Погружение в нирвану (2012, Нью-Йорк и Багамы), занятие 1

[Speaker 1]
So like, I don't know, 15 years ago, I got a phone call. I was living in New York, and this guy said, Hi, I'm Swami, Swami Paramahamsa. And just to hear the word Swami, I was kind of like, How are you?

Swami Paramahamsa. And he said, I live in the Sivananda Center, in the Bahamas. So I didn't know where the Bahamas was.

I knew it was some island. And then he said, we're having an interfaith program. And it was basically our token Buddhist cats about us.

And we got your name. Do you want to be the token Buddhist? And I was like, no.

And then we were working really hard on the Internet. He released a list of ancient books on CD. And we were really, really busy.

There was a team of five people working on Sixth Street. So we were like working night and day. Then he called me again.

Oh, please come. I said, I can't. I got a deadline.

We have to finish this DVD. It has a thousand ancient books on it. So it was a lot of work.

And I said, we just don't have time. We've got to finish this. He said, OK, look, how many people are in your office?

And I said, five. He said, we'll fly you all down. You stay in my houseboat.

He has a houseboat on the bay. And all five of you can stay in the houseboat. I'll move out.

And you can keep working on the CD while you're in the houseboat. And then you just have to come out for an hour and talk a couple of times. And I'm like, OK.

And so we went. It was really funny. Robert Chilton, I think Prince Oak was there.

I think Mama Laura was there. It was cute. And we finished the CD on the houseboat.

And we went swimming. But then I got to know them. And so I've been going every year.

Except for the three-year retreat. I think I've gone every year to talk there. And it's been very nice.

We did the Yoga Sutra. We team-taught the Yoga Sutra. And then Hatha Yoga Deepika, some of that.

And it was interesting because they're hardcore Advaita Hindu Shankara system, you know. And we're hardcore Buddhist Tibetan, you know. But a thousand years ago, we all used to be together.

We all used to practice together. Then some of us went to Tibet. And then the British came to India.

But anyway, now we're sort of getting back together. And it's been very sweet. And we're both really hardcore.

Swamiji is a great teacher. He was trained directly by Swami Vishnu Devananda, who's the student of Sivananda. He lived with him for like 30 years.

And I lived with my lama for 25 years. So we're hardcore. And it's kind of a sweet relationship, you know.

And so anyway, he's like, well, what do we do next year? So we finished all the sutras and stuff. And I said, well, I'd like to teach Nirvana.

I'd like to teach about Nirvana. So last year at this time, I taught about Nirvana, you know. And then he was, well, what are we going to do next year, you know.

And I'm like, you know, Swamiji, I got more demands on my time now than I used to have, you know. And I don't know if I can come down here for 10 days or 7 days, you know. Could we do half the program in New York, with your center in New York, and then half the program in the Bahamas?

So then I'd have only, I'll make all my New York students happy. And then I only have to come here for 3 days. I was kind of tricking him.

And he said, okay. And so we had this idea that, you know, we would keep going on the subject of Nirvana. And we would do 3 days in New York.

Hopefully Swami Sardar Sivabhadra, who's a great teacher, will be coming tomorrow here from the center in New York. He runs the Sivananda Center in New York. These centers are old.

We just went to the one in Montreal that just had its 50th anniversary. And they cranked out 10,000 yoga teachers. They just finished their 10,000th person, month-long yoga training.

And it's a beautiful training. And it's a good lineage, very good lineage. And they're all celibate in the Bahamas.

And it's kind of nice to be there. And they're all very beautiful people. They're all ex-Israeli intelligence officers.

Mossad, right? But they're beautiful. They're kind of cool.

And they're really intense people. It's a pleasure to be there. Also, they have this white beach with turquoise water.

It's never choppy. You know, you can see your feet and all the fish under there. And it's really beautiful.

It was a coconut grove 40 years ago. And some lady gave it to Swami Vishnu Devananda. The Atlantis Hotel chain and Club Med on one side, and George Harrison's estate on the other side.

And so they're, like, trying to get the land away from the yogis. Because they just have these little cottages and huts and tents. So there they are next to Michael Jackson.

What's her name? Oprah Winfrey. Atlantis Hotel.

George Harrison. And then there's this little ashram. And they're trying to take the land away.

And the government stopped it. Because the government in the Bahamas, a lot of them come to the yoga ashram. A lot of them.

Like, the current prime minister was a student there. So, it's cool. It's kind of sweet.

And they're really... I love the place. It's a good place.

They have good yoga programs. And they're especially good at kriyas. You know, like, throwing up on the beach and stuff.

I heard there were tourists walking down the ladder. They were throwing up on the beach.

[Speaker 2]
They were like, Oh, the tourists are very good, but I should go home. And...

[Speaker 1]
Let's see. Kandasana. I think you call it Kandasana.

It's a practice, okay? We're not going to do it. So, anyway.

They all agree, the two Swamis will teach. You know, we will hear the two Swamis. So, I'll teach down there also.

So, the idea is tonight, Wednesday, Thursday night here in New York. And then we go down on Friday. We fly down on Friday.

Then I'll start Friday night teaching. And then we'll do Friday, Saturday, Sunday. Come back Monday morning.

Something like that. Okay? The cottages there are booked out.

I believe there's some tent space left. Right? Talk to Sukuna.

You want to raise your hand? So, she's in charge of the Bahamas segment. You can still get into a tent.

The tents are comfortable. They're nice. It's on a perfect white beach.

There'll probably be a hurricane. I don't know. It's not just our program.

They have a teacher training running at the same time. Two teacher trainings. Two teacher trainings running.

So, anyway, they're pretty heavily booked. It's good. Great yoga.

We'll do yoga today. We'll do yoga every day together. And meditation.

And they do all this chanting. We stole most of our chants from them. But we do them better.

And then... You'll like it. And the idea is...

Me and Swami... The two Swamis... We thought we would like to work on...

Nirvana is defined in the Tibetan tradition as a... Nirvana means you're negatively conscious. Like jealousy, anger, judging other people, addictions.

These are called nirvana. Malupa means all of them. Pampa means to get rid of them.

Sosatango means... You're able to get rid of them because you saw the true nature of reality. According to the Buddhist idea, you can get rid of a negative emotion without seeing ultimate reality directly.

It's not possible. You can suppress it. You can suppress your anger.

You can suppress your jealousy. You can manage your addictions. But you can't get rid of them permanently.

Unless you understand reality. And I think the Yoga Sutra would say the same thing. Yoga means stopping your misunderstanding of reality.

And then Yoga Sutra also gives the big kleshas in their tradition. So in both traditions we believe that there are negative emotions. Those are called kleshas.

In Sanskrit, they're called klesha. Klesha has... The word klesh is the root.

And it has a codename in English which is holly. Which means prickly. And klesha means an emotion which bothers you.

The definition of klesha in Buddhist tradition is any thought which upsets the peace of mind of the person who has it. So nirvana is to stop those thoughts forever. Your husband would be incapable of upsetting you.

If you reach nirvana, your husband would not be capable of upsetting you. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn't get you upset. That's nirvana.

It's not the same as enlightenment. Nirvana happens long before enlightenment. Nirvana is when you can shut down your negative emotions forever because you understand reality.

And then Buddhahood comes much later. Enlightenment comes much later. Enlightenment includes the capacity to see all things in the universe in all times.

And nirvana happens a lot longer before that. We're just shooting for nirvana this week. We'll get to enlightenment at some later time.

So the way of this thing about dealing with your negativities, the emotions that bother you are klesha, right? Bother. There's a trick to it.

This week, you will learn. And I'm assuming some people won't get down to Bahamas, so I'll give you a nice package in the three days. So no stress, okay?

We'll cover this stuff in the first three days. And then we'll just keep going. We'll go deeper in the Bahamas, but especially offshore.

But it'll be enough if you do the first three days. We'll be okay. We're going to present a method of dealing with your own worst negative emotion.

It's a new idea of how to deal with our own worst negative emotion. How to turn it around. And they make us unhappy, okay?

That's the point. That's why I came back to New York so soon. Normally I wait six months or something.

It's a beautiful subject because the point is, by the end of this week, can we be happier? You see? Because those kleshas, those negative emotions, they ruin your happiness.

Mashivacheva. Mashivacheva means ashanti. Ashanti.

Destroys your peace of mind, okay? It makes you unhappy. It makes you stressed.

It gives you anxiety. It ruins your happiness, okay? And, you know, life goes on.

Life is moving on. We're all going through our lives. And it's sad to be unhappy if we could be happy, right?

So, my goal in this course, I could drown you with scriptural knowledge about nirvana, okay? But I just want to make you happier by the end of the week, okay? So, I'll take the cream.

What do you call it? The cream of the cream from the teachings on nirvana, which are extensive. I mean, we could do it for a year or two.

But I'll take the cream. And the cream, the purpose of the cream, is to give you a method for managing your own worst emotions, okay? So, I was talking today at the Three Jewels, and I said, you know, I wasn't a big gang fighter when I was a kid, but I got in a few.

And there was a thing in a gang fight. You go after the leader of the other gang, you know. Basically, you just run up to him and punch him in the head.

And then he falls down and they all fall apart. The whole resistance falls apart. And then you can just walk all over.

It's all over. Actually, it got done to us more than we did it to others. But somebody would come up and punch my older brother, and our gang would fall apart.

So anyway, if you can deal with your most common negativity, then the rest will crumble. If you have a new approach to dealing with your most serious negativity, then the rest will crumble. You just got to get to the worst one first.

You hit the first one. You hit the meanest one first. And then the rest don't...

It's a new system, okay? They can't stand up. So, that means we have to identify your worst pleasure.

There are 84,000 pleasures. Then there's a teaching that narrows it down to 20-something. Then Mama Kimberly and I worked on it.

We figured 84,000 was a little much in three days. So we worked out what we felt. We voted for you the six biggest negative emotions of modern times.

It's a little different from the Sanyin Duk, the six classical ones. We talked for a long time. We both talked for a long time.

I saw her on Saturday. We've been working for a few months. Actually, we started in August on this program.

So tonight, we'll do six short sessions in between the Blah Blah by Geshe Michael. We'll do six short sessions of meditation. And it's sort of an introspection.

So I'll propose a candidate for your worst negativity. And then you're going to examine your heart and see when was the last time you had it. And we'll go through the six that we have chosen.

And then I'd like you, by the end of the night, we'll try to have you choose one of the six that you'd like to work on for this week. So we could sit. I could read you scriptures about Nirvana.

They are interesting. They're very, very beautiful. They're like going to the...

What's the big museum of modern... Not the other one. The Met.

It's like going to the Met. If you go to a scripture... And I have 8 million pages in my laptop.

Right? This is the 25th year that we are typing scripture in the refugee camps. And I could walk you through those places and you would love it.

It's like... I don't know. They're like classic pieces of art.

They are beautiful. It's like going to the Louvre or something. And you can just stand in one room and see Rodin the whole day and not go to another room.

You can go back for many days. We can do that. But it won't help your...

I'm afraid it won't be applied to ourselves. So I'm going to stop. I'll give you the cream of...

I'll give you the best paintings there are about Nirvana. Maybe we have to do more, okay, someday. There's more.

There's like hundreds and hundreds of beautiful pages about Nirvana. But then I think we should pause. And me too.

And we should try to look inside and see which klesha is making you unhappy right now in your life, okay? If you could remove the gay leader klesha in your heart you'd be twice as happy tomorrow, okay? And isn't that why we're here, right?

That's the whole point of being here. So I'm trying to... We tried, we worked really hard with both the Swamijis and Mama Kimberly and Nicole and everybody.

What we want is that by the end of the week you've made some progress and I've made some progress on our worst klesha, our worst negativity. And maybe turn it around. Each negativity has a corresponding positive thing, right?

It's interesting that whatever negativity you have if you can work on it, it will become a strength. Your weakness, your worst weakness will become your greatest strength. That's the nature of kleshas.

Is this going?

[Speaker 2]
It's set to 50.

[Speaker 1]
It's set to... I'm really sorry about the heat. Hang in there.

I guess it kicks in around 10. I don't like it. I like to freeze the audience because they pay attention.

But anyway, your biggest weakness can become your greatest strength. For example, Hector introduced me last time I was here. Last year at the school, he said, the first Western geshe.

I wasn't the first Western geshe. There was another one. His name is George Dreyfuss.

He's from Switzerland. Some people always introduce me as the first American geshe. But I'm not the first Western geshe.

There was another one before me. He stayed a lot in my monastery. He stayed in the wrong part of St. James. I would go out and roar in debates. I'd come home and sit and drink tea with my teachers. And they'd say, You're amazing.

You're almost as good as George. And I was like, Who is this George? Who is this George guy?

And they'd say, You can't touch him. At least I hope you never get introduced to him. And I was like, So I hated him.

Long distance. I never went to his... It takes like 20 minutes to walk across the monastery.

And I never went to his part. And then, I don't know, We were having a class one day and they were talking about jealousy. And then you have this light come on in your head.

Hopefully you'll have a light come on in your head this week. Then I'm like, You know, I'm jealous. Like, it's a big revelation.

People, if you ask a person their worst emotion, they will admit their second worst. And they're blind to the worst. It's very interesting.

Then one day, I don't know what happened. Probably somebody hit me on the head with a cup, say. But I was like, Dang, I'm jealous of him.

I don't like him. And there's no reason I never met him. So I said, I'm going to go meet George.

And I got together some Tibetan Swedes and some scarves. You're supposed to take a scarf. And I went and knocked on his door.

And he's like, Oh, you're Michael. And I'm like, Yes. And he said, I heard about you.

Come in. And then I sat down. And there's this tense three minutes when I'm like checking him out.

He seems a pretty nice guy, actually. And the upshot is that we became very good friends. So your greatest weakness can become your greatest strength.

And we supported each other. And we helped each other. And we snuck secret texts to each other.

And we became really tight. If you can take your worst klesha and work on it, it can become a great strength. So we became like brothers.

And we became very supportive of each other. And we both rose through the ranks because we had each other to help each other. And so it's like that.

Your greatest weakness can become your greatest strength. Now I'm happy when I hear he's doing well. So hopefully by the end of the week, we can stop working on the negativity and start developing the opposite.

You see, the opposite of jealousy is to take pleasure in the achievements of others. And that's a lot of fun. So I don't want to spend a whole week beating yourself up about your jealousy.

About halfway through this dream, we will hopefully change it to the opposite. And by the end of the week, I don't just want you to be a jealousy controller. I want you to be a celebrationer.

I want you to go to the other extreme and become someone who really appreciates other people's achievements and is happy when you hear that someone is doing well. So we have to examine our hearts. So tonight I'll keep stopping and I'll propose a candidate for your worst pleasure.

By the end of the night, I'd like you to see which one clicks in you. And we'll work on that. We could be doing 12 other ones.

The possibilities are endless. But we've sort of tailored the program to six candidates, one of which you probably have, even if it's not your favorite. Okay?

And I want you to take these teachings and apply them to yourselves, each of us. It's very common to apply them to the person you don't like next to you. You know, like, you hear a talk on jealousy and you're like, she could use a talk on jealousy.

You know, like, you want to take her out to dinner and say, I heard some good methods today for working on your jealousy. So be aware of these mental tricks. Your mind will play tricks on you.

Okay? First of all, it will not admit the one that you are the worst at. And secondly, it will try to apply these medicines to your neighbor and not to yourself.

So be aware of those two things. It's not inappropriate this week, in the next few days, to approach people who know you well. Okay?

Your friends. And say, you know, I'm on this sort of self-help week thing and I was wondering if here's the six emotions that they're talking about. Which one do you think applies to me?

Okay? Like, people that you trust and people who aren't trying to hurt you. People that you love.

People that you love enough to ask the truth from them. Okay? Then ask them in the next few days.

Say, here are six emotions. Emotions? Which one do you...

I'm supposed to pick one. I'm assigned to pick one of them. Which one do you think applies best to me?

And then listen to them. And don't be angry at them. Okay?

Don't be upset at them. Okay? People ask me all the time, they say I waste my kids' fault.

And I'm like, I don't know.

[Speaker 2]
Because I don't want them to be...

[Speaker 1]
I don't want them to be mad at me or dislike me. Someone that you feel... that you trust.

And someone that you know loves you enough to tell you the truth. Then ask them. Here's six.

You can list the six. The six I've listed here. I'll tell you the six and we're going to work on them.

We'll start going through them. Again, these are just candidates. There are 83,994 others.

But let's work on... Let's see which one applies to you. Okay?

So the exercise begins now. You're going to hear six emotions. And try to see which one.

I'm not trying to make you feel bad. I'm trying to make you happy. I'm trying to get rid of the one that's hurting you the most.

And they do. They ruin your life. They make your whole life...

You can spend 20 years and they will ruin your life. You'll make an unhappy person. So if we could get over them, it's me.

I'm proposing that I can give you a secret weapon. A secret method. Of getting rid of the one, the chronic emotional disease that you've had for your whole life.

I could help you. But we have to choose it. Here we go.

Number one. Yes. But my number one would be...

Jealousy. Envy. In all its glorious forms.

Just don't tell me about some good teacher who's coming in next week. Because then I have to smile. Alright.

I'm really glad. Number two. Anger.

Anger. Some people think they don't have them at all. You just didn't meet the right circumstances.

Now they say every human soul has all 84,000. And if you're not manifesting it right now, it's because you don't have a partner right now or something like that.

[Speaker 2]
Okay?

[Speaker 1]
It's not that you've gone over it. I'm not jealous of R. Angle because he moved away.

[Speaker 2]
Okay. Alright.

[Speaker 1]
Anger. Let me show you. Addictions.

We put S, okay? Addictions to, like, alcohol, drugs, food, sex, talking, email. Okay?

Compulsive behavior of some kind. You can't stop yourself from doing it. And it's not good for you that you keep doing it.

Emailing on the internet over an hour and a half is not good for almost anybody. Can you stop when you want? You see?

Or can't you? Can you stop being when you're full? Or can't you?

You see? Do you take a glass of wine and do you have to have a second glass of wine the next day and has it become a habit that you can't stop? Okay.

Compulsions. Addiction. Okay.

Number four. Busyness. Okay?

Trying to do too many things. That seems to be the line. The more time-saving electronics we invent, the more busy we get.

Time management problems. Busyness. Nervous.

Anxious. Because too many things to do. And blaming it on others.

Right? Like, it's all self-imposed. Right?

Your busyness is self-imposed. You want to be busy. And you make yourself more and more busy until you're unhappy.

Okay? Next one. Judging other people.

My grandma told me many times that's probably my number two. The second best one I do. Okay?

And these are, you know, maybe judging other people you're not aware that you're doing it often. Right? But you are constantly, all the time, you know, constantly, constantly, constantly judging other people.

Making assumptions about people based on what someone said or what they look like. Like that. There's a big Mongolian guy.

Do you know Ulumcha P. Kichigo? This is his sister.

Chimila's sister. Brother. So, you know, he's sitting with my...

He's a big Mongolian guy. He used to come over to the temple in New Jersey every night to eat momos. We had to make 35 extra.

And he would just eat them. And they take a long time to make. These are our dumplings.

And he would just polish them off. So one time my stepmother came to visit me. And she's sitting at the table and she's trying to make conversation with Ulumcha.

And he's like, Well, Ulumcha, you know, what do you do? You know, what do you do for a job? I'm like, I'm like giving her signs, you know, don't even try, you know.

He just eats. And then she says, Well, I'm going to New York tomorrow to hear the opera. And he's like, Opera?

You know, and she's like, Yeah, opera. And he's like, Oh, you've got to see the Puchiga. I was there last week, you know.

I have season tickets. I go three times a week, you know. And the Italian one, the lead guy, he's like, Oh, unbelievable.

You've got to hear this guy. I'll take you, you know. I know the guy.

And we're all like... And then we had this serious conversation about opera. And, you know, French opera and stuff.

And I'm like, you know. And we judge people, right? We judge people.

We make up stories about people. And then we force them into that story. So I think judging other people is a very common one.

Last one. Procrastination. Laziness.

Putting things off. Not doing what you know you should be doing. For me, it's in the form of misprioritizing things, you know.

Like, I do have to eat dessert sometime today. But somehow it gets done before the homework for tomorrow night, you know. We'll talk about that later.

Like, misprioritizing things, you know. Which all of us do, I think, you know. Maybe you're a person who can get things done.

But you're not really attacking the most important things first.

[Speaker 2]
Right?

[Speaker 1]
Your practice is most important, and you put it off. I can't do yoga today because I have to, you know, call somebody or something like that. Like that.

So these are the six. We have six? Okay, I'm going to stop there.

And we're going to do a short meditation. And we'll do this six times tonight. When I'm in a jealous, what do you call it?

Binge. When I have a jealousy binge. I don't do alcohol binges, I do jealousy binges.

And I spend much more time thinking about how I wish this person didn't have what I don't want them to have than I think about the things that I have already. You know, like I have precious, beautiful, happy things. And I think about them less than I think about what I don't have.

See what I mean? This is the disease of jealousy. All right, I'm going to just intersperse those with Nirvana.

So we're going to go through the classical presentation of Nirvana. And then we'll start applying it to our own emotion, to our own creation. Okay?

Okay. I think it's useful to look at the word Nirvana. Okay?

I like words. And I like the word Nirvana. And it has three distinct meanings.

The word Nirvana has three different meanings. And I think they tie well into our project to remove our own worst negativity. Okay?

The three ways of explaining the word Nirvana themselves give us a lot of information about how Geshe Michael is going to deal with his jealousy. Okay? First one.

Okay? And I'm also following your homework. Okay?

I want you to do the homework. There's five easy questions. It's not a big deal.

Why homework? What we're offering in this course is, I mean, first of all, to deal with your own negativities. But secondly, in the monastery, it's a tradition that once you listen to a teaching, you are the holder of that teaching.

I'm treating you. Okay? I'm dumping it on you.

Okay? You're the next many holders. Alright?

When I finish this Nirvana talk, I'm done with it in New York. Then it's your problem. Okay?

You have to pass it on to other people. Alright? That's the tradition in the monastery.

It's a... Some people don't come to a teaching because they don't want to be... They don't want that responsibility.

They're aware that it's a heavy responsibility. Okay? This teaching on Nirvana has been passed on for 75 generations.

Two and a half thousand years. We can recite the names of each lineage holder back to the Buddha. There's a few gaps, okay, around the 600s.

Okay? I don't know exactly the guy's name. But I can show you the list of names back to Lord Buddha.

Okay? And they didn't lose the lineage. Now it's your problem.

And it's like passing on a recipe for a cure for AIDS. It's that important. Okay?

I'm giving you the recipe that can cure something which is worse than AIDS. Okay? And that's precious.

Alright? And if you mess around with the recipe or you don't get it straight, it's like making a good cocktail. You know?

I don't know, but I'm sure there are masters of it in the world. And it takes a certain amount of this and a certain amount of this. And maybe you have to add elderflower liqueur as the, try to find that, as the final touch.

You know, that makes it just right. And then you have to listen carefully when they tell you the recipe. You have to follow the instructions carefully.

Nirvana is like that. So I'm going to give you detailed instructions on nirvana. And you have good, authentic reading.

Okay? But the homework kind of forces you to see that you got the important points. Okay?

There's five questions on the homework. Those are the points I don't want you to screw up. Okay?

You miss one of those, then that thing's going to taste terrible. Or give somebody a headache. Or something like that.

Okay? So like, you have to, at least those five points you have to get straight. And then you're okay.

Then you'll be a good lineage holder. And I want you to hold the lineage. And I want you to pass it on.

So for me, you coming here is a statement that you are willing to take on that responsibility. It's a serious responsibility. Hasn't been broken in 2,000 years.

25 centuries. Don't be the schmuck who screws it up. Okay?

Like, get it right. Okay? Agree?

Mazab? Mazab. Okay.

We were at the Three Jewels today. It's a beautiful place to teach. Okay?

And I encourage all of you. All of you should teach. Okay?

And it's such a nice place to break in to teaching. Like, you're kind of shy. And you don't really know any place that you could teach.

And you never taught a group of people. Go to the Three Jewels. Where's Nancy Kerr?

Is she here? She's over there. Can you stand up?

She's the director of the Three Jewels. Michael Wake in the back. Can you stand up?

If you would like to teach, talk to them. Okay? They have free spaces.

It's open. It's free. They don't charge you anything.

They give you a chance to teach something. They help you make the posters. They help you send out the announcements.

You know? We have a class at Dynamon University about how to make a sexy poster about a tarp. See what I mean?

Not too many words. Not too few. You know, like that.

Find a good image off of Google. Make sure it's not copyrighted. Stuff like that.

You know? And I encourage you to approach the Three Jewels. Okay?

If you're not teaching now, think about teaching. Okay? It could be anything.

Anything you think is useful for people. You know, we have classes in French cooking. We have, you know, how to not be jealous when you're French cooking.

And then we have all kinds of... Every time we have a program in Phoenix, we have a class on solar energy. And we have different experts come and teach solar energy.

And then we have the last program two weeks ago? Two weekends ago. We had a prison training.

We had a two-hour training to work in prisons and teach in prisons. And, you know, we have a great program there. So think about it.

Okay? Do it. Come up with some cool thing that you want to share with people and talk to them.

And it's free. And just go. You might get the 6 a.m. slot on Wednesdays, but that's okay. And I want... I call it a toolkit. I want you to have a toolkit of different cool stuff that you can teach.

[Speaker 2]
Okay?

[Speaker 1]
And Nirvana should be in there after this week. Okay? You should...

Somebody said, you want to come to the Three Jewels and teach? You say, yeah. And they say, what do you have in your toolkit?

And you say, I can teach Nirvana. I did the homework. I listened to everything carefully.

I got it straight. I can teach Nirvana. I can teach the first three days of it anyway.

Okay? Okay? By the way, if someone goes to a wellness and comes back and you couldn't go, then obviously you should drag them to the Three Jewels and learn the second three days from somebody.

Okay? Maybe we can set that up. Because not everybody may be able to go.

All right. So the first meaning of Nirvana. Nir comes...

is a prefix. That is... The R used to be an S.

Before V, the S changes to R. So it was nis. And it comes from an older prefix called ni.

It's just N-I.

[Speaker 2]
Okay?

[Speaker 1]
N-I is a prefix in Sanskrit. And it has the meaning of down or not or away. Okay?

So the near part in Nirvana means down, out, away. And it came into English in the word nil, which means what? It's like zero or nothing or neither.

You can see it in the word neither. Actually the word nether, like netherland, netherlands, the lower lands. It means lower.

It means out. It means away. It means not.

Nir. The nir means that. Va.

And in Sanskrit, they don't have a real V. It's more like a va. Va.

Okay, Nirvana. There can be a short A or there can be a long A. This happens to be a long A.

Okay? Va. And that means to blow.

Okay? Long va means to blow. Okay?

So, under A-N-A is a suffix in ending that means the one who does that thing. Okay? Like a comedian does comedy.

Mathematician does mathematics. Okay? It came into English also.

So, Nir. Nirvana. Nir.

Va. Ana. Means the one who blows out a fire or a candle.

Okay? What's the fire? Geshe Michael's jealousy.

[Speaker 2]
Okay?

[Speaker 1]
All right? One of those six is the fire. And it's a real fire.

It makes you unhappy. It ruins your life. It makes you spend your days unhappy.

It ruins your time. It spoils your party. Life should be like a party and your place should spoil it all day long.

You know? If you didn't have them, you wouldn't miss them. They don't do anything useful.

Okay? They just make your day less joyful than it could have been. And they do that year after year after year.

So, Nir. Va. Ana.

Means blow out. Blow out those things. Extinguish them.

And the idea is permanently. Okay? It's not true that Buddhism denies permanency.

Okay? It's not true that everything is impermanent. If you can blow, if you can reach Nirvana, it's permanent.

They never come back. You can't have them again. Okay?

There's a method which is why we're here. And by the end of Thursday night, you will have that method. Whether you apply it to yourself is another thing, right?

But I will give you a method by which you can blow out your worst negativity forever. It won't come back. There are ways to reduce a negativity or to suppress it.

Meditation is one of them. Okay? Peaceful meditations and a yoga, a good yoga class.

Okay? They make you feel better for a while. You know, you can go into a good yoga class.

I had one this afternoon, right? We had a nice one at the Three Jewels. And you can go in feeling cranky or, you know, upset and you sweat and you work hard.

Or you can do a nice long meditation and you breathe well and you get calm. Right? And that will suppress negative emotions for a while.

You know? Then you get in your car, moving the traffic. Three really...

I almost used a bad word. Three irritating people cut you off. And then suddenly the effects of the yoga are gone.

Or you're at work and you've got your employees effing up. You know? Suddenly all the meditation dissolves and you get angry.

Irritated. These are temporary methods. I'm going to teach you the ultimate one.

Okay? That doesn't suppress it. It removes it.

And it can't come back.

[Speaker 2]
Okay?

[Speaker 1]
And it's difficult to imagine what your life would be without your kleshas. It's difficult to imagine what life would be if you could not get upset. Or you could not get jealous.

Or you could not get angry. Or you had no addictions at all. Okay?

It's hard to imagine. But I think you'll get a taste of it by the end of this week. Okay?

And then you'll get addicted to that.

[Speaker 2]
Okay?

[Speaker 1]
You get addicted to not having addictions. And it's sweet. And you feel happy.

And you feel lighter. And suddenly life is is much more bright and happy and more sunny. Everything is magical and fresh.

And you just feel like engaged and happy and joyful all the time. Try to imagine what it's like not to have any kleshas. To blow them up.

Okay? That's the proposal. We are not treating them.

We are destroying them. In fact, there's a Tibetan word for a person who reaches Nirvana is Arhat. Arhat means someone who destroyed the enemy.

Hath means Han. Hath comes from Han. Like Han is related to Hin.

As in Ah. Hinsan. No hurting.

Right? It came into English as Han came into English as Gar. H's become G's.

The word Gar comes from Hath. Arhat. Arhat means enemy.

In Sanskrit. Arhat means person who destroyed the enemy. That's someone...

Yeah, I translate it as foe destroyer sometimes, like enemy destroyer. A person who has reached Nirvana is called an Arhat. Arhat.

They have killed the enemy. Not suppressed it by a good yoga class or a good meditation. Because they will come back.

They have destroyed it. They are not capable of getting upset at work anymore. Like that.

Very beautiful. Arhat. We want to be Arhat.

Alright, that's the first meaning of Nirvana. Now I'll give you another one. Oh, by the way, the Va part came into English as Fan or Ventilation or Wind meaning to blow.

So blow out. Nirvana. There's another Nir, meaning there's another interpretation of Nirvana that Lord Buddha once talked about.

There's a beautiful sutra called the Sutra of the Great Nirvana. Somebody should translate it someday. I don't think it's been translated.

It's unbelievable. It's psychedelic. It's like a Jimi Hendrix style or something.

It's really good and really intense, really beautiful. And in that Sutra of the Great Nirvana he gives a lot of these explanations. One is there's another root, Sanskrit root Va which means to weave a web, a spider web or a carpet or an illusion.

Va. To weave. A lot of times English cognates or related English words are created by the duplication of the root.

So Va Va. For something that you do habitually like weaving is, what do you call it? Repetitive.

So they duplicate the root. So it becomes Va Va. And then A's become E's in English.

So it's weave. The word weave comes from Va meaning to weave. Nir weave means to break the weaving, to destroy the weaving, to destroy the illusion.

So you can read Nirvana as destroying the web which you have woven around you. You can destroy the illusion, the web of illusion that you have created around you. That's a beautiful interpretation because it tells you how to get to the first meaning of Nirvana.

Okay? First meaning is blow out your anger forever. Second meaning is destroy the illusion that's causing you to get angry.

And then you'll blow out. You see? If you can destroy the weaving you can blow out your negativity.

So let's go to the second one. I think it's anger. Yeah.

Ready? Let's meditate for just a second. And we'll just do a few more minutes and then we'll take a break.

Okay. How does the weaving of an illusion apply here? And how can we unweave it?

Nirvana. Right? How can we unweave Nirvana?

So here the nir means un and va means weaving. Right? Vana.

How can we... What is the particular illusion which is being woven here? And how does it help us blow out our self?

Okay? I don't know. In my case somebody was supposed to do something and they didn't do it.

Okay? So I felt that the person had committed to do something and then they let me go. Okay?

Then in this system that perception is coming from me. That person is coming from me. What they did is coming from a seed in my mind.

This card C exists in my mind and as it opens I hear the words from someone that they didn't do what they were supposed to do. Okay? And I'm not going to go into the pen thing because it's too late in the day and too many people will fall asleep.

Maybe tomorrow. We can explain card C's and we will. Right now let's not go deeper into it.

There's a seed in my mind. As it opens I hear the person say I didn't do what you asked me to do. Okay?

It's important to understand that no one in the world has the ability to put a seed in my mind except me. Okay? As much as you may want to put a seed in someone else's mind or as much as you may want to blame someone else for a seed that you have in your mind the fact is a seed can only be put in your mind by yourself.

How? So I let somebody down recently. Alright?

In the last few weeks. Maybe I was supposed to get a homework ready for class. And I let them down.

It's a lot easier to be the ladder downer than the ladder downee. Right? Like you hardly notice it when you're the ladder downer.

Okay? And then I mean it's just I was busy. And I'm not a bad person.

I had eight readings to do on the plane yesterday. Three for Bahamas. Two for New York.

One for Three Jewels. One for Princeton. One for Moscow.

One for Zurich. And one for Hamburg. Okay?

So I was busy. It's not like I'm a schlocker. And it's okay that I didn't get it done.

Okay? The person who let me down thought the same thing. They were also busy.

And they also had many other things to do. Okay? And they are coming from you.

They reflect your own thinking perfectly because they are coming from you. Okay? So this person who couldn't do what you asked them to do, the person who let you down, they are coming from a seed in your mind that you planted a week ago when you let someone else down.

Okay? So you can't blame this person. They are not the guilty party.

Who is the guilty party? You are. Alright?

I'm giving you a... There is an illusion that they are the guilty party because there is an illusion of free will in their behavior. Okay?

You think if they had chosen differently they could have done what you asked them to do and not something else that they did. Right? You assume that.

You think they could have done what I asked them to do but they didn't. They did something else. They made a decision to do something else.

They could have decided to do what I wanted them to do. Right? That's false.

Okay? That's false. They didn't have a choice.

[Speaker 2]
Okay?

[Speaker 1]
From your perception they must do whatever sees you having in mind forced them to do. Okay? It's interesting.

Alright? You don't have a choice. They didn't have a choice.

Forget the thinking that they had a choice. If you grasp that they had no choice but to do what they did because of your own sees and your own past actions you can't be upset. Okay?

It's not possible to be upset. We are never upset at ourselves. We only get upset at other people.

I'm not upset that I didn't finish the homework for tomorrow. I'm fine with it. But I get upset when somebody else doesn't do what they promised me.

Okay? Like that, right? So unweaving the illusion that they had a choice.

They didn't have a choice. It's not their fault. It's your fault.

Unweave that illusion that it's their fault. It's not their fault. That's nirvana which leads to nirvana.

Got it? Blowing up. Getting upset.

You can't get upset at someone else if it's your fault. Right? In theory the first time you hear that should be in the in practice.

I don't I can't say how long it takes because I haven't seen you. I've been doing it for 30 or 40 years. Maybe you'll be a little faster.

Okay? But that's that's the illusion. You break that illusion.

Nirvana. And you get to nirvana. And you don't get upset anymore.

Okay? Alright, we're going to take a break. Please come back at let's say ten.

Right? Ten? What time do we stop?

Okay. So, it's about a 15 minute break. Please come back at ten.

I'll be here if you want to talk or you have something that you want to ask about. I'd like to start with a meditation.

[Speaker 2]
So, sit up straight.

[Speaker 1]
Don't move. If you're half way, if you're a step, just stop. I'm kidding.

I'm kidding.

[Speaker 2]
Okay.

[Speaker 1]
We have to do better on the breaks. Okay? Because we have a lot of stuff to do.

And so, okay? You have to come back quickly. Please sit down.

Be quiet. Alright? I'm sorry.

I also didn't finish on time. Otherwise we won't make it through all the stuff we have to make it through. There's a third meaning of Nirvana.

There's a third one. Van, the root va can also be seen as van, which means to conquer or to win. It's still a long way along.

And there's a book, if you're interested in Sanskrit, there was a great scholar named Dwight Whitney from Yale. He lived in the 20s, I think. He taught my teacher and who was ancient, so anyway.

He has a book called Sanskrit Roots and it's very beautiful by Dwight Whitney. So, if you're interested, that's the best book anyway. Va also means to conquer.

And you see it in the English words vanquish and invincible. Okay? Va meaning to conquer or to win.

Or to go beyond some problem, to overcome or to transcend some problem. Nir, in that case, means something bad. Okay?

To transcend something bad or to overcome something bad. It's the third meaning of the word nirvana. Okay?

Even Tibetans, a thousand years ago, they had to make a choice. Which one of these three meanings would they use? Would they translate into their language?

We're going to see this also with the Chinese, like I think tomorrow. I'll teach you about the choices that the Chinese made in their choice of words. But, the Tibetans had to choose among these three.

They chose the third one. Okay? They felt that was the most important for them.

And, so they translated the word nirvana as saying ya, ya, nem, nem. Nem, you gotta hold your tongue and do it in your throat. Nem.

[Speaker 2]
Nem. Nem.

[Speaker 1]
It's not nem. It's nem.

[Speaker 2]
Nem. Nem. Nem.

Nha ngen, Nha ngen. leh, leh, depa. depa.

[Speaker 1]
Nha ngen, Nha ngen, leh, depa.

[Speaker 2]
depa.

[Speaker 1]
It's such a common word in Tibet that it got shortened, okay, like don't do that. Right? Instead of do not do that.

Okay? It's in a, what do you call it? What do you call it, contraction.

There's a contraction and saying nyang de, nyang de. So the word is so common, everyone's talking about nirvana all the time. So they just say nyang.

[Speaker 2]
I'm like a nature, I don't know.

[Speaker 1]
Then everybody knows what they're talking about, nyang de. Nyang ngen means grief. For example, when a person dies, when a loved one dies, the emotion that you feel is called nyang ngen.

Very specifically, grief. Leng de pa, which is a term, also nyang ngen is the nerve. Grief is nerve, negative thing.

And then van is de pa, means to transcend it or to go beyond it. So nyang ngen, leng de pa means to go beyond grief, to transcend grief. So now we have three different elements.

The first nirvana, blowing out your jealousy, blowing out your addictions, blowing out your anger. You see, I used to be addicted to ice cream. I don't know, I still don't even remember it.

I had a Tibetan doctor over at Sixth Street, and I don't know if it was you or somebody else, they brought in this huge dog bowl of ice cream. And I was sitting with this doctor and I ate the whole thing. And then they're like, and then I used to translate to the dog, I was two doctors, so, you know.

And then they brought me another bowl. And they're like, and then they're staring at me, you know. Then they brought a third bowl.

I did like a half gallon of ice cream sitting there. I used to do it regularly. And then finally they said, excuse me, you're going to get sick, you know.

And I'm like, no, I like it, you know. And so now I don't like ice cream anymore. I don't even need it anymore.

So think of that like an addiction. You think of an addiction and destroying an addiction. Nirvana would be the first meaning, blow out that addiction.

Second meaning, nirvana, see the illusion that's going on that causes the desire. See the illusion that's going on that causes the desire. There's some web being woven behind the desire.

You don't get good taste and good feeling of the things you enjoy to eat by eating them. You enjoy the things you most enjoy to eat and drink because you share them with others, okay. The seeds for true enjoyment of ice cream or a cocktail or anything else, the seeds come from serving others and providing things to others.

You see, if you like ice cream or you want to have that hit that you get from an addiction, right, whether it is sex, attention, emails, if you want that hit, it doesn't come from consuming, it comes from sharing. It's very interesting. Then sooner or later, you can get the hit without the stop, okay.

I get the same feeling though from a date or from people. I mean, you know.

[Speaker 2]
And so it's not coming from consuming.

[Speaker 1]
No, it's not coming from the ice cream, it's coming from sharing, okay. And the web, the illusion is to believe that consuming the ice cream is what brings you the pleasure and it's not true, okay. It's not to deny the pleasure.

The pleasure is real and the pleasure is desirable and you have a right to your pleasures that don't hurt other people, right. You have a right to those pleasures. You should have pleasures, right, but you don't get them by consuming the ice cream.

You get them by serving ice cream to others, okay. The hit will come predictably, constantly, all day long, not by consuming the ice cream, but by assuring that others have their wishes fulfilled. You see, it's very beautiful, okay.

Then you have destroyed the web of illusion, okay. You got to the non, you got the kick from ice cream, you got to the point where you got the kick from ice cream without the ice cream, okay, that's irrelevant, right. You blew out your own desire.

How? You destroyed the web, the illusion about the ice cream. What's the illusion?

That the kick from the ice cream is coming from the ice cream. It's not and the more you consume ice cream to get that kick, the less kick you'll get because consuming it isn't what gives you the kick. It's sharing it, it's providing others what they enjoy is what really gives you the kick and you can skip the ice cream after a while.

You don't need it anymore and you get the same kick, okay. That's destroying the web with regard to the ice cream and blowing out your desire for ice cream, got it? Then that takes you beyond grief.

Third meaning on your own, okay. That takes you beyond grief. What do you mean grief?

Grief here, it's not gonna give you like 12 minutes of grief, all right. I'm gonna give you grief. I'm gonna give you the 12 minutes of grief but grief here is basically the whole exercise of trying to acquire the ice cream to get the kick is grief, okay.

Misunderstanding the ice cream and trying to get it for yourself, you know, like making sure you get a ball and not thinking about the person who might not get a ball later, right. Eating three balls when other people might enjoy some. This is deluded, it doesn't work.

It isn't the consumption of the ice cream that gives you the good feeling, it's having shared it in the past and the ice cream is just a vehicle, okay. But misunderstanding where the pleasure comes from, we seek our pleasures for ourselves at the expense of others. You see what I mean?

We take three balls to have more pleasure and we deny someone else a ball, right, who comes to the refrigerator later, right. And then we cause ourselves trouble to go buy ice cream is trouble, to worry about is someone else eating the ice cream? Will I have ice cream when I get home tonight from this talk, you know, or is the fact that I'm out tonight gonna make my ice cream disappear?

You see what I mean? Like all the anxiety that builds up about the acquisition and protection of ice cream is canceled. I don't have either worry anymore, you see.

I don't have to go to the store to acquire ice cream. I don't have to make money to pay for the ice cream and I don't have to protect the ice cream after I acquire it because I get the kick without the ice cream. I get the same pleasure without the ice cream, okay.

So the whole grief associated with acquiring and protecting my ice cream is gone. I have nyam-ngen-le-deva, okay. Nirvana, the third meaning of nirvana.

Misunderstanding the web of illusion causes all of our associated problems and that's grief. Once you realize that your screaming boss is coming from you, you can shut him up without a gun, okay. I have friends, they work in the post office.

The post office, they hire ex-military people. They're required to, veterans, you know. So there are always these terrible shootings at post offices and I grab those guys.

I say, look, you don't have to shoot your supervisor. Just change the seats and they will get transferred or they will quit the post office and they'll have a hard time. Okay, I'm just kidding.

The last one, I'm just kidding, okay.

[Speaker 2]
Ah. Ah.

[Speaker 1]
So what we mean by grief here is all the anxiety that's associated with trying to make things happen in your life, okay. If you understand where they come from, you don't have any anxiety anymore. They just come.

Like money, okay. A lot of people have anxiety about money. They have credit card debts or they don't know where they're gonna get their money.

They have things they're supposed to pay for and they don't have enough money. If you understand how to plant seeds, money will come to you uncontrollably and you don't have to worry about it anymore at all. You don't have to think about it.

You don't think about how much oxygen is in this room, right? Maybe a little.

[Speaker 2]
Ah.

[Speaker 1]
But like you don't walk down the street in New York and say, you know, is he breathing more? Is Dushan breathing too much? More than he shares in the room?

Like you don't worry about that kind of thing. There's enough oxygen for everybody. There's enough money in the world for everybody.

You just have to know how to make it. And then there's no anxiety. So grief in this case means all the anxiety associating with things like supporting yourself.

It's unnecessary. It's just that you don't understand where money comes from. If you understood, you could just make it and you'd always have enough and you could give away money all day.

It's funny, okay? The grief is, the irony of life is that that grief is unnecessary. The anxiety is unnecessary.

If you knew what you were doing, you wouldn't have to worry about your finances. They would just take care of themselves like the oxygen in the air. And we were there.

I pretty much said, I don't, it just comes and goes. She figures out the taxes and, you know, she has all the checks and I say, give him a check, give him a check. There's probably five people in this room I gave checks to today and that's all.

Then it just comes back more, okay? You just have to know how, okay? What I'm trying to say is, you will go beyond grief.

There will be no anxiety, okay? So that's the third meaning of nirvana. Destroy the illusion, nirvana number two.

It will blow out your addiction or whatever problem you have, nirvana number one. And then you will go beyond all the anxiety associated with that kind of life. Shortages in your life of partners, shortages of energy, shortages of money, shortages of peace in the world.

You can stop all of that. Then there's no more anxiety. You're just kind of relaxed all the time, okay?

That's the third nirvana, got it? Okay. Let's do another meditation.

We don't have a lot of time. Two more to go. We have two more to go.

But, okay, so in the next 20 minutes or so, we'll do those two. But I want you to start, you know, considering which one is most desperate, okay? Which one is most serious?

Is it the jealousy? Is it getting upset? Is it overwhelming yourself with too much stuff to do?

Okay? Is it time? Is it some addiction to food or something else?

I want you to start considering if we have a vote at the end of class, which we're going to. Do you feel embarrassed to admit when it is in front of a bunch of people? If you do, you don't have to raise your hand, okay?

We'll have a vote. I'm just curious. We'll vote jealousy or addictions or busyness, okay?

So start thinking about who you're going to vote for. No, because that's the one you're going to work on this week. There will be special yoga programs, special meditations.

They will start tomorrow, right? Did everybody have a list? You got a schedule?

Is it split up per classroom? No. Yeah.

So apparently, do you have a schedule? Did you get that? Did everybody get that?

There are classes going on throughout Manhattan and there's some other country called Brooklyn. And other places. I mean, look at the schedule.

And the teachers are going to try to tailor that particular class. I'm going also tomorrow, okay? I'm not telling you which one.

But we're trying to do an experiment. I saw this guy in Kaivalyantak, near Pune, in Manorama, near Mumbai. And there's a hospital, it's called Kaivalyantak.

And it was founded by an Indian man who was a medical doctor and a yogi. And I was in the dining business. There are 2,000 dining dealers in downtown Mumbai.

It's very stressful. Extremely stressful business. You have to deal with the government.

You have to deal with the mafia, et cetera. And they go to the lava, to the yoga hospital. It's like an hour from Mumbai.

And they build a highway, the dining people. It's one of the only good highways in India. They build a highway to the lava.

And you go, and you get a prescription from the yoga teacher. And it tells you, you need to do this meditation. You need these asanas.

You should be doing this kind of massages. And it's a whole organic thing. It's very beautiful.

I'd like to start it. We won't be very good at it this week, but maybe in a year, we'll be better at it. We can try a couple times.

But ideally, there will be, for example, if your thing is anger, then, I don't know about you, but if I do like Bikram yoga or Shatanga yoga, I get angry. I don't know why. Maybe that's not universal.

I have friends who go to Bikram and they feel happy. But for some reason, they make me more hot. And I get angry.

So, the idea is, if your specialty is procrastination or indolence, we will put you in a Shatanga class. And if your problem is anger, we'll put you in a Niguna class. See what I mean?

And we'll try to treat your guna or your dosha, your personality type. And we'll try to provide you with a meditation and a yoga class, at least for the next few days. And then maybe we'll get more serious about it.

Maybe we can develop it further. Maybe you guys can help me. You know, I don't know.

I'd like to do what they do at Kavali Dham. It's the oldest yoga center in India. And it's very beautiful.

And I would like to develop something like that. You go in and you say, I have a anger problem. And then they say, okay, you need to do these twists and these bends, and you need to do these inversions, and you gotta do these meditations, and you gotta cut these foods out of your diet.

They get a diet recommendation like that. And then maybe we can treat the whole person for different genres of kleshas. That's my hope.

This is kind of an experimental week. It's not gonna be too serious yet. But help me, and let's get it more refined as we go.

And then maybe we can be like Kavali Dham. It's very beautiful. Like diamond dealers go in, they're all like shaky and going crazy, and then they come out all happy after a week.

They keep them for a week. They keep them in the ashram. They force them to stay.

And they do certain asanas and certain, it's good. I like it. I think we should do something like that.

Anyway, for specific kleshas. And Nigooma, in her second series, which we haven't released yet, she does that. She identifies specific asanas for specific mental problems, like jealousy or anger.

We should be doing this twist or that twist, okay? So we'll get better at it. You're like the pioneers, okay?

In the West. All right. I'm gonna give you all the meanings that grief has been described as in the ancient scriptures for two and a half thousand years, okay?

I'm gonna give you a lot of different meanings of grief. I put them in your reading, okay? But I'm gonna go through them from your homework.

By the way, in your homework, I want, those of you who've been to faith-based classes before, you know, I want you to do your homework with somebody else. I want you to cheat together on the homework. I want you to meet somebody else in the class who you don't already know, okay?

This is called carte blanche for hitting, hitting on people, okay? I require that you approach someone else in the class after class tonight and say, would you like to do homework at Starbucks on 86? Okay?

Just on third, just on the side of third, on 86, you know? And don't say, no, I'm busy. And you can try, the second or third person will say yes, okay?

And I want you to connect with other people. We have people here from all over the world. We have Tokians, we have Buenosarians, you know, we have Serbians.

I want you to get to know each other because my dream is that, like, the Serbian and the Tokioan go to Buenos Aires to teach it with Carola. You see what I mean? The Nirvana thing.

And it's happened in previous classes, okay? People have gone and done weird, beautiful things together in unexpected, exotic places, okay? So I want you to do that, okay?

I want to set that up. So I greatly prefer if you could do your homework with somebody else. If you're shy, come tomorrow, Nicole?

Here, at seven? Yeah. Out in that lobby area, there'll be homework cheating groups, and you can join mine.

Just sit down and work on your homework with somebody, okay? Please do your homework, okay? And please do it with somebody else, okay?

So come early if you have to. And by the way, I'm sorry we started at eight. It's because this yoga center doesn't want to lose their income of their classes up until eight, which I appreciate.

But if you can find us a bigger space with a better air conditioner, God bless you. And our original intention was to move around New York to different yoga centers to bond them together, but they all got too small. And if you know of a better one, or any place, it doesn't have to be a yoga center.

Happy to try other places, okay? All right. So here are some different means of grief, okay?

Here we go. There's a man named, do you have any more? Okay.

Oh, so there are TAs, they'll be here tomorrow, outside at seven o'clock, and you can join one of their groups and work on your homework together, okay? There's a man named Chris Selber who lived about 200 years ago. He said, he gave the classic meaning of grief.

He said, the feeling you have when you lose your child, when your child dies, okay? Which is, there's nothing like that. There's nothing like that kind of thing.

My brother died while my father was still alive, and I saw what he went through. And it's an extraordinary kind of pain, okay? Now, I'm gonna quiz you, okay?

I'm gonna give you, what? 12 kinds of grief. I'm gonna ask you to tell me if you think that's the grief that you stop forever when you reach Nirvana, okay?

Each grief that's been listed in the scriptures, I'm gonna ask you if you think that is stopped when you reach Nirvana, okay? So, is it the case that after you reach Nirvana, you will never see another person die? Who's dear to you?

It's not the case, okay? Nirvana, I'm just trying to get you to remember what Nirvana means. Nirvana means overcoming a negative state of mind forever.

Compassion and grief over death is a good state of mind, and you don't lose that until the day that death itself stops in this world, which it will, okay? And that's a good thing, right? So, technically, you don't go beyond that kind of grief when you reach Nirvana.

Here's number two, grief number two. Okay, so I'm gonna ask you each time, do you think that's the grief that stops at Nirvana, okay? There's an early Indian commentary called Commentary to the Praise of Confession, and it says grief can be defined as watching how the people around us in the world are tortured by the pain of life, okay?

The grief is the sadness of watching how the people around us are tortured by life itself, okay? Does that stop at Nirvana? Not really, okay?

No, I mean, in our hearts, it doesn't have anger or jealousy, but they're constantly seeing people die around there, and they see other people suffer, and it makes them sad, okay? So that's a kind of grief. It's nyau ye.

It's, by the way, what's grief in Sanskrit? There was a famous king who was beyond all grief, and his, yeah. Ashoka.

Shoka means grief, okay? It's for you. Any Russians?

Sukhoi, sukhoi, sukhoi? Dry. Dry.

It means to cry until you're dry. Sukhoi, okay? Suk, to be dry.

Desiccated comes from that. Okay, Ashoka, his name meant no more grief, no more. Now, I had a retreat, and in the senior retreat, he wrote me a note.

We all dunked in it, you gotta know. He's like, Geshe-la, is it possible to get dehydrated from weeping? I'm like, that's another thing.

[Speaker 2]
Okay.

[Speaker 1]
Number three. Master Vasudana, fourth century. Grief is part of the painful process of getting old and dying, okay?

Grief is part of the process of getting old and dying. Does that stop when you reach the level? Careful.

The causes for it stop, okay? The causes for the aging process stop. Whatever causes you've already put in motion are not stopped.

Arhats get old and die, but it's not because of anything they did after they became an arhat, got it? They no longer have karma, and they no longer have kleshas. Whatever old seeds they have can still play out, and there are stories of arhats being murdered, for example.

The first dialogue I'll list a bunch of stories like that. But they're not creating new seeds for it, okay? They've stopped creating new seeds for that, okay?

All right, number four. Master Vasubandhu also said that the feeling of being torn from those we love or encountering people or situations which we dislike can be called grief. Meeting people you don't want to meet and getting torn from the people you want to be with is grief.

Do you overcome bad karma? The causes, again, the causes you overcome, but old karma you have to still play. Okay?

You're not creating new situations for that kind of grief, but you still have the old seeds, okay? Number five, and there's a, I'm sorry, Master Prajnavarman says that grief is all of our suffering, all the suffering that a human being has, okay? Does that stop when you reach Nirvana?

No, technically no, okay? Your heart is pure, and you cannot be upset again, but still you have, your body was still produced by older karmas, and it will play out, okay? You will age, and you will suffer.

You will have suffering, okay? You don't make new suffering, and you don't possess the truth of suffering, but that's something else that you have to sit on that. Okay, Kalyanamitra, number six.

Grief is all the impurities in a human being, impure thoughts, impure actions, okay? Impure body, does that stop in Nirvana? The thoughts do, the actions do, but not the impure pieces of you that were already produced, okay?

Those stop at enlightenment, and the body turns to enlightenment, okay? Next one. Now we get into some descriptions by Lord Buddha himself, okay?

These last six. Grief is the pain of desiring a six objects of the senses in an ignorant way. For example, ice cream, okay?

Is it wrong to enjoy ice cream? No. Do arts enjoy ice cream?

Yes. I have this epiphany that I always see. People say, are you tight with the Dalai Lama?

I say, yeah. And they say, so like, when was the last time you saw him? I'm like, we had dinner together in Washington, D.C. Not long ago, you know, and they're like, dang, you know, how many people were there? And I said, like 500. And so I was on table 37, he was on table 98. We could almost see him.

And you know, I was like, this was some fundraiser. There were like 500 of us at dinner with my number. And I'm like spying on him like everybody else in the room.

Like, they're not eating exactly. They're like waiting to see how he eats, you know? And they brought the food out and they put it in front of him.

And he's like. And he's like laughing. He's like eating like, he's barely had seconds, you know?

And I'm like, dang, he's enjoying the food, you know? Like he doesn't take one pee and go like this, you know? And of all the people in the room, I think he enjoyed the meal the most, you know?

So our hearts enjoy, okay? They do enjoy the food. For the objects of the senses, but not ignorant enjoyment, okay?

What would ignorant enjoyment be? Eating three bowls of ice cream and not leaving any for another person would be the ignorant enjoyment of ice cream, okay? Why?

You won't get more, okay? That's dumb enjoyment. Wise enjoyment, His Holiness calls it the enlightened self-interest would be to share the ice cream.

Leave a couple bowls in the fridge for the next person. And that's the enlightened enjoyment of ice cream, okay? There is an enlightened enjoyment of ice cream.

You don't have to stop eating ice cream, okay? I know, David, but you don't have to eat, but that's okay. Do you get rid of ignorant enjoyment when you become an Arhat?

Yes. Okay, so there we hit, we hit what nirvana is, okay? They're not capable of misunderstanding ice cream anymore.

The biggest klesha that you overcome on the day of nirvana is misunderstanding the ice cream, okay? That's the final klesha, and it's the source of all other kleshas. It's misunderstanding the web, the weaving of illusion, and that will stop at nirvana.

That stops at nirvana. You will never again misunderstand where your yelling boss is coming from, and you'll never again be capable of getting angry at them, okay? That's nirvana.

You cannot reach nirvana and still have that misunderstanding. So they are simultaneous. The day that you finish off, it's called chul chul, the sunless form of the sunless form of your misunderstandings, you reach nirvana.

And it's not possible to be upset with someone anymore, because you see they're coming from you perfectly, okay? So nirvana and the end of avidyā, of misunderstanding your world, come at the same moment. It's very beautiful, okay?

If you understand where all this stuff is coming from, you won't have those six kleshas. We gotta do another klesha fast. Wait, what's the next klesha?

Oh, you want me to finish this? Let's go fast. It's in your reading.

Grief is being surrounded by things and people that pass away from your life. I'm gonna go a little bit over, is that okay? Sorry.

Is that, do you stop at that nirvana? Do you never lose loved ones and things you enjoy after you reach nirvana? No, you still keep losing, you still have old colors.

You're not making new ones, but you still have old ones, okay? Grief is a place of ignorant liking, ignorant disliking, and the ignorance behind them. The middle of the wheel of life, which we'll get to tomorrow, maybe, the pig, the snake, and the rooster, okay?

The three root misunderstandings. Do they stop at nirvana? Yes.

Do you stop the wheel of life at nirvana? Yes. You stop society, you are stopping society.

No more spinning of the wheel. You are no longer turning the wheel, okay? We'll get to that tomorrow.

Grief is pride and all your other negative emotions. Are those overcome at nirvana? Yes, that's what nirvana is.

No more pride, no more jealousy, no more anger, et cetera, okay? All 84,000 stop at nirvana. Grief is a world in which there's conflict between people.

Do you overcome that at nirvana? No, okay? Our hearts are watching the world blow itself up and they can't stop it, okay?

I mean, they will eventually, but not until nirvana, okay? Last one. It is a place where we make things into things.

Grief is a place where we make things into things. Do you stop that at nirvana? Yes, because making things into things means making ice cream into something that came to you because you bought it, okay?

Ice cream that you bought at the store. You are creating a fantasy. There's no such thing.

If you had not shared ice cream in the past and you went to the store with your money, there wouldn't be any to buy, okay? Got it? You don't get ice cream by money.

You get it by sharing, okay? Not eating the last bowl. Okay, we gotta go to one more question or else we can't have a vote.

And let's just skip. Judging other people, spend 10 seconds. Okay, this is my new meditative posture.

[Speaker 2]
Okay.

[Speaker 1]
I mean, when you were fantasizing about that boy in high school, you were like cross-legged and in, what do you call it? Siddha mudra. You were leaning back on the couch and you were like, you have this dumb smile.

[Speaker 2]
Ah, ah, ah.

[Speaker 1]
How do you judge other people? In the last few minutes. Do you have a problem with it?

Do you make assumptions about people that turn out to be completely wrong? And you make a fool out of yourself regularly. Okay, skip that one.

Next one, procrastination. I might call it, in my case, I would call it willful misprioritizing. I know I'm supposed to be doing something before the other thing, but I enjoy the other thing better.

And I do that. Do you have a problem with that? Do you put off saying that you should be doing and that you know you should be doing?

So actually, it's like a person who reads the council warning on a cigarette package and smokes a midnight. It's illogical. I should have done that before that, but I don't enjoy that so much.

Taxes. Okay, that's enough, two more things, okay? We gotta have our vote, okay?

I'm gonna repeat the candidates, okay? I'm just gonna repeat the candidates. I'm not saying you have to vote for Mike, okay?

You might wanna write that on a note, okay, as it goes by. Is it jealousy? Is that the one that ruins your day?

Okay, you take a perfectly good day. You start off, you have a good start to the day, everything's going well, and then suddenly, you meet George on the street at 7. Is that your problem?

Is it anger? Like your relationship with your partner is slowly dissolving because you can't keep your tone, right? I think you see anger in partnerships that you won't see anywhere else in the world.

You will never do to your boss or to your friends what you do to your partner, okay? Addiction, is that the most important one? I don't know, for me, it's like food, you know?

We have, we travel together. Mercy and Ningo are my attendants, they're partners, but the three of us kinda have the same habit. If you put a pizza in front of us, we have to eat the whole thing.

Busyness, are you like, you just, and I think typically you blame it on other people, you know, they're giving me stuff to do, but really, you just enjoy. It's sort of an adrenaline thing, and you get addicted to it. If you've been in a corporate life, executives get addicted to it.

They can't be still, they can't sit still. They need to have more challenges, more impossible tasks. And they do it to themselves.

We all do it to ourselves, busyness. Judging other people, okay? God knows what other people are thinking.

How do you know, right? Who knows if the guy's an opera expert or not? Who are you to say?

And then, procrastination, okay? You got it? You ready to vote?

Okay, I'm not gonna count, I'm just curious, okay? And then, whoever wins your vote, if you have time, try to go to the yoga class, or try to go to the meditation, which relates to that one, okay? And we'll get better at it.

This week is sort of experimental, and you know, I think we have to refight it. So you ready? Jealousy?

Jealousy? Hey, I thought more people had it, now I'm jealous of all the people that don't have it. Honk!

[Speaker 2]
Honk! Honk! Honk!

[Speaker 1]
Honk! Anger, who wants to anger? Oh my God.

[Speaker 2]
Oh, hey.

[Speaker 1]
All right, anger, do you? making a good show. Addictives.

That's pretty good. Probably just more angry than addictive. Okay.

Busy. Busy, yes. It's New York.

I don't know. You gotta tell Mama Kimberly we did pretty good. Okay.

Judging other people. Yeah. I think we all do it, but we just don't admit it.

Okay. Procrastination. Misdramatizing.

Okay, good. How many people are perfect?

[Speaker 2]
I get jealous of you. Okay.

[Speaker 1]
Okay, so I was gonna have you put it on your name tags. I just But let's think about it, Nicole. It might be embarrassing.

I think it's good to be embarrassed about your most special. Maybe you do something fun. Next year you just put perfect.

Okay, but keep it in mind, okay? Don't forget who won your vote, and that's gonna be the one we're gonna work on. And you will be happy by the end.

That's the whole point of having these classes, isn't it? You will be a happier person. Last thing, okay?

Somebody asked Lord Buddha in the Sutra of the Great Nirvana, they said, can you just summarize what is nirvana? What is your highest position on the meaning of nirvana? And he said, Lord if you are practicing well, if your yoga is good, if your meditation is good, if your study is good, my first line, he said, the indication is that you feel happier day by day.

Okay? The indication that you are practicing a spiritual path is that you feel happier day by day. And if you don't feel happier, you are not practicing.

Okay? If you don't feel happier this month than last month, and if you don't feel happier this year than last year, you're not practicing. Something's wrong, okay?

If you're not happier with your life, if you're not happier with yourself, if you're not happier with your relationships, if you're not happier with your career and your work, then you're not practicing. There's something wrong with your practice, okay? And you have to fix it.

So Lord Buddha defined nirvana simply as happiness. And I think we should think about that, okay? I want you to be happier by the end of this program than you are now.

Okay? And that means we did the right thing. We're doing something good.

Your life should be increasingly happier, brighter, more sunshine, more magic every day. And if it's not, there's a problem. And I don't mean you're evil, or you're deficient, or you should have low self-spiritual esteem.

I'm not saying that. I'm saying we gotta get you back on track. And it's not a big deal, okay?

We're gonna work on your favorite question, and we're gonna chip away at it this week, okay? And I want you to be happier in the month than you are now. And that's the whole point, isn't it?

That we all become happier and happier, okay? That's the Buddha's thought. That's your last homework.

We're gonna dedicate the comments, okay? Mr. Wong, if you may.

[Speaker 2]
Thank you.

[Speaker 1]
Thank you for coming, and thank you for giving me a chance to talk about these holy things. It makes me work hard and think about them and apply them to myself. So I'm very grateful for that.

If you don't know the prayers at the end, don't stress about it. Are they in the notebook? We can give them to you, okay?

And then you don't have to worry about some foreign language. You can just sit there and bay it in the chat. The idea is that you are giving away the good karma to the city of New York, to everyone in New York, okay?

They didn't get here, but you are selling them the good karma you make. You are banking it, okay? That's the meaning of this prayer.

Good night.