Банк других людей: инвестиции, которые никогда не прогорают (2013, Сакраменто), занятие 1

[Speaker 2]
Hi, thank you for coming. I'm sorry we're starting late because of the traffic accident. So we'll go late if you don't mind, equally late, or a little more maybe.

So I thought first just, I know some of the people here, I don't know others, and I thought I'd tell you a little bit about my background. I know Sean did some, and thank you for that. And then we'll just have a talk about something.

So I grew up in a normal family in Arizona. And then, I don't know, I was accepted to Princeton, and my mom was very proud. And she would go all to the neighbors' houses.

She went to the newspaper and got an article done, and she was very proud. And, you know, it was funny, she'd say, How's your dog? Did you know my son got a scholarship to Princeton?

And then we loved each other very much. I have four brothers and no sisters, and my mom. And then, so I went there to Princeton, and it was very weird for me because I'd never been anywhere in my life, and it was difficult.

And then it was all going really well. I got invited to the White House by the president for a scholarship medal, and my mom went all to the neighbors' and did that thing again, and made sure it got in the newspapers. And we were happy, we were all happy.

And then I got a phone call one night, and they said, Your mother died, you know, suddenly. And it was really difficult, and we were really close. And so I was like almost crazy.

I remember I was hearing things in the wind, right? I don't know if you had your mom die, but I was hearing things in the wind and stuff like that. And then I remember I was running to a class, and I was a really good student, and I enjoyed school.

And I never missed a class, I was never late to a class. And I was running to class, and there's a tree in front of the... I was in the religion department, and I took a Buddhism course, although I didn't know anything about Buddhism, and I wasn't interested in it much.

But there was an Indian boy, a boy from India, was sitting in front of the tree, looked like Buddha, and he said, Come here, you know. And I said, No, no, I have to go to class. And he said, This is more important than class.

And he made me sit down, and then he said, You know, if you really care about what happened to your mother, you should go to India, and talk to the Buddhist people, and they can explain to you what happened. And then you will learn something important that you cannot learn here. And he kept me for the whole hour of the class.

And then by the end, I was like, Okay, I'll go to India. And it was very funny, because I'd never been anywhere. And I went to the school, and I said, Can I go to India?

And will you pay my scholarship money for my trip? And they said, Sure. And I'm like, Oh no, now I have to go.

And I went. I got on the plane. It was Alitalia.

Cheapest flight, $400. All these Italian grandmothers in the plane. We had to stop in Rome.

And I remember the plane took off from Kennedy, and it went straight up, and then it dropped straight down, like for a thousand feet. And all these old Italian grandmothers are screaming, like as loud as you can scream. And it was such a weird trip.

And I didn't know anybody. And the boy said he would meet me in the New Delhi airport, right? So, I got to...

We landed in New Delhi, and they opened the plane door. And I remember this intense incense smell. Like this intense smell of India incense, you know.

It hit me. And then the rest of the smells of India hit me. And I was like, Oh!

And in those days, India was a lot more dangerous and wild. And I got out, and it was all like pigs and chickens and cows and people screaming. And I was looking for my friend, and he never came to India.

He stayed home. And so, I'm just standing there in the Delhi airport, and I don't know anybody. And I got a cab, you know.

And they said, where do you want to go? I said, I don't know. I need to stay someplace.

I need a hotel. And they're like, you know what they say in India, my brother owns a hotel, you know, which means his brother's house, right? And so, I like go to his brother's house.

And I remember I went into the room, and I locked the door, and I was so frightened, I stayed there for two days. I didn't come out. And finally he knocked on the door, and he's like, are you all right?

And I'm like, no.

[Speaker 1]
And he's like, do you need some food? I said, yes. And then he brought me some food.

[Speaker 2]
I remember it was a real Indian meal, like rice and dal and raita. And he took the time to explain each food to me and the power of each food, and he was very kind. And then he said, you know, why did you come to India?

And I said, well, I have to meet the Buddhist people. I have to ask them about my mother, what happened to my mom. He's like, Buddhist people.

And he looks at his watch, he says, you're kind of late for the Buddhist people. I said, why? He said, oh, they finished in India a thousand years ago.

And then I'm like, well, maybe I'll go home, and I check my ticket. It's a three-month ticket. I have to stay for three months.

And he said, well, why don't you go to the Himalayas? Maybe there are Tibetans coming out, refugees, and they're Buddhist, and you can talk to them. So I ended up going, meeting them, and I started studying with them.

And then I became a monk, and I entered a Tibetan monastery, and I stayed for 25 years. And also in the United States, at a Mongolian monastery, which is Tibetan. They study Tibetan Buddhism.

So I spent 25 years like that. The last three weeks is a final examination for what they call geshe. Geshe means like, you know, master of Buddhism or something.

So you debate in public. You debate in a public square. In my monastery there, at the time there were 1,300 monks.

Each one asks you questions in public for three weeks in Tibetan. And it's with martial arts. They do it with martial arts.

And they scream at you, and then they dance around and knock you. And, you know, and... So this is what you study for 25 years to pass, you know.

And then you have to be really tough. And if you succeed, then you get a... You've seen those big yellow hats that they put?

Yeah, like that. And so I passed, and they gave me a big yellow hat. And I don't have any other degree.

I just have this yellow hat, you know. And, you know, I remember I told all my friends, I'm a geshe.

[Speaker 1]
And they're like, what's that? And then it was like that.

[Speaker 2]
And then you're supposed to go back to your room, and my stepmother came for the final ceremony. And then each monk will give her a white scarf. This is Tibetan custom.

So she was... She's pretty short. She's about five feet tall.

She was buried under this mountain of white scarves. And you couldn't see her behind the scarves. And then...

Then they called me on the telephone, the abbot. So the telephone at that time was... We have these seven-year-old monks, baby monks, and you're not allowed to take your vows till you're 21, but you're allowed to live in the monastery, like if you're an orphan or something like that.

So we have little monks running around, and they're our telephone. And so you tell them, you know, the abbot told the little monk, you go tell Geshe Michael, you know, I need to talk to him. And then they run.

He says, run, and they run. And then... But sometimes they meet their playmates, and they start eating candy, and they forget the message, you know.

So you have to send two or three baby monks, and maybe one will get through, you know. And so we didn't have any telephones. We didn't have anything.

So I went to the abbot, and he was my teacher. You know, usually you only go to the abbot for discipline, to be disciplined. They beat you.

That's why Tibetan monks are so polite. And so I was nervous, and I said, yes, you know, yes, Master, what can I do? And he said, oh, I wanted to congratulate you.

You're the first Westerner in our monastery in 600 years. You know, and congratulations. He never said anything good to me in my whole life.

And I was like stunned, you know. And then he said, but... And I'm like, yeah, what's the but?

And he said, you're a foreigner, so we have a special examination for you. We have a second examination. I'm like, you didn't say about any second examination, you know.

Then he said, no, no, foreigner, you have to prove yourself. And I said, well, what do I have to do? And he said, you go to New York.

And I said, I hate New York. And he said, you start a business. And I said, I hate business, you know.

And he said, diamond business. I said, that's the dirtiest business, you know. They're all crooks and cheats and...

And then he said, you go to New York, you start a diamond business. And then you use the principles that we taught you and see if you can make like a million dollars in a year, you know, using karma, using the principles of karma. Because it's one thing to talk about it in a monastery and it's another thing to do it in real life.

And then, by the way, you can learn the challenges that real people face making a living, you know. And so, I said I didn't want to, but they have these fan belts that they use on your bottom. And so, he convinced me.

And I went to... I went to New York and we started a business. And I didn't really know how to do what he wanted at the beginning, because it...

I never... They never taught us how to use it in a business situation. They were...

It was always like meditation or, you know. And I... It was a struggle for me to use those principles in a business situation.

But we... We worked hard. I worked hard.

And we started with three people. Now we have 10,000 people. It's 250 million dollars a year.

And it was bought... The company was bought in 2009 by Warren Buffett. And I used the money for charity.

And I'm often asked by people to come and speak to people who want to make money, especially for charities, you know. So, we've been... For 25 years now, we've been helping Tibetan refugees.

We teach them to type on computers. We supply them computers. We build computer centers for them.

And then they type in their ancient scriptures. And we've identified 200,000 books in the world, in libraries around the world. And they're typing through them.

There are about 10,000 books finished. So, I figure another 150 years. So, we actually have a plan.

And we're actually working on it. And it's all free on the Internet. But it took a lot of money to do it.

It took like five, ten million dollars. So, I've been using my money for that.

[Speaker 1]
And I often meet people who say, you know, teach me how to do what you did. Because I have things that I'd like to do with my life.

[Speaker 2]
I have projects that I would like to do. And they take money. You need money to do big projects.

And if you want to help seriously a culture or some endangered literature or anything like that, cultural projects, big ones, they take a lot of money. And so, people often ask me all over the world. I travel the whole world.

And they ask me to give this talk about especially how to make money for a charity, how to raise money for something that you want to do that's going to take a lot of funding. So, I thought tonight... I was listening to the radio NPR a couple days ago.

And they were talking about the American middle class. And it was very interesting. I mean, it didn't occur to me.

[Speaker 1]
But I think it's true. They said the American middle class is disappearing. Because the American middle class used to...

The income of the middle class was skilled manual labor, like automobile factories.

[Speaker 2]
And this is where you could get paid 30 or 40 dollars an hour. And you would have enough money to buy a home. And, you know, they were trying to define middle class.

And it was, you have enough money to go out once in a while and hire a babysitter for the kids with your husband. And you have enough money to buy a home. And, you know, you have money left over for retirement and things like this.

This was the definition of the American middle class.

[Speaker 1]
And now, I have friends. Even this week, I have friends. They are educated.

They have college degrees.

[Speaker 2]
I met one of them last night. And I said, you know, I knew he was looking for a job. And I said, well, what did you find?

And he said, nothing. You know, there's nothing for a college-educated person to do. He said, I'm teaching yoga.

He's a good yoga person, and he's teaching yoga. But the payment for yoga teaching is dropping. I mean, in Tucson, where I do yoga often, the class is $4.

So, you know, you can't make a living. It's difficult to make a living. And it will settle, in the world, it will settle around $5 or $6 or something.

And then it will be difficult. And my other friend, he has a college degree.

[Speaker 1]
And he used to build restaurants. And now he's working at Starbucks. And he was very happy to get the job.

I think he started yesterday. He worked for months to get the job. He really, really worked hard to get the job, to get a $10-an-hour job.

[Speaker 2]
So you have $10-an-hour jobs, a lot of $10-an-hour jobs. And then you have, you know, like investment bankers. And then in between, there's just a vacuum.

There's nothing there. You know, the work has changed. And I travel a lot.

We spend a lot of time in China. I was in Beijing last month. We gave talks in the Forbidden City near Tiananmen Square to the MBA students at Beijing University, which is their main university in the country.

And we spoke in Shanghai and Guangzhou in South China. So we've spoken all throughout China. And I'm looking at China, and I'm thinking about the United States, and I'm thinking, when I was younger, there were recessions.

I don't remember the years. When we started, the diamond company was in a recession. It was 1981, I think.

And there was a recession going on. And in America, when there was a recession, you always just kind of sat it out. You know, you kind of didn't go out much to restaurants, and you were careful to be nice to your boss.

[Speaker 1]
And, you know, but it was always assumed that it would just change in three or four years, you know, that things would come back, because every recession America ever had, it just comes back after a while.

[Speaker 2]
And in my work in the diamond company, in the diamond business, it's international. I travel all over.

[Speaker 1]
One of my main jobs is to evaluate other companies that want to do business with us.

[Speaker 2]
So I have to go to their factories. I sit in their factories. I watch the factory.

I'm on the assembly lines. I'm walking around the factories. I look at their books.

I look at how much money they've borrowed, you know, things like that. And then we decide whether we can collaborate with them or not. And so I'm used to evaluating an economy or, you know, the strength of a country or a company.

And I think, in my opinion, and I'm not a big economist or anything. I just work a lot. You know, I've just been everywhere and seen many, many, many companies and worked with many companies.

And I don't see any reason for the recession to stop indefinitely.

[Speaker 1]
Like, I don't think it's going to suddenly go back up.

[Speaker 2]
I think there's been a dramatic and irreversible change in the world market because of the Internet, largely. But now you are competing with people all over the world. You know, I do my graphics design in Guadalajara.

I do my... We do a lot of video editing and video creation. We do all that in Guangzhou, South China.

And things like that. The diamond cutting is in India, Mumbai. And then the factories, the jewelry factories, are outside of Tel Aviv.

And what is that place up north? Haifa. And then India, Thailand, Hong Kong, and what do you call it?

Dominican Republic. But nothing in the United States. It's too expensive, and you can't find people who really work that hard.

And so I'm concerned.

[Speaker 1]
I'm worried about my country. Frankly, I see a pattern. My friends are all...

It used to be when you had worn-out clothes, you took them to Goodwill, and now you sell them. Or you had junk in your house, and you just gave it to Goodwill. You were happy, because they would come and take it away.

But now you have a garage sale, because you need 30 bucks, or you need 60 bucks. And that's good money now. That means something.

[Speaker 2]
And things have changed. Things have changed radically.

[Speaker 1]
And I think there's a lot of uncertainty about the future. More than before. It's much worse now in America.

[Speaker 2]
You can't know what's going to happen here. And I'm in China a lot, and I was very... What do you call it?

Chinese are like Arabs, you know? Like the press has convinced us that Chinese are evil, and Arabs are evil, like the way the Nazis used to be evil. I forget who it was before that.

Probably the Indians or something. But the press chooses someone who's evil, and then they... I saw a video.

It was on the news of a child in China who was hit by a car, and the guy didn't stop. I don't think he saw the child, ever. But it was played over and over, and it was said to be proof that Chinese don't love their children or something.

And it was just this kind of propaganda that the Americans get on somebody, like Palestinians or something, and they go crazy. So anyway, I was nervous when I went to China. I'm a monk.

I wear robes. I hid my robes in my suitcase, you know? I wore a suit the whole time.

And then nothing happened. Just I met nice people, you know? And then I went back a second time, and I was more comfortable, and I made some friends.

[Speaker 1]
And then I went back a third time and a fourth time and a fifth time. Now I feel like very comfortable with everyone, and I realize they have one head and two arms and two legs, and they also love their kids, and they just want to be happy. And they're no different from somebody from Sacramento.

[Speaker 2]
People in Beijing are absolutely no different from people from Sacramento, and they're not mean or cruel, and if they wanted to take over the world, they could. And they're not interested, you know? And so it's like, now I feel like I'm just at home, you know?

I'm just there, and I'm working with them. And same with Russia. The first time I went to Russia, I told them, I feel very nervous here.

You are enemy. They asked me, how do you feel? We had a project for 14 years in St. Petersburg to catalog the Tibetan books. We paid for that. I paid for that. So I used to go.

And one night they're driving me around, and they said, well, okay, how do you like Mother Russia? And I said, you guys are all right.

[Speaker 1]
You're just like Americans. It's cool, I like you. I said, but you know it's funny, when I was a kid, they told us that you were the enemy.

And I said, even my first grade teacher used to tell us to hide under the desk in case the Russians tried to bomb us. And I always wondered how hiding under a desk would help during a nuclear war, you know? And then they started laughing.

All the Russian guys started laughing. And I said, well, you know, it's not that funny. And they said, no, no, you don't understand.

Our teacher said the same thing about you. They told us the same thing about you, that you wanted to kill us and bomb us, and we had to hide under our desk also. And we were laughing.

And that's the way the world is. Once you travel a lot, and you see a lot of countries, everyone's the same. Everybody wants the same stuff.

And the world is suffering. The world has the same suffering. People all over the world are trying to make a living.

People all over the world have families. People have kids. They also want to make some money.

[Speaker 2]
They also want to have a refrigerator and have things for their family. And they're not evil. Arabs, Chinese, Germans, Americans, they're all the same.

We're all the same. We just want to have things to live, you know? And we're all the same.

[Speaker 1]
And then we all have the same worries, okay?

[Speaker 2]
So what I've done tonight, I thought for tonight, there's a famous text that we studied in the monastery, Tibet. It comes from India. It's by Nagarjuna, Arya Nagarjuna.

[Speaker 1]
And he said there are six problems that everybody in the world faces in your life, trying to make a living, trying to support your children, trying to live through a recession or maybe see the recession change. By the way, I'm hopeful. I believe that we could establish a new kind of economy, a new kind of global economy.

The idea of local economies is over.

[Speaker 2]
It's finished, you know? I do book contracts all the time, and somebody in Spain was telling me, can I have the rights to the Spanish translation of your books?

[Speaker 1]
And I said, no. And he said, well, then I'm not going to sell them. And I said, well, I don't care.

I mean, somebody in Mexico will translate it, and people will order it online. I can't tell you they're not going to mail it across the border. It's over.

Those days are over. You can't have the rights to a country because Amazon will ship anywhere, and it doesn't mean anything anymore. So I think we will settle into a nice, beautiful global economy.

I believe it will be prosperous. I believe that poverty areas will finish and that there will be a high standard of living globally for the whole world. It can no longer be some people are rich and some people are poor.

It can't be like that anymore. If Amazon will ship anywhere, those days are gone. You know, a little guy in Africa can sell yoga mats to Zuta Yoga from Zimbabwe, and they'll ship them.

We print our books in India, and they just ship them from New Delhi, and it doesn't matter. You can't stop it. It's going to be like that.

So can we set up an economy that's good for everybody? And maybe it's better. In the long run, it'll be a little bit shaky for the wealthy people because now people in China are also wealthy, and they also need oil, and they're willing to pay more than an American.

So for us, it's a little frightening, but I think we've got to get used to it. And everything will settle fine. Everybody will have enough.

We just have to get used to the process, okay? So tonight I thought to talk about the process. In the end, it will be fine.

We will be prosperous. People in Mexico, people in China, people in India, Africa, we'll all be prosperous. It's okay.

But we have to get used to that.

[Speaker 2]
It's weird to be in Beijing and know that they have more money than my city. They're more prosperous than Phoenix, Arizona. It was a little bit of a, what do you call, hurt my ego.

They're like, I'm like asking them, can you loan me some? And it was like, new for me, because as an American, you're used to like strutting around the world and thinking you're number one.

[Speaker 1]
I think it's going to be a global economy and people will be pretty much equal. But in between here and there, there will be and there will remain six fundamental problems of anyone who works for a living, okay, which is everybody, eventually. those were outlined 1,800 years ago.

And I wrote it out for you. So let's go through them, okay? I propose we go through them.

[Speaker 2]
So I'm going to start on the first page, past the cover, okay? After the cover. In Tibetan it says, ngepa mepa, ngong mi shepa, lu yang dang yang du dorwa, yang dang yang du nyin sam jorwa, yang dang yang du to men du gyurwa, trok mepa.

[Speaker 1]
These are the six challenges that any person who's trying to make a living, who's trying to support themselves, you will always find these six challenges. They will face you wherever you go, whatever country you live in. It doesn't matter.

Everybody has them, okay? Number one, we can't be sure what will happen with our job. You don't know what's going to happen next week, okay?

You work for a company. Does anybody not have a reading?

[Speaker 2]
Raise your hand, and Mercedes will give you one. There's a gentleman there in the back.

[Speaker 1]
Two people. Anybody else not have one? There's a lady right there.

Good. Anyone else? No?

Okay. Can't be sure what will happen with your job.

[Speaker 2]
Like, it doesn't matter where you work, it doesn't matter what your position is, you can own the company, you can be the president of the company. I was the vice president of my company nineteen years, okay?

[Speaker 1]
And, you can lose your job in five minutes, okay? And you know that. People who've worked in a company, big company, it's just the way it is, okay?

Anybody can lose their job in five minutes. There's no certainty. And that causes a lot of stress for everybody, okay?

In a company, any kind of job that you have, you could lose it in five minutes.

[Speaker 2]
If you have your own company, you could have a car accident, you could lose your ability to work.

[Speaker 1]
You don't know, okay? We are all in that position, all of us in this room. We share the same doubt about our life, and it wears you down.

It wears on you. It doesn't matter if you're Tom Cruise or, you know, he also doesn't know if he'll get another movie job. He doesn't really know.

[Speaker 2]
Anything can happen to anybody. People die suddenly. It happens all the time.

And you don't know.

[Speaker 1]
You can get fired, you can lose everything in a moment, in five minutes, okay? Usually it's unexpected. And you know, I used to be in the board meetings where we decided those things.

They'd say, we have to cut 500 people. And you choose, you choose. And you're like, no, no, you choose.

You know, you know, it's very brutal. It's very, to be on the firing end is also brutal. You can't sleep at night.

The person that you fire hates you forever. And if you don't fire them, the company fails and everybody goes home. So it's like that.

We don't have certainty about what's going to happen to us. That's our condition, human condition. Number two.

You meet people, they want to get the job. I'm thinking of the guy who got the Starbucks job. His initials are RH, okay?

Some of us know him. He's so happy this week that he got the job. He's been schmoozing the manager of the Starbucks for like six months.

And they finally got the job and he's all excited. And you know and I know that in six months he's going to be complaining that he hates Starbucks and it's so boring and they don't pay him and he can't take time off. You know, that's the nature of things.

We get the job, the dream job. We get the thing we wanted the most. It applies to partners also.

And then six months later, you're like dissatisfied already. You don't like it anymore, okay? That's just human nature.

There's something about us. Number one, we don't know the future. We're all not sure what's going to happen next week.

If we'll be alive, we don't know next week. And then number two, anytime something does go well, then after a while you become dissatisfied and you want more or you want something different. This is human.

This is who we are. The point of tonight's talk is can you change these things? Is it possible to change these things?

That's why I'm here. Number three, you always lose your good gigs, your good jobs. You finally settle into a job.

Any job you ever get, you will lose. Any job you ever get, you will lose. That's just life.

Those of you who are old enough have been through it a few times. It doesn't matter how good the job is. It doesn't matter how good the company is.

It doesn't matter if their product, fax machines, is desired by the whole world. You know, it can change. And then suddenly nobody wants that thing at all.

And then suddenly the company's gone. And then you're gone. Every position you ever manage to scrape together, you will lose.

That's our condition. That's human condition. It doesn't...nobody's...

All jobs will end. All companies will end. All lives will end.

All cities will end in rubble. It's just the way it is. Can you change it?

That's why we're here. Okay. Number four, you have to start over again and again.

So, I don't know, especially relationships. You know, you're with somebody for a couple years or ten years or twenty years, and then suddenly it's over. And you're like...

You like walk back into the kitchen, you know, and they're gone. The moving truck drives away, and you're like, oh, god damn, now I have to start over, you know. I have to do the whole thing over again.

You know, I thought I had it all figured out, you know, and the third marriage, you should have it figured out. You know, and... And now there's this desolate...

desolate feeling, you know. You're just standing by yourself in the kitchen, and half the pots are gone. They took all the good ones, and the ones with tops, right?

And... And you're standing there, and you're like, damn, I have to start the whole thing over again. I even have to go buy pots, you know, and I have to buy some dishes, and...

You have to start over again. And this is a human condition, okay, at work especially. I think it's seven times you will be retrained in your life, if you live that long.

You will have to learn a new job, completely new job. So it doesn't matter what you've trained yourself in, or what you did in college, or what you're qualified at.

[Speaker 2]
Those of you who are old enough, you know that you will be asked to do something different, and then you have to learn it, and you have to learn something totally different.

[Speaker 1]
And that will happen five, six, seven times in your life. With relationships also, you have to start over again. And it's very frustrating.

It's like I spent ten years learning, you know, stenography, and now they got iPhones. I did, I learned stenography, and then, yeah, yeah, I was desperate for a job. I came out of the monastery, I couldn't do anything.

That's before I started dying. Okay, anyway. Number five, every job we ever get goes up and down every day.

Even if you hang on to your job, even if you stay at a job, there's a constant anxiety. While you're at work, there's a constant anxiety. You never have a purely good day, you know.

Like, it gets like 4.45, and you said, the whole day's been good, you know. I think I'm going to have my first purely good day, you know. And then the boss calls you and says, you know, we got an order, you have to stay till nine o'clock.

And then you're like, there goes my one good day, perfect day, you know. And it's like that. It's always like that.

The human condition is that your job, the time you spend in your office, it just goes up and down constantly. All these huge swings, and then your mood swings with it, right? Oh, I'm the best yoga teacher in the studio, and then suddenly you're not anymore, and then, you know, and then it goes up and down, and there's this, it's like a roller coaster, your whole life.

And the stress, the anxiety never ends of this up and down. Relationships also, you know. Oh, I finally got it down.

Me and my husband are finally tight, you know. And then he's like, by the way honey, I want to tell you about somebody. And then you're like, and then there's this thing again.

Then it swings again, you know. And life is just total up and down. It's this oscillation, constant waves, right?

It never stops. You never get a rest. You can't go to your husband and say, don't say anything stupid today, the whole day.

You know, like, just let me have one day that things don't change, you know. It doesn't work. I think number six is the saddest, which is in the end we are alone, okay?

You come to your job, usually you apply as an individual, right? And you get fired as an individual. Usually you lose your job and you're alone.

I've done it, you've done it.

[Speaker 2]
You walk down the street away from the building that was your home for ten years or fifteen years and you walk down the street and that's it.

[Speaker 1]
And you're alone. There's nobody with you, okay? In the end, you can have a big family, you can have a husband, wife, you can have children, you can have a company that you've worked with for your whole life.

But they'll come the day, in my company, they gave you the silver pin. It was a gold pin with a diamond in it, you know. And they would call me, the HR would call me and they'd say, we need a ten-point diamond.

Cheap. And I'd say, they're going to fire somebody. They're going to fire somebody old.

Somebody who's been with the company twenty years is going to get their pin and they want a cheap diamond to put in the pin, you know. This particular size of diamond is kind of unusual. And I say, oh, they're going to fire somebody.

And then that person, it's so, what do you call it? It's so sad to see them leave. Everyone else is staying in the office and they're cleaning out their desk and then there's this kind of last look that they give which is kind of a mixed bitterness and anger and sadness and uncertainty and stress.

[Speaker 2]
And they got to go home and tell their family, right? And there's this look on their face and then you don't want to see it. You go to the bathroom or something, you know.

Or you get the security to take them out because you don't want to take them out, you know.

[Speaker 1]
And then they go and they walk down the street and you see them walk down the sidewalk and they're alone. And in the end, we're always alone, okay? You die alone.

You will leave every situation you've ever entered. You will leave it alone, okay? That's our condition.

So, these are six very sad things about human life. They relate a lot to our economy, our work nowadays. But they also relate to your personal life, your relationships.

And the question is, is there any way to change that, okay? Can these conditions be changed? And I mean, human...

What do you call it? Common wisdom? They call it common wisdom?

CW? Common wisdom... Conventional wisdom is that you can't change these things.

These are... At a certain age in your life, you assume they cannot be changed. And you just learn to deal with it, okay?

Yeah, I know I'm alone. In the meantime, I'd like to have a partner and I'd like to have some children. But I know that in the end, I'm alone.

And I know I have to lose my job someday, but can I enjoy it as much as... I mean, what little enjoyment I get out of my work, let me have it. Don't hassle me.

You know, I know all that stuff. It's true. But I choose to ignore it, because if I thought about it every day, I'd be miserable.

So we get to a kind of... They call it maturity. You get to a kind of maturity.

They call it stability. I don't sit in bed all day depressed. I still get up and fight.

Every morning I put my leg out and I still get my shoes on and go to work, even though it's all crazy and it's all going to end. I still do it. And what's happened to us as a herd is that we're used to it.

We decided to live with it. Those of us who didn't... My brother committed suicide, and he decided no more.

But the rest of us, we decided to stick it out. And for better or for worse, we're going to stick it out. And we assume we can't do anything about these six things.

My goal tonight is to try to present a way that you could change those six things. All six. And that's my goal.

Tonight I want you to go home with at least one crazy person who thinks you could change these six things. You know? No, I mean, and then you...

You won't believe it all tonight. But you'll go home and you'll start to doubt whether they could be changed or not. And that's all I want to do.

In Tibetan they call it, dung-gyur-ke-tetsam. Doubt... Your first doubt's about something that you should have believed all along.

Your first suspicion that there could be a different way. And that's all I want. I don't want to sell you my ideas.

I just want you to suspect that they might be right. By the end of the night, I want you to be suspicious that maybe these six things are not inevitable. Okay?

That's my proposal. Okay. That's going to take some doing.

We'll go for like another 20 minutes and then we'll take a break. I think there's refreshments, aren't there? I never talk anywhere unless they have refreshments.

Yeah, okay, good. So I don't have to leave. And I'll go...

I'm going to start... I had a nice meeting today at lunch. I had a lunch meeting with some people.

And I'm sorry if you were there. You get to hear this thing again. But maybe it's okay.

There's a very simple, powerful, traditional way to explain the ideas that could change those six conditions. Okay? There's a very simple, ancient way of explaining that.

And I was thinking... I had like three alternate ways ready. And then I thought, oh, forget it, you know.

Let's just do the same thing. Okay? So here we go.

In the ancient Asia, the teacher asks a question and you answer immediately or you get hit. And so the first row has to be attentive. It's amazingly...

it works very effectively. You know, students listen and they obey the teachers. Anyway, it's not allowed in the United States.

So just answer. When I ask a question, just answer from your... don't think about it.

Just answer. I'm not trying to trick you. Okay?

I'm trying to stop those six problems. Okay? What is this thing?

[Speaker 2]
Yeah, it's a pen. If a dog, small puppy dog came in here, walked down the aisle, you know, and I wave this thing in front of the puppy dog and I wave it in their face, what will they do?

[Speaker 1]
They will bite it. Okay? They'll play with it.

Okay? Does the dog see this as a pen? You can say no.

What do they see? Yeah, the same thing which I see as a pen. You know how long it took to find that on Google?

The same thing which I see as a pen. They see as something to chew on. Now, question.

Who's right? The dog or the human? You can say both.

It's a very honest, natural answer. Yeah, the dog can enjoy... I also enjoy chewing on it.

The dog can validly enjoy chewing on it. The human can use it to write. No problem.

Both are right. Okay, next question, more difficult. If I put this object here and all the people leave the room for their refreshments, it's not just water, right?

[Speaker 2]
You're not...

[Speaker 1]
She's like not committing there. Good. All the humans leave the room, all the dogs leave the room, at that time, which one is it, a pen or a chew toy?

Yeah, indeterminate. Who said that? Beautiful answer.

That's the first time anyone ever said that exact answer, and I think it's the most correct. Indeterminate is good. It could be either one, depending on who walks in the room.

Who walks back in? If a human walks back in, it becomes a pen. If a dog walks back in, it becomes a chew toy.

What if they walk in together? It becomes both. Good, no problem.

At that moment, there are two realities running in the room. No problem. Parallel dog reality, human reality.

Okay, no problem. Even on that object, two realities are running. There's a chew toy reality and a pen reality.

No problem. Next question. Therefore, you can answer my next question easily.

If I see this as a pen, is the pen coming from the pen or is the pen coming from me? Yeah, it must be coming from me. Okay, I mean the dog proves it.

Okay, and you know, it sounds stupid and simple, but just think 250 million. Okay, I'm not a big business person. I don't like business.

It's not interesting for me. I use the money for good things, but I did make a 250 million company. I helped make it, and I use these principles.

So, they sound simple and they sound kind of childish, but they're not. You can save Tibetan culture. You could save Tibetan literature with this idea.

So, don't think I'm just being dumb. It sounds dumb, but it's not so dumb. So, we can say that the pen is coming from me.

Then, why do I perceive it as a pen? And why does the dog perceive it as a chew toy? We say, there's a seed in the dog's mind.

There's a... I don't know a good word. Vāsanā, how will you translate it, Jay?

Seed? Energy? There's like a...

Huh? Yeah. There's a seed for a tendency or something like that.

It's a difficult word. Let's say seed, okay? Let's just leave it.

There's a seed in the dog's mind to see it as a chew toy. And there's a seed in my mind to see it as a pen, okay? How do you plant that seed?

You see? If I could control the planting of those seeds, if I could understand how the seeds are planted in my mind to see the things around me, I could control my future. I could design my reality.

You see? I could be like Neo in the Matrix. You know?

Like he figured out everything with a computer program, right? And if I could learn, if there were a method of planting seeds in my mind which caused me to see everybody in my world and everything in my world, then in theory, I could design next year. Okay?

I could design a better partner or I could upgrade my current partner. Like, let's say they don't like to wash dishes or they don't have a good job or they're lazy or... Everything's coming from me.

The pen is coming from me. My partner's good qualities are coming from me and my partner's failings are coming from me also. So in theory, if I became a master of planting these seeds in my mind, I could control what I see next month.

I could be a stupid, untrained monk and make $250 million company that Warren Buffet bought. Okay? I could do it if I knew how to plant the seeds.

You see? So tonight I just want to talk about that principle. How do you plant seeds, okay, in the mind?

Because what's true for the pen is true for everything in your life. Your job, your partner, your family, your city, your body. It's all coming from seeds in your mind.

So if I could help you to plant certain seeds, to learn a system of planting seeds, then in theory you could have the things you want. Okay? I always say there are like five things that people want.

I've been teaching for, I don't know, almost 40 years. And in my life experience, there's five or six things people want. Number one, they want to be financially independent.

Everybody would like to have enough money to do whatever they want. I don't know anybody who wouldn't like that. I mean, it'd be nice to have as much money as you.

You see something, you want it and you just buy it. And you don't have to ask anybody, do I have enough money? You just buy it.

I'm not talking, I think most of us are not, what do you call it, ostentatious. We don't want to be, have a five carat diamond ring or three cars or... I think, especially people in the United States and even California, I would dare to say.

No, I think people in California are a little more advanced in this regard to other people in the country and to other people in the world. You are wise enough to know that three cars is more trouble than one. You know, and I'm not kidding.

No, I'm not, it's not a joke. You've evolved. And there are countries where people don't believe that, they don't understand that.

In Beijing, there's, wasn't there 500,000 new cars there last year? You know, it's like weird, it's like scary, because everybody wants two cars or three cars. And then, I think Americans have reached the point, because they've had prosperity so long, I think most Americans understand that if you have a house with 17 rooms in it, it's just a lot of cleaning.

And it'd be better to have a small, efficient, pleasant house. I have a small, efficient, pleasant house on a mountain. But, you know, in front of me there's nothing.

And that's fine. I don't need, I don't want more than that, because I have trouble cleaning the two rooms, you know, and I don't want to clean four rooms. So I think we've reached that kind of evolution in America, because we've always had enough.

People in other countries haven't had that yet. And they get there. They all get there.

So I, but wouldn't it be nice to have enough money to do anything you want? And not to stress. And especially, I'll tell you something interesting.

Like, I go around the world giving these success talks to thousands of people. It's not unusual for a thousand people to come to a talk in China or Mexico or, you know. And then X number of people want to make a lot of money.

They want to be prosperous, wealthy. And I say, why? I get them, we go on these three-day retreats, three-day success retreats.

I make them leave their home. They have to come out to the countryside with me, in every country, in Bulgaria, in Russia, in Argentina, in China, in Malaysia. We go out of the city.

We go to a resort. I keep them for three days. They have to do yoga.

They have to do meditation. And they have to join discussion groups. And they have to tell me what they want.

And then for three days I get to work on them, you know. And then they go home and they try to get it, you know. So a lot of people say money.

The first thing I want is money. And then I say, why? And you'll be happy to know, I think Jay was talking about it today, but you'll be happy to know, I would say 90% of the people who want more money want it because they want to serve the world.

They want money to help other people. And it's very, it makes me very happy. I'm happy to report to an audience in Sacramento, California, that all over the world people want money because they want to do something good for others, you know.

And that's cool. I'm happy. So it's not bad to have money in that sense.

It's useful. It's precious. It's a nice thing.

Everybody would like to have financial independence. Number two, everybody would like to have a nice partner or family, right? Not everybody wants a family.

Most people would like to have a partner. It's one of life's greatest pleasures. And I don't care if you're still angry about your last breakup, but in the end you're going to want another partner, okay?

After it wears off, you're going to want another partner. It's like one of the greatest joys in life, to have a good partner, you know, like a really nice, loyal, sensitive, financially independent, who works, you know, polite, nice person to live with. Because it's lonely to come home.

You can have a lot of money and then come home and there's nobody there to share your day with. That's lonely. It's not fun.

We've all had trouble with partners, but in theory, is it possible to have a good one? You see what I mean? One that is good for a long time.

We would like that. Everybody would like that. I think most people would like that.

In my experience in the world, most people would like to have a nice partner. That's the second thing. You can have money, you can have a partner, but if you don't have health, if you have a bad back, or you have some chronic health problem, or you don't have energy, if you've lost your energy, lost your youth, the energy of youth.

A lot of people spend their youth to get money. They spend their life's juice, the battery, to get money. And when they get the money, they're too old to enjoy it.

There's nothing sadder than an old rickety guy in a stingray. There should be a law that the old guys have to give to somebody who can appreciate it, who can use it, who's 20 and can attract some girls with the car. So I think those are three things that people want.

They want to be financially secure. And then they want companionship. And then we want good health and energy.

We'd like to be strong and healthy. And then you get to the mental things. We'd like to be peaceful in our mind.

No depression, no nervousness, no anxiety. The emotions, jealousy, anger, desire, we would like to somehow be free of those chains of being jealous all the time of people, or judging other people all the time, or getting angry easily, or upset easily. We would like to be free of those mental poisons.

They're called poisons in Tibet. So I think that's like a fourth goal. And then obviously, I went to a city in China called Chengdu.

It's on this side of Tibet, and it's famous for Mapo Tofu. Anybody know Mapo Tofu? You're cheating, you've been to China.

Mapo Tofu is a kind of tofu that was invented in Chengdu, and they use Erma. Erma is a red peppercorn, and it tastes like a good Mexican chili, but different. It has a unique taste.

Once you've eaten Mapo Tofu, you can't eat anything else. So there's a restaurant where they invented Mapo Tofu in Chengdu. So I was like, I gotta find this restaurant.

I worked like two days, and I found this old wooden restaurant where they invented Mapo Tofu, you know. And I walk in, and there's all these waiters, like in China, in a restaurant there'll be 25 waiters and two people eating. And, you know, so I sit down by myself, and I'm experiencing Mapo Tofu, you know.

Oh man, this is it. This is the original Mapo Tofu, you know. I gotta learn how to cook this, you know.

And then everyone else is just watching me, you know. And I'm thinking, why don't they buy some Mapo Tofu, you know. And then I realized they don't have any money.

They don't have the money, you know. I'm alone in the restaurant eating the Mapo Tofu with all these people watching me. And then it wasn't fun anymore.

It was totally not fun. And I left. I left the restaurant, because I couldn't do it anymore.

I couldn't stuff myself on my favorite Mapo Tofu in front of 20 people who didn't have the money to buy it. And it was just really uncomfortable. So I think the last thing we all want, like Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, once you get that much money, what do you do?

You start helping other people. It's just not fun to be the only person eating in the restaurant, you know. Like, if you get successful, and you have all the money you want, and you have a beautiful partner, and you have good health, if your health gets constantly better and better, your energy is more and more, then you feel guilty when you see other people, and they don't have these things.

And then you can't enjoy them, because the other people don't have them. So then you get this desire. It's a human, it's a beautiful human trait that every one of us, if we became wealthy, we would start to give it away, because we would want other people to have it also.

So I think these are basic five emotions. I'm happy to report to you in Sacramento, California, that everybody in the whole world that I've met wants to help the whole world. There's no culture, however evil the newspapers say they are, who would feel comfortable to eat in a restaurant if nobody else could eat.

Every person in the world would be uncomfortable with that. So I think those are five. We want to help the world.

In the end, deeper than the desire for sex, deeper than the desire for food, is the desire to serve other people, to be the mother for other people. It's a deep-seated human desire, and it's universal. Everybody in the world has it.

It's beautiful. It's cool. And we all have it.

It's a beautiful thing. So these are the five goals of a human being. So how can we use seeds to achieve them?

I'm going to skip the paper. That often happens. I'm sorry.

It's not important. We'll get there. Sorry.

The people who printed it at the last minute, they're always like... Let's just go straight to those five things, okay? Do you mind?

Somehow I think we'll solve the other things, by the way. And people ask me, you know, why are you a monk? You're a Buddhist monk.

Why are you going around teaching people to get rich? It's because I don't like to eat in a restaurant by myself.

[Speaker 2]
Okay, understand? It's a kind of compassion, I think. It's not an evil thing, you know.

We all know that three cars is not useful, and that 17 rooms is just more cleaning, right?

[Speaker 1]
But you also have anxiety about your credit cards, and the debts you have, and paying off your car loans, and school loans, things like that. You have those anxieties. Why not get rid of them?

Why make people go through that if they don't have to? If you can stop it, why not stop it? That's one kind of human pain.

Okay, first one. We went through it today at lunch. I'm sorry to repeat myself.

You guys can fall asleep. Now I'll wake you up when we get to something new. There are four steps to achieving any of those goals that we talked about.

To repeat. Financially independent. I can do anything I want.

[Speaker 2]
Secondly, I have a beautiful partner. Third, I have what?

[Speaker 1]
Health, energy, youthful energy. Health, good health. Fourth, my mind is peaceful.

My mind is at peace. And then finally, I'm doing something to help the whole world. I can bring those things to other people.

So let's go through them one by one. And we'll forget the reading. I think by the end the reading will solve itself.

Where did it go? Yeah. Okay.

How do I put a seed in my mind to see those five things? Okay. How do I place the seeds in my mind to see those five things?

Because if the pen is coming from me, this is a common technique in Tibetan debating. You learn it. You lull the audience with a small example.

A pen. And they happily agree that the pen is coming from me. Everybody agreed, right?

Nobody disagreed. Then if I take you to a place where you accept that the pen is coming from you, then you must accept that everything else around you is coming from you. You don't have a choice.

I tricked you. You thought I was just talking about a pen. I'm talking about your husband.

I'm talking about your kids. I'm talking about your job, your city, the sky, the roads, the traffic, the accidents on the roads. They're all coming from you.

Okay? You can put seeds in your mind for anything. How do you put it there?

There are four steps, okay? And that you should write down somewhere, okay? You have the paper, right?

Just use it, write it down. You can throw it on the street when you get outside. Number one, decide what you want, okay?

I suggest you focus on one thing, okay? Don't try to do all five things at once, okay? Like, whatever sounded best to you, write it down now, okay?

[Speaker 2]
I want to have as much money as I want to do anything I want, including helping all the people I'd like to help. Or I'd like to have a peaceful state of mind, you know? I don't want to have anxiety in my mind, or depression, or doubts, or anger, or...

[Speaker 1]
Okay? You decide. You write down what you want, okay?

I'll give you one minute more. If the thing you wrote down was, I don't know what I want, we can also fix that. Okay?

That's also coming from seeds, and you can change it. It's very cool. There's nothing you can't change with seeds, okay?

Got it? Okay, number two. Do you have any money?

Do you have some money? This is how I supplement my income. It's like, usually it's much more effective with a hundred dollar bill.

No, I'm just kidding, I'm just kidding. So, I'm going to show you how to plant a seed. So, I want...

Let's say, for example, I want money. And again, I'm not saying you're greedy, and you want a zillion dollars, and you want, you know, a big mansion, or something like that. Because I agree, we all are mature enough to know that's not going to make you happy.

It's just more work, okay? But I would like to have a nice three, two-room house on a mountain with, you know, debt-free. You know, it's mine.

You know, it's got solar. I have a rainwater catchment. I don't need anything.

If there's a nuclear war, I'll be fine. So... So, how to make money?

How do you plant a seed in your mind? So, watch. Planting a seed requires that you find someone else who needs the same thing, okay?

Step number two is to find someone else who wants about the same thing, okay? I had somebody ask me this burning question. I think it was in Detroit.

If I want a vanilla ice cream, can I give chocolate ice cream? Yes, okay? It just has to be close.

Yes, okay? Ice cream. Any kind of ice cream, all right?

So, I want to be financially independent. I don't want to have to think... What I want in my life, I don't know about you, but I want to reach a place where I don't have to think about money.

And then I can think about the other things I want to think about. So, I don't want to be rich, but I want to reach a place in my life where I don't have to think about my bills. And I'm there.

I don't pay my bills. Somebody else pays my bills. You know?

They're right here in this room, but I won't embarrass them. And I don't pay the bills. I don't see the bills.

They just get paid. That's nice, okay? If you want to get there, you have to do it for somebody else.

You have to try to do it for somebody else, okay? If you want to be financially independent, you have to take a pet project of helping someone else to become financially independent. Okay?

You need another person to plant a seed. It's like soil. You cannot plant a seed without another person.

Not possible. If you don't want to do that, you can leave now. Okay?

You have to do it for somebody else. That's the rule. And there's no exceptions.

You cannot plant a seed without another person. It's not possible. There's no such thing.

You can just leave now. If you don't want to help somebody else, just leave now, because it won't work. And I claim that you'll never be happy, and you'll never get what you want, okay?

You need somebody else, okay? So, anybody else. So, let's say Bonnie is...

Step number two, I choose Bonnie. Okay? You don't have to stand up.

Just relax. I choose Bonnie, okay? And I'm going to help her become financially independent.

I'm not saying you have to give money away wildly, randomly. It doesn't work either, okay? You don't have to give money.

People always come to me, should I give money to the homeless? I say, if you're sure they're not using it for drugs and alcohol, maybe. But that's not the point, you see?

You choose anybody who needs to make some money, and you help them. Just help them, okay? So, I'm not suggesting you go hand out dollar bills to everybody, or ten dollar bills.

It was a dollar bill, right? Just kidding. Here's how you plant a seed for money, okay?

And I'm very serious. I'm not joking, and I did it. So I'm speaking...

The reason I tell you my life story is that you believe me. I did it, and I'm there, and it's nice. And I don't think about my bills much.

So anyway, I want to put a seed in my mind for money. I choose... Step number two.

I choose a person who needs some extra money. And I help them make it. You don't have to give it to them.

Just help them. Give them advice, okay? Who's the last person in the world who can advise other people about making money?

A person who doesn't have enough money. Who wants to use this system? A person who doesn't have enough money.

But what it comes down to is intention, okay? Not skill, okay? If you really want to help someone else, that plants a seed.

That's enough. Just want to help others is enough. And then do your best.

Whether you succeed or not is frankly not so much up to you as it is up to their seeds, okay? Don't get frustrated. Do your best.

I got to help her make money, but I don't know how. Just help. Just try.

That plants a seed. So okay, here. Then watch.

Watch my hand. I put the money in her hand. Then I let go.

Who's witnessing the action? She is, and I am. My mind records everything in my life.

I did, Sean mentioned, I did a three-year meditation retreat in a room. Three years, okay? And I can tell you everything you ever saw in your life is still in there.

Every TV advertisement you ever heard is still in there. They were singing to me like after 12, 14 months. These spaghetti advertisements, you know, uh-oh, spaghetti, uh-oh.

You know, if you're my age, you know. Chef Boyardee, I don't know what it is, but you're in deep meditation in the 16th month, and all you can hear all day is, uh-oh, spaghetti, uh-oh, spaghetti. And everything you do is stored in your mind, okay?

Trust me. I can... I saw it.

Okay, so I hand it to her. I let go. I am witnessing my own hand letting go.

That plants a seed. Okay, that plants a seed. So step number two, find someone who needs something similar to what you want, okay?

And then, you know, trust me, people come to me all the time. I don't know anybody who wants what I want. And I say, check for 24 hours, get back to me.

You know, and then they come back, 24 hours later they come back, I found 10 people who want what I want. You were ignoring them your whole life. You know, of course, there's people around you who want those five things.

Duh! But you just ignored them up to now. Now you need them, right?

You need someone to plant a seed with. Now suddenly they appear in your life, you know. Oh, she also wants some money.

You know, they were there all along. You didn't care. You didn't notice them.

In this exercise, you learn to notice other people's needs, which is also nice. So, when I let go, a seed is planted in my mind, okay? So, step number two, make a plan, choose somebody, okay?

Choose somebody, make a plan, okay? I often tell people, make a plan to take them out to like Starbucks or something, okay? You're going to take them out to a certain Starbucks, and you're going to sit down and you're going to say, I know you're buried under credit card debts, or I know you still have your student loans.

It's usually $80,000. I don't know why. I guess that's what it costs.

But all my friends have $80,000 school loans 30 years later, you know. And you're like, okay, I know you have the same problem that I had, and I want to help you, okay? Just like that.

Just say, let's help each other. Let's go out and have coffee, and I'll give you some suggestions. Make them your pet project, okay?

If you don't feel like doing that, this system is not going to work for you. And I claim that nothing else will work for you. And you will go through those six things your whole life.

You will go up and down, you will lose jobs, you will get new jobs, you will make money, you will lose money, partners, houses, families, and it'll keep going over and over again. But sooner or later, in your life, you have to help other people. That's the only way.

Sooner or later you'll figure it out. Might as well do it now. It saves time, right?

You have to find somebody else who needs what you need. And then step three, guess. Step two is to choose them.

Step three is to do it. Okay, just do it. Take them out somewhere and help them, okay?

I often do it at a coffee shop. You just sit down and talk, and say, I don't have all the answers for your life, but I'm going to help you. I'm committed to meeting you once every two weeks, and that's enough, okay?

And that will bring you financial independence, okay? It's very interesting. If you plan to see.

But, okay? Here's a but. This is like those TV shows that end halfway through at the end of the night and you have to come back tomorrow.

You know many people who are generous who didn't make $250 million, okay? You know that. I don't have to tell you.

The reason you don't jump up and kiss me right now is that in the back of your mind you hesitate because you say, I know people who are generous and they're still poor, you know? I know people who are very generous. I've seen people give money over and over to other people.

My mom, and she was always struggling for money, her whole life, you know? She never got through that, you know? So I respect your sentiments, but I don't think it will work because I've seen the opposite.

And then my answer is step four, okay? You have to know step four, all right? Step four is a process which nurtures the seed in your mind.

During the time that the seed stays in your mind, it has to be nurtured. It has to have fertilizer, water, sunlight. There are mental and moral equivalents of fertilizer, sunlight, water, and you have to apply them to your mental seeds or they don't grow, okay?

And they'll sit there forever. By the way, you can't destroy them. They will sit there forever and they will never open, okay?

It's like a watermelon seed that you leave in a drawer, okay? Is the seed good? Yes.

Does the seed work? Yes. Will it make a watermelon?

Yes. But you have to plant it, okay? And you have to water it or it just will never do anything.

So I'm claiming that almost all of you already have enough seeds in your mind to get anything you want. You already did many kind things to other people. All of us have.

We all do bad things and we all do good things. And you already have countless seeds in your mind from having served other people, kind things you've done. Everyone here has done beautiful things for other people.

Those seeds are sitting there like watermelon seeds in a drawer and you have to water them. And then you probably don't have to do much new stuff. Just water them and they will open, okay?

And then you can have money or you can have a partner or what you want, you can have. So cleverly, I'm going to tell you step four after refreshments so that you don't leave. Do you have any announcements you want me to make, Mark or me, while they're still paying attention?

No. You want to come up and... No?

Let's do it at the beginning of the next part. Okay, we'll do it at the beginning of the next part. I'd like to introduce some of the staff that I travel with.

I usually travel with about 15 staff. We're on our way to Latin America. We leave tomorrow morning at 5.30. And we do tours. We do tours of many countries. So some of the staff are with me tonight. Some of...

I'd like to introduce them because if you have a question about your own life, you could ask... you could ask them, okay? I call it like shopping at the supermarket.

I'm going to ask them to stand up one by one and you check them out. And if it looks like they might have the answer for your question or if you feel a karmic connection with them, then during the refreshments I encourage you to talk to them, okay? So don't be shy.

You paid to come, I think. I don't remember. But you're here and they're trained.

Some of them have been trained for 20 years and they're good at it. So ask them questions. If you see someone who strikes your fancy, then just go up to them and ask them a question.

I'm going to ask them to stay up here during the break, okay? So I think... Let's see.

Mark Ross, can you come up? The first four people live in Sacramento. So if you want to have a free advisor for the rest of your life, it's Mark Ross.

Ami Diller, can you come? His wife, partner. Brandy Davis, where are you?

Are you here? Yeah. David Fishman.

Are you okay? Yeah. So those four people live in Sacramento.

And then traveling with me, Sean Pfister lives in San Francisco. So they're local. Some of my usual staff are...

Mercedes Baleta, the singer. She handles mostly Russia and China. She does about ten cities in Russia and China, but she'll still talk to you.

Bonnie Suick just got married. She's cool. She was one of the first employers of Apple Corporation and she did not buy the stock, which is why she still has to work.

And then Polycom Corporation. So she does a lot of our financials. Ellie Vandepost, do you mind?

She's the bill person, okay? She does my... She's the financial person.

And let's see. Nicole, can you come up? Nicole's a yoga teacher.

She can help you if you're into that. Rebecca, she's not too mobile. You're going to do it anyway?

Okay. Did I leave anybody out?

[Speaker 2]
I don't think so.

[Speaker 1]
Okay, so there's your choices, okay? People you can talk to. If you have a question during the break, don't be shy, okay?

Engage them. Ask them. Because many, many, many people during the break, they got the answer they were looking for in their life.

So you have specific needs in your life that I may not talk about. So use the break, okay? Use that time.

Don't be shy, okay? They've only bitten a few people. All right.

Okay, we'll take... Also, we're very interested in coming back to the area and doing some more corporate programs with the Diamond Cutter Institute. If you are interested in helping with those events in the future, or you have any ideas of a company or a corporation that might like to bring Michael in for a lecture or a training in a corporation, please talk to Bonnie.

She heads the corporate division of DCI. Okay, thank you so much. Thanks.

She's a singer.

[Speaker 2]
She has a lot of nice albums, especially for yoga and meditation. And if you're interested, you can get them here.

[Speaker 1]
You can get books here. I have many books here. I'm not in the book business.

If you want to take a book, just bring it to me. I'll give it to you. But I'll be here to sign books.

And I can also... I'll sit here, and if you have questions, I can answer questions, okay? Anything else?

No, we're good. Okay, all right. Fifteen minutes break, okay?

And then we'll start again. For step four. Okay, let's start.

Step four, okay? Step four is weird because it's very easy. And it's only in the last year or so that it occurred to me that it's possible that the easiest thing is the most powerful thing, or the most happy thing to do is the most powerful thing.

And it just seems... I grew up in America, a Judeo-Christian background, and we kind of felt that you have to be crucified to do your part. You know?

No, and it's just part of our culture. You have to suffer to be successful or something like that.

[Speaker 2]
But if you think carefully, if you're really open-minded, is it possible that the most pleasant thing you could do would be the most powerful thing? You see? So that happens to be the case.

So step number four. I have come to call it coffee meditation because my lama, when he taught it to me, he called it coffee meditation. So, I'll tell you the whole story because we have a little bit.

I'm going to go to 9.30, is that okay? Or a little bit?

[Speaker 1]
I'm not going to get any sleep anyway. You might as well suffer with me. He used to sit and watch.

[Speaker 2]
He was a Tibetan lama, very cranky, old school, very high lama, and then some demon gave him a television. And then he got addicted to New York Yankees baseball, and he would watch New York Yankees baseball, and then I would come home from the diamond company. I had to come home to the monastery every night.

So some of my time, I lived in a Mongolian monastery in New Jersey, and he would be upstairs, and only the abbot is allowed to watch television, and I wasn't allowed to watch television, so I didn't have a television. But then I would hear him upstairs, and I'd hear the baseball game, and I'd be like, how could I get up there? And so Tibetans like Tibetan tea, which is made with butter and salt and nutmeg and soda powder.

They taught me to make it, and they got me addicted to it. And at the time, I was drinking like 20, 30 cups a day, and it keeps your mind very sharp, and you know, rear.

[Speaker 1]
And he would sit and watch baseball, so I said, oh, I'll make him some tea.

[Speaker 2]
So you have to pour all those things in, and then you have a plunger, like a butter churn, and you have to plunge it, and then you pour it into a cup, and you have to run upstairs, and you knock on the door. And in Tibet, the lama says, shok.

[Speaker 1]
Shok means what you... it's the word you use for a dog. It means come.

Like, come in. And he'd say, shok. And then I'd come in, you know, and he'd be sitting with his...

He always had his rosary, and his team never lost after he started praying for them.

[Speaker 2]
If you like baseball... He was a Mets fan, mainly, actually, and that was the year they won the World Series after losing 17 years in a row. And he cheated.

He was...

[Speaker 1]
I swear he cheated. All these weird things happen. If you know baseball, it was a historical year.

[Speaker 2]
Anyway, he was doing all this, and so he would ignore me. And I'd say, Rinpoche, I have tea. You're supposed to say, you know, in Tibet you're supposed to go, shok, shok, shok, shok, shok, which means I respect you.

And so you have to get down on your knees, and you got to say, shok, shok, shok. And then you can't look at the Lama, and you have to offer the tea.

[Speaker 1]
And then he would take the tea, and then I would sort of go like this and get behind him and watch the baseball game, you know. And then he would be like totally absorbed in the game, but he had eyes in the back of his head also, and then he'd say, you're still here. His voice was like that.

[Speaker 2]
He's like, you're still here. I'd say, yes, Rinpoche, you know. And then he'd say, why are you still here?

[Speaker 1]
And I'm like, oh, Rinpoche, I worked for how many hours? It was 12 or 13 hours, you know. I'd say, I'm just fried, Rinpoche, you know, I need a break.

I just want to watch TV, you know. Just let me sit here, I won't bother you. Just let me watch, you know.

And he'd say, that was his answer to anything I said. It was, then he didn't hit me, so I figured it was okay to stay. And then he's like, then after a while he's like, did you meditate today?

And I'd be like, no, Rinpoche, you know. I was on the bus at 5.30 to New York, you know, then I was on the subway, and then I had to walk to work from the subway station. Our building's in Tribeca, so anyway.

Then I come back, you know, so he said, have to meditate. You've got a duty of meditation. So, I'd say, okay, and I get up to leave, you know.

And one day he said, you can sit on the couch and meditate. So, he had this big teak, teakwood couch frame with gold cloth, with gold threads through it, real gold. And some wealthy guy gave him this couch, you know.

And he didn't let anybody sit on the couch. The Dalai Lama came to visit one day, and he sat on the couch. But no one else is allowed to sit on the couch.

If you get close to the couch, he hits you with his mala, with his rosary. He whips you with his rosary, you know. And so I'm like, you sit on the couch, you meditate now.

He talked just like Dirty Harry. And then, and he loved Dirty Harry. I think there was something going on.

And, you sit on the couch, you know. And then sometimes a lama will ask you to do something wrong because they want to hit you, you see. So, they're checking to see if you'll sit on the forbidden couch, you know.

And when you sit down, they start hitting you with their rosary, you know. And I'm like, that's okay Rinpoche, I'll sit on the floor here. You know, I'm happy on the floor.

Sit on the couch. You know. And then he, I'm like, there's a rule in Tibet, if a lama has to ask you three times, they hit you.

So, you might as well sit. After the second time, you might as well sit on the couch because they're going to hit you anyway. But there's a chance they won't hit you if you sit on the couch.

So anyway, I sat on the couch, you know. And then he's like, lie down on the couch. And then, in Tibet your feet are considered very dirty.

They're considered very profane. Your feet are profane. You're not allowed to put your feet on anything.

He's like, put your feet up on the couch. You know, and I'm like, he really wants to hit me, you know. He's drawing it out, you know.

And then, I'm like, okay, okay, Rinpoche. I sat on the couch, I leaned back. And then, prop your head up on your hand like this.

You know. And look at the ceiling. And I'm like, I thought you wanted me to meditate.

That's meditation. And then he'd swing his, he'd twirl his rosary, which is like a threat, you know. And he'd like, do that.

And I'm like that. I said, okay, what do I do now, Rinpoche? He's like, it's like this.

And he's like, it's like that pose they made us do today. I was cheating, okay. I had my hip on the ground.

Anyway, so, he's sitting like this and he said, okay, we're going to do coffee meditation. I'm like, what's coffee meditation? go make yourself some coffee, come back.

You know. And I run down, make coffee, come back. He says, drink the coffee.

And I'm drinking, sip the coffee, okay. Look at the ceiling, okay. Think about the good stuff you did today.

Did you do any good stuff today for anybody? I'm like, yeah. He says, you remember the church?

Do you remember the church? I'm like, he went to a church one day. He went to a cathedral.

The Pope issued a, what do you call? Edict, encyclical? I forget.

The Pope told everybody they had to do something. And it was that every Catholic church had to invite people from other religions to give lectures at the church. So, they called us and they said, you have a Buddhist Lama there, yeah, can he come and give a talk because the Pope said we have to.

And he's like, okay, I'll go, you know. And I remember we were walking down the middle of this beautiful cathedral and he's looking everywhere. He's like, Mike, Mike.

He called me Mike. Mike, get your pen out. I'm like, what?

He says, make a list, you know. I'm like, what? He says, we need windows like this in the temple, you know.

These colored windows, they're great, you know. We can put Buddha and Tara, stained glass windows, you know. And he's really excited about the church, you know, and he's like, we got to do all this stuff.

We're walking down the middle with a priest, you know. Then he looks over to the side and there's a little room, right, on the side of the church. And a priest comes in the back door and this good-looking lady goes in the front door of this little room.

And he's like, he's like, tell the priest, you know, what are they doing there, you know. And the priest is like, oh, don't worry, it's all okay. And he said, what are they, why are they going in there?

And he said, don't worry, it's a confession. And he says, oh, that's good, we do that too, you know. And he said, what do they do in there?

Well, there's a window and she tells him her bad stuff that she did and then what happens? Then the priest tells her to do prayers on a rosary, like a hundred prayers on a rosary. Oh, that's like mantras, good idea, you know.

That's really good. You get rid of all your bad karma. That's great.

Then he says, where's the other one? And the priest is like, what do you mean? He's like, you know, where's the room on the other side?

And he says, no, no, we just have the one. He says, what? You got to have a room on the other side.

He says, well, we have one is enough for the church, you know. He says, no, no, you don't understand. The priest comes in the back, the lady comes in the front, she tells the priest all the good stuff she did.

And then the priest is like, that's a good idea, you know. And, so there's a tradition in ancient India that you have to give equal time to reviewing your mistakes and equal time to reviewing the good things you did today. So, coffee meditation is, and they're very strict about it, it's when you lay your head down on the pillow.

If I let the head go to the pillow, I fall asleep, that's the way it is. I fell asleep today in that stupid pose, I forget what it was. Did you notice?

I was like dead out. Anyway, you put your head like this and you look at the ceiling. I prefer this, okay.

You can try the pillow, but it's a little dangerous. And you go like this and you look at the ceiling. That's meditation, okay.

When you were in high school and you're thinking about your boyfriend and you're like, you know, that's focus, okay. No, it means the sense organs are turned off. Seriously, you're like, and you're not looking to your eyes.

Your eyes are open, but you're not seeing anything, right? It's called nanglamargenpa in Tibetan. So, you get into this space on your bed and a normal person's mind will go to one of three places.

And you check it out. You try tonight, okay, on your pillow as you start to go to sleep. Check it out.

The human mind goes to one of three places. Number one, your ex-partner from ten years ago. That's something they said ten years ago, okay.

I had a very beautiful female lama, Western, what's her name? Who's in Oregon or something. Tuptan Chudron, yeah.

I went to a talk by her. She gave a really good talk. And then she said, your boyfriend forgot that thing he said to you the same afternoon.

But ten years later you're still thinking about it. You know, like he did a number on you, you know. He said something to you ten years ago, your ex.

And you're still thinking about it ten years later. And he forgot it like half an hour after he said it. You know, like he should have to think about it, right?

And that's one thing. We think about people who hurt us in the past. And then we think about worries about the future, right?

[Speaker 2]
We wonder, will I have my job next week? Will my husband leave me? You know, you don't...

you worry about things. And then...

[Speaker 1]
Me, I make plans. I make grand plans, you know. Like I...

I use up today by planning tomorrow, and I'm never in today, you know. And those are the three things that your mind will go to when you're on your pillow. And then you have to wrestle with your mind, okay?

[Speaker 2]
Like you have to like, you know, and then your mind is worrying about next week, or your mind is still thinking about your ex-partner twelve years later. And then you have to grab onto your mind like a wrestler, like an Olympic wrestler, you know. And you flip them.

You know, you say, we're not going to think about that stuff.

[Speaker 1]
And he's like, what are we supposed to think about? And you say, we're going to think about all the good things we did today. The person we took to Starbucks for step three, we did a good job, didn't we?

It's not pride. It's appreciating who you are, okay? It's not pride.

It's appreciation. So, okay. I...

I'm trying a new method of making money. It doesn't involve slavery to some company or to the state of California. I guess that's popular in this town.

You know, today I tried a new way to make money rather than just working blindly my whole life and getting my measly little pension, you know. I took someone to Starbucks and I talked to them about ways that I could think of that they could make more money. And that's my strategy for paying off my credit cards.

Okay? Got it? I'm going to plant seeds by helping someone else who has financial stress.

And that's my new system. You know, it's the crazy diamond cutter thing, that guy, you know. I'm going to try it for a couple of weeks.

If it works, okay. If it doesn't, the worst thing that happened is you took someone to Starbucks, you know. So, think about it on your pillow.

Today, I did something possibly revolutionary, you know. I tried a new way of making a living, which is that I helped someone else to get the thing that I wanted. And in theory, that's going to plant a seed.

And in theory, that's going to create an object called money. That's my pen. Okay?

Because it's coming, money comes from you also. Money is also coming from you. Okay?

So, I'm doing an experiment with my life. To make money, I'm going to help someone else. I'm just going to sit with them at Starbucks and give them suggestions about how to pay off their credit cards and stuff like that.

Okay? And I'll see how it works. And then at night, the guy said, I had to do step four or it wouldn't work.

Okay? He claimed that I could make $100 million if I just lay my head on my hand correctly, you know. And, think, today I tried a new way to make money, which is helping someone else to make money.

Okay? And I understand it's a little weird, but I'm willing to give it a try. Okay?

If you're a big shot in a corporation in New York, you get three weeks vacation. You know, it's a point of pride in a big corporation in New York. You know, you come out of the owner's room, you know, and you're like walking down the hallway and you kind of turn to someone and you say, I got three weeks vacation.

You know, and they're all just common slaves and they only have two weeks vacation, you know. And you're like, I got, I'm a VP and I got three weeks vacation, you know. And then you feel really happy, you know.

You gave 49 weeks, you get three, you know. And from the outside, you know, from a truly, what do you call it? Objective viewpoint, you're insane.

You know, you're trading 49 weeks of your life for three, and one of those weeks, you're going to wash your clothes anyway. You know, it's, no, it's, the whole deal, the whole system is a scam, you know. Why not give me 26 weeks and I'll work 26 weeks, you know, make it 50-50.

We have a rule in our company. We work 183 days a year. That's the rule.

[Speaker 2]
We cannot schedule a talk or any business meetings or nothing. 183 days off per year and 182 days on, you know.

[Speaker 1]
And that's our rule, and we don't break it for anything. She arranged a flight back from China to get to the airport by 11.30 pm because we didn't have another day. We would have gone over 182.

You see? I'm serious. It was a big struggle, and we did it.

[Speaker 2]
So, I'm going to try something new, you know. I'm going to make money by helping someone else to make money, just as an experiment.

[Speaker 1]
I'll try it. What the heck? If I can get an extra two weeks vacation, it's worth it.

I'll give it a shot, you know, give it a shot. This system requires that on the bed at night, as you fall off to sleep, you think about the things you've done to help other people, and there's no expiration date. Okay?

It can be 5 years ago, it can be 10 years ago, it can be 15 years ago. Anything you did to help another person, if you just feed it some water, it will grow, the seed will grow, because the seed cannot be destroyed. All mental seeds are indestructible, they cannot be destroyed.

They will stay in your mind for decades. Any kindness you've ever done is sitting there like a watermelon seed in a drawer, and if you put some water on it, it will grow. Okay?

And then you can have what you want. You already have those seeds. Okay?

Okay, that's number four. Is it difficult? It is difficult, because your mind's going to...

your mind will go off to some ex-partner, or some future plan, or some anxiety you have about the future, and you will have to wrestle, and fight, and struggle, physically with your mind. Your mind will slide, it'll keep sliding away to your problems, or someone you don't like. Okay?

And then you have to grab it by its neck, you know, scruff, and get the heck back here, you know. We're thinking about the good things we did today. No, no, we have financial problems.

Shut up. Shut up. No, no, my boss said something unkind to me today.

Shut up. Get back here. You know, that effort, the effort of struggling with the mind, that is the true meaning of meditation.

Okay? I meditated in the monastery for 25, 30 years. Okay?

That's meditation. It's not some like spaced out Aum Mani Padme Hum thing. Okay?

It's not like that. Meditation is the struggle to focus your mind on what you choose to, and the mind will fight you. Okay?

And the more you fight with your mind, you build a muscle. It's called a meditation muscle, and you get good at it. Okay?

You can trick the mind too, you know, like, I don't know. I want to think about tomorrow breakfast, you know, and you're like, oh good, let's think about tomorrow breakfast. You know, you don't fight.

This is, you can trick the mind also. What are you going to have for breakfast? Oh, I'll have some pancakes and some eggs, and aren't you going to have coffee?

Yeah, let's have coffee too. You know, and then, where, where do you get coffee? Coffee shops.

Have you been to a coffee shop lately? Yeah. Did you, did you talk to anybody there?

Yeah, yeah, I did. And then you trick the mind to come back to the kind thing that you did, okay? So there's two ways to fight with the mind.

One is trick it to come back. But that's meditation, that's real meditation. What happens is, as you fall off to sleep, you fall off to sleep in a grateful mood.

You're grateful for yourself, you're grateful for a new way of life, you're grateful. And then all night long the seed multiplies in the subconscious, wildly. Okay?

I'm talking 250 million. I never intended to, I never intended to make a million. I never thought it would happen.

I didn't honestly think about it. But people ask me, what's your secret? I say, sleeping.

Okay? It's cool. If you have the right state of mind, if you think about the kindness you've done to others as you fall asleep, that cooks in your mind all night, okay?

It cooks in your mind all night. Then you can get other things. I mean, money is one thing.

People want a partner. It's very, very straightforward. There's no...

what do you call it? Magic about it. It's just a plain old thing.

You want a watermelon, you take 12 watermelon seeds, you punch your thumb in the ground, you dump the 12 in there, you cover it and you water it. And that's the end of it. There's no fancy thing.

And the same is true for a partner. You want a partner? Try this.

You will always get a partner. It cannot fail, okay? Find a lonely person.

Step one, I want a partner. Step two, find a lonely person, okay? Where do you find a lonely person?

Go to a nursing home, okay? Any nursing home. I've told thousands of people around the world they all got boyfriends, trust me.

Some of them got too many boyfriends. Then they come back to me. One lady flew from a certain country in the Middle East to Germany to complain to me that she had too many boyfriends.

After using this method, okay? So be careful. Find a person, like an elderly person who's lonely and who has no friends, who has no family.

Nursing homes are hell realms in this world. Sacramento has little hell realms. They're called nursing homes.

We don't go there. Nobody goes there. They're very, very unpleasant.

They stink because people can't hold their poo-poo and pee-pee. And people are desperate there. They moan all night.

And just go there. Pick one. I have one.

I've helped her for 20 years. She's still alive. We're still going.

Pick one. Adopt them. And help them.

You don't have to go every week even. Go every two weeks. It doesn't matter.

But you know when you feed birds or something? What's the trick? You got to be regular.

You got to be the same time. They will start making noise. It's got to be 7 a.m. I don't feed mine till 9. If I wake up at 7, I wait till 9. And they know it. And they don't get upset.

But at 9 they have it. So, say I'll come every other Friday. And come every other Friday and don't miss.

Come at the same time. And just be with them. Just sit with them.

That plants a seed. That's like giving money to Bonnie. You're aware of yourself going.

Plants a seed. And then it grows. And a guy shows up in your life.

Or a girl or whatever. Okay? It's just the way it is.

You can't stop it. If you plant a seed, if you water it. How do you water it?

On your bed, okay? At night. If you plant it and if you water it, you cannot stop it.

There's no force in the world that can stop it. I quit my work, I don't know, how many years ago? 15 years ago.

I stopped working 15 years ago. The money is still coming. The money is still coming.

I was at a yoga class, Dharma Mitra, in New York. A guy gave me a $100,000 check. I never met him in my life.

He handed me a $100,000 check. I like you. I like your work.

I said, I never met you. He said, take it. I said, what's it for?

He said, anything you want. You know, plant the seed, and then go to yoga. No, I'm not kidding.

You think I'm kidding. Imagine if what I say is true. Imagine how I feel to talk to you.

Imagine how it feels to me to see you struggle for money. You see? Imagine how it feels.

If what I say is true, imagine how... You laugh, but I'm like, why are they laughing? Of course.

You know, just plant the seed, and you can't stop it. It will come. It must come, okay?

Now, last question, then we'll stop, okay? And maybe if you have some questions, I'll take questions, okay? About anything, okay?

I don't care. How does this relate to the six problems we started with today? I'll go there quickly.

Let's go through them quickly. You cannot be sure about the future. From what I just said, what happens to number one?

Just plant what you want, and it will come, and you can't stop it. God cannot stop it, okay? If you plant a seed properly, and you do your work on your pillow, no force in the universe can stop that seed.

Nobody. Nothing can stop it, okay? You will get what you plant.

Good or bad, by the way, sorry. Dissatisfaction, you know, you struggle to find a partner, you find a partner, and then after six months, you don't like them anymore. Did it ever happen to you?

That's because the seed wore out, okay? The seed got old. Seeds wear out by growing, okay?

A tree kills a seed. Meeting your partner destroys the work you did at the nursing home. Got it?

Every hour you spend with them destroys more work from the nursing home. What's the solution? Keep going, okay?

It's dumb. It's obvious, okay? I had a woman, this worked for her, she's a yoga teacher, she's an architect, she's a famous, you know, she got the boy.

I went and did the ceremony in New York, and you know, it's very satisfying for me. Last month I married two people on the stage in Singapore, 1,200 people were there. They used this system, and they met each other, they both used it, and they asked me if they could get married on the stage, and I was like, that's kind of weird, but it was fun.

Anyway, I'm at the wedding, I'm sitting there on the couch, they're eating wedding cake. I'm like, so how is Mrs. Smith at the nursing home? And she's like, well, you know Geshe-la, getting married is not an easy thing, you know, there's a wedding and invitations, there's a dress, there's a caterer, you know.

I said, like, tell me the truth, how long has it been since you've been in a nursing home? Well, I didn't have time to go for three weeks, you know. But unspoken was what?

I got the boy. Who needs the old lady? You know, I got the boy.

Unspoken. And then I said, you sit down. I got angry.

I told the boy, you come sit down next to her, you know. And I said, you got to go together to the nursing home now. Now you have to go together.

How long? Forever. How long you want to be?

Then you're going to use up the old lady, get another one. Okay, it won't end. There's a solution to number two, okay?

Things wear out because the seeds are... wear out by producing their result. Every hour you're with your man, you have used up more seeds.

It's a debit card. And you have to keep recharging. That's obvious.

That's easy. That one's easy. Okay, number three.

You lose your jobs. That's the same principle, okay? If you keep planting seeds, a relationship or an occupation, a career can go indefinitely.

Okay? Can the body go indefinitely? Is the body like the pen or not?

Is the body coming from you? Or... It is.

It's like a pen. It's the same. You perceive your body because of seeds you have in your mind.

Okay? If you could find the seeds, you could keep the body going indefinitely. Okay?

Mortality is the... Mortality is the... Mortality is the running out of seeds that you planted before.

And if you want more life, give life. Give life. Protect life.

There are many ways, right? Drive more carefully. Don't text while you're driving.

Don't use your cell phone. If that's conscious, it will extend your life. And it can be indefinite.

Okay? You have to start over again and again. Not if you keep planting seeds.

Okay? So, the first four we took care of, right? Five minutes.

Easy. I should have done it at the beginning. Every job you get goes up and down every day.

You have ups and downs in your job every day. You think things are going well, then suddenly the boss is unhappy for no apparent reason. Right?

Just when you think you're doing well. Two things happen to anybody in a big corporation. What?

You get credit for stuff you never did. Then you're very quiet. You're like...

You know? And then you get blamed for stuff you never did. And then you're like very noisy, right?

Everybody knows that. Things don't have to go up and down anymore if you use seeds. Okay?

You're just experiencing old seeds popping up and going away. Get rid of them. Collect new seeds, powerful seeds, and then life will be consistent and there won't be ups and downs.

Okay? Very beautiful. Very fun.

Happy. Very happy. Okay?

Sometimes we're on the airplane flying to China. You know, it's like, I don't know, flight, 12-hour flight, you know? And it's in the middle of the night and the stewardess comes by and says, she'll sit down on the armrest and she'll say, what do you guys do?

You know? And then sometimes I'll say, can I join your company? Because we're like having a really good time on the airplane and they're like, what do you do?

You know? You need more people? It's like that.

Okay. Number six. In the end we are alone.

So I put a nice quotation. Go to the last page. So there's an ancient tradition in Tibet that Lord Buddha got enlightened, that Lord Buddha was very close to getting enlightened.

And then he had some subtle obstacle in his mind and he couldn't make a breakthrough. Like he's sitting under the Bodhi tree, right? In Bodhgaya, which at the time was called Vajrasana.

And he's sitting under the Bodhi rickshaw and he's meditating and he can't do it. He can't break through the final tiny thing. He can't do it.

So there's a tradition in India that says all the Buddhists held a meeting. The people who already got enlightened, which are countless, they had a meeting. And they said, there's a guy on earth, he's trying to get enlightened, he's sitting under some tree.

What are we going to do? He's got to make a breakthrough. And then they said, it's obvious, he needs a partner.

He needs a partner, spiritual partner. And this is the belief in our tradition, in the Dalai Lama's tradition, this is the belief that the final breakthrough has to be done with a partner. So they like call this lady, her name was Tila Uttama.

Tila Uttama. And they call on this angel and they said, okay, there's this guy, he's trying to get enlightened, he needs a breakthrough, he needs somebody to help him, meditate with him. And they sent her and she meditated with him.

And there's this beautiful, beautiful story that when the sun came up they got enlightened together. A very beautiful story. This is the real story of how the Buddha got enlightened.

It means that, it means that in our tradition at least, a partner is a very important thing. It's almost a path to enlightenment. It's very good.

The reason everybody in the world wants a partner is more deep than you suspect. It's not just a physical, what do you call it? It's not procreation alone.

There's a deeper spiritual reason to have a partner. They complete you chronically. Together you complete each other, okay?

And spiritually you complete each other. So there's a higher goals. That's why people crave partnership or crave companionship.

It's not just physical or emotional, it's also a very high spiritual thing. They want to be completed by another person. So then you just go to the nursing home, okay?

And you serve a lonely person. And that will create a partner. And that's beautiful.

She did it. She asked me, I want a partner, Geshe-la. I gave her this talk.

She got married two months ago.

[Speaker 2]
It was very pleasant. We all went. I helped to do the ceremony.

It worked for her. Okay, she's a good actress.

[Speaker 1]
Good advertisement. Last thing, and then I'll take questions. If anybody wants to stay, you can stay, and I'll take questions.

If you want to go, you can go. The most common question I get all over the world, in every single country, and it's in the back of your mind now, and I want to talk about it. And today at lunch we talked about it.

It seems... I was in China, in Guangzhou, and a lady raised her hand, and she said, okay, I understand your system.

[Speaker 2]
I understand, I have to help someone make money if I want money. I have to help the sick if I want to be healthy.

[Speaker 1]
I understand. And I have to help the lonely if I want to have a partner. I understand your system.

It's logical.

[Speaker 2]
It's comforting to me that someone is saying that everything has a logic to it. It's justice. It feels very good that the universe should run by some kind of cosmic justice.

What you do to others will be done to you. It feels very comfortable. I like it.

This is a Chinese person, right? And then they say, but our parents taught us something when we were children in China. And I said, what?

[Speaker 1]
And they said, when you do a good thing for someone, don't ask for something back. Just do it because it's kind and it's good. And don't threaten people.

I'll come to the nursing home if I can get a boyfriend. This is not compassion. This is business.

This is boyfriend business. I'll help you lonely old lady if I can get a boyfriend. If you help me get a boyfriend, I'll visit you.

But if not, I'm not interested. You see, then this is not love. This is some kind of selfishness, okay?

And I agree, if you use an older person to get a boyfriend, will you get a boyfriend or not? According to what I said, it comes up in the scriptures, okay? If you give money to someone only in order to get more money, will you get more money?

I'll give you a clue. If you drop a pen with a noble intention or if you drop a pen with a selfish intention, will it drop in both cases? It doesn't matter.

If you give money, you shall get money. You can't stop it, okay? If you help a lonely person, a boyfriend will come.

You can't stop it. But if you use her, if you're selfish, what will the boyfriend be like? He'll be a selfish son of a gun, okay?

Okay? You got to understand that about this system. You can't be selfish and use this system.

Will it work? Yes. Will you be surrounded by creepy selfish people as you have your Mercedes-Benz?

Yes. And you've seen people, they made money and they're surrounded by creepy selfish people. So how do I get out of this problem?

How do I make it compassionate? How do I make the process of getting a boyfriend compassionate? Okay?

And it's very beautiful. There's no time. If you suddenly come up with a boyfriend after, what, five years or something, of losers, you know, you come up with a good one, then what are your friends going to say?

They're going to say, what's the website? Or, you know, they're going to ask you, what yoga studio did you meet him at? You know what I mean?

They're going to ask you. It's going to come up. If suddenly you have a lot of money, they're going to say, what, are you into drugs?

Or, you know, what's happening with, you know, where's all this coming from? They're going to ask you automatically. They're going to ask you.

Your friends are going to ask you. And then they're going to say, what's the website? Or, where's the club?

And you're going to say, nursing home. And then they're going to say, oh, he looks so young. They're going to ask you.

And, if you are obviously successful, people will ask you, what are you doing? How did you do that? You know, you used to have a bad back, now you're doing yoga.

What happened? What did you do? And then you're going to say, oh, I planted some seeds.

And you're going to explain to them this process, if it works for you, okay? Give it a try. I'm not going to, you know, force you.

Give it a try. Life will force you. Okay?

You will lose things, and you'll get desperate, and then you'll try my system, okay? That's basically how it works. So, if it works for you, your friends will copy you.

And their friends will copy them. And then there will be lines outside of nursing homes. Can I get an old lady today?

She's, they're all busy. Next week. What time?

Three o'clock, she's got a 15-minute slot open. You know, oh, okay, I'll be here next week. Yeah, I'll be here early.

You know, no, there'll be a big demand for lonely people. I was in Detroit, I gave this talk. This young man came the second night, he's like, Geshe-la, Geshe Michael, I found her.

What? She's poor, she's sick, and she's lonely. This old lady, you know, I'm like, good job, you know.

And, no, you laugh because we avoid poor people, and we avoid the homeless, or we avoid people who are really ill. You take flowers a few times and then you stop going. You know, and older people are just a drag, you know, so you don't go anymore, right?

If this became common knowledge, if people believed in this system, if it works, people will be struggling, people will be competing for poor people, people will be competing for old people, okay? It's very sexy. Then what will happen?

No more lonely people, no more poor people. God bless the last person to understand this system, because there won't be anybody to help left.

[Speaker 2]
Okay?

[Speaker 1]
Okay? Got it? Got it?

In Buddhism, what do they call that? All you like Tibetan Buddhists, you struggle your whole life with this thing. What?

Starts with a B-O-D. Bodhicitta. Okay?

There's this Buddhist ideal called bodhicitta, love for the whole world. It's so hard to have it. It's so, what do you call?

You can't get your mind around it. It's so hard to love the whole world. I can't even love my neighbor.

I can't even love my dog, you know. How can I love the whole world? If you follow this system, the service of the whole world is an automatic result.

You can't avoid it. Got it? It's so cool.

You automatically are helping the world if you follow this system, because people will copy you, and then people will copy them. So if you keep your mind on that as you do it, the first time you go to the nursing home, think, I'm, I'm creating lines at nursing homes all over the world, right now. I'm starting, I'm ground zero of the boyfriend revolution.

You know, I had a girl, a lady in Eastern Europe, she says, Oh, this will be drugya revolutsiya, this will be boyfriend revolution, you know, and she was so happy. And you got to think like that, think big, okay? By using this system to get the things you want in your life, you are triggering a change in the global culture.

Think like that, and it's true. And then no more selfish. The boyfriend will be what?

Deeply spiritual, concerned about the whole globe. You know, why? Because as you helped the old lady, you were thinking about lines outside of nursing homes in every country.

Just put your mind there. It's the same action, helping her is the same action. But the intention is different.

I'm starting a virus. I'm putting a virus out there. Think that way, okay?

And then the boyfriend will be special. The boyfriend will be extraordinary. Got it?

Then it's not selfish, it's the opposite of selfish. It's world love. It's global love.

It's global compassion. It's bodhichitta. Okay?

It's very cool. The action is just visiting an old lady in a nursing home. Got it?

Okay? Try it. Don't be dumb.

I mean, don't go home and not try it. That's really dumb. You wasted my time, you wasted your time.

Just try it, you know. I'll marry you to the guy next year. Okay?

Alright, any questions? Let's do ten minutes of questions and let's go home, okay? I got to pack.

Any questions? No. Yes, please.

Can you say it loud so people can hear? Oh, no, he didn't hit me, but he never let me sit on it again. The sofa is still there.

He passed away in 2004, but the sofa is still sitting there. Nobody ever sat on it since then. It's still there.

Okay? Yeah, please. Oh, by the way, he has been reborn as a child.

The child just entered the monastery last month. He's a very precocious boy, and he loves TV. And...

he's very, very naughty. And so I'm like, I'm like, that's him for sure. The Dalai Lama said it was him, you know.

He has to approve all these reincarnations. It's cool. He's a very naughty little boy.

He's my teacher. Yeah. Yeah, did everybody hear that?

How do you teach this to teenagers or to children? Or to anyone? There's nothing more powerful than jivoy premier.

What is that? Jivoy premier. A living example.

We were in Russia recently. We were into that. A living example.

So you can talk to your kids all you want. You can lecture them. You can give them pamphlets from our society.

[Speaker 2]
And you can, you know. But in the end, they will copy what you do. And nothing can change that.

You can say anything you want. They will ignore it. They will watch you.

[Speaker 1]
And if you are happy, in a way, the fact that the best way to teach is by example is the greatest pressure you can put on a parent. You see what I mean? You not only have to talk good, you have to be, you have to be successful.

So, you know, if you're going to get up and give this kind of talk, you better have made some money, you better have beautiful relationships, and you should be healthy, even at an advanced age. Except I didn't figure out the karma for hair yet. But, but I mean, they'll watch you, and they'll do what you do.

So, so the pressure's on you, as a parent, as usual. You know, you have to, if you are obviously happy, they will copy you. And everybody will copy you.

And if you try to teach and you're not happy, there'll be a problem. There'll be a disconnect somewhere. People will say, after a while they'll get tired, and they'll say, it didn't work for him, it's not going to work for me.

I have this joke about meditation to you. I will teach you meditation, and everyone's like, I don't know what meditation you're doing, but I'll pass on that one. You know, you have to be, so anyway, I heard the Dalai Lama tell somebody that, you know, as a parent, it's example.

And as any kind of teacher, you have to be good at what you do, and then people will imitate you. Okay, any other question? No, okay.

Let's go to bed. I'd like to thank Ami and Mark. Could you stand up?

And, yeah.

[Speaker 2]
And also I'd like to thank Brandy and David. Can you stand up, please? Yeah, yeah.

[Speaker 1]
And they worked very hard to organize this talk. We're booked, I mean, we're booked through 2015. But the reason we came to Sacramento is we think, I don't know, it seems to be, you don't think so maybe, but you're pretty well-evolved here, and it would be nice to have this influence here, I think.

So, we're not, we don't need more places to go. We have enough. But we feel that, given the work that's been done by other people here, Ami and Mark and Brandy and David and other people, that it's a special place.

[Speaker 2]
It feels like a special place, and that something good could happen here. So if you're interested to help them, let them know, okay? Ami, can you wait?

[Speaker 1]
And Mark, just talk to them, and if you can, if there's, just say, I'll help, you know? And then you'll end up, you'll end up setting up chairs or, you know, okay, cleaning up afterwards. Okay.

First of all, I just want to thank Michael Roach again for coming tonight. Thank you. I can attest it works.

This is how I met Mark. So, and he really is very busy. They do travel, and we're really so pleased that you found time to squeeze us into the schedule on the way to Mexico City.

So he'll be up here for a while signing books and answering questions. Okay. Thank you.

Good night. Thank you.