Полный Танец льва: на лифте к прямому восприятию пустоты (2018, Аризона), занятие 5

[Speaker 1]
Well, but to be honest it's not that exciting, but we'll do it anyway. Dhamma, Dhamma, Dhamma, Dhamma, Dhamma, Dhamma, Dhamma, Dhamma, Dhamma, Dhamma, Dhamma, Dhamma, Dhamma, Dhamma, Dhamma, Dhamma, Dhamma, Dhamma, Dhamma, Dhamma, Dhamma, Dhamma, Dhamma, Dhamma, Dhamma, Dhamma, Dhamma, Dhamma, Dhamma, Dhamma, Dhamma, Dhamma, Dhamma, Dhamma, Dhamma, Dhamma, Dhamma, Dhamma, Dhamma, Dhamma, Dhamma, Dhamma, Dhamma, Dhamma, Dhamma, Dhamma, Dhamma, Dhamma, Dhamma, Dhamma, Dhamma, Dhamma, Dhamma, Dhamma, Dhamma, Dhamma Dhamma, Dhamma, Dhamma, Dhamma, Dhamma, Dhamma, Dhamma, Dhamma, Dhamma, Dhamma, Dhamma, Dhamma, Dhamma, Dhamma, Dhamma, Dhamma, Dhamma, Dhamma, Dhamma, Dhamma, Dhamma, Dhamma, Dhamma, Dhamma, Dhamma, Dhamma, Dhamma, Dhamma, Dhamma, Dhamma, Dhamma, Dhamma, Dhamma, Dhamma, Dhamma, Dhamma, Dhamma, Dhamma, Dhamma, Dhamma, Dhamma, Dhamma, Dhamma, Dhamma, Dhamma, Dhamma, Dhamma, Dhamma, Dhamma, Dhamma, Dhamma, Dhamma, Dhamma, Dhamma, Dhamma, D Dhamma, Dhamma, Dhamma, Dhamma, Dhamma, Dhamma, Dhamma, Dhamma, Dhamma, Dhamma, Dhamma, Dhamma, Dhamma, Dhamma, Dhamma, Dhamma, Dhamma, Dhamma, Dhamma, Dhamma, Dhamma, Dhamma, Dhamma, Dhamma, Dhamma, Dhamma, Dhamma, Dhamma, Dhamma, Dhamma, Dhamma, Dhamma, Dhamma, Dhamma, Dhamma, Dhamma, Dhamma, Dhamma, Dhamma, Dhamma, Dhamma, Dhamma, Dhamma, Dhamma, Dhamma, Dhamma, Dhamma, Dhamma, Dhamma, Dhamma, Dhamma, Dhamma, Dhamma, Dhamma, Dhamma, D turn your phone off Here's Michael, and then come to the small noises in the room, desire realm.

Rest your mind on those noises, like resting your head on a pillow. Then please come to your heartbeat, first form realm level. It's not really the first form realm meditation, that would be deeper, but it's a good start.

Now come inside the heart to a beautiful meditation room filled with sunlight, and the walls of the heart are beating around you, a more quiet place. And now go deeper to the core of the heart, the inner room, still full of sunlight, but the beating walls seem far away, more quiet. Now imagine a single crystal of sugar on your finger, and place your mind inside.

Try to focus like a laser, like a tip of a needle. Try to keep your concentration in that one spot. Still, the room is sunlit, and spacious, and comfortable, but at the same time it's like the tip of a needle, a very single point.

Now flex your meditation muscle, show that you can, inside the sugar crystal, you can imagine a vast ocean as big as this planet, very deep. If you like, you can go to the center and drop a drop of water in the middle of the ocean, and watch the ripples go out to the endless sides of the ocean. Just follow, pick a piece of the ripple and follow it as it goes to the edge, which is not there, edgeless.

Add the light, blue sky, above the dark blue ocean. Stretch your mind up infinitely to space, while you still keep the ocean in mind, but you're focused on the sky. Then that's third formless realm level.

Turn the mind off, try to stop all thoughts, relax, have fun, into complete quiet in the mind, relaxing quiet in the mind. If a thought comes up, then wrestle with it and stop it. So part of your mind is vigilant, watching the mind for thoughts, and the main mind is quiet.

Now keep the mind turned off, but let the thoughts just float around outside of the core. Go to the core of the mind turned off, and let random thoughts and feelings just move around the outside of the mind. Now think of one of the teachers in your life, maybe a different one than the last few days, and with affection, which I think is a kind of respect, ask them to come sit with you, help you with the meditation.

Could be father or mother, could be school teacher, could be the person who taught you your job that you do, could be a spiritual teacher, could be a historical teacher like Buddha or Jesus or Mohammed. Now think of some quality that you really admire about this teacher, something about this teacher that you really admire, you have a great love for this quality, you would like to have this quality, their best quality, their favorite quality. Now have fun, go to your past life, be an innovator like Nagarjuna or Sangha, have fun, find a new story, be creative, keep it going, don't just go to some century in some country, some body, and then stop and wait for me to go on.

Make the story more and more beautiful, more and more detailed about what did you do in your past life to create this beautiful quality. It's just imagination, maybe someday we'll see it directly, but whether you see it directly or whether you imagine it, it's coming from the same seeds. So in that sense, anything you can imagine is partly real.

So start with imagination and it will plant the seeds later to see these past lives directly. What did you do in your past life that was similar to what you see? Because that must have caused what you see in your teacher.

Then please come back to the teacher and feel a new appreciation for that quality. Oh, that quality came from me. So we're looking at the same teacher as we were looking at before, but now we feel differently about the quality and we kind of rejoice, coffee meditation done.

I was able to create such a person. I was able to create this quality. This quality came from my goodness and I can keep this quality in my life.

If I just keep doing those good things, I can keep this teacher and this quality guiding me in my life, like a message from my past life, from myself to myself. All the qualities I can think of that I see in people around me, all the good qualities that I ever saw in my life and other people were coming from me. Three deep exhales, push out the extra breath at the end until your stomach tightens.

Then slowly open your eyes. Take a stretch. Drink something.

Any questions? Comments?

[Speaker 2]
Thank you for teaching, Geshe-la. I have a question from yesterday's teaching.

[Speaker 1]
I don't have my notes in front of me and I apologize that I'm not understanding it. I hope I phrased this correctly, but I get that the tree doesn't come from the seed in the way that we think it does, but you said that, Nagarjuna said that if a thing doesn't overlap in time with its cause, then it's not actually connected.

[Speaker 2]
If the seed and the tree don't exist in the same moment of time, then they're not dependent upon each other. So, if I take that same analogy to a karmic seed, then how could the karmic seed cause the karmic result?

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, good question. I keep hoping people won't think of this question.

I think you have to apply ... it's kind of a question about the emptiness of emptiness, you see? Like, do the rules that apply to seeds and trees, do they also apply to karma and its consequences, right?

And there's a whole chapter, he's going to talk about it, but in the same way that ... let's think about the pen and the writing, right? And the microphone and the sun coming up.

So, it's easy to see that banging on the microphone doesn't cause the sun to come up. That's like a false cause and effect, and mankind, humankind, has had many of those in its history. Probably we're doing some of those.

Well, everything is that. Some kind of very foolish idea that it's almost like a superstition or a ... what do you call it?

Primitive superstition. You can see tribes of people banging on drums to make the sun come up the next day, you know? And then in modern times, we're more sophisticated.

But are we? Do things really happen the way we think they do? Does a pen cause the writing?

And what Nagarjuna is trying to say is, no, the pen doesn't cause the writing. First, your mind creates a pen, and then your mind creates writing, and your mind links them together. Your mind creates that connection.

So, in normal thinking of our world, world of pain, right? Wheel of life, samsara. We feel like the pen is creating the writing, and we strongly feel that.

Then we hear someone say, oh, you know, that's not how you write a book, by getting some good pens. You help someone else write a book, right? And that's what causes the writing.

So, can we apply the same thing to the seeds which created the writing, and the seeds which created the pen? Can we say the same thing? That somehow, when we think about karma opening, or karmic seed opening and creating something, that we're doing the same thing again.

We're thinking the same way again about karma seeds, that we think about pens and writing. Maybe we're making the same mistake about it. We think that the writing comes from, or the book came from, helping someone else write a book.

But, I think somehow, the point is that we're making the same mistake again, when we think about how karma causes something. So, it's tempting to think that by definition, karmic seed is creating the book, or karmic seed is creating the pen. But, maybe it's not like that, you know?

Maybe, maybe that connection itself is coming from different seeds. You see what I mean? Maybe our understanding of it is, maybe we're carrying the same bad habit of how cause and effect happens, to when Geshe-la explains how everything's really coming from your seeds, right?

So, I think the answer is there. I think the answer is there somewhere. I think, and we're going to discuss it today in class, the whole class, but we have a strong desire, you know?

That old desire to think that, and by the way, that's the real meaning of desire. The old desire to think that the pen causes the writing, that there's something in the pen that could cause the writing, is when we learn about Nagarjuna, then we say, oh, now I understand. It's really my mental seed caused the writing, really.

You see what I mean? Like that, we're doing it, we just change our object of desire to the mental seed from the pen. You see what I mean?

And Buddha said that's the real meaning of desire. That's why Buddha kept repeating, don't have desire. It doesn't, secondary desire for money or sex or whatever, these come from the deeper desire, which is to think that money comes from competing, or that sex comes from bad behavior.

You see, it's a deeper desire. So, what I mean is, I think what we're doing is, when I explain about the pen and the writing, and I explain that instead of going like this, it goes like this, you know? Then you want to do the same, then you decide, oh then the real seed is my mental seed, karmic seed, but then you're just moving that misperception, misunderstanding to this misunderstanding.

You see what I mean? Oh, the mental seed has the real power inside of it, and that's not coming from me. You see, you just move your misunderstanding to another level, you know?

I think that's the answer. I think that's the answer.

[Speaker 2]
Sorry, I forgot to mention the second quick question.

[Speaker 1]
So, if Nagarjuna says that in order for two things to be connected they have to exist at the same time, could you just give an example of two things that are connected that exist at the same time? I can't. We're gonna study it today.

By the way, he attacks the four kinds of conditions. He calls them conditions, right? Why does he call them conditions and no causes?

Because the first one is called the cause-condition. So, he attacks them together, and then he's gonna attack them one by one. He's gonna attack their definition one by one, and then at the end he comes back and attacks them together again.

So, first he attacks them together. The concept of a cause he attacks, and then he attacks the four of them one by one, and then at the end of the chapter ... by the way, we're almost to the end of the chapter.

The chapters are small, which is very Nagarjuna. We're proving why causes can't work anyway. And where he's gonna go, I think, tomorrow is ...

by the way, Tim, I'm not quite done with tomorrow, as you notice, and I have a board meeting today, so it's gonna be all night for the translators. But, the final word he's gonna say is, look, this thing about the cause and result having to touch, the cause and result having to overlap, who caused the trouble in the first place? It was Lord Buddha.

You know, who said that in the first place? It was Lord Buddha. He blames it all on Lord Buddha.

And by the way, part of your mind is wondering, probably, I guess, so where was the Middle Way school during Lord Buddha's time? You know, if Middle Way is the ultimate answer, then why did it take 700 years for someone to talk about it? Didn't Buddha found the Middle Way school?

This whole chapter, is there a basis in the Buddha's teaching? Can you point to a specific teaching where Buddha taught the first chapter? The content of the first chapter?

So, we're gonna go on that tomorrow. But, here's the punchline. Buddha said, his big, big thing was, if this happens, that will happen.

You know, and there's ... he didn't say dependence, he didn't say dependent origination, he just said over and over again, ... and there's sutras called, if this happens, that happens.

But, somehow they have to touch. If they don't touch, then this happen, this create that, and that, and that, and that, and that, because they create everything it doesn't touch. So, either they exist at the same time, for a little while, at the end of the first thing, and at the beginning of the second thing, or else, random, you know, if they don't have to touch, if the pen doesn't have to touch the writing, at any point, then pens can make fish, and pigs, and you know, because they also don't touch.

They're also not connected to pens, got it? Either they're connected, or they're not connected. If there's some connection, then pens are connected to writing.

If there's no connection, then pens can create pigs, because if it can create one thing that it's not connected to, it will create a million things that it's not connected to. What's the difference? Why should it create writing if it's not connected to it?

Got it? Then it should create anything. Where's the theme?

They have to touch. The similarity, first law of karma right? There has to be some similarity.

If they don't connect, then there doesn't have to be similarity. If they do connect, there has to be similarity. Okay?

That's how Buddha would answer it. And we're gonna go through a sutra tomorrow. There are sutras from which, you know, you should be wondering where did Nagarjuna get his stuff?

You know, what sutra did Nagarjuna pull from? And we're gonna go there tomorrow, but I'm still writing it. Okay.

Let's do meditation questions, and then we'll do philosophy questions in the class, because you'll get tired. There's the one behind you, Joe.

[Speaker 2]
Thank you. Thank you, Yeshela. When we're doing the emptiness meditation of the Lama, we go and imagine the past life and some sort of good seed we planted.

But you said that's an emptiness meditation, but it's actually a dependence, a karma meditation, because you're not picturing a negative, an absence, an absence of a self-existent thing. And then they don't look very different, the self-existent Lama from the projected Lama. You mentioned a lot the feeling.

Can you please explain what, how can we know when we have a feeling that something's our projection? And how can we know when we have a feeling that something is not our projection, it's self-existent? And especially, because this is supposed to make you see emptiness directly, so you gotta recognize the feeling of what a self-existent mind is, me and my mind, and what a projected me and my mind is, which is, this is where you're taking us, but it's more about feeling, right?

Not instances of time or parts, or is it? Can you please explain?

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, okay, good. Yeah, so the whole Lion's Dance in Maitreya, by Maitreya, when he mentioned it, he's saying it's connected to the Wheel of Life. And it's, the source for the Wheel of Life teaching, dependence, the twelve links in scripture, and the source for the Lion's Dance are the same verse, okay?

DE NAS ZIN GYI RNAM DGON PA'I STIN GYI MTSAN NA SNYONG ZHUGS PA'I BRTEN CING BRAL BYUNG LUS THUN DANG LUS MI THUN LA RTOG PAR BYED Very famous. So, the first two lines are, one line in Sanskrit is Lion's Dance, and then second line is about dependent origination. But there's, amazingly, in one verse, the third and fourth line are about dependence, and the fourth line is about emptiness.

So, when he teaches the Wheel of Life in two lines, and then Lion's Dance, the first two lines, and then Wheel of Life in the third and fourth line, the third line is about, basically, it's about dependence, and the fourth line is about emptiness. Because he says LUS MI THUN means spin the wheel back, you know, spin the wheel back, break the wheel at the first link, you know, stop thinking that the pen created the writing. Who made movies?

Yeah, if you don't like a movie, who's fun at it? You know, it's really funny to me, I mean, ever since I became a Buddhist, life is kind of strange. Because people will say, I'm so pissed off, this used to be a good director, you know, but this last movie, it's terrible, you know.

Then I'm like, yeah, but he said, yeah, but you don't know Geshe-la, he used to make good movies, and now the movie, you know, such a bad ending, you know. And then I'm like, I can't have conversations with people, because I'm like, I can't say what I really think. I have to say, yeah, you're right, you know, it's really bad, and he's getting older, and he probably can't make movies, you know.

But really, you make the next part of the movie, right? The movie is coming out of here, when you turn the page of a book, it's blank. There's nothing there.

Then your mind writes the next page in 1 65th of a second. Your mind lays down the words. If you don't like the ending of the movie, you know, make better real apps.

By the way, I heard some real apps last night, and they were really awesome, and I'm going to try to adjust the schedule, Tim, to give more time to—I would like to hear more real apps from people. We could have spent all night last night just listening to people's real apps. I heard Two Cool Dudes, and—what was the other one?

What was yours called? Impossible Connection? Yeah, but there was another one.

Aldo's. What was yours? What was yours?

You are the mirror. Enjoy the mirror. Yeah, okay.

Anyway, so you're absolutely right. The part where you think about your past life, we are studying dependence. We're not focusing on emptiness, yeah.

So, when you look at your teacher and you think, oh, this quality came from something I did, that's dependence. RTEN CING BRAL BYUNG LUG MTHUN. Okay, that part of the quotation.

Then we have to take a break, because I don't want to make everybody—there has to be a pee-pee break between dependence and emptiness. No, because emptiness takes more focus. Seriously, when you lead the Lion's Dance, remember, don't go straight to emptiness and then pee-pee, because people won't concentrate.

So, after the dependence, we come back and we focus on the emptiness of the Lama. Now, what's the feeling? What's the difference in the feeling?

The famous story I tell is, I was sitting in my Lama's classes for 25 years, you know, and I think I told this story, probably I did, because I told every story. But anyway, we had these folding chairs, and they were wooden. Maybe somebody remembers them.

Maybe that's what messed up your head, I don't know. But, they were really hard, and they were built wrong, and they were super— within two minutes you feel uncomfortable. After two hours, you feel like torture, you know.

And he taught in the Tibetan way, which is how I used to teach before this week, which is just talk at you. And you don't have to do homework. You don't have to do anything.

He just talked at you for two hours, three hours, and no pee-pee breaks. You're supposed to listen like this. If you look down or something, if your hand's not moving, he said, what?

Why you're not taking notes? And so, you're like this. Sometimes you just write anything.

Then, you're not supposed to ask questions. But, you know, he went on and on and on about this feeling, you know. It's a feeling.

And then finally, I couldn't stop myself. I remember two or three famous times I couldn't stop myself. I said, look.

I raised my hand, you know. He's like, what? What?

Then I'm like, I see the door, you know. Because I was thinking about, he used to give us tea and snacks after the class. So, I keep looking at the door, you know.

And then I said, I'm looking at the door right now, and according to highest school of Middle Way, I'm doing something wrong all the time. There is no tsema. Ultimately speaking, there's no tsema.

There's no correct perceptions. You never have, until you see emptiness directly, an accurate perception of anything, ever, in your whole life. And then I'm like, so what am I doing wrong Rinpoche?

Is there a door there? Isn't there a door there? What I really meant was, isn't there tea on the other side?

I'm like, isn't there ... what's the mistake I'm making? He said, you're not making a mistake about the door.

So, get that clear. When you look at the door, and you identify it as a door, that's not a mistake. That's what we call accurate perception, pramana.

That's correct. You see a door. That part's not mistaken, but you have a feeling about the door.

I said, well what's the feeling about the door? And he said, you know, you think that it didn't come from you. You feel like that, strongly.

You think it didn't come from your past life. It didn't come from what you did yesterday. You know, maybe how my friends talk to me, or how my wife behaves, comes from me.

That I understand. But door? You know, door comes from door factory.

You know, didn't come from me. Then there's ... that's the feeling, wrong feeling about the door.

And there's a joke that when you teach the pen, there's an old joke, which by the way in ancient times was a conch shell, a white shell. You didn't use a pen, you used a shell. And there's a joke that while you're explaining to someone how it comes from them, they feel like it comes from the pen.

While you're explaining it, they also are misfeeling it. Got it? Even while you're explaining it, that it doesn't come from itself, they're like looking at it, and they're feeling that it comes from itself, and they're going, I get it Geshe-la, I get it.

Come from me, come from me. But the feeling is the billions of years of habit. So, very difficult.

So, we're gonna go to the feeling next, and we'll go to the emptiness meditation next, which is after the pee pee break. So, have a good break. Remember to look, stop and look at the bathroom door for a while.

What am I doing wrong? But don't think too long. Now please bring back to the room the teacher that you chose before.

Do I see a teacher? Yes. Do I have the right feeling about where they come from?

Usually not. So, focus on that nice quality they have, and think about how it came from seeds in your mind. And those seeds are always planted by being aware of ourselves.

So, karma is planted by being aware of ourselves. I was kind, or I was patient in my past life. I observed myself being kind or patient, maybe consciously, maybe not consciously.

But that observation of myself planted those seeds. So, first enjoy how those seeds are coming, are opening, and creating this nice quality we see. One of the feelings you can have at this moment is kind of comfort that, oh, this teacher's good qualities are actually coming from me.

And that means, if I am smart, then I can keep this teacher, because I can make more seeds. I make a lot of good seeds to see that quality just by being happy about it. I make a tremendous amount of good seeds by understanding where it came from.

So, there's a sort of comfort that I can protect myself from losing this teacher by planting more of those seeds. And that's the real meaning of taking refuge in Buddhism. Now, ask that teacher, please sit to the side, because I need to do an emptiness meditation.

To do an emptiness meditation, there has to be something that I refuse or deny. There must be something I cancel. And that should be something that could never exist.

You exist. You're my teacher. You have this beautiful quality.

So, please sit to the side. Now, I bring another teacher that looks just like you to sit in front of me, but this teacher is different. They have patience or kindness, which is not coming from me.

Inside their mind, inside of them, from their own effort and their own practice, they have developed patience or kindness. Maybe it took many years. And they have this quality inside of them.

It's coming from inside of them. And then it comes out to the surface. And I see it in their actions and in what they say.

I see this kindness, which is deep inside of them. It comes out sometimes and they say kind things or they're patient. So, now think of your teacher this way.

That the patience is inside of them. And this is impossible. This is what we call true nature.

This is their nature. This is part of them. And that's a wrong idea.

That's a wrong idea. Even if they had practiced patience for many years, and even if they feel patient all the time, but I don't have the seeds, then I could even see them as angry all the time. Think about, we call fake teacher, bubu lama, the one I didn't create, and try to understand how they don't exist.

If they did exist, you couldn't keep them. They wouldn't come from your effort. You would lose them one day.

Now let's start round two. Invite back the real teacher, the one who comes from you. Appreciate that you created this goodness and take your leave.

Start to come back down. We'll go first to the fourth formless realm level. Turn off the mind.

Coming out of the center, we are starting at the center of the mind, where we looked at our teacher's dependence and emptiness. And now we are coming back out to the normal world. So we start with the mind.

Try, this part should be relaxing. Don't struggle. Don't fight.

Kind of enjoy coming out slowly from your meditation. The mind, inner mind, with no thoughts. If thoughts come, let them float away.

I think it's good to do these other realms a little bit more quickly. You are tired. Meditating is difficult work for the body and also very difficult for the mind.

To focus the mind or control the mind is like fighting with a wild horse and it's tiring. You're sitting on your cushion, but it's actually quite a lot of effort and it's tiring. So come back down smooth and happily.

Come out to a little noisier place, third formless realm level. And you're watching your different thoughts and trying to slow them down, deflect them from the quiet of the mind. Come out more smoothly into a blue sky, suave, to the ocean, to the sugar crystal, single point, single needle point.

Come out a little more to the inner room of the heart, beating at a distance. Lots of sunlight. Push out extra exhales from time to time.

Don't let prana build up in the heart chakra, inside the heart, whilst beating. And then to the beating heart. Form realm number one, level number one.

We stay here. We don't go out to the air conditioner. Let's go back up into the center of the heart, into the room of the heart.

Round three, deeper to the middle of the heart, sugar crystal. Relax. You're tired.

This is like shaking in yoga. This is when you build up your strength. So appreciate that.

Don't avoid it. Don't be afraid of it. Stick with it.

This is the kind of endurance and meditation you need if you want to see emptiness directly and help all the people you love. To the ocean, wide. To the sky, even wider.

Try to rest. Try to relax in the pose. Turn off your mind.

Block thoughts. Go to the core of that and stop listening to the thoughts. Greet your teacher.

Remember where this good quality came from. Round four, stick with it. Stay with it.

Relax. Don't fight it. Come back to the heartbeat.

So we jump from nine down to one. In round four, we're going to go back to ninth level, Lama. But on the way between each level, we're going to bring the Lama back.

Think about where they came from. Think about their good quality. Think about how they are not coming from inside of them.

So you can have fun here. Make it interesting. Focus on different things as you do pel gom.

Pel gom, alternation, alternating between the form and formless realm and the teacher. So from the heartbeat, go back to the teacher. Enjoy this nice quality.

Now you see that you wrote the book, you made the movie. I did a pretty cool job. Maybe I'm not as bad as I thought I was.

Inside the heart, let go of the teacher. Enjoy the quiet. Back to the teacher.

Try to remember what you did before in your imaginary past life. Into the inner chamber of the heart, heart beating at a distance. You can rest before we bring back the teacher in the silent.

Bring back the teacher. Think some more about what you did in your past life. Maybe you have some new ideas about it.

Into the sugar crystal. Peace and quiet. One more detail about your past life.

To the ocean. Relax during these eight lamas. Relax the mind, rest the mind.

Let it float on the ocean. Come back to your teacher. I like to insert in here, how did I first meet them?

And where I feel that came from? What's the wrong idea about how you met them? Were you on a certain bus or plane or you were in a certain building and they came into the building?

You saw something on the internet. And that's why you met them. To the sky.

It's okay to speed up on fourth and fifth realm. Part of the exercise is flexibility of the mind. Bring the lama back.

Why did you really meet them? Turn the mind off. Total quiet.

Then just happy that you created the seeds to see this lama. Meet this lama. Turn the mind off with no effort to stop any thoughts.

Let them float around. Go deeper. Go to the center.

Ah, there's my lama that came from me. So beautiful. So nice.

So well-deserved. And I'm gonna keep them by continuing to be a good person as well as I can. Fifth realm.

Final realm. Then we've done the whole lion's dance. Come back to the mind with no thoughts.

No fighting thoughts. Now come to the air conditioner. Jump out to the outside room.

From the eighth level jump out to the outside room. Show how strong your mind is. I can jump to an outside sound purposely, not because it demanded my attention.

And I can slide back right now into no mind, level seven. Silence. I have control of my mind.

I can tell it where to go. This is meditation. Jump out to the air conditioner.

Let's go to the sky. Jump out to the air conditioner. Rest your mind on the air conditioner.

And then rest it on the ocean that stretches beyond the horizon. And jump back to this room and these noisy machines. And then watch.

I can jump into a sugar crystal at will. I have that authority over my mind. Jump out to the noisy machine.

Jump into the center of the heart. Jump to the machine. Jump to the inside of the heart, beating around me.

Jump back to the machine. Jump back into your body and watch your heart. And three long exhales.

Push the extra air out at the end, so you don't get tight. It's like Shavasana. Open your eyes.

Take a stretch. Congratulations, you're the first group to do the Vipta bound like that. Alright then, if you want to come up and turn off your phone you can do that.

There's actually a little bit more, there's a dessert. It's not round six, but you know, there's a traditional way to end the meditation, which we'll practice tomorrow. Okay, there's a one-minute thing you have to do.

Any questions? Whoa, drink something. Thank you Geshe-la.

Regarding the sugar crystal single point focus, it's a bit hard how to balance that, because when I see the sugar crystal here, but it's a ... and at the same time you guide us to go to imagine inside of it to be a special place. So, Ho?

Yeah, personally, you know, when I give DCI talks, then let's say I'm doing Wheel of Life, and Scott always has this laser thing, and I ask Scott, you know, give me the laser thing, because I always lose it. He never lets me hold it. He keeps it.

And then, you know, I use it and I aim it at the picture, and I push the wrong button, and he tells me again, it's not that button, it's the other button, and then I push it, and then there's this spot of light comes, okay? So, the feeling should be like that. And I promised you I would go through the technical meditation thing today.

How about tomorrow? I'm having a lot of trouble keeping up with your homeworks, okay? So, I'll do it tomorrow.

I'll try to ... I need to look at it again. But, the traditional scripture, at this point, KDPJ, he will talk about the sugar crystal part, it's very big emphasis on single point.

So, you know, see if you can work it in. The point is, anytime you're in meditation, it's useful to go to a small place. So, if you're doing tonglen meditation, you're supposed to see a rose in your heart, or a lotus in your heart, and there's a diamond in the lotus, then if you have trouble focusing, there's a tradition to shrink it to a tiny place in your heart, to a single point, like the laser point, and that's tradition.

If you have trouble focusing, then shrink it to a tiny bit of your heart. There's another tradition to put it here, shrink it here, and you might try that sometimes when you want to increase your focus, and that's trying to put it inside a chakra. So, a lot of people, when they think about chakra, and you say, oh the chakra, it's called the min tsam, which means between your eyebrows, but it's not.

It's a little higher, okay, but there's no eyebrow here, so they just say between your eyebrow. It means here, you know, and it's here. There's a chakra here, right?

Ajna chakra, and the important thing that they teach here in the monastery is, it's not painted on the forehead. It's not like ... in fact, that's why Indian women wear a bindu after they get married, but it's to represent a chakra, which is actually about a centimeter?

I don't know meters very well. Half inch in. So, start on the skin, and then focus a little bit behind that, and you hit the bone, and then focus a little bit behind that until you feel some concentration.

You'll feel some kind of ... something will click, you know. So, I think some people's ...

everybody's body is different. When they measure chakras, they measure them in cun, this line, because that's ... that's a Chinese medical way to measure parts of your body, as my teacher taught me, went long ago.

I did two years of ... two years? I think, something in medicine with her, but it depends on your own body, you see?

So, don't measure with a stick, measure with your own finger, because some people's finger is smaller, because their body's smaller, so that's going to be more accurate. So, one cun maybe? In, and you might find a point of focus.

So, if you have trouble focusing, it's traditional, you can call it sugar crystal, you can call it laser, you can call it Ajna chakra, command center chakra, but ... it doesn't matter. Go to a smaller point and it'll be easier to focus, okay?

If you get tight, if your chest gets tight, or your back starts to hurt a lot, or you feel nervous or something, then ocean, sky, you open it up, okay? All right? So, somehow you have to maintain this laser point, even though the crystal becomes as big as a big apartment in Guangzhou or something, Shanghai, okay?

All right, other question? You're not going to remember all this? It's okay?

[Speaker 2]
I'm going to say it fast. So, the first one is, oh, all right, so you said that every time, in our daily life, if we are busy, we can finish the dance in the teacher, in level nine, instead of the level eight, the previous eight, but this time you asked us to stop in the desire of the noise, after part five.

[Speaker 1]
So, is it a ...? No, we stopped in the form realm. We didn't go to the desire realm. We stopped at one.

We didn't go to the ground floor.

[Speaker 2]
Oh, okay, so we start here.

[Speaker 1]
Is it not good? It's more fun. It's tradition, because when you see emptiness directly, it's from the first form realm level.

So, it's important, it's a good seed to put in your mind, to stop there. Yeah, that's ...

[Speaker 2]
sorry?

[Speaker 1]
Five? Realm five, that's right. No, I'm thinking not to.

Yeah, yeah.

[Speaker 2]
Oh, at the hot ... oh, not the noise, okay.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, don't go to the air-conditioner, it's ... you will have to go to the air-conditioner, or you can't go to work, but traditionally, for good luck, because level one is where you see emptiness from. Actually, the level one has three levels, but we're not talking about it, but at the first of the three levels, sam den donmo nyen do mi chok me, this level here, that's where you see emptiness directly.

So, I'm thinking it's a good idea if we stop there. Another two ... Then I say, I'm done with the meditation, and then you get up and you hear the air-conditioner anyway.

[Speaker 2]
Another two part of her question is, you taught us to see the seeds opening, and like the layer of light, like a light coat, putting on the teacher, but you didn't do it this time. I feel like it's a pity. Good question.

And then the last one is, in the final dedication, you asked us to breathe out with golden light to send out the good seeds, and we didn't do it this time.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah.

[Speaker 2]
Also.

[Speaker 1]
Two ways to end the meditation. So, when you teach it, start with just three breaths, and then later connect those breaths to dedication. You see, we didn't do it yet.

We didn't reach it. Maybe tomorrow. Okay.

After they learn to dedicate with the three breaths, then teach them to bring the Lama into their heart. You see? So, start with three breaths.

Get the student used to doing three breaths, and then suddenly say, okay, now use those three breaths to give away the good karma. And after they get used to that, then change it again. Because if they learn everything, you can't teach anymore.

Just kidding. Then do the ... bring the Lama into your heart.

We're gonna do it tomorrow.

[Speaker 2]
How about a seed opening part?

[Speaker 1]
Yeah. Now, seed opening. I think, I suggest, you know, there's too many things to think about when you think about how the seed opens, how the picture comes out, how the picture coats the Lama like honey or something, you know?

Or like a sweater. Last night we needed a sweater, right? And you can ...

I think a good place to do that is in round four, okay? Because round four, you're just kind of in between the eight. You can have fun.

Oh, seed opening. Okay, go back to the heart. Oh, coat coming.

Okay, go back to the heart. Oh, you know, you can have ... you can do all those things there.

And there's many, many more you can do. By the end of five years, you can do 27 different kinds of examinations during the ... between the eight Lamas.

Yeah. Good. Yeah, round four.

Round four, right? And pel gom with gokpay nyom juk. Say pel gom with gokpay nyom juk.

So, that means alternating meditation with a cessation meditation. But cessation means you are meditating on emptiness. So, you can call it an emptiness meditation.

Traditionally, it's called a cessation meditation. Okay? And then round five is ...

when you're coming down, it's just dukham. Between the eight levels. What's dukham?

Yeah. We call it in Sanskrit. Something dhatu.

What's that sutra called? Bad sutra. Kama.

Yeah. Kama dhatu. Kama dhatu.

Okay. Alright, let's do some class because I'm afraid you won't be able to do your homework, and I'll be very sad.