Снять с себя зависимости с помощью кармы (Феникс, 2014), занятие 3

[Speaker 1]
Hi, so we're continuing with our talk about the ... that's pretty cool ... about Addiction and the Wheel of Life.

Again, the Wheel of Life is an ancient teaching. Does anybody not have a reading? Raise your hand, and keep your hand up.

If you don't have a paper, if you don't have a paper from earlier today, please raise your hand. Okay, so we're going to continue with the Wheel of Life, which is very much about self-perpetuating cycles, okay? It contains the explanation of why we're on downward self-perpetuating cycles, and it gives a teaching on how we can turn it to an upward self-perpetuating cycle.

So it's very popular to talk about vicious cycles, and especially there are things that we do in our life that trigger downward cycles, and we find ourselves doing the same things over and over again, especially with an addiction. And again, an addiction can be physical to things that you ingest, or it could be emotional with ways you treat yourself mostly, and then philosophical ways that you see the world. So, all downward cycles are triggered by the same view of the world, and then if you can change that view, you can get on an upward cycle.

And you know, we're not on upward cycles often enough or long enough to see how cool they are, but if you can learn the basic principles that we'll talk about tonight, then you can start your life on some kind of very dreamlike upward cycle that goes on for decades, and it's very very cool, okay? So, that's the goal tonight, is to learn how to get on that kind of an upward cycle. We were talking about the middle of the painting of the Wheel of Life, we covered how it was painted under the Buddha's instructions, and we already talked about the pigeon, or the rooster in the painting, meaning that represents desire for pleasure, pursuit of pleasure, which is done ignorantly, meaning you are taking your pleasure, right?

And if it's done in an enlightened way, you are planting your pleasures by serving others, by providing happiness to others, you plant your pleasures, and that would be the pleasure without the addiction, you see? So, the pigeon represents doing it the old way, which is the way the whole world has done it. In this world, and there are other worlds, right?

But in this world, people up to now, they haven't been trained, or they haven't been taught in this way of planting the things you want, rather than taking them from others. So, it's the opposite, you get the things you want by providing them to others, okay? The golden rule, but you need some training, right?

There's some technique. You can throw a corn seed on the ground here, and the seed is strong and vital, but it won't grow. There's techniques to planting—anyone who's tried to do a garden.

I've had a garden for five years, and I had many teachers come and teach me. I went to a rose—what do you call it?—a rose class with the rose expert of the Verde Valley, which is a major population center, and I had this cute class outdoors on folding chairs with her, and then they had a raffle, and the person who won it got to have her come to their house and plant all their roses for them, and so that's how I started my garden. And it takes a lot of skill, you know, there's a lot of tricks to planting a garden.

So, you can plant your future, you can plant the seeds that you want, you can design what you have next year, but you have to know how. Someone has to teach you how, right? I decided that since the American press decided that Muslims were evil, that I would go make friends with Muslims somewhere.

So, I looked up countries on the map. I decided to go to Morocco. I think Ben helped me, and I went and I thought, you know, I'm gonna learn some Quran at the source, you know.

So, I got to go to a... I got set up to come to a village called Bizu near Marrakesh, and spend two months there. And there's a place called a Riyadh, a kind of architecture called a Riyadh, which is similar to a hacienda, and it's a four-walled structure, and the inside courtyard is often planted with a garden, and the windows are all on the inside, which is very pleasant, and there's no windows facing out.

And it's a very beautiful thing, a very beautiful kind of building. And you know, I'm like calling ahead and saying, you know, is there gonna be someone to bring me food? Because I can't come out, I'll be two months in retreat studying Quran, you know.

And they're like, don't worry about food, you know. And then I'm riding from the airport, you know, and there's this kind of crazy driver guy. And I'm like, so we're going to the village right?

He said, yes. And I'm like, is there gonna be food there? And he said, don't worry about it.

And then he said, and the first thing we're gonna do is to have a Moroccan whiskey party. And I'm like, okay. You know, and I'm getting myself geared up for a Moroccan whiskey party.

And we got to the Riyadh in the village, and he took me inside and served me a really elegant nanar, mint tea with lots of sugar, on a whole silver set, you know. And we had a tea party. And he said, that's Moroccan whiskey, because we're not allowed to drink whiskey.

And they really don't. And they, instead they drink overly sugared mint tea. And then I said, well have you arranged for someone to bring me, you know, like fresh vegetables and stuff during my two months retreat?

And he said, don't worry about it. And then he left, and they locked the outside door, you know. And I'm like, and there's this garden there, and in the middle of the Riyadh, it's beautiful, it's very beautiful.

And the first week, tomatoes came out. And the second week, watermelons, and then corn, and then everything you could imagine that you'd want, and herbs, and all kinds of wonderful fresh vegetables and fruits. And every week something else opened, you know, like magic, you know.

And then I just picked it, and I've never had fresh food. I grew up in the city, you know. I've never picked something and eaten it the same day.

And it was two months of like culinary nirvana. And then, you know, the guy came to teach me Arabic and Quran every couple days. And he said, see, we took care of you, you know.

And I said, that's really cool, you know. He said, yeah, when we heard you were coming four months ago, we planted what you would need, so that every week you'd have a different kind of vegetables growing. We planted three, four months ago.

We designed the garden for you three or four months ago. And in this system, that's what you do with your life. You plant the mental seeds for things you want a month ahead, or two months ahead, or three months ahead.

You design your garden in your relationships, in your career, with your health, with your mental state, and you plant it all ahead of time. And then you just, what do you call it? You just harvest, you don't have any, you just go out and pick it.

And it's effortless, and you look really smart, because everything goes right for you, and all your friends are like, how do you do that, you know, what's your secret? And you're like, I planted it three months ago, and I'm just picking. I don't have to do anything but pick what grew, you see what I mean?

It's like that. So, the pigeon is the old way to get things, which is to go out and look for them, struggle with other people, compete with other people, and then take from other people, and try to get more of the pizza than other people got. That's, all the isms in the world are based on that, capitalism, socialism, communism.

They're all based on, there's a certain amount of pizza in the world, there's eight slices, and each country has to compete for a slice. I think what capitalism says, I have to fight you for the slice, and try to take the eight slices myself. And then socialism says, everyone gets one bite a week, you know, and then communism is like, you know, we all work together, and it's the same, you split the pizza at the end.

This system says, if you provide pizza to someone else, there's ten pizzas tomorrow, and there's twenty pizzas in two days, and there's fifty pizzas in three days, and the market expands, and wealth expands in the planet, you know. So, that's a new way to do the desire. As far as an addiction, I like to think of a glass of wine.

So, we talked about wine last night, you know, a lot of people, I think as you hit your 40s, and definitely by your 50s, because you can't sleep well, more and more people have a glass of wine at dinner, you know. And you see, in my little town there's no supermarket, there's one tiny little country market, and half of it is wine, the other half is beer. Now there's a few like food things in between, but it's amazing like how many people at a certain age just start having a glass of wine every night.

And it's the comfort of the feeling that you get of relaxation from the wine. And then, we were saying last night, that this approach to addiction depends upon understanding that the relaxation you feel isn't coming from the chemicals in the wine. It's not possible, okay?

It's not coming from what's inside the wine. Why? Because some people drink the same wine and start fighting with their family, right?

It doesn't necessarily make you relaxed or more peaceful. If something works some of the time, it's not working, and you don't understand its mechanism, how it works. If wine can make some people disagreeable to each other, and make other people relaxed, then it's not something in the wine that's making them relaxed, okay?

That's just so elementary that we don't notice, okay? So, in this concept, in this approach, we're trying to say, you don't have to give up wine, or you don't have to give up relaxation. You should plant the seeds that give you the relaxation, and then you don't need the vehicle of that, that you're addicted to.

You're addicted to the vehicle, and it's harmful because it doesn't work. Like your partner's body, and you feel like, oh I need this partner, because they can give me pleasure with their body, right? And then you, you know, for the first few weeks it's fun, and then you start to have problems, right?

And then later it becomes like unpleasant. You believe that the pleasure you get from intimacy is contained in their skin, or somehow in their bones, or there's flesh, and actually it's coming from your own mind, right? And it doesn't depend on them, or on their body.

So then, when you stop having pleasant sensations from their body, you get angry. And that's the snake, okay? The snake represents addiction which is thwarted.

So, if you really want to get in trouble, or if you want to get on someone's bad side, find out their addiction, let them get that source of pleasure in their hand, whether it's a woman, or wine, or cookies, and then take it out, try to take it out of their hand, you know? Try to stop, stand between a person who's close to the object of their addiction. Don't ever stand between a person and the object of their addiction, because they'll go through you like a truck, you know?

Because that's the nature of addiction, you see? Try to, you can reason with your partner the day before about why they shouldn't have a Starbucks latte, but once they got it in their hand, don't try, okay? Because the addiction takes over, okay?

So, desire easily, the more afflicted or addicted a desire is, the faster it can switch to anger. When you don't allow that person to have the object of their addiction, when you try to stand between them and the object of their addiction, they hate you, and they get angry, okay? So, that's the snake, that's what the snake represents.

Both of them come out of the mouth of the pig, okay? Which is very interesting. Remember that this is the innermost wheel of the Wheel of Life, this is the innermost image, these three animals are the innermost image in the Wheel of Life.

Why? They drive the wheel, they are the gasoline that drives the wheel, okay? Why?

The pig represents ignorance, okay? Which is, I don't know how that started, I got to know pigs in India when I was there. They wander around the monastery and eat everything, and they're actually very smart, they're wily, but in general they have a reputation of being stupid, okay?

And in this painting that Lord Buddha designed two and a half thousand years ago, the pig means you don't understand where pleasure is coming from, okay? You believe you need a glass of wine to have the relaxation that wine seems to give you, and you conveniently ignore what? The fact that sometimes you drink it and you just feel angry, or confused, you see what I mean?

And you can't put two and two together because you're under the influence of the pig, okay? It should be obvious that the relaxation can't be coming from the wine, because sometimes it makes you nervous, or agitated, or especially, what do you call it, confrontational with other people. It often has that effect.

Three out of four times the wine relaxes you, and then suddenly you drink it and you feel confused, or angry at people. And that means the feeling you get isn't coming from something, a chemical inside the wine, it's like the pen. There's a seed going off in your mind, there's an image being put, popping out of the seed, and that image is being, is being, how do you call it?

It's like being sent out of the mind, by the mind, onto the wine, the glass of red liquid, and then you have this gut, visceral feeling that it's the wine that's making you relaxed, and that's wrong, and that's the pig, okay? So the pig means, you don't understand that if something makes you relaxed, it's because a seed has opened in your mind, an image of a relaxed Michael has come out, and it's covered the glass of wine, okay? So, it's not possible to be addicted to wine if you understand wine, okay?

That's, and we don't have any other method. We don't take you in a room and lock you up, or we don't take you and put you in front of a glass of wine, and every time you reach for it we give you an electric shock. That's not our approach.

We say, understand the wine, and you will overcome your addictions, okay? And we believe, to be honest, that there's no other way that's permanent. You know, as long as you believe that something's in the wine that will make you relaxed, you will drink, you will try to drink, and nothing can talk you out of that.

You know, you can lock it away from you, but if you get close to it, you'll drink it, and you will get back into some miserable cycle. You see, if you, the only way to really overcome wine as an addiction, is to understand how it works, okay? Then we talked about a stapler, and how a stapler works, you know?

If it has staples in it, it will work. If it doesn't have staples in it, a stapler which is perfectly functional will not do anything, okay? So, the stapler has to be loaded, okay?

And all the objects in your life which you derive pleasure from, have to be loaded by the seeds in your mind, okay? And those seeds are planted by serving other people, by providing others with happiness, okay? Then those plant seeds in your mind.

Then you can take a glass of wine, or you can go out and look at a... I like to go out in the desert on my bike. I have a long road near my house, and I can go for like an hour or two hours ride on my bike, and I get the same sort of pleasure from the bike ride as I would get from a glass of wine.

And I'm not a naturalist, I'm not like, you know, close to the earth and all that, I'm not. I don't care about, I mean... But, and then I take friends out there on the desert bike ride, I say, check this out man, and they're like, it's hot, it's dusty, there's cactus everywhere, it's all rocks, you know?

What's there? What do you see there? And I'm like, it's so beautiful, you know?

It's like unbelievable. And I get really, really happy like I had a glass of wine, you know? So, it's not coming...

even the desert is not producing the feeling of pleasure. The desert is an empty stapler, and the wine is an empty stapler. And if you have the seeds in your mind, you will derive some pleasure from whatever you do.

So, and then you can do things that don't hurt your body. You don't have to eat things that have calories, or you don't have to drink things that hurt you, you know? You can do simpler pleasures, and you get the same result, you know?

I met the Dalai Lama, I told you, I mean, my mom got breast cancer, I took her to my Lama, my first Lama, Tenzin Chinle. Who's that? Sharpa Rinpoche, Tenzin Chinle.

He's in the Vajrayogini Sadhana, okay? His rebirth was my Lama, first Lama, and he said, you should bring your mom to meet the Dalai Lama, because he can teach her how to die, you know? Because she was close to dying, you know?

So, I brought her, it was like really terrible. She had an epileptic attack on the airplane, near the runway, and it was like crazy. And then, from the cancer, and I took her there, and we sat with His Holiness, and she pulled, she didn't tell me, she had a crucifix ready, you know?

And she pulled it out, the first thing, she sits down, pulls it out, and gives it to the Dalai Lama. I'm like, you know? And he's like, wow, thank you, it's so great!

You know, he was really happy. It was really weird. I thought he'd be really kind of offended, you know?

And he looked like a kid that got some candy or something. And then, then he leans over and he says, so Mike, you know, have you ever taken drugs? And I'm like, my mom's over there, she doesn't know anything, and the Dalai Lama's asking me a direct question, and I'm like, like do I lie to the Dalai Lama, or do I upset my mom?

What would you choose? So, I said, yeah, I took some, a little bit. And then he said, what's it like, you know?

He was really curious, you know? And we went through the whole thing, and then he said, well now you can do it with meditation, you don't have to do it with those, you don't need those things anymore, and besides, they're very expensive, you know? Meditation's free.

And then he was like teaching me how to get the same pleasure out of meditation, and ever since then I've done it that way, and it's better, okay? But, it's not in the meditation either, okay? You have to understand that, or else you will never make progress.

It's not in the meditation, and it's not in the drug, okay? It's in my, the seeds in my own mind. If I have those seeds and I try to meditate, I will have pleasant mystical experiences.

And if I don't have the seeds, and I do the same meditation, I'll just get, my knees will fall asleep, my legs will fall asleep, and I'll feel miserable, okay? So, even meditation doesn't have anything in it. All these words, okay, I'm going to teach you something.

RANG BZHIN, say RANG BZHIN GYI GDUG PA. DENPUR GDUG PA. RANG BZHIN GYI GDUG PA.

All these words, okay, that mean, that are translated as self-existent, or existing from its own side, or existing by its nature, or existing by definition, say RANG BZHIN GYI GDUG PA, RANG BZHIN GYI GDUG PA, all of those words, right? Just cancel them. When you're teaching people, don't use those words, okay?

I'll give you an easier one, you ready? IN. I am in, okay?

It's the relaxation, it's the power to make you relaxed in the wine, it's the power to excite you in your partner's body, you know? It's the hit that you feel when you eat a doughnut, in the sugar, you know? IN, just IN, okay?

RGAGS BYA, the thing we deny in Buddhism, that something could have something in it. That's all, you don't need all those complicated philosophical words, okay? There's nothing in a doughnut that can make you happy, there's nothing in your partner's body that can give you pleasure, and there's nothing in wine that can relax you, there's nothing.

It's just all neutral, okay? If your mind has seeds, then if your stapler is loaded, then the wine will relax you, or the meditation will work for you. And if it's not, you can meditate for a hundred years, nothing will happen.

You'll still be nervous, and you'll be nervous that you didn't have any realizations. It's not in the meditation, okay? It's very interesting.

So, what this represents is that our troubles and our addictions are caused by the pig, which is the belief that pleasure exists in the object of addiction. And then from the pig's mouth can spew feelings of desire and anger. Desire, because you seek the object which you thought had something in it that could make you happy, and then anger because it didn't, okay?

Or anger because someone tried to stop you from hurting yourself, okay? So, those three animals represent the whole source of trouble in addiction, okay? The root of addiction is that we believe that what we want is in the substance, or in the person, okay?

So, in theory you could be addicted to yoga, or meditation, or that also, right? If you believe that yoga by itself would make you healthy, or flexible, or extend your life, that's pig thinking. And then what's the opposite of that?

Can you show link number one? I don't know if you—it's in there somewhere, probably in the 30s or something. It's called link number one.

No. I don't know how you have those arranged. Okay.

Page 15? Look on page 15. You want to go there?

Let's go there. Let's go deeper in the Wheel of Life, okay? So, you finish the middle of the wheel, you understand that.

On page—is it page 15? The twelve links start? Can you just put up the twelve links?

Sorry to skip around. I made a big deal of putting it in order for Tim, and then I—ignoring the order, just very unusual. No, that's great, that was great.

Show that. So, this is the guts of the wheel, this is the process through which the wheel works. And I think it would be useful to go through it, okay?

And then that'll be the meat of what we do tonight. And there's many, many other subjects we can cover, that I threw into that reading foolishly, and paid to print, because we'll never get to them. Maybe next time.

Maybe we do the second half some other time, soon. Okay? We do the second half of the addiction thing.

So, I'm going to start going through the—these are called the twelve links. Luckily they correspond to the hours of a clock. So, we can talk about one o'clock, and two o'clock, and three o'clock.

It's not like 13, or 14, or 11, it happens to be 12, okay? Which is convenient, okay? These are the guts of the wheel.

These twelve steps represent how we get first stuck in an addiction, and then by reversing the twelve, we learn how to get out of an addiction, okay? So, these are the twelve that get you into an addiction, and these are the twelve that, when you work backwards, lung what? Lung dok.

Who said that word? You have such a good memory, or something. So, lung jung is 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12.

Lung dok is stop 1, stops 2, stops 3, stops 4, stops 5, okay? Like that. So, we're going to learn that.

Let's learn that tonight, it's fun, okay? And it's a huge subject, it's a major subject. In the Abhidharma there's like three, four ways to teach it, and someday we should do that.

It's huge, it's a major subject. We were thinking to do a book similar to the Tsongkapa book about the Wheel of Life, like a huge art book that has some of the original texts in it, and stuff like that. But, let's go through it.

What I'd like to emphasize, that this, this, it's a chain reaction. This is a link, this is a picture of a chain reaction. If one happens, it triggers two, triggers three, triggers four, triggers five, okay?

So, you have to think of this as a chain reaction. If number one gets triggered, it will go through the twelve limbs. We call them limbs, or links, or parts.

Yenlak, right? Yenlak Chuni, very famous. If you can stop one, what happens to two?

It never goes off, okay? So, these are like firecrackers laying next to each other, okay? If one goes off, two is going to go off.

If you can work on one, two will never go off, okay? So, we're going to go through this twelve as a chain reaction, and I'd like you to focus on one kind of special idea. You ready?

In China I say, you want to go deeper? And they go, I don't know if they're saying, please don't, or please do. But I take it to mean, yeah, we want to go deeper.

You want to go deeper? Okay, good. And they're not shy about it, they're like, okay.

How to say, these twelve links describe why the equipment with which you observe the world is broken, okay? Imagine if your eye were split into two by some kind of membrane, and you saw everything double for your whole life, because you had nothing to compare it with. Or suppose that what you saw as red is really blue, like there's some kind of problem with the filter on your eye, and you never knew.

Like somebody said, how many fingers I'm holding up? And you see four, but your mom told you that that was two. You see what I mean?

Suppose there were like a fundamental, what do you call it, defect in your, in the tools of your perception, okay? What if you, if there's something wrong with the telescope, and you see all the stars as double, and they're all binary stars, you know? To you, what if you're, the equipment with which you perceive the world is itself broken?

So then, how do you communicate to a person like that? That's not a red shirt, Phil, it's blue. And then you're like, yeah, I know, it's blue, and Jim Day has on a blue shirt also.

You see what I mean? Like, what if your senses were just screwy? You know, what if the ruler was broken?

What if the ruler wasn't right? See what I'm trying to say? What if you had a ruler that was 11 inches long, for your whole life?

You see what I mean? And every time you used it, you made a mistake, but you never knew, because that's the only ruler you ever met. And that's what the truth is.

So, there's a, the root of addiction is deeper than just misunderstanding. Your ability to understand is broken. So, I have to try to tell you, through your senses, why your senses are broken.

I have to communicate to you, through sight and sound, why your eyes and your ears infect everything you see. But I'm going to have to tell you with words that go through those defective instruments to your mind. So, it's almost impossible.

It's almost impossible. You see what I mean? I'm going to have to explain to you, using words that you can hear, and movements that you can see, why your eyes and your ears experience everything wrong.

But I have to do, I have to use a broken instrument to communicate it to you. It's really like, almost impossible, right? These twelve links, if you want to know deeper, if you want to go deeper, the purpose of the teaching, the purpose of the twelve links, is to explain why your equipment is defective, right?

And then a super intelligent person can understand it, and learn not to trust their equipment. Or they can learn to correct everything they see by 30 degrees or something. You see what I mean?

They can say, everything I see is 30 degrees off. Okay, I'll look at it this way, and then I'll see it this way. You see what I mean?

It's delicate. You want to go there? Is that okay?

Okay. No, I'm just saying, I mean we could do something more normal. Probably we should.

Anyway, these twelve ultimately explain why your equipment is broken. And then if you learn them well, you can outsmart your equipment with your reasoning, okay? You can outsmart the messages given to you by your senses, by sheer logic, okay?

And that's why Buddhists spend so much time on logic. So, just by raw understanding, you're going to outsmart your defective equipment, okay? And you will correct it.

What do you call that? Like they went to the Hubble Telescope a second time, and they put a new lens on top of the old lens, and it shifted everything a couple degrees, and made it straight. You see what I mean?

So, I'm going to have to use words that you hear the wrong way, to explain to you why you're hearing the wrong way, and then you're going to fix it from the inside. You ready? Okay.

Alright, number one, link number one, at one o'clock. You can close up now. I apologize for the quality of the painting.

These thangkas, these scroll paintings were done in a children's school in Nepal, that I was supporting. And they taught them to paint, and I needed a hundred. It wasn't often we gave away how many, a hundred?

We gave away 150 of them, they had to finish them in a month, and so they got all the twelve-year-olds paintings. So, these were painted by twelve-year-olds. They're accurate, technically accurate, and they're sloppy artistically, and I apologize, okay?

So, this guy is a blind man, okay? He's blind, and he has a stick to prove it, and he represents the fact that we are blind to how things really work. I'm going to keep going back to the glass of wine, and I apologize because I'm not really supposed to talk about wine I guess.

I did a really good video of how to make momos, which is the Tibetan national dish, but it has meat in it. So, we all voted not to put it on YouTube. I never ate them of course, I made them for lamas, but I'm going to talk about wine anyway, I'm sorry.

So, he is blind, and his blindness consists of the idea that the wine has something in it that can make him relaxed, okay? That's his blindness, okay? The blindness means he believes there's something in things that can bring him pleasure.

Whether it's your partner's body, or it's a glass of wine, or you know, a very uncommon belief that a Starbucks or a giant coffee could have in it anything that will keep you alert. That was the hot chocolate, okay anyway. No, they're all the same.

You can't have an addiction if you understand that those sensations are not coming from the object of your addiction, okay? Then it, just the whole fun is destroyed in like five minutes, you know? You're not chasing after girls anymore, and you're not running out to Starbucks anymore, and you're not trying to buy a more expensive bottle of wine anymore, because you realize what you want isn't in them, okay?

So, you can't have an addiction. That's our theory of stopping addiction. If you finally get it, that the thing you want isn't in that thing, then you don't have any attraction to it.

It's just an expensive rotten water, rotten grain water, you know what I mean? Who would think to eat a rotten apple, or orange, or ... you see what I mean?

But we drink them, right? It's the same thing. Those are things that went bad, they didn't get refrigerated long enough, and they rotted, and they became alcohol, you see what I mean?

And so, that's the first step. What are we talking about? The first step of what?

Huh? It's the first step of addiction, it's the first of the twelve steps in a chain reaction. Yenlak means, they call it limbs, it's a bad translation of anga, right?

They are firecrackers in a chain reaction, okay? Think of it that way. But a chain reaction that leads to what?

Talk to me in terms of your eyes and ears. Yeah, they throw off the calibration of your eyes and ears, okay? And your mind, okay?

I'm talking about what happens if you let an addiction go on, okay? Where is that summarized, where is that process, where is that process of what happens as an addiction progresses contained in the Wheel of Life? Those of you senior people here, where is it depicted in the Wheel of Life, the process by which you descend into an addiction?

Yeah, the five realms, or the six realms. And that's another story, we're not, we won't have time to go to it tonight, but you descend through a human realm, to a temporary deva realm, and then you become bestial, animal realm, and then you descend into a spirit realm, and then you drop into a hell realm. And we're not going to have time to talk about that tonight, but that's the progression of addiction, okay?

That's what, the personal experience passes through those five realms, okay? We don't have time to talk about it tonight. So first link is misunderstanding the why.

If you could break that misunderstanding, you would be free of addiction. And we don't, I don't teach any other method. I don't think any other method works, okay?

All right, does that mean you shouldn't go to AA meetings? We had that question last night. No, it means you should go to AA meetings, but with an understanding of why they work, how they work, how to get it to work for you, because they don't work for everybody.

They work for people who have seeds, and they don't work for people...the same meeting doesn't work for a person who doesn't have the seeds, okay? We're talking about collecting the seeds and then going to the AA meeting, okay? Next, this is called Nipa Duce Kile, and in Sanskrit?

Duce. Sanskrit, say Sanskrit. It's similar to bhaktsa, vasana, okay?

Meaning a mental seed, okay? So, if you misunderstand, we're starting on a cycle of addiction, we're starting, we're entering a cycle of addiction. It could last for your whole life, it could last for 30 years, okay?

We're starting to explain a cycle of addiction. You look at a glass of wine, in step one you are blind, meaning you think the enjoyment is coming from the chemicals in the wine, and then you try to get wine, okay? You do something, or you say something, because you're thinking something, right?

Those are the three kinds of karma, right? You think you need wine, then you go to the liquor store to buy it, and you talk to the person and say, I need a bottle of wine. So, those are three forms of...those are the three forms of karma, or planting seeds, okay? So, this person here, he's a pot...what do you call it? A potter. He's making ceramic pots, okay?

And that represents planting seeds by going to the liquor store, by thinking...by going to the liquor store in your car, and by talking to the guy behind the counter and saying, do you have a nice red wine that's not too dry, and not too sweet, and has a nice effect, you know, and like that, and he...you discuss it, and he swirls it around, and you go, you know? I have seen a person refuse a bottle of wine at that point, my boss. Anyway, he's talking...he's driving in his car to the liquor store, and he's planting seeds by doing so. He's talking to the guy behind the drive-in window at the liquor store, and he's planting seeds. But verbal and physical actions are derived from thought, thoughts. He has to think something's going to...good is going to happen at the liquor store to get in his car and to talk to the guy. It has to be preceded by an idea, that if I go to the liquor store they'll give me something in a bottle, which will make me relaxed, okay? He has to believe that to get in the car. So, there are three ways of planting negative seeds.

One is driving in the car doing something. One is talking to the guy through the drive-in window, which is saying something. But they have to be preceded by the idea, by ideas or thoughts, that if I...if I do drive to the liquor store and talk to the guy, I'll get something in a bottle, I'll get a red liquid in a bottle that will make me feel better. He believes that, okay? So, ignorance has to trigger the car driving and the talking to the guy, okay? But all three of those, they not only trigger each other, but all three of them plant new seeds, you see?

All three of them plant a habit, okay? And that's a long story, there are four ways that karma makes seeds open. The second one is, as a habit, you get in the habit, and then you start a cycle of addiction, you see what I mean?

Thinking once, that if I drive to the liquor store and talk to the guy, I'll get some relaxation. Thinking that once, and playing out those actions and those words, assures that you will do it again. It plants seeds to do it again.

That's bad, okay? That's the beginning of a cycle of addiction. But there's something worse going on.

What...what other negative seeds are being planted simultaneous to the drive to the liquor store? More seeds of the pig, more pig seeds. Because he believes in what the...

during the drive...if he...if he lost his belief during the drive to the liquor store that something in the red water will make him happy, he would turn around and come home. So, it's one thing to undertake the actions you need to, to obtain alcohol. But it's another thing that during the drive to obtain the alcohol, all the whole time the drive can only be sustained by the belief that there's something in the red water that will make me relaxed, okay?

So, he's planting two sets of seeds during the drive to the liquor store. He's...he's planting seeds by undertaking a useless act to get relaxation. And during the whole drive, and during the whole conversation with the guy in the window, and during the moments before when he was looking for his keys at home, those...

during those three actions, he's planting seeds for continuing to think of the wine in the wrong way, okay? He's planting seeds for continued suffering. He's...

during the whole drive, and during the looking for his keys, during the conversation with the guy behind the window, and during the opening of the cork, which is a big deal, right? Those actions can only be sustained by misunderstanding the wine. So, he's planting a whole second set of seeds at the same time, which is that he will feel more strongly the next morning that wine can make him relaxed, okay?

That there's something in wine that will make him relaxed. By the way, if you wanted your wine to always work, or if you wanted to graduate to drinking prickly pear juice to get your kicks, we did an experiment this week, we were working on prickly pear juice as a substitute for wine. Much cheaper, and more fun, and has...it doesn't have alcohol in it by the way, it's just prickly pear juice. He could graduate to that if he understood where the pleasure was coming from. If he understood what was making the relaxation happen, then he could start planting relaxation, and he would start to find it in desert drives on his bicycle, and things like that. He'd start having the same...a real Buddhist is kind of fun, because you take them out for a dinner, and you want to get them to drink some wine, but by the time they drink the Perrier, they're already stoned. You know, and you're like, you're like, it's funny, you know, because they're already starting to giggle and get warm with the first few sips of the Perrier, you see, before the dinner. So, what seed do you think you would have to plant to start getting relaxation kicks out of Perrier, for example? Well, how would you plant relaxation seeds?

What are the four steps? Let's go back to the four steps. We talked about four steps last night, okay?

You got to drill these into your mind, okay? From now on, I curse you, okay? You will ultimately in your life, from this night on, you will start to be frustrated trying to get things by looking for them, okay?

Because a little voice in your head will say, this is stupid and it doesn't work. Okay, I curse you. For the rest of your life, even if I never see you again, you will never quite believe yourself, okay?

The second part of the curse is, understand that all good things that ever happened to you come to the four steps. Number one, decide what you want, okay? For those of you who can't decide what you want, do the four steps on that.

I can't decide what I want. Find someone who can't decide what they want. Help them find out what they want.

Go home and sleep on it, okay? So, you have no excuse, even if you don't know what you want, you still have to do the four steps, okay? Step number one, I want relaxation.

I don't want to have to depend on wine for relaxation. Like, I like wine, I like the taste, I appreciate it, but it's making me addicted. Something about it is making me addicted.

I feel a sense of dis-ease when I'm looking for it, I feel dis-ease when I'm drinking it. Sometimes it backfires, I get maudlin, I get unhappy, I sit there and drink more and I feel more unhappy. The whole bottle's gone, I feel more unhappy.

I look at the second bottle, I look at my bed, you know, what should I do? I get into bed, I still feel maudlin, the bed makes me maudlin. You see what I mean?

Like, how—that's number one. I want to feel relaxation from innocent sources that don't hurt me, okay? And number two, find someone who has trouble relaxing, okay?

And that's not difficult. Find someone who's restless all the time, feels a lot of anxiety all the time, okay? Someone who can't relax.

Swami, what's his name? Vishnu Devananda, right Earl? Where are you?

Vishnu Devananda. I forget he had the five R's or something, you know like, do yoga, really, or—I forget. There's like five R's, but one of them, in his path, one of the requirements of all his disciples was, you must learn to relax.

You know, like you have to study, you have to do yoga, you have to do meditation, you have to do public service, and you have to learn to relax, you know? And you have to take your rest. When it's time to rest, you have to take your rest.

You can't just go on—what do you call it? Like, what do you call that? When you can't stop yourself, like compulsively or overworking without proper attention to your body and your rest, okay?

So, you have to find someone like that, who's a—can't rest properly, incapable of resting in a wise way, okay? Look for somebody like that, there are many. I'll tell you something about step number two, okay?

Here's a secret about step number two. Every time I tell people about step number two, they say, I don't know anybody like that. Then I say, let's make a deal.

You look for 24 hours among your friends and family, or your co-workers, for anybody who can't relax. And then, if you don't find someone in 24 hours, you let me know and I'll give you a hundred dollars. I've never lost a hundred dollars, ever, okay?

They always come back to me, I found somebody. I said, no you didn't. They said, no I did.

And I say, no you didn't. And they say, you're right, I found 20. I found 20 people who can't relax.

This is the person who told me the night before that they don't know anybody who can't relax. Now suddenly they found 20 people, why? They started looking, okay?

They've ignored their friends and family for their whole life. They didn't care if they couldn't relax, because it wasn't in their interest. Now suddenly, with step number two, you can't relax unless you find somebody who can't relax.

So suddenly you find all these people who can't relax, that have been not relaxing around you your whole life. Got it? When you start looking for people who have the same needs that you have, suddenly you will find that you're surrounded by them, okay?

And that's just a question of not, never having looked. Never having paid attention to the needs of the people around you, okay? So you can find any problem you have, any addiction you have, within a few hours you can find someone else who has exactly the same thing, okay?

You just have to ask people, and show some interest in their life, okay? Then you will find. So that's step number two.

What is the third step for a person who wants to learn to relax with a drink of the Perrier, and not have to buy the wine? Huh? Yeah, you have to do it.

You have to help the other person to relax. You have to sit them down. I always say three things, right?

Go to a Starbucks, make it on a Friday afternoon, do it at 3 p.m. Why 3 p.m. on Friday? Everybody's off at 3 p.m. on Friday, okay? Even if you work till 5, nobody does anything after about 2 o'clock on Friday.

So it's available, people are relaxed already, it's a good time of the week to do something special. Take them out on Friday at 3 p.m. to a Starbucks, make it specific, and do it every week, okay? You cannot grow a garden by planting seeds and going away for six months, it doesn't work that way.

You have to tend the garden, you have to keep coming back and helping the person. Now, what's the next question somebody's going to ask me? You want me to take someone out to Starbucks who can't relax, and I'm going to advise them about how to relax.

Right, why am I doing this? So you can plant a seed. For what?

To learn to relax. So the person who doesn't know how to relax is going to take the person who doesn't know how to relax out to Starbucks and teach them how to relax, in order to relax? The answer is, exactly.

Okay, you're the best person to help them to relax, because you don't know anything about relaxing, okay? In fact, you're the person who has to help them to relax, okay? And that can only work because 90% of all karma is intention, okay?

So just get used to it. Who's the worst person to take them out to teach them to relax? You.

Who's going to do it? You, you know. Why is it going to work?

Because of your intention, your good intentions, okay? Karma is 90% intention. I want to help you to learn to relax.

And sometimes it works to just be honest with them, you know? Like if you have a problem with anger, you're going to have to find a person who has a problem with anger. And in theory, you should pick the person you know who has the biggest problem with anger.

And if you really want to see how angry they can get, tell them, I'm taking you out on Friday on three o'clock, because you're the person who gets most angry than I know, and we're going to work on your anger, you know? And then they're going to blow up at you and say, you know, okay? So in this case there's a upaya.

What's upaya? Skillful means, thab kepa in Tibetan, thab kepa. It means, go to them and say, I have a problem with anger.

You know, confess right away, right up front. Say, I don't know how to relax, and I just wondered if we could go out, and you help me every week, and you just kind of give me some suggestions about how to relax. People who get angry a lot don't realize they get angry a lot, and they love to give people advice about how to not get angry.

So, this is a very ... because that's the nature of addiction, right? We're blind to our own addictions.

It's very easy to admit your second worst addiction. It's impossible to recognize the first worst one. If you want to, ask your friends, okay?

If you have the courage, ask your friends, what's my worst addiction? And they'll tell you something that isn't even on your list, okay? So, if they're good friends, if they're really good friends, they'll be very honest with you, okay?

So, that's the third step. Take them out, talk to them about relaxing more, give them suggestions on how to relax more, make it a mutual thing. Say, I have trouble relaxing, I think you might have trouble relaxing, why don't we go out to Starbucks and help each other?

This system requires, okay you ready? This system requires an hour a week with another person who needs the same thing that you need, period. If you're not willing to invest an hour a week on Friday at 3 p.m. at Starbucks, this system won't work for you. Go home now, you know, watch TV, do whatever you want to do, it's not going to work for you, okay? You must commit an hour a week to this person. And I'm also talking to the people who've been sitting here for 10 or 15 years, or 20 in some cases.

If you can't invest an hour a week to help someone else get their dreams, or fix their problems, it's not going to work for you, and you can just give up now. You can just go back to what you've been doing, you know, it won't work for you. You have to make an investment in another person, you have to make a project out of another person.

Choose another person. People ask me, can I choose 10 people? No, you don't have 10 hours a week, you know?

Pick one person and give them an hour of your time a week. How long do I have to do it? Until you get what you want, okay?

Then after that you're going to have to keep doing it. Why Joe? Because the seeds of planting, that you're planting, are going to wear out the minute you get what you want.

Trees kill the seed that grew this tree, okay? If you're like trying to get a boyfriend, and you use this system, and you help a lonely old person, and then you get the boyfriend, and you stop listening to the old lady, then what's going to happen? He'll divorce you, okay?

That's why so many people get divorced, okay? The seeds wear out. The seeds for meeting a boy are killed the moment you meet him.

So, you and him have to go visit the old lady every week, okay? For how long? How long do you want to know each other?

How long do you want to be together? Because that's how long, okay? It's like that.

Okay, that's step three. Those three plant the seed. How do you get the seed to open fast?

You must, you are required, you are strictly required to enjoy yourself, okay? You are strictly required to appreciate the good things that you do, okay? And a lot of people find that totally impossible.

They just can't do it, okay? In this system you will fail if you don't struggle to learn to appreciate the kind things you are doing for others. If you can't do that, this system is not going to work for you, okay?

What were we trying to get? What was our number one in this case? We wanted to overcome the need to buy wine.

We wanted to get relaxation from a bike ride in the desert, or a glass of Perrier, okay? That was step one, you already forgot. Step two was, help find someone else who has trouble relaxing.

Step three, once a week, regularly, as if you were tending a garden, you must help them, okay? And then those three plant the seed, but they don't make the seed grow. And the seed could stay in your mind as long as Egyptian purple corn seeds stay in the pyramids, and don't produce a corn stalk, which is a thousand years, okay?

Whether you believe in future lives or not, I don't care. They exist, why? There are seeds in your mind that won't grow for a thousand years, they won't open for a thousand years.

Nothing in the universe can destroy a seed, good or bad, nothing. There's a joke in Tibetan, God cannot destroy a seed, why? Huh?

Well, that's one thing, but there's a justice, there's justice to the world. If we could, if we could say, all your good seeds are going to ripen, but your bad seeds won't. All your good seeds are going to open, but your bad seeds are just going to stay shut forever.

There's no justice in that, okay? There is a universal justice in the whole universe forever, no one can change it, okay? If you hurt someone, something bad must happen to you, you cannot avoid it.

If you help someone, something good must happen to you. If you happen to die before, if your body happens to die before that seed opens, what will happen? The seed must continue, nothing can destroy that seed.

If the seed could not go off, then there would be a lack of balance to the universe, then goodness would never be rewarded, or harm would never be repaid. You see what I mean? It's not possible.

The seeds will accumulate in your mind, and they survive your death, okay? So, it's ... you can't stop it, there's nothing you can do.

They will grow, they will open, they will produce pleasure or pain, depending on how you've treated other people, okay? So, why are we talking about that? If you plant seeds of relaxation with the first three steps, but you don't water them with the fourth step, which is ...

I'm going to demonstrate again, because we're almost ready for our break, okay? This is not proper meditation posture, okay? That's wrong, it's not correct, okay?

Show me proper meditation posture for the fourth step. It's like, get super comfortable, okay? Like, whatever is comfortable for you.

I mean, I enjoy sitting like this or something, just at home on my bed, okay? And for you it might be like this, or ... so it's meditator dependent.

Whatever posture is most lazy for you, then do it. Okay, get in that posture, and space out, and go inside, and think about what ... the kindness that you did for someone.

You took them to Starbucks, this person's overworking all the time, they will work themselves to death, trust me. I've seen it, I'm old enough to have seen it many times. Robert LaRue, my accountant, couldn't rest, he killed himself, you know, he had a heart attack.

And I saw it coming for like ten years, and I didn't say anything, and I feel so guilty, you know. They will kill themselves, and you know people like that. So, you have to learn to relax, and appreciate that you stopped somebody from hurting themselves, okay?

You tried to get them to relax. When you appreciate the good things you did, if you're a yogi, if you're interested, the prana goes to that vasana, to that mental potential, and it triggers it, and it opens the seed. And then you start feeling relaxed within 24 hours from small pleasures that are harmless, and don't cost a hundred dollars a bottle, okay?

And don't make you grumpy on bad days, okay? All other pleasures that you don't plant are unstable, and they can flip very quickly. The person that you are most attracted to sexually, can become the person you most hate within a month, and you know that, and you've had it happen probably, okay?

So, those accidental ripenings are not stable. You have to learn to plant them, okay? Why are we talking about that?

That guy—what happened to the guy with the paws? Not—yeah, so he's making seeds. What kind of seeds?

Be careful, okay? You can't just say bad seeds, okay? He's not just making bad seeds.

He could be planting seeds to have wine work for him, but it's not conscious, it's accidental, it's good luck, it's random, okay? He's like talking to his friend who's upset because his girlfriend left him, and he tried to plant the relaxation seeds by accident, and he didn't water them properly. They're ripening randomly, and sometimes the wine makes him relaxed, and sometimes it doesn't, because he's not controlling the process.

He's just a victim of his seeds, okay? And that's the kind of seeds this guy—so, we say, CHOS NAMS SAGS CES SAGS PA MED LAMA THOB PA'I SAGS CES NAMS, LAMA THOB PA'I DUS CES NAMS SAGS CES GANG GYUR DE DAG LA SAGS NAMS KUN DU RGYAS PA RGYUR, first opening lines of the what? Abhidharmakosha, okay?

He's planting—I'll give you another one, Earl will know. KARMA SHUKLA KARSHNAM YOGANIS TRIVIDHA MITTARISAM, fourth chapter. Yeah, what's it mean?

KARMA SHUKLA KARSHNAM YOGANIS. Karma is A-Karshna, not black, Krishna, Krishna, A-Karshna and A-Shukla, A-Shukla, neither white. Karma is neither black nor white.

Yoganis, for yogis, okay? Plural, dative or genitive. And then, yoganis, trividham.

Vidham means type. It's three types. Mittarisham, for other people, okay?

Other people are collecting three kinds of karma. What are they? Yeah, good karma, bad karma, and like neutral.

But the good karma that those people are collecting is called sakche. Her name is Vimala, right? Your name is Vimala.

Miss Berber's name is Vimala, which means not stained. But karmas that are collected by people accidentally are called mala, stained. It's the root of malificent, malicious, okay?

Bad. Okay, Vimala means totally pure, not an inch of badness in there. But in karma, in the study of karma, mala means people who do good deeds by accident, by good luck, and they're unstable.

Sometimes the wine makes them relaxed, and sometimes it makes them angry, okay? So, we have to plant similar seeds, but very consciously, and then they become Vimala, they become pure. And then we don't need the wine to feel relaxed, we can take Perrier or tap water, okay?

Got it? Then some of us are like, I kind of like the wine, I don't want, could I just have the relaxation come from the wine all the time? That's okay, that's okay, because it won't be an addiction anymore, it'll be a controlled experience, you see?

And you'll get the same relaxation from two sips, okay? So, if you like the taste of wine, and you want to keep your wine, there's nothing wrong with wine, even in a Buddhist context, if the relaxation that comes from it is planned and planted consciously, you see what I mean? Then you're not going to abuse it, you're not going to over drink it.

You'll drink a few sips and you'll have, you'll be relaxed, and you can cork the bottle and save it for another day, okay? Got it? This system of addiction control, or addiction, what do you call it?

Eradication? It's cool, because in this system you still get the pleasure from the object that you used to be addicted to, okay? You don't give up the pleasure that you're getting from intimacy, or from wine, or from donuts, you don't give it up.

You learn to plant it, and enjoy it honestly, and cleanly, and happily, okay? In a way that doesn't hurt you, or other people. So, this is kind of, even that's a cooler approach I think.

We're asking you to give up the addiction without giving up the pleasure, you see? That's cool, alright? Cool.

I think we'll take a break. Okay, we still have some time. We finished the first two of the twelve links.

Let's make a goal to finish the twelve links, okay? Because it's a beautiful, it's a beautiful transmission that has been passed on for two and a half thousand years. So, if you hear it once through, it's a big blessing, okay?

So, let's do the, yeah, this is the third link. It's a monkey. To understand the third link, you have to understand something about how karmic seeds open.

So, we've been talking about karmic seeds in your mind as being so tiny and clear that you could fit thousands on the head of a pin, and you wouldn't see them. They're like, what are those things I got in China one year? Scabies.

Man, seven year itch. And they stay underneath your skin, and they're microscopic, and you have them for like six months, and then you get rid of them, and you think you have them for another six months, because you can't see them in either case. And karmic seeds are like that in your mind.

They are tiny, they're invisible, they split open, they create luminous silver-ish images. Somebody asked me in Russia, why not gold? I said, I'm sorry, but they're not.

They're silverish, okay? And they come out, and they coat the thing, or they cover the thing that you're looking at. For example, a black stick, and they make you perceive it as a pen, okay?

It's so good, and so fast, and so slick, and so smooth, that you think the pen is out there. And you don't, you don't realize that the seeds opening in your mind at the rate of 65 a second, are creating the impression of a pen. And that impression is so good that you can write with it, okay?

Get used to that, okay? That's how seeds open. You should keep thinking about that all the time, especially when you're irritated with somebody, or you're attracted to somebody, okay?

Like something sexy is happening in your life, or something miserable is happening in your life. Try to focus on the idea that little seeds are opening and coating this person in a steady stream, and then you'll be better able to deal with how you feel, okay? You'll be more aware, if you just sit there and say, oh this is coming from me, it doesn't really strike you as strongly, as if you try to picture seeds opening in a quick succession and covering this person with a certain—the Irish call it glamour, right?

The Celts called it glamour, or some kind of voodoo, hoodoo. And then you see them in a certain way, and it's all coming from you, okay? Get used to that.

And practice it when you're in traffic and you're irritated at somebody, you know, and you have a few minutes, because it's not moving. And just look at them, you know, and try to see this thing happening, and then it'll help you, okay? But, on a deeper level, as we've talked about—some of you heard me talk about it—the ancient scriptures describe four ways in which karmic seeds open, okay?

Four seeds—four ways in which seeds open. So, I want to talk about it, because you need to know that to understand links number three to ten in the Wheel of Life, or a little bit further. So, let's go through that, okay?

The first—so, when you do a single karmic action like getting upset at somebody in traffic, which I do, okay? I confess, it's one of my pet things. I hate bad drivers.

My Lama even told me I'm not allowed to say I hate. I don't like bad drivers, and I get really upset about it, you know? So, if I get upset at a bad driver in traffic, and sometimes I'll even like make a motion to them, and not that bad, okay?

It's usually like that, all five fingers. Then, I plant a seed, okay? A seed is planted, and that simultaneously four different versions of the seed are planted.

Simultaneously, four different ripenings will begin, okay? The first one is the one you normally think of, which is that something similar will come back to me, okay? So, I plant a seed, if I yell at somebody in traffic, then I shall be yelled at ten times, or a hundred times, okay?

And that's the first way in which a karmic seed ripens. It means there's a similarity between cause and effect. Whatever I did to someone else will come back to me, except, what do you call it?

Enhanced, right? What do you call it? Exponentially, okay?

Exponentially enhanced. So, that's the one we always talk about, that's the one we use for the four steps. I want a boyfriend, I should help lonely people.

I want my yoga to work for me, I help sick people. Like that, okay? I load my yoga practice with seeds.

That's the first one, that's the one we're always used to. Second one, okay? Second way in which the same action ripens karmically, is that I get a habit of doing the same thing again, okay?

So, if you allow yourself to yell at another driver, you will find yourself yelling more and more, okay? You will lose control over your responses, and it will get worse and worse, okay? Because every time you do it, it multiplies it, okay?

In addition to planting future people screaming at you, ripening number one, we call it flower number one, then secondly, it creates the habit of yelling at more drivers, and getting more drivers yelling at you. So, that's number two. I'm going to skip—no, I'm not going to skip.

Number three, it's called an environmental ripening, okay? So then, you know, you will live in a city where people drive badly. I mean, Phoenix people used to drive quite well when I was a kid.

I don't know why they drive badly now, okay? Like, you will live in a city where people are habitually abusing each other on the road, okay? And you created that.

That ripening is happening simultaneous to your getting in the bad habit of yelling more and more, and people yelling back at you, which are the first two ways in which the karma—so now the karma has ripened in three different ways. The same seeds are ripening in three different ways. Fourth one is much more deep and profound.

So, and if you already know it, learn how to explain it, because it's very powerful if you know how to explain it properly, okay? So, when I yell at another driver, what plants the seed? I hear myself, I see my hand waving at them, right?

Or I hear the words I say. That creates literally an impression on my mind, okay? As if I were pressing my fingernail into my palm, and it leaves a...

what's it called in Tibetan, remember? LANG RJE, good. They pre-nasal it for no good reason, okay?

LANG RJE. It creates an impression, an imprint, you see? And then that develops, it's kind of like a cancer, it develops into a seed, it develops into a karmic seed, okay?

So, if I yell at somebody in traffic, I hear those own words of myself, and that creates an imprint on my mind, and then that festers into a karmic seed, a sanskara. And then that enters the subconscious part of my mind, it's like an iris bulb underground, okay? How many people grow irises?

Cute yellow flowers, really disappointing, they open for like a week. In the whole year you take care of them, and then they open for a week. If a frost happens on the second day, they die, and you'd had 363 days of taking care of them, and two days of these beautiful yellow blooms.

So, anyway, and then every four years or so, you have to go out and dig them up. Why? They divide underground.

They, like cells, they dichotomize? They split underground, and then they crowd each other out, and they fight for the same nutrients, and they get smaller and more stunted. So, a good gardener goes out and carefully digs them up without injuring the bulbs, and divides them, and gives them to their friends.

You know, go plant this in your garden. And karmic seeds do the same under the ground of your conscious mind, okay? So, in your subconscious karmic seeds are splitting every 24 hours, they are doubling, okay?

So, if you yell at another driver, within 24 hours you're going to get how many yelling back? Two, okay? If you wait 72 hours without fixing that seed, you get four, and like that.

If you do the math, I believe it's over a billion in a—I'm sorry, it's well over a million in a month, okay? What that means is that compared to the amount of seeds that you entered this life with, by the time your body, you know, wears out, you have millions, actually billions more seeds than you can possibly use up, because they ripen at the same speed as they are collected, okay? So, I'm using 65 seeds a second or opening to create the frames of my life, okay?

And then, when I do something to somebody, I'm planting 65 seeds per second, okay? But, what? They're doubling every 24 hours.

So, when you come to the end of your life, and the body wears out, your mind is filled with millions of extra seeds, which are created by the interest on your seed planting, okay? Got it? Your iris seeds have split.

Bulbs, you have more bulbs than when you started, okay? And we said before, nothing can destroy those seeds, nothing. The destruction of the physical body cannot affect the seed.

A seed is called in Tibetan philosophy, it's called a demenduchi. What's a demenduchi? Do you know?

All reality divides into two types, dakpa and mitakpa. Who said permanent? Yeah, changing and unchanging.

Because things can be unchanging and not be permanent. They can end without a change in their quality, you see what I mean? So, changing and unchanging things, okay?

Unchanging things are three. This is called shi druk gi nam shak, those of you who care, in the study of pramana. The Mexicans convinced me to start a formal study of pramana, which would take 20 years.

Anyway, three types of changing things. Physical things, mental things, and what are called neither that nor that, demenduchi, okay? Neither that nor that, they are potentials, and seeds are potentials.

Why am I talking about that? If the body is destroyed and the mind is destroyed by death, what does it do to that thing which is neither? Nothing, they sit there.

It's like you remove the dirt from the garden, the bulbs will just sit there, okay? And they must open, they will always open. If a seed could be collected that didn't open, there would be no justice in the world.

You could do something wrong and not get hurt. You could help somebody and not have something nice happen. No seed can disappear, there's no such thing, and no one can make a seed disappear.

Seeds will always remain until the day they open, okay? So, you come to the end of your life, the body is destroyed, the mind is destroyed, the gross mind is destroyed, and then those seeds start opening, okay? The extra seeds start opening.

First step, whoa, what happened? Bring back the monkey. Try to understand, okay?

When you die, those seeds which are neither physical nor mental, but which exist, they begin opening, okay? And then suddenly you're aware, but who is you? You are just the seeds, okay?

You, you know, Michael, five minutes after he dies, is only the leftover seeds rolling around in some cosmic billiard table, okay? Like, he's just the, the potentials for things to happen are still there. And then they start opening, and you start thinking again, and you start being aware of yourself again, okay?

So, awareness begins. That's number three. Now we can go much faster, because we don't have much time, but also because once you get to that, we can go faster.

Number four, link number four, say ming suk, nama rupa. It's some ashtanga nama rupa thing, right? It means name and form, okay?

Name and form. But, but I think not many people realize it has a specific philosophical meaning. In the womb you have five parts to a person, the five skandhas or heaps, and in this presentation where there's two guys in a boat, you divide them into two, the physical parts and the mental parts.

The It is one in a, it's like one in a tent, but that's very subtle. Anyway, one of these guys represents all the extra seeds leftover from your past life that are starting to open, that create awareness and consciousness, okay? And then the other guy represents all the seeds left over from your last life that open up into the physical body, and into the world, the physical world around you.

That's the important distinction, okay? The first skandha in the highest presentations of the Buddhism isn't restricted to the, what we call gyukyi dupa, that stuff contained by your skin. It also created the tiles, and the pews, and the church, okay?

Your seeds are creating those, your physical skandha, the first one, also includes outer things, okay? So, these two guys are the physical and mental parts to you, in the womb, in your mother's womb, okay? That's why there's two guys in the boat.

Their nickname is name and form. The four parts of a person which are mental are called name. The one part of a person which is physical is called form, okay?

So, these two guys in the boat are called name and form. What's the boat represent? Your mother's womb, okay?

Got it? Why is it a boat? It's traveling from the past life to your birth, okay?

Next, say kye che. Kye che means the formation of your senses, okay? The formations of your senses.

There's a text which lists them in a very economic way. mik me, nawa me, na me, che me, lu me, yu me. Yeah, Heart Sutra, okay?

Your eyes, your ears, your nose, your tongue, your touch, okay? Your body, and then your mind, your thoughts, okay? Your six senses, the six sense organs, the capacity to feel, the capacity to be aware, develop at this stage.

Out of the two guys in the boat, okay? You are taking birth, and your senses are starting to up, are starting to develop, okay? And they make a big point that the windows, although this is supposed to be a house with windows, okay?

The windows are empty. No one's looking out the windows yet, okay? Your ear is forming, your eye is forming, your body's forming, you're ready to have experiences, but you're not there yet, okay?

Next, dupa rekpa, say dupa? Rekpa. Dupa means number six, rekpa means contact, and sparsha in Tibetan, sorry in Sanskrit.

So, it's sort of graphically illustrated by two people having sex, okay? The physical sensation of your lover's body on you is a metaphor for the contact which your eye consciousness makes with colors and shapes, okay? The collision of the Titanic with the iceberg, I mean colors and shapes with your eye consciousness is called contact, and it's represented by the contact between two lovers, okay?

So, it's kind of a cool image. I thought it'd be cool to make a movie out of this, or... you know, they were restricted to paint, but we're not, and probably we should make it more graphic.

It was meant to be graphic, so you know, when someone's in a creative mood it should be made into a video I think, okay? Dupa rekpa. Next, say dunpa?

Sorwa. Sorwa means vedana in Sanskrit, feeling, okay? Sensation.

And it's illustrated by a guy with a arrow in his eye, okay? Not very pleasant. It means, once there's been contact, in the last step six, during step six there's been contact between your eye consciousness, your ear consciousness, and your mental consciousness with the world, okay?

There's been touch, contact, like your hand touched a cactus needle, okay? And for a split second that's all, nothing has happened yet. I have these birds outside my house, stickers they call them, what are they?

Anyway, if I don't take my shoes off when I enter the house, they come off on the carpet. I don't have carpet, I have a few rugs, but then I step on them in the middle of the night or something. Very fun.

When the sticker touches my skin, that's number six, contact. When I say ouch, the next millisecond, that's called sensation or feeling. So, that's step number seven, sensation or feeling, dunpa sorwa.

Okay, next. By the way, we're going around the wheel, we're at eight o'clock now, okay? Eight o'clock is called, say sepa.

Gepa sepa. Gepa means, number eight, sepa means, how do you want to say that? Desire, okay?

Desire, attraction, or wanting, okay? And there's two levels of this desire. One is called initial desire, and one is called advanced desire, okay?

So, link number eight is initial desire, link number nine is advanced desire, okay? They're just two gradations of desire, of desire. But what kind of desire?

I'll give you a clue. If you have this kind of desire, then the karmas you made at step two, as a potter, Harry Potter, are armed like a nuclear weapon, you see what I mean? So, when you first do an action, you plant a seed, but it's inert, it's not armed, okay?

When you go through levels eight and nine, then the seeds you planted are armed. In the sense of a stapler, they are loaded, okay? The karmas are loaded, which means they can go off, okay?

And I'm sorry, I'm gonna keep you late, I don't care. I don't get to talk philosophy, I have to continually teach success over and over. But there's a bad movie that John Travolta starred in called Broken Arrow, and in this movie he has to find a nuclear device and disarm it, before it blows up, you know, Salt Lake City or something.

Anyway, there's this scene where he's in a salt mine, and he finds the nuclear device, he straddles it, he's sitting on it, and he's trying to tear out the wires, and not get the wrong wire. And all I can think about is, if he pulls out the wrong wire, what's the first thing that's going to get blown up, you know? I mean, who would do that?

I mean, sit next to it, and you know, I just got this image in my mind, okay? So, he's not trying to stop a nuclear device, he's trying to stop the small piece of dynamite that sets off the uranium. There's a pre-explosion, which sets off the big explosion.

So, steps eight and nine, which are represented by a guy overeating at a dinner party, and number nine, which is represented by a monkey grabbing fruit on a tree, these two steps arm the karma, okay? They arm the karma. So, they cannot be simply wanting things, whether it's strong wanting or initial wanting, they must involve what?

Misunderstanding where stuff comes from. In our context, which is addiction, we can say misunderstanding the wine, okay? Not understanding what gives the wine its power to relax you, okay?

Which is necessary to have an addiction. If you don't have that, you can't be addicted to it, because it looks the same to you as gasoline and coconut water. You see, it doesn't matter, it's just another liquid, okay?

So, eight and nine always involve misunderstanding the wine, okay? Then what happens? Number ten, chupasipa.

This is supposed to be a pregnant woman, it looks just like a fat guy, but it's supposed to be a pregnant woman. It means she's loaded, she's armed, the stapler has got staples in it, okay? It represents a karma which has now been armed and is ready to explode, okay?

It represents that, alright? You have taken refuge in the idea that relaxation could exist inside the wine so often, that now you've created a habit of addiction, okay? She represents addiction, okay?

She's, what do you call it? Pregnant addiction, okay? Now you're addicted, now you're fully full and pregnant, okay?

And you're addicted, okay? Why? Because of eight and nine.

What were eight and nine? You misunderstood the glass of wine, and you thought that the power to relax you, what do you call that? Resided within the wine, okay?

And again, you know, I struggle to make these talks relevant to a person who really has an addiction, okay? Which is how many people here? Everybody.

If you don't remember anything from these three talks, try to remember that the power to relax you doesn't exist in the wine. The power to stimulate you is not in the Starbucks coffee, you know? The power to stimulate you in a sexual way doesn't exist in the skin of your partner, okay?

They are not there. Those are coming from seeds in your mind, okay? If you want relaxation, what?

Plant relaxation by making a nervous person relaxed. If you want sensual pleasure, a guy in Oslo proposed to me that he should go kiss every woman in the major restaurant in the city. If you want that kind of warmth, then give other people, you know, friendship, okay?

That's what creates sensual warmth, okay? Is warmth in the sense of friendship towards others, okay? If you're interested in that.

Then what was the other example? Stimulation from coffee. Give other people energy.

Don't drain other people's energy, you know? Give them energy. Let your interactions with others result in a net gain of energy by them, and don't drain other people's time and energy, okay?

Don't waste other people's time, okay? Give and don't take, okay? That's the cause for coffee to work, okay?

I often have two or three cups of coffee just before I go to bed. It relaxes me, okay? And I fall right asleep, okay?

It means the stimulation is not in the coffee, really, okay? Alright, that's number ten. Links three to ten, what did we say about them?

If you tell me you can go home, almost. What did we say about the faculty of perception? It's broken, okay?

It's broken. So, get this, we're gonna go deeper, okay? Do you want to go deeper?

The fact that your physical body, the fact that your mind was created from seeds that were planted by misunderstanding the world, means that your mind and your physical senses are corrupt, and polluted, and you can never see things the way they really are with the equipment you're born with, okay? Because that equipment was created by negative seeds, okay? That equipment was created by misunderstanding the whole world.

If you had had better seeds that weren't infected, you wouldn't have the kind of body you have now, and you would not be aging, and you would not have to die. That's pretty profound, okay? Any body, body which is the product of misunderstanding a glass of wine, is made of flesh, and bone, and blood, and it must die, okay?

It must get old and die, okay? And if you could change the seeds by understanding the wine, it wouldn't just eliminate an addiction to alcohol, it would eliminate an addiction to misunderstanding things, and the result of that would be a body which is immortal, and a mind which is an immortal, and an angelic form, the form of an angel. You would, your body would change, your mind would change, you would become literally an angel, okay?

And that's the goal, I mean that's the long-term goal. We're supposed to be talking about addiction, but there's big addictions and there's little addictions. Addictions to chocolate and wine is one thing, but addiction to thinking wrong is what made you mortal, and you can change it.

You don't have to die to change it, okay? If you change the thinking now, it will have a domino effect. Through those links number three to ten, and your body would change, and your mind would change, and you would become an angelic being, okay?

Jesus said a very powerful thing. Those of you who grew up Christian, you know, he said there are some, there are some among you who will see the kingdom of heaven before you die. It's very, very beautiful, you know, people repeat it in churches all over America every day, and they don't think about it, you know.

He promised those guys, that if they followed his instructions, they would see the kingdom of heaven before they died. And that's the idea, the idea that somehow in the worst moment of your life something good is going to happen, it's kind of naive. Naive?

You're a naive? Naive? Anyway, to think that in the greatest moment of confusion in your whole life, as your body is collapsing and your mind is collapsing, something different would happen is naive, okay?

You have to make it happen before that. You got to be sitting with Aaron on the porch of your apartment, and three weeks from now and suddenly you turn to each other and you're angels, you know. It's got to happen now, you know, it's got to happen within a comfortable time period, before you get too old to meditate, or you know, you got to make it happen now, okay?

How do you make that happen? Learn how to put the relaxation into anything, and don't believe it's coming from the wine, you see what I mean? Okay?

It's a struggle, it's a whole struggle. It has to be reflected in every action of your life. You have to stop thinking that there's a power in coffee of waking you up.

You have to stop thinking that there's a power in your partner's skin to give you some kind of pleasure. You got to stop thinking that the wine has any inherent power to make you relax, and you have to start planting your own seeds on your own, designing your garden at the Riyadh of called your life, and then pluck the fruits, you know, just enjoy the fruits, okay? Stop struggling, stop looking for things, just plant them.

How? Four steps, serve other people, be nice to other people, plant the seeds you want, okay? And then you don't have to go to step number eleven, which is, she's having a baby, and then step number twelve.

By the way, what kind of baby is she having? The kind produced by link number one, misunderstanding the wine. She's having a physical body made of blood, and bone, and flesh.

And then next, the last link, and now you've had all the links and I can go home. This is a burial in Tibet, he's carrying a body. They take a body, they fold it up, and they tie it into a fetal position, and then somebody comes to your house, and this is like the worst job in Tibet.

Worse than a New Jersey Turnpike toll keeper. And they carry you, they carry your, they wrap, they tie your body up into a fetal position, and they carry it to the mountain, and they chop it up, and they feed it to the animals, okay? So, this is a Tibetan funeral, and it represents old age and dying, okay?

Gasshi, say chunyipa? Gasshi. It means link twelve, old age and death.

Aging and death, okay? Those two links, eleven and twelve, having to take a body which is mortal, and a mind which is defective. Defective equipment can be avoided by stopping.

Tell me which link you have to turn around to stop the whole process. Yeah, go back to link number one. Link number two can't happen without link number one.

Anyway, it's the blind guy, okay? Up at one o'clock. Stop that one, and you're home free, okay?

Stop that one. Stop thinking that the power to relax you is contained in the wine. And it's not just that you overcome a worldly addiction to alcohol, you overcome the addiction which created your body, and your mind, as a defective instrument, and then they become divine, and you become angelic.

And that's the end of the story. Thank you. Okay.