of the closest thing you can think of.

Try to make an image of your mind of what a heart teacher would be like. First of all, they would know you inside and out. They would know everything about you.

They would know everything in your mind. Very importantly, they would know everything that ever happened to you before. And very crucially, they could see your future.

So a heart teacher would be someone who knows you inside and out, past and future. The second quality of a heart teacher, I think the most important quality, when we do the meditation preliminaries and when we say you bow down to the quality of your teacher that you most admire, or that means the most to you, the same thing always pops in my mind. It feels maybe a little selfish, I don't know, but I think it's right, and that's that she loves me.

My heart teacher really is completely, totally concerned about my welfare. My heart teacher loves me completely, and I can feel it, and I know it. And so as you visualize your heart teacher, or as you try to imagine a heart teacher that you haven't met yet, to me the most important quality is that you can feel waves of concern for your well-being coming from them.

They truly love you. They truly want to see you happy. And then the third quality of your heart teacher is that they understand how to make you happy.

They understand how to teach you. They have power, and they have knowledge, and they know how to teach, and they know how to guide you. They know what to do.

I saw Guruji once. I went to the Mysore Shala once. Me and Lama Kristi went for a day or something, and Sri Vatabhi Joyce was very kind to invite us to come observe the class.

He didn't have any idea where we were from or who we were. And we came in to watch him, and I don't know, I remember him, there was a lady in a pose on the ground, and he came and he was a big man, and he got on top of her. He got down on his knees on her back, and he was pressing her further into a pose, and she began to, like, I don't know, she was like, I don't know, yelling.

And he didn't stop. And as I watched him, I felt like I saw this true knowledge of how far he could push her, and he wasn't going to do less than that. And she was strenuously objecting, and then he kept pushing her further into the pose.

And he knew, he had this sense of authority and knowledge of what was good for her, and he just did it. And then afterwards she got up, and she hugged him, and he hugged her, and she looked so proud of herself and so happy, and there was such a sense of accomplishment. But then it was so inspiring to be in the presence of a real Master who knew how to help the person.

So imagine a heart teacher like that. Now step back from the vision, okay? Step back.

This is the last stepping back that we'll do together at this time. Step back from the view. Step back from the scene.

Observe you observing the teacher. Observe how you feel about your heart lama. Do you believe that they are divine?

Do you believe that they are divinity in a human form? Do you believe they can know everything about your past and future? Do you believe that they have a love for you which exceeds your love for yourself?

And do you really believe they have the power to do exactly the right thing that you need? How do you feel about your heart lama? Do you really believe they are divine?

Watch yourself watching your heart lama. Observe how you view them. Because every time they touch you, every time they speak a single word to you, every time they allow you to be even within the same state, Arizona or whatever, with them, do you feel like that's the most intense blessing that could happen to you?

You see? Learn to step back from your own mind to observe your mind's feeling about the most important thing in your life, which is your heart teacher. If you don't have one, you must find them.

No possibility of progress, no possibility of any practice without a heart teacher, without that relationship. And it won't bear its full fruit unless you view them as divine. And every single glance they give to you, every single brush against them, every single word they say, thousands of blessings.

Learn to step back from your mind. Learn to watch yourself observing your heart teacher. And how are you feeling?

What are you thinking? Observing it itself will change it. The act of observing it itself will change your view of your teacher.

Dedicate the karma of this beautiful time together, these four days together, all the effort. The people at Diamond Mountain, especially the caretakers, the permanent staff, they have spent many, many months preparing the smallest details of our visit here. The retreatants have allowed us a peek at their holy world, Mandala.

They are being good retreatants. They are working hard. They are a true example for all of us.

Lama Kriste is giving them very good leadership, difficult job, 40 wild elephant retreatants. Everybody in the world, so many people around the world are helping, helping in many countries. So appreciate what's going on here.

Appreciate that we've been allowed to enter the Tsam and feel this world, magical world. And wish it upon others, right? Wish that others could enjoy this kind of opportunity.

And perhaps through our efforts, both retreatants and the people helping them, perhaps through our efforts, then the art of doing retreat and the art of being quiet, the art of trying to develop ourselves from the inside, perhaps this will begin to spread to other communities of people. In a way, what's going on here this week and in the last six months, and all the efforts of the staff here, especially the director, it's not just the retreat going on now, this is the first of many generations of retreats here and elsewhere. Appreciate what's going on and make a prayer that this scene could be repeated hundreds of times around our country and this world.

So make that prayer now, and then that will be the end of my presentation. Okay, come out slowly for meditation. My teacher, Khen Rinpoche, his English could best be described as experimental, and he would say, Disperse!

But thank you for letting me come. Thank you for the beautiful cabin, and it makes me feel welcome, and thank you for your courage. Thank you, Lama Christi.

Disperse!