Что такое нирвана и как её достичь? (2011, Багамы), занятие 1

[Говорящий 2]
Tonight we begin a new program. The program is called What is Nirvana and How do we get there? And this program will be presented by Geshe Michael Roach.

And I would like to introduce Geshe Michael Roach. He is the first Westerner to have been awarded the degree of Geshe or Master of Buddhism after more than 20 years of study in Tibetan monasteries. He has used this training to become a prominent international teacher, philanthropist, author, and educator.

Geshe Michael Roach graduated with honors from Princeton University and has received the Presidential Scholar Medal from the President of the United States at the White House. He helped found Andean International Dynamo Corporation and bring it to annual sales of over $100 million, donating his profits to international aid projects. His book about achieving business and personal success through generosity, The Diamond Cutter, has become a global bestseller in 20 languages.

He is the founder of the Asian Classic Institute, Diamond Mountain University, the Asian Classic Input Project, Worldview, the Yoga Studies Institute, Star in the East, Global Family Refugee Aid, Three Jewels Community Outreach Center, and the Diamond Cutter Institute. And there is so much more, but this is just a pre-biography of his amazing life and activities. And most importantly, he has been coming here for over 10 years now, and this is a great honor for us to have him here again, and all this beautiful, inspiring teaching.

So this week is going to be about Nirvana. Let us welcome Geshe Michael Roach.

[Говорящий 1]
Hi. So, did everybody get a notebook? Yeah.

Don't look at it. Later. If you want to take notes, you can take notes.

So I don't know. I grew up like most of you. I grew up in the United States, in Arizona, and I used to hear the word Nirvana sometimes.

Like, people would say, that feels like Nirvana, or I'd like to go to Nirvana. You know, there was a rock band named Nirvana, and there was a restaurant where I lived named Nirvana, and I don't know. I had two ideas about Nirvana, I think.

One was that when you went there, you disappeared, right? Like, they say you went to Nirvana and you don't know where he is anymore. You just disappeared, you know, like that.

That was one idea. When I was a child, they'd say, go to Nirvana and you just finish and you're gone, and that's all. The other idea was like one of those restaurants.

Like, you would go there, and you would start eating, and you would stay there forever, just enjoying the food, you know? Or something like that. Like, you go to Nirvana, and you're just in some place.

It had two meanings when I was growing up. One was that you were blissed out, and one was that you don't do anything else. You just stay there forever, like a very good marijuana or something, you know?

And that was what I heard about Nirvana when I was a kid. Then, you know, I ended up studying in Tibetan monastery, and one of the first books we had to study for 12 years had a beautiful explanation of Nirvana in it, a very beautiful teaching on Nirvana. So when we were talking about my coming here this year, I thought, oh, that would be nice to translate it and maybe share it with everybody.

Because it's a very beautiful teaching on Nirvana, and it answered a lot of questions for me. And I think, most importantly, it made Nirvana something that I could reach, and it made Nirvana something that I wanted to reach. Because it was kind of scary to think about Nirvana as just, I disappear, you know?

And where would I be after that? And how could I enjoy it if I wasn't here? And, you know, I think this teaching is a very beautiful presentation of Nirvana because it makes Nirvana something relevant to your life, and it's not some strange thing that's going to happen to you in 43 years, if you're lucky.

It's something, if you understand Nirvana, and if you have a good teaching on Nirvana, it's something you can start doing now. It's some practical thing that you can use now, and you can start working towards your Nirvana and building your Nirvana. So, you know, the more teaching I got on Nirvana, the more I thought I could do it, you know?

And that it would be fun, and I wouldn't disappear, and it'd actually be pretty cool for all my friends, too. So we're going to go through Nirvana that way. And then I thought every night at the end, I thought, one thing, I'll leave you with a little meditation you can do.

There are some meditations you can do that would bring you closer to Nirvana, and that would be one thing. And then I think maybe the last ten minutes, if anybody has any questions about what I say, or your own idea about Nirvana. So ten minutes before we stop, I'll give you a little meditation you can do about Nirvana, and then you can ask some questions.

So save up your questions in your mind, all right? As we go. So I guess I like to start with words.

I love words. And I'd like to talk about the word Nirvana, and where did it come from? You know, what are the parts of the word?

So Nir, Nirvana is a Sanskrit word. Say Nir. Nirvana.

You have to curl your tongue back. I was telling Shankara, if you curl your tongue back, they never sound it properly. Say Nirvana.

[Говорящий 2]
Nirvana.

[Говорящий 1]
Yeah, it's Nirvana. Nir comes from nis, okay? Nis means down, or away, or not, okay?

And before v it has to change to r, so it becomes Nir. V is a Sanskrit root. All Sanskrit is built around roots.

And it has three distinct different meanings. V can mean three totally different things. And each one is appropriate for Nirvana.

So for example, I'm studying Chinese Buddhism nowadays, and one of my teachers said, we chose not to translate the word. They called Nippon. They didn't translate the word Nirvana because they knew van had three different meanings and they didn't want to leave one out.

So they decided to just keep it as Nirvana. So va can mean three different things. And then ana is an ending that means something that gets you there.

So nir means out. Va, the first meaning is to blow. So nirva means to blow out, like to blow out a candle, or to stop a fire, to extinguish a fire, is nirva.

So nirvana is seen as stopping a fire, or like blowing out a fire. And what is the fire? And then there are a lot of ideas about what the fire is.

There are many, many ideas. But I think the correct one is said to be, is your kleshas. We have them in Yogasikhi, right?

What is it? Abhidhyasmita, Raghudvesha, Abhinivesha. These five negative emotions, bad emotions that we have.

You can say jealousy, anger, desire. We divide desire into good desire and bad desire. Good desire is desire for ice cream.

Bad desire is desire to have an ice cream at the expense of someone else. Same object, same emotion, different intention. Like Swamiji was saying today.

So nirvana is to blow out. The ultimate definition of nirvana that we have to memorize is... I'll say it with you.

Say nyundu, malubar, pangme, sosor, tangok. Nyundu... You guys are sleepy.

Nyundu, malubar, pangme, sosor, tangok. That's the definition of nirvana. We have definitions for everything.

So nyundu means the obstacles caused by our negative emotions. Malubar means all of them. Pangme means to eliminate them forever.

Sosor, tangok means based on your perceiving the nature of reality. So based on you perceiving the true nature of reality, you are able, because of that, to remove your negative emotions forever. And what I would say is at this point, I think we'll do it now instead of at the end.

I find it useful when talking about nirvana. Right now, before we go on, try to think of the negative emotion you have that makes your life most unhappy. Everybody has a favorite.

It's like ice cream. Everybody has their own. I'll tell you mine, freely, which is jealousy.

If somebody says, I heard a good Buddhist teacher... It doesn't matter if it's not me, I immediately get jealous. I didn't have to hear their name yet.

And I start worrying about them and hoping that I won't be in Arizona anytime soon. Or like that, right away. And it goes with everything.

It's everything I do. So, you know, everybody has their own specialty. You have your own favorite negative emotion.

Or we say you wouldn't be here. That emotion was probably quite instrumental in bringing you into a world which is impermanent, where you are immortal, where you will suffer, and where you will die. So the special negative emotion that you have, I don't know what's your specialty.

Mine is jealousy. But you can assume that it also helped get you here, into the world of suffering. It had a big part to play in your being here.

Which means if someone is here, in this room, and if you're not a disguised deva, or you know, you'll be like, what is that? Goraksha in Hatha Yoga Vedic, they say he's still wandering around. Hatha Yoga Pabhava Tarvic, Brahma Devi Charitante, he's still wandering the world.

If you're not like Goraksha, or if you're not a hidden angel, then you're here only because you have, you still have those emotions. And the karma of having that emotion thrusts you into this life, and it will kill you. It does kill you.

Yeah. The karma of it kills you. So we all have.

So I would encourage you as we go through the talk, like your first meditation assignment for tonight is just to try to recognize, or try to identify, what is your own worst mental affliction? What is your own worst klesha? Your own worst negative emotion?

Because we all have one. If you're not a disguised Buddha or something, then you have one. You have, we say 84,000.

It's very famous. Girti Sita means 84,000. And we have it.

We all have it. We have 84,000 variations on negative emotions within the human mind. And then that's why Buddha is said to have taught 84,000 groups of scriptures, each one to address a different negative emotion.

So out of those 84,000, which one is it that you have? Try to identify it. How will you know, when you're having it, you'll be unhappy?

That's all. Klesha, a negative emotion, which is called nyamong in Tibetan. And it has its own definition too.

Which is, rang yin deng gi khang sak yi she gyu ma shi wo che pe, sam jung sem pa. rang yin deng gi khang sak means, the person who has it, rang gi she gyu, their own mind, ma shi wo che pe, is disturbed, sem pa, sem jung, by this mental function, by this thought. So what is nirvana, in the high school, is to remove your own negative emotions permanently by applying your vidya, your knowledge of reality.

And then, a negative emotion is defined as any thought which upsets your peace of mind. So, if you want to know if you've reached nirvana yet or not, you would just see if anything was capable of disturbing your peace of mind. If there's a thought in your mind which would disturb your peace of mind, that's a klesha, that's a negative emotion, and you have it.

And nirvana, it's a very beautiful thing, nirvana would be to blow out nirva, those negative emotions, forever. And they're very careful to distinguish between suppressing a negative emotion and destroying it forever. So that's a beautiful thing about nirvana.

Nirvana is, we'll discuss that if we have time, we'll go into whether it's possible to drop out of a state of nirvana and come back to having a disturbed mind. But, if you achieve a real nirvana, then it's not possible to have a negative thought again. And just try to, we'll be doing different exercises to try to see what that would feel like.

But I think right now, in your own mind, you can imagine what it might feel like if you never got upset again in your whole life. If you were incapable of getting upset or angry, or wanting a third ice cream from the boutique. I'm talking the same night.

You know, that's what nirvana would feel like. There's another meaning of nirvana. And, this is very beautiful, it's very difficult.

It's a long A, va. And it means to weave something. Weave a piece of cloth, or weave a piece of fabric.

And oftentimes, in Sanskrit, when you do something repeatedly, or when you need to do something over and over again to do that thing, they repeat the root. So it would be va-va, like Lady Gaga. But it would be va-va.

And then, that came into English as weave, which came into weave. So va-va means to weave a piece of fabric. And in that sense, nirvana was spoken by the Buddha in...

nirvana. And in there he said, nirvana means... nir means to un, and va means to weave.

And nirvana means to unweave the illusion. So we have woven an illusion around our minds. Our minds are caught in a web of illusion.

And then nirva means to unweave or unravel that illusion. So, really, the two meanings of nirvana that we have so far, one is a cause and one is an effect. If you can unweave the illusion, if you can come to understand reality, then you can blow out your mental afflictions, your negative thoughts.

And if you cannot, we say in the Buddhist schools, if you are not able to grasp how reality is really working, then it's not possible to stop your anger or your jealousy or any other emotion forever. It cannot happen. They feed on your misunderstanding of things.

So you cannot reach, it's not possible to reach nirvana if you still have it with you. If you still misunderstand things around you. So, you know, I like to speak practically.

I have to talk to a lot of, I don't know, we just got back from China and, you know, it's not like they're into spiritual things right now. I mean, they've spent, I don't know, the last how many years? 60 years under, told not to think spiritually.

So, to get up in China and just say, let's meditate, you know, it doesn't work out. And you have to go really basic and you have to really speak, you know, practical. And maybe that's better anyway, I don't know.

So what would it mean to misunderstand your world, right? And how would that cause a mental, a negative emotion, you see? So Swamiji talked about it, was it today?

No, it was yesterday. It was definitely yesterday. He was talking about somebody hurting us, somebody doing injury to us, yelling at us, right?

And then what should we do back? And he said that the most foolish thing you could do would be to return the insult or return the injury because where's the person come from? Why has the person come to you to injure you?

Why has the person come to you to insult you? You, according to these ideas, you must have done it to someone before, there's no question, okay? It's not possible to meet someone who's doing you injury unless you have done a similar injury to someone else.

In China you say, a chih gua zhong cha. If you see a watermelon, there must have been a watermelon seed. It doesn't take a philosopher to understand that.

If you see a big watermelon and somebody tells you, asks you where did it come from? Then you say, well, a watermelon seed. And then they say, well, did you see that?

And you say, no, but you don't have to. All watermelons come from watermelon seeds. If I see a watermelon, there must have been a seed before.

That's all. And it must have been a watermelon seed and not a mango seed because that's the way it works. So if you meet a person who insults you or hurts you, it's like a watermelon and it must have come from a seed and it must have been something you did and it must have been the same.

And that's all. If a person approaches you and insults you, calls you stupid, then it means you did something similar to somebody else before. That's all.

It came from the same seed. That's all. So as Swamiji said so beautifully last night, what's the stupidest thing you could do to someone who calls you stupid?

[Говорящий 2]
Huh?

[Говорящий 1]
Yeah, to call them stupid back would be the stupidest thing you could do if someone calls you stupid. Actually, it would prove that they're right. I think, right?

It would prove that they're correct. And then human nature, Swamiji called it human nature and I like that. Human nature is to respond and it's to respond in kind, right?

If someone's violent, you ask them violent back. If someone calls me stupid, then I call them stupid back. And that's samsara.

Like, we always talk about samsara and then samsara feels like some kind of place, like New Jersey. And I met the Dalai Lama 30 years ago and I said, what should I do with my life? He said, study with Geshe-la sometimes.

I said, where is he? He said, New Jersey. So, samsara is not like a samsara is not like a place, ok?

Samsara is the perpetuation of of pain, of suffering. Samsara is the perpetuation of suffering. How do you perpetuate?

It's a circle, a downward cycle. How do you perpetuate that circle? Someone calls you stupid.

You call them stupid back and then they return again to call you stupid. And that's just, that's samsara. Ok?

It's not a, we'll talk about it later, but it's not really a place. It's a condition that we tend to do when exactly the kind of thing that causes more trouble for ourselves. That's what we do all day.

That's what we do. So, to not understand that, is to weave a web around yourself. That's va.

And nirva means you can stop it. Nirvana means unravel the web of illusion that you have built around yourself. That's the real meaning of nirva.

And then you will get to the first meaning of nirva, which is? To blow it out. To blow out your negative emotions, right?

So you have to have the first kind of nirva to get to the second kind of nirva. You have to unravel the way you see things, and then that will allow you to stop your negative emotions. How?

Why? In the case of a person who comes up to you and calls you stupid, what would it mean to unravel the situation? How could you think about it?

It's a what? It's a what? You'd say, oh, this person came from something I did before.

That would be unraveling the situation. Someone came up to you and called you stupid. Unraveling the situation.

Vidya, knowledge, understanding would be to think, oh, this person has come from me. I created this person. Just that thought.

I created this person. How would that affect your anger, for example? Right by tomorrow you've got to tell me your favorite negative emotion.

I confess mine. I could go into it, but it's embarrassing. I'm going to ask you tomorrow.

I'm going to ask five people. But suppose yours is anger. Which doesn't happen to be mine.

I'm lucky. I'd rather have jealousy than anger. But suppose it's anger.

How would anger be affected in a situation where someone called you stupid if you had your mind firmly on the fact that they are coming from you calling somebody else stupid? Where would your anger go? Where does anger fit in there?

You're angry at yourself. Maybe you could be angry at yourself, but could you be angry at them? I don't think it's possible.

You created them. It's like spitting in the mirror. You don't like what you see in the mirror.

It's not the mirror's fault. It's you. No, really.

When you say back to a person you are stupid, you are spitting in the mirror. Because they are just reflecting what you did last week. You are seeing who you are.

In our little university, I love it. There's a lot of half sentences. People are constantly speaking half sentences.

Somebody will say, Jigme, you're really stupid. But you're really... Because the implication is that whatever you see in someone else is you.

It's what you were last week. So you sit down with somebody and you want to explain to them why this person in the and why they're always bugging other people and why they're always stupid. And then everyone in the table is smiling and nodding their head.

Oh, irritating. Speaks at their own time. Yeah, yeah.

And they're agreeing with you. And then suddenly you realize they're saying, yeah, that's how you are. Really.

We can study a scripture. We will study scriptures. But I just told you the whole thing.

It's good to have a scripture. But that's the whole thing. It's not possible to be angry at a person who calls you stupid if you truly understand that they are reflecting what you did last week.

And it's not them who are stupid. And that's all. And then the emotion of anger cannot arise on your mind.

By thinking this way, in time, you reach nirvana. And that's nirvana. So I have a question for you.

When you reach nirvana, would you disappear? According to this idea. No.

Right? It's not your body that's causing a problem. Right?

It's not them. There's no reason to say that your body disappears when you reach nirvana. Could ten people in this room right now, which Swamiji also mentioned last night, have reached nirvana already?

Could ten people in this room have reached nirvana already? Yeah. Would they necessarily appear to you as peaceful?

No. It's just that what you see depends on what seeds you put in your mind. You see, I mean, everybody in this room could have achieved nirvana except Geshe Michael.

And he wouldn't even know. You see? Because they would just act like normal people because he has seeds in his mind to see them that way, even when they're not.

Okay? Got it? Like they're already totally peaceful already.

They've reached nirvana already. They did nindriya-madhava-gopala-sonsa-tango. They stopped their negative emotions.

But he keeps seeing reflections of his own behavior in them, which are not part of this. He's showing these reflections on them and then he sees them acting how he acts and not how they see themselves acting. It's possible.

Like I had people argue with me. They said, no, it's not possible that everybody in this room reached nirvana already. I said, why not?

And they said, well, they would be acting very peacefully. I said, why? And they said, well, they wouldn't have any kleshas.

They wouldn't have any negative emotions. They would be sweet and thoughtful. They would never be angry.

They would always give you the ice cream. You know? Right?

But everybody's not like that. You see? Then people argue with me.

They say, no, no. I don't think more than one or two people in this room could have achieved nirvana. Maybe Swami...

Which one? Okay. Maybe he did, but not...

Those other people, they're too unkind or they're too irritable to have reached nirvana. But we wouldn't be able to see. You see?

Because we're only seeing how we were before. And we don't know how they're seeing themselves. We don't know how they think of themselves.

So it is possible that many people in this room have achieved nirvana already. And we wouldn't know. Because our mind keeps throwing up these images that reflect how we are.

And we never see how they see themselves. Which brings me to the third meaning of the word nirvana. So va...

There's three roots in Sanskrit that are vi-long-e, va. The third one also is v-a-n, van. Which means to conquer or to defeat.

And you find it in English in the word vain, quiche, or invincible. It means to destroy or to win a battle against somebody. So the word nirvana, the three roots of the word nirvana are meant to be thought of in order.

First is, I would like to blow out my favorite negative emotion. Which for me is jealousy. And then secondly, how are you going to do that?

You have to unravel. You have to unweave the way you see things. You think the person is calling you stupid because they're stupid.

But they're calling you stupid because you called someone stupid last week. And if you don't understand that then you're stupid. And you have to unweave the idea that they are coming from their side.

That's the second meaning of van. And then the third one is what? If you can unravel the way you see other people and thereby blow out your negative emotions then you have won the war.

Then you have won the war. And those are the three meanings of nirvana. Those are the three roots that you see in the word nirvana.

Then when you reach that in Sanskrit they call you arhat. Someone who reaches nirvana is called arhat. In Buddhism.

Arh it can mean to kill somebody. And hat can mean the same as ham, can mean the same as hin, as in ahinsa. Arhat means enemy.

Hat means to strike. What's anahata? Anahata.

It's the name of the heart chakra. But why? Unstruck.

Nobody ever beat it. So hat means to strike. Ah means very much.

Un means not. Anahata means your heart beats without anyone using a stick on it. That's why the chakra here is called the unstruck sound.

It's beating. It's like a drum but nobody had to use a stick on it. Anahata.

So arhat means someone who has destroyed the enemy. So arhat means a person who has reached nirvana. We call them enemy destroyers.

In Buddhism they're called enemy destroyers. That makes the enemy who? Your own negative emotions.

My jealousy is my enemy. And then if I can destroy it I become an arhat. And then I've reached nirvana.

So I have a question for you. I don't know what I'm going to talk about for four more days because I'm using it all up. Uh That's okay.

Uh Are enlightenment and nirvana the same thing? If you reach nirvana are you a Buddha? Are you enlightened?

What do you think? Because I know when I was growing up a lot of people would say nirvana and enlightenment are the same thing. But now I think you can guess that what?

They're not the same thing. Nirvana is less. Enlightenment is more.

Alright? People can and do reach nirvana. Okay?

They remove their negative emotions within their mind forever. But they're still not a being who can appear on a billion planets and help people. You see what I mean?

That's a different skill. So you can become a you can reach nirvana relatively easily. You can stop your negative emotions in this life.

But then to become an enlightened being is a big jump. That's still a big jump and that's for us the definition of an enlightened being would be someone who could for example show themselves in many countries on earth at the same time and help people. You see what I mean?

They would have to have the ability and it's a spontaneous ability. You don't have to think about it. Automatically while they're asleep while they're brushing their teeth while they're swimming in the ocean off paradise island they are their bodies are flying out from them and showing themselves on countless worlds at the same time.

They can be having a conversation with you in a boutique and at the same time they are appearing on countless planets and helping people in different bodies and that ability is only had by an enlightened being. So nirvana is a lot earlier than enlightenment. So that's a that's a basic difference between nirvana and enlightenment.

How about did you hear the word Arya? In Buddhism Arya Arya means do you know what is Arya? What is Arya?

You guys throw around all these words that we don't know either. It's like now they'll say this is a Chaitanya, this is a Swamin, this is a Vamachari. We're like I thought they're anyway.

Like they're different, right? I assume. And in this teaching on nirvana you have to be able to distinguish between an Arya, an Arhat and an enlightened being.

So what is an Arya? What does Arya mean? I mean Hitler used it for a very bad purpose.

He took it from Sanskrit and it meant superior being. But Arya means someone who has seen ultimate reality directly. So they have had an experience.

In Buddhism Arya means someone who has had a direct experience of ultimate reality. I don't know. Should we do that now?

I'll just start, okay? And let's just go to China and talk what do you call it? Nuts and bolts.

Alright? Not big philosophy. Let's just talk in normal English.

In normal style. When somebody calls you stupid, ready? You're about to become an Arya.

Which takes a billion lifetimes. You're lucky. If someone comes up to you and calls you stupid, right?

Is there a person there? Wake up a little bit. You took flights to there?

It's hot. It's hot. Is there a person standing there calling you stupid?

There is. Are they real? They are real.

I mean, if they weren't real you wouldn't hear anything. They're real. They're there.

They're calling you stupid. They are real. And if they punch you, your nose will break.

That's real. Am I right? It's not unreal.

In that sense it's not unreal. Try to get this feeling. Is there a person standing in front of you calling you stupid who has not come from you?

I'll say it again. Is there a person standing in front of you calling you stupid who has not come from you? So how much does the person calling you stupid who doesn't come from you exist?

Huh? I'll say it again. How much does a person who has not come from you calling you stupid exist?

Not at all. You can't say zero. In Sanskrit, zero is?

Shunya. Okay? Shunya.

That's all. It means zero. I'll say it again.

Somebody is standing there in your face and they are calling you stupid. And you have this emotion comes up where you hate the person calling you stupid. But the person you're focusing on that you hate, do they exist or not?

They don't exist. Is there a person calling you stupid?

[Говорящий 2]
Yes.

[Говорящий 1]
There is a person calling you stupid and that's real. Is there a person calling you stupid who is not coming from yourself? No.

I'm going to ask you, the person that you hate at that moment, the person that you dislike at that moment, is that the person who really is there? Or is that the person who is calling you stupid who didn't come from you? I'll say it again.

Somebody calling you stupid. You get mad. You hate them.

You feel bad. I don't know about you, I get sort of a little pain over here. I don't know why.

I'm hating them at that moment. I'm angry. So the person that I'm angry at, I'm giving you two choices.

This is a diamond deal. Is it the person who is really there calling you stupid that you're angry at? Or is it the person who is not coming from you?

Which one are you mad at? You're mad at the one who is not coming from you. If you thought he was coming from you, I don't think you'd be angry at him.

Am I right? There's this thing, I told you before, but it's okay. Maybe some people weren't there.

Most of my life I spend in ashrams or monasteries or places where you don't have your own bathroom. Maybe that's the definition of an ashram. I don't know, a lot of ashrams I've been in, they're cold.

They're really cold. They're not like here. You're supposed to be a good monk and you're not supposed to have a lot of things.

We're only allowed to have two sets of monk's clothes. So then you have one good pair of wool socks, normally. Then you're going to take a shower and you walk into the bathroom in your one pair of wool socks on a really cold day.

And then suddenly they're soaked. The bottom is soaked. And you're in Ireland or something and they're not going to dry out for a week.

[Говорящий 2]
You know?

[Говорящий 1]
And then you feel, there's this emotion you feel. And you just, I don't know, you feel really angry, but you're not sure who it is yet. You're really upset at somebody.

But, no, it's real. This is real life, right? Your socks are ruined.

Your feet are going to be cold for a couple days. No matter what. You can wear them, they'll be warm, soggy.

Or you can try to dry them out and then they'll smell bad in a couple days. And so then you feel really, I don't know, what do you call it? The object of your anger isn't clear yet.

You're not quite sure who it is yet. But you're angry already. And then there's like three people in the ashram who use that bathroom.

And, you know, you walk into that. These are people, you know, they take a shower and I don't know why they leave the curtain open. It's like some kind of statement or some kind of special practice.

Abhisheka. I don't know what it is. But they can't close the shower curtain.

I don't know what it is. Or, they towel off, they step out of the shower and get the water all over and they dry themselves off there. Out of the shower.

Like, can't you just put the towel and dry yourself inside? I don't understand. I never figured it out.

So either one, they either leave the curtain open or when they're soaking they step out in front of the sink and they slowly dry off. But they make sure a lot of water doesn't escape. And then, so you know, I've had this experience.

You go to breakfast at the ashram and you're like, you're like looking for these three people. And then you sit down across from them. They're all smiling.

And you're like, OK, just tell me who it is. And I'm not going to get angry because Swamiji told us you can't get angry. I'm like, just confess, be honest.

Who was it? And they're like, why? And you're like, just tell me who took a shower this morning.

It must have been early. Who took a shower between 3 and 5 o'clock this morning? Just confess.

I won't do anything to you. And they look at each other and they're like, did you take a shower this morning? And they look at you and they say, didn't you get up this morning?

You were up kind of early. You know what I mean? And then you realize it was you.

You got up really early and took a shower. And you were so tired you didn't close the shower curtain. And then you got water all over the bathroom.

And then you stepped on it at 9 o'clock in your wool socks. You know, like 5 hours in. And then suddenly you realize it was yourself.

Can you still be angry at them? Can you still be angry at them? Is there anyone else who put water on the floor?

What you're telling me, what you just said is there's no other person who put water on the floor. Am I right? Can you get mad at another person for putting water on the floor if they are not the person who put the water on the floor?

[Говорящий 2]
Yeah, they do it all the time.

[Говорящий 1]
You must already wish they were there. But then try to get a handle on this person who's yelling at you who's not you. Try to get your hand, try to get your mind around the idea that the last person who insulted you was a direct reflection of yourself and not them.

You see what I mean? The last time you got angry at someone who said something harsh to you or harmful, hurtful? Hurt your feelings.

The last time someone hurt your feelings with something they said and you felt angry or bad towards them, you were feeling bad towards something that didn't exist. There was no such person who hurt you who wasn't coming from you. Got it?

There was no such person who hurt you who was not a direct reflection of yourself and your own behavior. You see what I mean? So, the irony of samsara, the cruelty of this system is that all your suffering is caused by being angry at things that aren't there.

That's the big, what do you call it, irony of life. That's the saddest thing of life. If it was somebody, evil guy, if there was a devil, besides us, right?

If there was a devil and you could blame for everything, it would be alright. But the irony, the saddest thing about samsara is that all the people who hurt us are direct results of ourselves. They are directly coming from us.

And we are angry at someone who's not us. We are angry at someone who did not come from how we act. Which means we're angry at nothing.

You see? We're angry at somebody who's not there. And couldn't be there.

You see what I mean? It's not so bad if there were people running around, you know, making bombs or stuff, and then you felt angry at them. I don't see that would be such a problem.

But if you go around getting angry at people who don't exist, now that's a problem. You see what I mean? That's a sad thing.

That's a, what do you call it? It's just a tragedy. That's a tragedy.

The suffering of the world is a tragedy. Because people are experiencing the results of karma they have collected by being angry at things that don't exist. People don't exist.

Got it? Tomorrow we'll do more. I used up all your question time.

I'm sorry. I'll sit around at the, what do you call it? Those picnic tables?

Under the thing. Yeah, at dinner. If you want to...

If somebody wants to ask me a question. Or if you have some question about your life or something like that. Like we, in our monastery, we spend a lot of time studying the special connections between what's happening to you and what you're doing.

You see what I mean? Like how you create certain karmas. There are beautiful explanations for everything in your life.

Every problem you are having in your life has a specific karma behind it. And you can remove it. And you can change it.

So if you have something like, if you have some challenge in your life right now and you want to know what the seed is and how to get rid of it, we can talk about that. Or if there's something you want to achieve in your life, how to plant the seeds. It's a very beautiful way to spend dinner.

So and then tomorrow I'll take questions at the beginning. If you have any questions. And then we'll keep going deeper into nirvana and how to get there.

There are many, many kinds of nirvana. And we'll talk about some of them tomorrow. We have a tradition to give away the good karma.

So if you know that weird hand thing, you can do it. If you don't, you can just go like this. And then I'll do a special prayer which is to give away the good karma that we collected tonight.

I'd like to thank so many and all the ashram for their kindness in having us again year after year. And they always treat us like royalty. You're like the only people in the world who do that.

And it's a pleasure to be here and to learn from you.