Что такое нирвана и как её достичь? (2011, Багамы), занятие 4

[Говорящий 1]
So, we've been talking about nirvana, those of you who haven't been here, and exploring what it is and how we get there. And we've been saying that nirvana was the ability to stop your negative emotions forever. Like, you would just, I mean, it's a little difficult to imagine never getting upset again, ever, or never being unhappy again, or depressed, or never being jealous of anyone, never wanting the third donut, you know, at all.

I mean, it's a little bit difficult to imagine. So, I've heard some people say it would be boring, and that life is only appreciated by the suffering to compare it to, but I think that's almost a bad word. And they say there's a school of thought that you couldn't recognize happiness without sadness, and that's not true.

It's just not true. It would be nice to be happy, and it would be nice not to ever get angry again. And there is such a thing, and that's nirvana.

So nirvana is not disappearing into some personal blissful state where you ignore everybody in the world, okay? It's not that. Nirvana is nyundri-madhubha-bhagavesa-sattvam, very famous in Buddhism.

It's the permanent ending of your negative emotions because you have seen ultimate reality directly. That's part of the definition. So, all of us here in the last couple of nights, having a great desire to reach nirvana ourselves, I mean, the part about not ever getting upset again sounds good.

So, exactly how do you carry that out in practical terms with a daily meditation? With regard to this ultimate truth thing, what does ultimate truth really mean? What is ultimate truth?

And we were talking about, it's a difficult idea. Ultimate truth is the absence of something, okay? Ultimate truth is the absence of something.

So, like, you go to Atlantis, you sneak out to Atlantis. We did it the other day, but not very well. And you take your credit card, you know?

And you don't take a lot of stuff because then everybody knows you're going to Atlantis. So, you just put a credit card in your pocket and you're going there. Any place you eat there, it's going to cost you $30 just to set foot in there.

And then you eat something, you have a nice dinner, and then they bring you the bill, and then you reach for your pocket, and you're like, oh my God, I bent over on the beach. I remember, about halfway down, you know? And it's gone.

And it's that nirvana, it's that kind of a feeling. And ultimate reality is that kind of a feeling. Something you thought was there, something you always thought was there, is gone.

And that's how we define ultimate reality. Ultimate reality is the absence of something. That's what helps it be eternal and unchanging.

Because, this is, I'm going to go through a little meat tonight, okay? The only unchanging things in the world, actually, in our system, are absences of things. Is there, we gave an example last night, is there a two-headed, 34-foot purple elephant rampaging through this temple right now?

You can say no, okay? You can say no. So, we can say there's an absence of that kind of elephant in this room, okay?

And it could never be more or less. You see, you couldn't say it was 95% absent. And then I had students who raised their hand and said, what if the elephant comes to the door and his trunk is hanging in the temple?

Then it's like, he's only 95% absent. Okay? I mean, that would be okay almost.

Except those kind of elephants don't exist anyway. You see what I mean? You can't say that, it could never be that there was 95% of a purple elephant not here, or 25%.

You see, it will always be 100% absent. Okay? Therefore, it never changes.

It doesn't vary. It doesn't get more or less absent. All right?

What helps make ultimate reality ultimate is that it never varies. It really is ultimate. And there's nothing to compare it to.

It's beyond. It's a higher reality. Okay?

And in that place, it's 100% ultimate reality. Okay? And it's never less than that.

It cannot be. Because it's the absence of something. Now get this.

Okay, ready? You have to get this. I didn't do too much last night because I didn't want to give you indigestion.

Ultimate reality is the absence of a thing which was never there in the first place. Which could not have been there. Just like a two-headed purple elephant.

All right? So ultimate reality. So I'm going to ask you a question.

Is Nirvana ultimate reality? Hmm? He said no.

Is it not an absence? Didn't we say Nirvana was the absence of something? Didn't we define Nirvana as the ending or absence of something?

Didn't we? What's the absence of? Your pleasures.

Your negative emotions. Did those ever exist? I'm proof of it.

I mean, my jealousy is classical. Okay? It's there.

Nirvana is the absence of something which certainly did exist up until the time you achieved Nirvana and then you got rid of it. So by this definition, could it be ultimate reality? No, because ultimate reality, we said, is the absence of something which was never there.

Then you know, that's all philosophy. Let's take it down to real life, okay? And we were saying someone came up to you and called you stupid, which never happens, right?

Like, someone came up to you and criticized you in some way or another. Swamiji says we meditate on pizza during our meditation time, but that's not true. We meditate on the people who criticize us.

I think the pizza is between us. So, mainly, I mean, most of us, we meditate on people who hurt us. I mean, that's a big subject for meditation, people who have hurt us in our life, right?

Let's say someone who called you stupid recently, right? And we were describing that person. We said they were coming.

We said it was to prove you're stupid if you do what? If you call them stupid back, it proves they're right. Okay?

Why? Why? Yeah, because by calling them stupid back, you plant a new karmic seed in your mind to see them call you stupid again next week.

And that's samsara. That's the meaning of samsara. Something bad happens to you, you respond negatively, and thereby plant a new seed to have the same stupid thing happen to you.

That's samsara. The irony of all of this, the tragedy of all of this we were saying, is that the person you're calling stupid is coming from you. Okay?

They're not calling you stupid by accident. It's not some random thing. Okay?

They come from a karmic seed in your mind, which who put there? There's a thing about karmic seeds. No one can put a karmic seed in anybody's mind except themselves.

That's just the rule of the universe. Okay? Nobody can put a seed in your mind except yourself.

If you want to have someone call you stupid, it is required by the universe that you call somebody else stupid first. So where did the first stupid start? Really, which came first, chicken or the egg?

What would Hinduism say? What would Buddhism say? They would say the same thing.

Logically, which came first? The person calling you stupid or you calling somebody else stupid? It's a trick question.

There is no... It's been forever. It's been forever.

Okay? There cannot be a person to call you stupid unless you have called someone else stupid. Okay?

It's not possible. And you can't call someone else stupid until they tell you you're stupid. Okay?

Both of our systems say there was no, there is no, there cannot be a beginning. Okay? We've been stupid forever.

Now, now, big question, okay? When you get angry at a person who calls you stupid, right? Can you get angry at a person who calls you stupid and at the same time entertain the knowledge that they are coming from you?

Is it possible to blame them at the same time as you know it's your fault? I mean, you can blame them 10 seconds later or 20 seconds later, but is it possible for one mind to hold the two thoughts, this person is my fault and their yelling at me is their fault? Is it possible for one human mind to hold both of those at the same time?

We say no. We say not possible. They say there's two cowboys in town, the bad guy, there's dirty Harry, and there's, I don't know, the other guy.

The mean, the bad, and the ugly. Whatever. Okay?

And then what does the one always say to the other? There ain't room in this town for both of us. You know?

Your mind is like that. You cannot simultaneously understand that the person is coming from you and blame them for calling you stupid. It's not possible.

It's just not possible. Okay? You can't think two opposite things at the same time, technically.

You can think them about a millisecond apart, but you can't think it at the same time. Not possible. In the next second you can say that, you know, you can blame them, but ignorance, vidya and ambidya cannot exist in the same mind at the same millisecond.

It's not possible. Okay? The mind cannot hold both.

So I have a question for you, and you've got to stay with me, okay? Don't space out. You can do that tomorrow during meditation.

So if a person yells at you, and you get angry at them, and you feel that it's their fault, does that person exist? Does the person who's...

[Говорящий 2]
Does the person who...

[Говорящий 1]
Yeah, does a person calling you stupid who comes from themselves exist or not? No such thing. There's no such thing.

There never was, and there couldn't be, because all things come from karma. All things come from seeds in your mind. Okay?

There is no person who ever criticized you who was coming from their side. There was never such a person. That's the meaning of maya, illusion.

Okay? There has never been such a person. The tragedy of life is all the people you get angry at don't exist.

The people you have ever gotten upset at in your life, if you could get upset at them, didn't exist. Okay? That's the tragedy.

Okay? Now understand this, and then we can move on. Understand one more thing.

The absence of a person calling you stupid who's not coming from you is the meaning of ultimate reality. And that's all. And that's it.

Okay? No more big mystery about it. I'll say it again.

The absence of a person who's calling you stupid who's not coming from you is what ultimate reality is. And that's all. And in this school, that's it.

That's ultimate reality. Alright? Got it?

If you saw that, would it help you? If you saw that, would it help you? It's the only thing that can really help you.

We say, and we went through the other viewpoints yesterday. We went through five other ultimate realities yesterday. They're helpful, but they don't stop your euclidiasis forever.

They cannot. And then back to Shyam Krishna's question. Try to grasp this.

The reason that the higher schools say you cannot drop out of nirvana is because once you... Let's say you're walking by a store. You're driving by one of the stores in Nassau on the way from the airport to here.

And you know how you're talking to somebody and you halfway see something out of the corner of your eye? And you're thinking, oh, that lady has a nice dress on. And you turn your head and you see that she's a mannequin.

You see that she's just a plastic mannequin in the store. Can you then, for the rest of the drive, desire to ask her out for a date? No, is it possible?

Is it possible that it will come into your mind to ask her out for a date? Unless you're really... Unless you went to the bar in Atlanta just before that or something.

You see, it's not possible to have that kind of wanting for her. Or to ask her for her phone number or her email address. Because you saw that she wasn't at all a person.

And the reason you can't drop out of nirvana once you reach nirvana is that it is based on seeing that the people you thought were there were never there. And you can't... How can you forget that?

How can you just suddenly decide the mannequin... How can you drive back to the store and ask her for her email? You'd have to have some huge lapse of understanding.

Okay? This is for real. This is for real.

Once you've seen directly... That's a different thing, okay? But once you've seen directly that the things and people around you are coming from you, you can't go back.

You'll never go back. You can't go back. Okay?

It doesn't happen. It's not possible. You won't drive back.

And that's why nirvana stays. That's why you stay in nirvana. So now I wanted to go on to a different subject.

We've been exploring nirvana as the end of your negative emotions. And by the way, they're also the end for the deep seeds for them. The deepest vasanas or sanskaras for those kleshas are also destroyed by vidya, but that's another subject.

Some people add that to the definition. But there's this thing... How do you say?

You know the Wheel of Life, okay? If you have a reading, okay? I put a Wheel of Life in there for you.

All right? There's a picture. What page is it?

Twenty-six. What page? Twenty-six?

[Говорящий 2]
Twenty-six.

[Говорящий 1]
Look at page 26 of your reading, okay? That's a picture, and we taught it last time we were here, a year ago. It's called Sipa-Karna or Bhavana Chakra, Samsara Chakra.

It's a painting, which was designed by the Buddha himself to illustrate how you stay in samsara, okay? And then a lot of people correctly define nirvana as the end of samsara, okay? Getting out of samsara, all right?

So, they call this the Wheel of Samsara, and we have to explore what samsara is, because you can define nirvana as moksha or mukti from samsara, okay? So what is samsara? And here you have a picture of it.

This is a picture made by, you know, for us, the best authority. Lord Buddha himself designed this painting, and it's been copied ever since. And the instructions for it are in the Vinaya Sutra, which isn't a sutra.

That's another story. It's a shastra. It's made by a human.

Anyway, in the middle, not the middle middle, but you can see five, can you see five different realms? Like about halfway in? There are five different realms.

If you look at 12 o'clock and you go to the left, you can see like two groups of people. They happen to be fighting with each other. These are the suras and the asuras.

These are the gods and the demigods, okay? The forces that people have, you know, that we've been talking about, okay? So there's a traditional conflict, permanent conflict going on between the sattvic forces and the majasic forces, the evil forces, okay?

These are, this is even represented in the wheel. You can see there's a division, and they are fighting with each other, okay? Next down on the left is the realm of animals.

Next down, six o'clock at the bottom, is the narakas, the hell realms, okay? Eight cold hells, eight hot hells, and a bunch of extra hells, okay? And then up from that on the right, three o'clock, are the realms of pretas.

Pretas are like people who couldn't stop eating Pringles in this life. And when they die, they have this insatiable desire. They are spirit beings that are difficult to see, but their essence is that they, they were so obsessed with food or things like that in this life that they are born constantly searching for food in a spirit, in a spirit being, okay?

Preta. And then the next one up, around one o'clock, those are the realms of humans, okay? Those are the realms of the humans.

So we say, what do they call it? Pancha-dhatu. This is the wheel of life.

This is the wheel of samsara. This is the wheel of five realms of suffering, okay? It doesn't matter where you're born.

How many of these realms can we see? Only two, okay? A normal human being can only see two of these realms, human and animal, okay?

The rest exist. You can perceive them in meditation. If you learn to meditate well, you can perceive them.

But I don't think it's so, it's not important for me to convince you. There are five realms. If you die, you can be born in one of those realms.

And that rebirth is sometimes called samsara, okay? Because this is the wheel of samsara. So reasonably, people have said that nirvana was not coming back ever again.

And we say there are four steps in a person's spiritual career. There are four stages that you can define. I think Swamiji today would have called it, what do you call that?

Viveka khyate. Viveka khyate, okay? A high state of realization, but not all the way.

We would say these four levels start from there. So a person who's really enjoying the fruits of their spiritual practice can be divided into four. The lowest of them is someone who just saw ultimate reality directly.

Can you see ultimate reality directly right now? We say it's not possible to see it unless you are in very, very deep meditation. Extremely deep meditation, okay?

And there's a training on how to get there. But something that's very, very useful to have that threshold experience is what I want you to meditate on tomorrow, okay? So what I want you to try tomorrow.

We've been doing these meditations every night, okay? I give you a meditation each night, you forget it, and you... No, I mean, you do it the next morning, I hope, okay?

So we started out, the first meditation was you were supposed to figure out what's your number one pleasure, you know? And I told you mine is jealousy. And I have honed it to a science, you know?

Like my mind is filled with it all day, about the smallest, stupidest things I can have jealousy about anything, you know? Because I meditate on it so, so well, okay? So, you know, the first night you were supposed to decide what's your number...

Some people said anger, some people said low self-esteem, some people said potato chip desire, you know? That's okay. Then the second night, what was it?

You were supposed to catch it coming up in your mind, or at least review the last few days and see how many times did it come up in your mind. Then we said try to get in touch with how it felt when you got it. And it feels terrible, okay?

By the way, that's the definition of a klesha, of a negative emotion in Buddhism, is a thought which disturbs the peace of mind of the person who has the thought, okay? That's the definition of a klesha. So we were supposed to, in our third meditation, we were supposed to just bring up one of your favorite kleshas and see how bad it makes you feel.

And just be aware of how it ruins your day. Your kleshas are pretty much the reason for your unhappiness throughout the day. When one comes up, you feel unhappy.

It can ruin 15 minutes of your day, it can ruin an hour, it can ruin the whole day. You get angry at one person. Somebody calls you stupid in the afternoon in the kitchen, and then you say something bad.

And then you think about it all day. And it ruins your peace of mind. As long as it's ruining your peace of mind, that's a klesha, okay?

So then we said, watch your kleshas. Just observe how bad they feel. Then we said, try to observe how good it feels when you do the opposite, right?

So the other day I was praising somebody and I was thinking, why don't you just do that, Geshe Michael, instead of being jealous of people? Because it's so joyful to tell someone how cool they are. Rather than being jealous of them.

So then we were talking about how nice. Now tomorrow, what I'd like you to try is something else, okay? Get this, okay?

I want you to review, and this will help you see emptiness directly. This will help you see ultimate reality directly. This is an exercise which could throw you into the direct perception of ultimate reality.

Try to get in touch with how the person you don't like doesn't exist and never did. Just try to get in touch with them, okay? Like the person you're jealous of, or the person who called you stupid, whose fault is not yours.

Okay, I'm adding that. Ready? Got that?

I'm adding that. For whom you are not to blame, who you didn't create, all right? Try to get in touch with the person who's calling you stupid, or that you don't like, who you didn't create yourself.

Okay, got it? Where will they be? They don't exist, okay?

But I want you to get in touch with that. I want you to feel it. Because that can trigger the direct perception of ultimate reality.

Because that is ultimate reality. The fact that the people you don't like don't exist, and never could have, is ultimate reality. Do they exist?

Yes. Do they call you stupid? Yes.

Do they come from themselves? No. So you have to be very clever, you have to be very viveka, you have to have good discrimination.

Do the people calling you stupid exist? Yes. Is that a bad thing?

Yes. Is it their fault? No.

Is the person whose fault it is out there? No, okay? Just try to get in touch with that for tomorrow's meditation, okay?

Think of someone you don't like, think of something they did to hurt you, and then try to imagine them as someone who's not your fault. And that don't exist, and it never did. And if you get good at that, you can go into the direct perception of ultimate reality, okay?

What happens then? So, in the Buddhist system, viveka khyaktya, that would be roughly viveka khyaktya, your first direct perception of ultimate reality, okay? We say that's the beginning of the way out, that's called gyunshupa.

Gyunshupa means stream enterer, someone who has entered the stream. I like to call it someone who has plopped down on the conveyor belt, okay? It means there's a conveyor belt going to nirvana.

And if you can have that peak experience, if you can see ultimate reality directly, because you practiced it a lot on the people who irritated you, okay? You see? They can be extremely useful, okay?

All the people who irritate you, meditate on the fact that they're not coming from you, and that's ultimate reality. And if you do that enough, someday, in a deep meditation, you will see ultimate reality directly. At that moment you become a conveyor belter.

They call it stream enterer, okay? It means you are in mindopa. Mindopa means there's no way you can't not get, there's no way you can't get to nirvana after that.

You are very quickly going to get to nirvana, okay? Stream enterer means if you see ultimate reality directly once, you're on the way and nothing can stop you, okay? That's called stream enterer.

Next one. There are four, right? Next one is called len chik chiro.

Say len chik chiro. Len chik means one more time. Chiro means back.

Chiro means come back. They call once returner. Comes back one time.

Where? You can say to this world, okay? You can say to this wheel, okay?

It's the kamadhatu. It's the desire realm, okay? There's a tiny part of this wheel which is not the desire realm, but we won't worry about it, okay?

Len chik chiro means they will have to take one more rebirth in this wheel, okay? In the lower part of, in the bad part of this wheel. Not as a deva.

Next one up above that is called say len chik, sorry, say chiro. Mio. Mio.

Say, say. Say chiro. Chiro.

Mio. Mio. Doesn't come back.

Someone who will not come back to the lower parts of this wheel. There's a tiny part of this wheel which is kind of cool, and you get to live there a long time as Ishvara or Brahman, okay? And that's not desire realm, but that chiro mio means you don't have to come back to the bad parts of this wheel.

You still have to come back to the wheel and you will suffer in the wheel, but at least you're like in the top 1%. That's called chiro mio. Doesn't have to come back to the lower 99%, okay?

To the desire realm part, chiro mio. After that, if you go higher in your spiritual practice, you reach a thing called arhat. Say arhat.

Arhat means enemy destroyer. The Tibetans translated it as da chomba, which means enemy destroyer. That means they saw the word arhat as being ari hat.

Ari means enemy. It's not just an Israeli name. And hat means to strike.

Hat or han. Han came into English as gun. The H changed to G, okay?

Anahata, unstruck. Ahimsa is the same root. No violence.

Okay, so arhat means to slay the enemy, to kill the enemy. Who's the enemy? Who's the enemy?

No, arhat means is the name given to someone who has reached above. That's the name we don't call nirvana because it's too hard to say. We call them enemy destroyer, foe destroyer.

They have killed the enemy. What's the enemy? Your own negative emotions.

Okay? And again, that could happen tonight and you wouldn't look different tomorrow, but you would have reached nirvana. Okay?

Get used to that. You can reach nirvana on Tuesday and still get assigned to kitchen duty on Wednesday. Or accounting, which is worse because it's permanent.

So... Okay? Alright?

Get used to that. Alright? So...

So dharcha by enemy destroyer means arhat. And in these four steps, it's defined as a person who no longer has to come back to any part of this wheel. They are beyond the wheel.

They will never have to take another rebirth, okay? And that's what you think of when somebody says escape samsara. One of the things you always hear is oh, they don't have to be reborn anymore.

And then, you know, people I've talked to, like Buddhists here, me and Jingmei were talking about it yesterday. She said, God, when I heard that, I was so scared. You know, I said, well, where am I going to come back if I don't get to be a human or a bug or I don't even get to go in the hell realms?

Well then, where am I going to be? Is it so desirable not to take rebirth? I don't know.

I grew up as a Christian. It was a big deal that you were reborn. It was supposed to be a good thing, you know.

Or, you know, come back again was supposed to be a good thing. So, if someone's trying to sell you the idea of nirvana and they say, look, it's cool. You say, why?

You say, you know, you get to not come back. And then you're like, but I want to see my mom. You know, I have a dog.

You know, I'll never hear the fourth chapter of the Gita. You know. So, by the way, it's scheduled for 2014.

So, no, I mean, there's this thing, you see, enemy destroyer is the word given for someone who has reached nirvana. And an enemy destroyer is someone who doesn't have to come back and get to the wheel anymore. So now you've got, in my mind, I used to have a big problem here.

I used to just have a big problem and I got like 14 minutes to explain why it's cool. Some people were saying nirvana means you don't have to come back anymore. And then some people were saying, no, nirvana is the end of your negative emotions.

And there are very elaborate bodies of scripture to describe each one. And then it was just confusing for me all the time. Some people are saying, there's a lot of nirvana.

When you get to nirvana you don't have to come back anymore. And you've escaped sansara. And then you've escaped this wheel and the five forms of rebirth.

I mean, they weren't too clear on what I was going to be after that. And then the other people were saying, no, no, you see ultimate reality, you stop your negative emotions. You could be sitting here tomorrow and be in nirvana.

But then these other guys say, I have to leave the wheel of life if I get to nirvana. Got the problem? You see the problem?

Half the people are saying you get to nirvana when you get out of sansara. And sansara is the five realms of rebirth. And then half the people are saying you get to nirvana when you stop your negative emotions.

So to really appreciate the answer to the problem, it's a beautiful answer. And it's a beautiful idea. You have to try to understand what rebirth is.

You have to understand what rebirth means. I'll do the pen thing. Pen?

Okay. I gotta do this fast. So you gotta hang in there.

I know it's late. They put me at the end, which is really cruel. Okay.

What is this thing? It's a pen. If a dog came in here, what would they see?

They would... A small dog would bite it, right? They would cheer.

Who's right? You can say both, basically. Okay.

Dogs leave the room. And turkeys.

[Говорящий 2]
And...

[Говорящий 1]
We were having this huge debate about whether we were turkeys anymore or not. I told Yingbo he was a turkey, either way. Anyway.

If I throw the pen here, all the dogs leave the room, all the humans leave the room, then which one is it? You can say neither. And that's shunya.

In Buddhism, that's emptiness. It's not some black hole. You just got like 20 years of teaching.

That's emptiness. Nothing more, nothing less. If I look at this object and see a pen, why do I see a pen?

Because there's a karmic student in my mind. Who put it there? Me.

How did I put it there? I gave a pen to someone who needed a pen. I showed a kindness to another person.

I gave a pen to someone who needed a pen. I watched my hand go out. It recorded everything.

There was an image of a pen put into my subconscious. That's a karmic seed. And then, you know, later, I pick up this object and I see a pen.

Okay? Question for you. Is the pen coming this way or is the pen coming this way?

You can show me with your hand. Is the pen coming this way or is the pen coming this way? It's got to be coming this way.

Why? Why? Because the dog doesn't see a pen.

Okay? It's very simple. If it was coming this way, a dog would see a pen.

Okay? It's got to be coming this way. It has to be.

I have a seed in my mind. How? Why?

I put it there. How did I put it there? I offered it to another person.

I offered a pen to another person. That's how you put a seed in your mind. Karmic seed.

So I have that seed. It opens. I see it as a pen.

It's so fast that you're not aware of it. It's so fast. This whole process, you know, karmic seed, vasana opens, projected out onto this object and you think it's a pen.

And you feel that it's coming from its own side. You really do. Okay?

But now you know it's not. Right? Because of?

Dog. It's so simple. It's so simple.

It's not a pen from its own side and it's not a cheap toy from its own side. By itself, without dogs and people, it's neither. Got it?

What's this? It's an arm. Is it coming this way or this way?

Yeah. Yeah. You're all right.

Those of you who are awake, which is about four, no, they went like this. They said, because all things are the same. Understand the pen and you understand everything.

All things. Where did we say the guy who calls you stupid is coming from? We dropped a few people.

He's also coming like that. Okay? Get used to it.

We call a synonym in Buddhism for a person who hasn't reached viveka kyate is sultang. It means someone who thinks things are coming this way. Okay?

So, they are coming this way. Things are coming this way. If I had not reached out to help other people with my hands and arms, okay?

Get this. If I had not in my past reached out to help people who needed help with these limbs, I would be seeing a paw. No.

Try to grasp that. It's true. If I had not helped people with these limbs, I would be seeing a paw.

[Говорящий 2]
Okay?

[Говорящий 1]
Sorry? Say again?

[Говорящий 2]
Now you see.

[Говорящий 1]
Oh, good. Yeah. Where would the paw come from?

We would say like being cruel, ignorant. Most animals, I mean you can what do you call them? You can fabulize animals.

But in general, birds fly away when you come close because all animals kill each other indiscriminately, constantly. Their life is a story of looking over their shoulder and not getting eaten by another animal. That's their life.

So the essence of if I see a paw here, it's probably because I was indiscriminately disrespectful of all life. I ate meat. I killed animals.

You see? And then that put a seed in my mind and I see a paw where someone who reached out and helped people is seeing an arm. Same object.

Try to feel that. Try to get that feeling. Same object.

Is seen in two different ways by two different people who have different seeds in their mind. Okay? Now, stay with me, okay?

What is it to be reborn? What has to happen? Do you have to get in the shuttle and fly off somewhere?

What is it to be born as an animal? What's required? What's required?

How long does it take to be reborn as an animal? After you die, how long does it take to be reborn as an animal? What makes you an animal?

It's just a change in your vastness. It's a 10 second change in your vastness. It takes 10 seconds to go from human to animal.

That's all. You breathe your last breath, 10 seconds later you're seeing it as a paw. It's the same thing.

They didn't take you and stuffed your soul into a dog body. There's not any factory in Kansas that's producing dog bodies. And then people are out with big nets catching souls and grabbing them and shoving them into a dog body.

Try to understand how dangerous the situation is. What the great danger you and I are in all the time. It takes 10 seconds for the vastness to change.

You could be an animal by... In 3 minutes from now you could be in an animal realm. It's just the karmic seed has shifted.

A tiny seed, the size of the pin of a needle has shifted in your mind and you're an animal. You don't have to die, wander around and look for a body and go to Kansas and get a dog body. It's not like that.

That's all a wrong idea. That image of samsara is wrong. There are not 5 realms.

There isn't like 5 places somewhere and there's a map and if you had the right map you wouldn't have to go there. There is no places. There are no places.

You die, your karmic seeds stop, 10 seconds later you're seeing things in a different way. And that means you were born as an animal. And that's the animal realm.

And it's just a perception. It's a shift in perceptions. That same shift occurs when I turn my head.

Your seeds in your mind shift more than it takes to be born as a dog. When I turn my head. I'm not turning my head.

Your seeds are shifting. Your karmas are shifting. I'm not turning my head.

It's easier to be born as a dog than to see me turn my head. It requires less change in your vastness. It's frightening.

We're in that situation all the time. We're always on the verge of dying. And dying is just the seeds wore out.

And then you're on the verge of being something else. And that's... It takes a few seconds and you're in another realm.

Because there is no other realm. It's just... It's a new thing like that.

It's very dangerous. The life we're living is very... If you don't listen to the Gita well and you don't get your ass in gear then you're in a very dangerous situation.

Getting liberated is not like a... What do you call it? A luxury for people who have the money to come here.

It's like if you don't get it going you must die. The Abbasidists that are supporting your vision of this life right now are very fragile. And they move fast.

Especially religious ones. To be in a good ashram is expensive. Extremely expensive.

And those karmas are used up. That's like burning a credit card. It's very expensive to be here.

To have Swamiji be in your life is extremely expensive. It is the most... The most expensive karma there is is to have a sweet, authentic teacher.

It is the most expensive karma in the universe. There is no more expensive karma. To maintain Swamiji or your heart teacher in your life, if you're not doing really good stuff all the time they will leave.

You can't sustain it. It's too expensive. It requires too many good deeds to keep them here.

So anyway, I've got two minutes. I'm going to ask you a question. Do you see a bridge now between the two ideas of what nirvana is?

I'll say them again. One school says if you can stop your negative emotions you have reached nirvana. The other school says if you reach a place where you don't have to come back to the suffering realm of samsara you have reached nirvana.

Are they related? You see? Then there is this great unification of the two ideas.

You see? The world is created by impressions. The world you see is created by your negativities.

You see? You cannot come back here if you remove them. He wants to know what's left.

In one minute he wants to know what's left. What do you think? If your karmic seeds were completely pure where would you go?

What would you see? You see, I talked about going down. I see this other stick as a paw.

What if you go the other way? Light. Yeah, light.

It's light. Light itself. Try to grab the light.

I got light coming down on my bald head. Me and Shankar. And you can't touch it.

You see, your body will be made of a substance very similar to that. Your body will be made of that. No more dirt.

And the cool thing about that body which is what we said before is that you can multiply it billions of times in every moment of your existence. From then on you can split off bodies to take care of whole planets. Billions of planets.

You can split off enough bodies to take care of billions of planets in a second. You can take care... I mean the big human need the desire of all humanity is to take care of other people.

Deep down the biggest desire even more than pizza and sets is to take care of other people. You want it so bad and you really really it's so enjoyable. It's the highest pleasure.

When your body changes which just means your vastness changes, right? Then you can take care of billions of planets at the same time. You could be the Shankar, Adi Shankar of a whole planet.

Of billions of planets at the same time. That's cool. That's really cool.

And it's possible because of this. So what's that? Your mind is just projecting a paradise.

It's nice. Is it there? Oh.

We say there are physical and there are mental and there are ultimate reality parts to an enlightened being. An enlightened being is made of three parts. One is physical.

One is mental. And one is the ultimate nature of their being. So you will be all three.

Physically you will be a being of light who can appear on a billion planets to take care of all of the people there at the same time. Physically. Mentally you see all past, all future.

Which makes you very good at really taking care of people. And then your essence is of ultimate reality. At the same time.

You are those three things at the same time. Cool? That's what we call Parinirvana.

That's like Super Nirvana. Nirvana is not the same as Super Nirvana. Got it?

So I think what I wanted to do tonight was somehow reconcile the two versions of Nirvana. One which said that you don't have to come back here. And the other said you're going to get rid of all your negative thoughts.

And then what I want you to get is that where you come back is created by your negative thoughts. It has to be created by that. When you turn a page of a book there's nothing on the page.

As your eyes cross the line it creates the words you see. You have written every book you've ever read as you read it. Like throwing stones down to walk over.

You see? Every movie you ever saw you created the next frame from your own karma. So you've got to see Adjustment Bureau.

You've got to see it.

[Говорящий 2]
I'd like to thank very much Geshe Michael Roach. Let's give him a big hand. Also to Mercedes for the singing.

Geshe Michael Roach will continue tomorrow evening with the program on What is Nirvana. And tomorrow will be the last lecture in this program.