12 способов сделать новый год успешным — вдохновение из «Короля Дхармы: иллюстрированной жизни Чже Цонгкапы» (2021, Аризона), занятие 2

[Speaker 1]
Welcome back to our New Year's program. I wanted to thank all the translators. I can see some of you now.

Sugeng, Emily, Aldo, thank you guys, you other translators. You're doing a great job. This is a special three-day program, free of charge for New Year's, and inspired by our Singapore team, and Jenny Wong and her team.

Thank you for sponsoring this program. Thank you for organizing it. Thank you, Irina.

Thank you, Amelie. Thank you, Zanda. Okay, Tim, can I share my screen?

[Speaker 2]
I think you should have the power to do that. All right, here we go. Let's see.

[Speaker 1]
Okay, we're going to review a little bit about what we did yesterday, what we went over. These are 12 different posters based on the very rare paintings from the Haro Temple, Haro, New Jersey, in America. There's a small Mongolian temple called Rashi Gampali.

I studied there for 25 years with my teacher. And I'm very grateful to this temple. Without that temple, I wouldn't be able to be here today.

I'm still hearing somebody, Tim. I just wanted to thank the temple. This is where we found these 15 very rare paintings that reached the temple even before I got there.

Yesterday, we talked about the lessons from these 15 paintings. I think the most important lesson is we need a teacher. And I'll tell you something interesting.

If you ever see emptiness directly, if it ever happens to you that you can see emptiness directly, of course, many amazing things happen to you. It's possible you will have a direct experience of bodhicitta. And at that moment, you meet every single person in the universe directly.

And you talk to them. And you say, I will take care of you. In this life, I will take care of you in future lives.

But I think a more amazing thing that happens at that moment, if you want to know, is you see your future teachers and you see who will teach you in your future lives. And that's a very wonderful experience because you can see the teachers who will teach you even when you're a little kid in your next life, in your future lives. So, it's a wonderful experience when you see emptiness directly that you know you will be taken care of into your future lives by teachers.

And you will have the karma to meet those teachers. So, it's a wonderful reason to see emptiness directly. I don't think you can reach the goals of these paintings without finding your heart teacher.

And we said yesterday, it's like a pair of jeans. The same jeans don't fit everybody. In fact, I don't think there's two people in the world who wear the same jeans exactly.

And you have to find the teacher who fits you. And then always remember that this teacher is coming from you. They are coming from your seeds.

And the way you find a teacher is the same way you find a husband or wife. You plant the seeds that they will come to you. And they will come to you like a bee coming to honey if you plant the seeds.

You don't have to... I found this temple and I found this teacher, this great, great Geshe, about 45 minutes from Princeton University. First I went to India to look for them in Himalayas.

And then later I just plant the seeds and they come to me. That's the first painting we covered yesterday. Secondly, we said that there's a reason you came to this life.

When you're a little kid, you always start to think that maybe there's some reason why I came to this life. Maybe I'm supposed to do something special in this world. I think all of us, when we are kids, we start to think, oh, there must be some special reason why I came to this world.

There are billions of worlds. The new telescope went up two, three days ago. That telescope can detect the very last vibrations from the beginning of the universe.

And we've been there. There are countless worlds. It proves there are countless worlds, billions and billions.

And there must be people on other worlds. And yes, our purpose, why we came into one world, why we came to this world, is we're supposed to do something here. Each one of us is supposed to do something here.

And I'm very proud that almost everybody listening today, I think almost everybody listening today, they are helping in some way to spread these teachings, to help other people in the world to understand these beautiful teachings. I just want to thank all of you. I believe almost every person in the Singapore group or the other groups that are listening here, I know you are working hard.

I'm looking at Tim right now. He's working from early morning to late at night all the time. And there are many, many people like that in this group.

And I'm very grateful to you. You did come here to save the world. It is what you're supposed to do.

You were right when you were a little kid. You're supposed to do something special. And never doubt it.

Never doubt it. You're not here to eat and poo-poo and die. This is not why you are here.

You are here to do something special for the world. And you have the tools. You have these paintings, these teachings.

You came here for a reason. And you're supposed to help this whole world. And you can.

And many of you are doing it. And I think you don't even think about it much. You're just doing it.

But sometimes you should sit down and say, wow, I'm doing good stuff. I'm really doing good stuff. I'm really helping the world.

I didn't come to eat and poo-poo and die. I came here to this world to do something special. And I am a special person.

And you are. All right, now we come to... By the way, here you can see...

This is a little booklet I wrote many years ago about the paintings. What's happening in the paintings. And if you like, you can get a copy of this little booklet.

It's basically what I'm teaching for... And you can get a copy of this booklet. We're kind of bribing people.

If you help with one of our projects, charity projects, we will send you this booklet. Okay, new painting for today. A new topic.

Is question everything you know. Always ask questions and go deeper. I love it.

When I go to Singapore, when I go to Asia, I will ask the audience, hey, you guys want to go deeper? And they always go crazy like, yay, we want to go deeper. And oftentimes in the class people will complain to me, Geshe-la, today you didn't go deeper about emptiness.

You didn't make us... You didn't debate with us. You didn't question us.

Let's go deeper. Let's go deeper. Okay, so that's very much a tradition of Tsongkhapa.

In our tradition, we ask a lot of questions. We go deeper. And especially we go deeper into the ancient books.

We talk to the ancient masters. There are 2,500 years of ancient masters. And you can talk to them if you just read their books.

Those books are very difficult and very, very difficult to understand. But you cannot go deeper. You cannot make real spiritual progress unless you ask questions.

And I love this example here. I'm going to blow up this picture. This golden guy, that's always Tsongkhapa in these paintings.

So in this painting, he's 15 years old. And he left his home in east of Tibet. And he walked to Lhasa.

It's many hundreds of miles over the snow mountains, over the rivers. There's no bridges at that time. He walked when he was 15 years old.

He walked to the capital, Lhasa. Why? Because that's where the great monasteries are.

That's where you can become a Geshe. That's where you can study the great books. And he purposely walked.

He walked all the way, the hundreds and hundreds of miles. He's 15 years old. And on the way, he didn't just visit a bunch of temples and stop at monasteries.

Every time he goes to a monastery, he says, you guys, can I sleep here tonight? I'm going to study in the great monasteries. And people say, yeah, sure, you can sleep here tonight.

Can I have some food? Yeah, you can have some food. Don't forget he's 15 years old.

Then he says, can I debate with all the monks in your monastery? Can we debate? And he's like a cowboy who wants to show how fast he can shoot his gun.

He's like, can I debate with the monks in your monastery? So in the paintings, we see him. This is Dewachen, a monastery called Dewachen.

On his walking to study with the great teachers, he debated the whole way. Every painting here, you can see Tsongkhapa in the golden color. He's debating with these other monks.

And he's asking them questions. And he's exploring new ideas. And we really, really have to do the same.

And this is our tradition. In our tradition, Tsongkhapa tradition, we say, actually, we're not allowed to study the easy things. We're supposed to concentrate on the difficulties.

And Tim, can we show the Mixed Nuts class announcement? There's a Mixed Nuts class coming up in February. This is 60 hours of deep, deep exploration of the ancient books.

And it's very difficult. And it's very confusing. And it's very exhausting.

For us in Arizona, we get up early in the morning. And we work until late at night so that people from Europe and people from Asia can come. So here you can see the class.

This is Mixed Nuts. These are the 12 great translators from all over the world who are studying how to translate the ancient books. And we are taking the tough books.

We are not translating the easy books. We are translating the most difficult books. Because we're afraid in the future those books won't be available in modern languages.

So you're welcome to take a shot of this barcode and QR code. And you can come to the classes and go deeper. This is our tradition.

This is the Tsongkhapa tradition. Tim, we have two new books that came out from this group. Very, very deep books.

First one is called Emptiness Meditations. Maybe you can show that slide, Tim. And this is a new book that just came out.

And it's in English for the first time. It has the most ancient directions, how to meditate, by Kamala Sheila. Very, very famous.

Bhavanakarma, his famous book on how to meditate. And then it has 38 different emptiness meditations that you can try. 23 of those meditations are correct.

And 15 of them are wrong. Okay. And I think it's very beautiful that this book, which was written about 350 years ago, the author, Choney Lama, he says, look, here's 23 good emptiness meditations.

And here's 15 wrong emptiness meditations. Okay. And you have to be careful not to do them.

Okay. It's a wonderful book. It's very, very valuable.

I hope you will use the QR code. Get a copy. And we're translating it into other languages also.

This was translated by Venerable Utpala Bedsgiri, who's one of our Mixed Nuts translators. And she did a great job. And she's working very, very hard to prepare all of the books for you guys.

She's working incredibly hard every day. I saw her the other day for dinner and her eyes are, the water's coming out of her eyes all the time because she's working so long hours. Her eyes are always watering from editing all the translators' books.

Tim, I'd like to show another book. It's called The Golden Key. And this book came out yesterday.

Okay. The e-book. Tim, if you need it, there's an email in your email from Rosa with this graphic.

And this is a book translated by Wordsmith. He's a Mixed Nuts translator. And The Golden Key is a famous, famous book about the middle way school.

Sorry, mind-only school. And this is a very, very difficult subject. In the monastery, in the Geshe course, we don't study the mind-only especially.

We don't have a separate course specifically for mind-only school. We study it while we are studying some middle way teachings. But this is a great, great book.

I think it's the greatest beginning book about the mind-only school that you can ever use. And it goes very deep about how the world is coming from your mind. And I really...

This is the first day we've announced this book. It was finished late last night. The e-book was finished late last night.

I'd like to thank Rosa van Grieken and also Venerable Jigme Eli Vandepas. And the whole team at the Diamond Cutter Press is working very hard. And Wordsmith, boy, he works so hard.

He worked for five years to translate this book. I think it's the greatest book available for the mind-only school. And I encourage you to get it.

I like this e-book format. We only sold the physical books. Like this is the Diamond Cutter Sutra Commentary that we printed about, I don't know, three years ago.

And Eli and I worked on it for 20 years. And I didn't like e-books. I like to read the real book.

But during the COVID, we can't get a paper. We can't get publishers. It's difficult to get shipping.

And we started to do e-books. And the first time I saw the e-book, I was so happy. I said, oh man, I've been so stupid in the past not to use these e-books.

I like to buy them and send them to my friend. It takes about three minutes. You go to Diamond Cutter Press website.

Here's the QR code. And you can send it to all your friends. And it's so much fun for me to send a book to my friends.

It takes about less than three minutes. And I'm very happy to see this book come out. And I'd like to thank, oh, there's Wordsmith.

Hi, Word. This is his, really, he's done a lot of great work as a translator. He has finished a huge dictionary, Chinese language, Tibetan language, English language.

And he's worked very, very hard. And this is his great achievement. He's working on a follow-up book, which goes even deeper.

And Word, I think we can finish in about six more years. Don't worry. And then I hope we can do some more.

But the Mind-Only School is really the basis of all Buddhism in China. All Chinese people, doesn't matter where you live, the Mind-Only School is the basis of your ancient traditions. And I think it's one reason why Chinese people are so successful in the world.

Chinese speakers, it doesn't matter what country you live in, but I think it's because of the influence of the Mind-Only School and learning it. And it's very, very important to learn and very valuable. So I hope you guys get that book.

Hey, Tim, can I go back to my... Thank you, Word, good job. I'm going to go back to...

Where is that? Here we go. So there's Tsongkapa.

He's going deeper. He's debating. He's...

Look, there he is debating again. Don't forget, he's like 15 years old. And here he's debating again.

Why we debate like martial arts? Wushu. Why we use this like karate or wushu format for debating?

I'll tell you my theory. The monks don't get any exercise in the monastery. We do two, three hours a day of debating, and you're exhausted when you come home.

And also the monks get very strong from debating. And also they're not allowed to have girlfriend at that time. So I think it gets all this energy out by debating.

And it's a very beautiful custom. And they go very, very deep. And they learn a lot.

Here's another... This is an interesting part of this painting. And I'll tell you something going on here.

So Karpa is debating Manjushri. This is unbelievable. Later in his life he learned how to meet this Buddha called Manjushri directly.

The one with the sword here. Let me get my big cursor. Hang on.

Oh, I can't do that. Okay. All right.

Anyway, here's Manjushri up in the top. And so Karpa is actually debating with him and asking him questions about emptiness. So he's even debating with the Buddha.

Here's he also studying Lam Rim, asking questions to his teacher. I have some students, I can think of some of you, who are always asking me questions. And I like it.

I like it. I like to answer questions. And it's very much our tradition that we ask questions, we go deeper.

I had some people from... Some people I know, they told me, you guys talk too much. You should meditate more.

You shouldn't always talk about philosophy. You should have a good heart. You should practice compassion.

But actually, you can't practice compassion if you don't understand emptiness. Then your compassion is not real compassion. You need to ask questions.

You need to go deeper. And you need to read words books, books like that. Here's more pictures of Tsongkapa debating throughout his life.

And he never finished. He was debating even to the end of his life. And it's a very good custom.

So I encourage you guys, keep asking questions. Keep coming to those mixed nuts classes. I had somebody told me, Geshe-la, I went to words class online.

I went to the mind only class in the mixed nuts. And I didn't understand one thing. For one hour, I didn't understand one thing.

And I said, that's good. That means you're learning something. If you go to a class by some teacher and you understand everything easily, you say, I heard that before, I understand it.

Then think about it. You're not learning anything new. You are not improving yourself.

So you have to go deeper. You have to study the ancient books. These ancient writers were genius.

They were super Einstein. They also know 500 years ago, 2000 years ago, their meditation is very good. They know you are going to read their book in 2000 years.

They can see it directly. So actually the book is written for you. It's very interesting.

Those books are not normal books. You don't read them and put them on the shelf. And you don't finish a Buddhist book.

You never finish a Buddhist book. You live with the book for your whole life. And you're not supposed to finish the book.

You just keep going deeper and deeper and deeper. And your mind will expand. Then you can really have love for other people.

Then you can really help other people. Okay? So you need to study.

It's a big part of our tradition. You need to go deeper if you want to help people. And you need to ask questions.

And in this tradition we encourage you to ask questions. If you're bothering the teacher, you're asking more questions, you are not bothering the teacher. The teacher likes it.

We like it. All right. If you keep asking questions, then one day we say you will see the diamond.

And this is our fourth goal of these paintings. And these are all pictures from the paintings of the temple in New Jersey. These are all pictures about Tsongkhapa seeing emptiness directly.

In this picture here, he starts to have a strange... He starts to have a strange... He's meditating.

He's in the class. And then suddenly he looks up in the sky and he sees the Mother Sutras. He sees the emptiness teachings written on the sky.

He's so deep into emptiness teachings. And he's so deep into understanding the Buddha. He's so deep into understanding the books of emptiness.

Probably it's Word's book, I guess. But he looks up at the sky and he sees the book. I guess it's even faster than the e-book.

He looks at the sky and he sees the emptiness teachings written on the sky. And it means he's going to see emptiness soon. He's going to see emptiness directly soon.

And here, where he has a vision of all the great teachers of emptiness, especially Nagarjuna. I'm going to blow this up. Remember, these paintings are tiny.

This Nagarjuna is smaller than your thumb, than your thumbnail. And these painters, my teacher told me the ones who painted these paintings, many of them went blind later. They are painting Nagarjuna with a single horse hair.

They are painting these paintings. And here, if you look carefully, you can see snakes around Nagarjuna's head. And that means he's the king of the Nagas.

Why that? It's because he went to their world of the Nagas to get the emptiness teachings. So here Tsongkhapa is seeing a vision of the great teachers of emptiness.

And if you want to really go deep into emptiness, come to the Mixed Nuts classes. And Professor Nick Lashaw, his book is all from Nagarjuna. He's finishing, I think, he just finished a great...

sorry, he's going to finish in February a great, great book about Nagarjuna. And then he's going to start another one which will take about six more years. So if you're really interested in these deep, deep teachings on Nagarjuna, then come and listen to Nick's class.

And also I will be teaching Nagarjuna's Wisdom for ACI. We will have another course coming up soon. Tim, I forgot what month.

[Speaker 2]
July, we'll be releasing it.

[Speaker 1]
Oh, okay. All right. And we're going through Nagarjuna's book.

So when Tsongkhapa was about ready to see emptiness directly, he had this vision of Nagarjuna and the great teachers of emptiness. I love this painting. I gave some of the paintings from the Mongolian temple in New Jersey.

I gave them to a young artist in New York City. His name is Orican. Some of you know him.

He's a good teacher. And I said, can you paint it modern style? Western style.

Can you paint it a little bit modern style? And he did. And this is a very famous place.

Just before Tsongkhapa saw emptiness, he had a vision of Manjushri. That's up on the top here. From Manjushri's heart came a sword.

Came out of the heart. A sword made of light. And it struck Tsongkhapa in the heart.

That's supposed to be the trigger of when Tsongkhapa saw emptiness directly. It's very, very cool. Here Manjushri is in the bottom left.

He's predicting that Tsongkhapa will see emptiness. Right after he saw Nagarjuna, he saw emptiness directly. Yay, you can do it.

You can all do it. You have to study the great books and you have to meditate every day. Here's the explanation.

You can get this copy. Now, poster number five, I think it is. I'm trying to finish them all today, Tim.

Maybe I will be a little slow. It says you should meditate. You should learn to meditate.

This first picture is Tsongkhapa. He left his home when he was 15 and he never went back. He never saw his mother again.

He loved his mother very much. But he left. He went to the mountains.

He started to meditate and he learned how to meditate properly, correctly. I like this white teacher here in the white. He's a Nyingma yoga master.

Nyingma means the old tradition in Tibetan. Tsongkhapa is asking for his help to learn how to meditate. These great teachers, they are always showing us something about ourselves.

Tsongkhapa, he listened to how to meditate, how to use prana or chi in his meditation from this Nyingma master. The Nyingma master said, do you have any questions you want to ask me? If you can read Tibetan, you can see here, it says, kutu la nyung.

Kutu la nyung means... What Tsongkhapa asked the great meditation master, he said, I don't have problem with meditation. I have problem with my back.

Kutu means my back. My back hurts when I meditate. My legs hurt when I meditate.

Can you help me? How do I fix that? He taught him yoga.

The meaning of asana, the meaning of yoga pose, is really meditation pose. He learned yoga from this master. He learned how to sit without his legs hurting, without his back hurting.

Tsongkhapa had this problem his whole life. His legs hurt when he meditated. His back hurt.

I think he's trying to show us, look, even the great teachers have these problems. You have to be tough, and you have to overcome those problems. I like this picture.

This is very cute. I love this story. If you think about it, if your meditation is perfect, it means you put your heart on it.

Your senses withdraw. You don't see anything. You don't hear anything.

If somebody put a McDonald's french fry close to your nose, you won't smell it even. You withdraw from your sense organs. Then there should be a problem.

If your meditation is perfect, then how to wake you up? I used to think about this problem. I used to think, what will happen if my meditation is perfect?

Then I will never get up. I will just keep going. Maybe I will die on the chair.

This is a real story in this picture. Tsongkhapa went to a prayer meeting with all the monks, which we're going to do tomorrow in Arizona. I encourage you guys to do it tomorrow.

In the morning we're going to meet together. We're going to meditate. Then we're going to do the last class and eat together and celebrate the New Year.

Tomorrow we are all going to make our resolutions. Tomorrow we'll go through the paintings again and we'll make some promises for the New Year. Every one of us.

I also need to make some promises. Anyway, this story is so beautiful. Tsongkhapa went into meditation during a group meditation in the temple.

He forgot to get out of meditation. Everybody else, they announced the meditation is finished. They all got up.

They all left the temple. Then they realized he's still in the temple 10-12 hours later. Somebody said, where's Tsongkhapa?

I said, I don't know. Where did he go? Then they went back to the temple.

He's still in meditation because he didn't hear the bell to tell him to finish the meditation. I think that's a great concentration. I think that's really wonderful.

Here he's learning how to meditate. He's getting different instructions on how to meditate. Here he's at Rar Deng Monastery, which is Atisha's old monastery.

He's teaching his students how to meditate. You see he's probably using Kamalashila's book, which you can read in the Emptiness Meditations book. Here he's getting help again.

I like he's in his meditation chamber and he's getting advice on how to go deeper into his meditation from Manjushri himself. I like this painting. This is supposed to be the last year of Tsongkhapa's life.

He was 62, I think. Yeah, he was 62 years old. In Tibet they didn't live very long, in the old days.

This is the last year of his life. If you can see, he's sitting in a tent. Why he's sitting in a tent?

He's outside. They went camping in the forest. Why did they go camping in the forest?

There's a hot spring in the forest, hot water coming out of the ground. Tsongkhapa's legs were bothering him in meditation. He had arthritis in his legs.

He asked his students, I want to meditate, but my legs hurt. Please carry me to the hot water spring and let's put my legs in the hot water and then I can meditate longer. Even to the last year of his life, he's trying to meditate longer and longer.

I think it's a beautiful thing. All right, that's another resolution we can make for the new year. Now we're on number, what is that?

Number six, maybe. I think so. I'm going to talk about this painting for a while and then I'm going to introduce a special guest that we have.

There's a tradition in Buddhism that we should ask angels for help. Here's a beautiful picture here on the left side. This is Tsongkhapa's mother and she's asking the angels for help.

She wants to know, can she have a baby? Can she have a special baby? She even started to talk to the angels about her baby.

Sometimes when you meditate, it's very good to just close your eyes and say, please send me a message. Angels, please send me a message. You can call Buddhas or angels, it doesn't matter.

You can close your eyes in the meditation, especially if you're having some trouble or something. You can ask the angels, please send me a message. Please send me a message today.

I will watch today for your message. Then you will get some funny messages. Yesterday, hey Tim, I went to Camp Verde.

I'm desperate to go to a coffee shop. There's no coffee shop around here open after 2 o'clock. It's terrible.

I heard this one is open until 2.30. I went there. This old man came in. He's way overweight.

He looks to be 70. Now 70 doesn't look old to me. Let's say 75.

He can't walk very good. He's with his wife. They buy some bad food.

They buy some donuts. What do you call it? He starts to eat the donuts.

I'm thinking, man, that's going to kill you to eat this bad food. Already he almost cannot walk. He's talking to his wife.

They're both very old. I was listening. Maybe I'm not supposed to listen.

That's why you go to a coffee shop, right Tim? You like to listen to the people. He told his wife, no.

She said, yes. He said, no. She said, yes.

He said, no. You cannot make your meditation short today. You cannot.

You have to do the whole meditation. You cannot make your meditation short. You have to do this whole thing.

Then I'm like, whoa. There's a cowboy in Arizona. He's an old man.

He almost cannot walk. He's eating all these donuts. The angels are sending me messages.

Did you do your meditation today, Geshe-la? They're sending me a message. This guy is a Buddha.

This guy is not a human being. You can get messages like that. Here's some messages that Tsongkapa got.

In this picture on the right, he's meditating. He's getting messages from Atisha and from Tantric deity. He's seven years old.

He's seven years old in this picture. He's already meeting angels. When they did fundraising for their big temple, for their big monastery, he invited this angel called Vaisravana.

This is Kubera. This is the Buddha of fundraising. I think Jenny Wong and her group must be talking to this angel because their fundraising is so powerful.

When he needed to raise funds, he would talk to this angel. There's one more angel I like here. This angel...

This is a picture. The hands are the Dalai Lama's hands. He came to the Mongolian temple many, many years ago when he was very young.

We met him. He touched this young girl's face. It was so beautiful.

I was watching. She looked like an angel to me. I'll never forget this picture that I saw at that moment.

This little girl named Amalie. We have another Amalie in our group. This little girl became a young woman.

Tim, is Amalie there? She was going to talk a little bit about the Mongolian temple. They are still fundraising.

I thought maybe we could talk to this angel. Hi Amalie.

[Speaker 2]
Hi, can you hear me?

[Speaker 1]
If you'd like to talk for 5-10 minutes, we'd love to hear about the temple and what's up with the temple. Wonderful.

[Speaker 2]
Hello everyone. My name is Amalie Mitchell. I have been a lifelong member of the Raja Gangbuling temple.

Our family has been part of the congregation since the construction of the church about 70 years ago. The temple was built by our community, which included all my relatives, more than a decade before I was born, who were Mongolian religious leaders that immigrated here from Western Europe. The temple has been the residence of many prominent religious teachers, including the great teacher Khem Rinpoche, Lapsang Tharchin, who trained many great scholars and masters, such as Kumbhaka Rinpoche and Trajong Rinpoche.

His legacy lives on throughout the world, having many students himself, including Geshe Michael Roach. When I was a child, Geshe Michael Roach was my first teacher of Buddhism. He would patiently teach us how to read and write in Tibetan, and teach us stories which explain the history of Buddhism, and also how to determine right from wrong.

We grew up attending services each month, and of course for special holidays, including Zul, which we celebrated last night, and Sagan for our Lunar New Year, which we're looking forward to celebrating in March. I will always cherish waking up before the dawn to welcome the new year in the temple. It is so special and such a nice way to start the year with our family and other members of our congregation.

Our community revolves around the church. I got married in the church, so my siblings and cousins got married. It's not only a place of worship.

Can I interrupt you for a second? Yeah. A few things.

There's a strange echo on your side. Is there two computers in your room? Is that better?

Yes, and could you slow down by about 25%? We have translators who are translating into eight languages. They're having a hard time following you, because we want our participants to be able to hear everything you say.

Okay, wonderful. Is this better? There's still an echo.

Yes, there's still an echo. Is there a second computer in the room? There is, but it's not on.

Maybe if you can turn down the volume on your computer itself, like the output speaker? Is that better? I think so.

Okay, Amelie.

[Speaker 1]
Keep going. Take deep breaths, and then the translators have time to translate.

[Speaker 2]
Do you want me to start over, or do you want me to just keep going?

[Speaker 1]
I think it'd be nice to start over. Go slow.

[Speaker 2]
Okay. I'm sorry. Again, everyone, hello.

My name is Amelie Mitchell, and I've been a lifelong member of the Rasha Gembling Temple. Our family has been part of the congregation since the inception of the church about 70 years ago. Our temple was built by the community, which is also my relatives.

His legacy lives throughout the world, having many students himself, including Geshe Michael Roach. When I was a child, my father was a Jesuit. Geshe Michael Roach was my first teacher of Buddhism.

He would patiently teach us how to write and read in Tibetan, and teach us stories which explain the history of Buddhism, and also how to determine the right and wrong. We grew up attending services each month, and, of course, for special holidays, including Zulu, which we celebrated last night and celebrated on our New Year, which we look forward to celebrating in March. I will always cherish what we have before the dawn to welcome you to the Rasha Temple.

It is so special and such a nice way to start the year with our family, and other members of our congregation. Our community revolves around the church. I got married there, and so my siblings and cousins got married in the church.

It's not only a place of worship, but a heart of our community. We are all working towards trying to renovate the main temple, and the main main temple as a building for over 50 years old and need help. We are hoping that with the purchase of the general fund and proceeds, they come our way and can help us to see completely windows, broken gutters, new and important rooms, replace the windows in the sewer, the original paintings that still remain to this day.

I want to thank you so much, everyone. We hope you have a safe and wonderful New Year.

[Speaker 1]
Thank you, Amelie. I apologize to everybody that we had some technical problems, but Amelie is encouraging us to... She's telling us how important is the temple, which was built 70 years ago, and how much it meant to her, to her whole life.

She got married there. She also went to class there as a young girl. Again, this book, King of the Dharma book, we have an e-book.

Maybe, Tim, you can show the... We have an e-book, and we have a physical book. I would try to get a copy, okay?

All of the profit is going to go to help Rashi Gempeling Temple, the Mongolian Temple. This book has three parts. The first part is about Amelie's ancestors, her family.

You can see them in these pictures. The third part of the book is all of the paintings and the meaning of each of the paintings, you can see. Each part of the paintings is there and explained.

The middle part of the book is how you can practice Lai Tsongkhapa. I encourage you to get a copy through this QR code. This new generation, Amelie and Zanda and all of their friends and family, they are keeping this temple going.

I thank you, Amelie, for doing that. Thank you for being such a good student. She learned Wheel of Life about how many years ago?

I think 40 years ago?

[Speaker 2]
At least 40 years, yeah.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, yeah, yeah. She learned. Sugeng, she translated it before you did, okay?

They worked on it before you did. They did a great job. Thank you for keeping this temple alive.

Thank you for allowing me 25 beautiful years there. Thank your family for me, okay?

[Speaker 2]
I will.

[Speaker 1]
All right. Okay, here we go back to the paintings. There is Amelie as a young girl greeting the Dalai Lama at the temple.

I will never forget that. Okay. Seventh picture.

It's tradition that some member of your family, Amelie, your husband or your wife or even your children, you will find an angel in your own family. This is an ancient tradition that if you listen carefully to your family members, you can hear angels talking. Sometimes your kids will say something to you.

Sometimes your husband. Sometimes your wife. It's good to meet, to see that even your family members like your wife, your husband, girlfriend, boyfriend, can also talk to you like a Buddha sometimes.

Here's a beautiful lady called Thangsha Mamo. This was the spiritual partner of Tsongkhapa. Later in his life, he had a partner named...

She's called the Lady in the Red Hat. This special hat, Tibetan style hat, is called Thangsha. Everybody knows her as the Thangsha Mamo, the Lady with the Red Hat.

She was his spiritual partner later in his life and helped him to reach emptiness. These two spiritual partners on the sides, this is a female Buddha and a male Buddha. They were partners and they came to Tsongkhapa's mother in a dream.

Here you can see her sleeping. She had a dream that she's standing in a long line of women. These two spiritual partners, they are walking down the line.

The guy will ask the lady, Is this the mother of Tsongkhapa? She said, No, no, not this one. They keep going down like a hundred ladies in the dream.

Finally, the lady angel said, Yes, this one. This is going to be Tsongkhapa's mother. This is a famous dream of spiritual partners that Tsongkhapa had.

This painting on the lower left is very, very famous. One monk is Tsongkhapa and one monk is called Thogdenpa. Tsongkhapa was nervous to have a partner.

He said, I'm a monk. It's a little bit difficult. People won't understand it.

Manjushri came and these angels came. You can see the angels in the cloud. They started pouring, there was a dream, and they started pouring amartya, deathless nectar on these different stupas here.

I think there's supposed to be seven, but I guess there's more here. Tsongkhapa said, What does this dream mean? What does it mean that the angels are pouring this honey on the stupas?

He got a message from Manjushri. Manjushri said, this means that you and some of your students are ready to have spiritual partner. You can have a spiritual partner now.

I want you to find your partner and I want you to practice together with her. Here's a traditional kind of painting where you can see these partners. I think this is a cute meditation that Tsongkhapa did when I think he was about 20 years old.

He never wrote anything before. He never wrote any writing before. He had a vision of Sarasvati, which is here.

This is the goddess of music. This is the Buddha of music, the female Buddha of music. I like it in our Buddhism that we have female Buddhas and man Buddhas.

We have both. This is a female Buddha. She specialized in religious music.

He had a vision of her and he had a relationship with her at the age of 20. He wrote some poetry to her. He wrote some beautiful poetry.

You can see it here. Maybe someday in the Mixed Nuts we can read this poetry. It's very, very beautiful what he wrote to his muse.

All right, I got to speed up. I know, Tim, I'm trying. We have to finish 12 thangkas.

Oh my gosh. Tomorrow, don't forget, we're going to review and we're going to go deeper. We're going to make some resolutions for next year.

This is called Be Grateful and Say Thank You to People. This is a beautiful thing that happened. Tsongkhapa was studying from a teacher called Rendawa.

Rendawa is a Sakya scholar. He met Rendawa and Rendawa started to teach him. Rendawa wrote some famous book about Nagarjuna.

I hope we can translate that. This is called a bowing fight. They are having a bowing fight.

You can see it in the monastery when one great teacher meets the other great teacher. Each one wants to bow. I used to go to the airport in Kyoto or Tohoku in Japan.

You can see Japanese people, they're having a bowing fight. Each one trying to bow more times or bow lower, lower, lower, lower. It means thank you.

It means thank you and it's showing gratitude. What you see here is a bowing fight. Each one wants to bow to the other one.

Each one wants to bow deeper to the other one. Tsongkhapa even used to show gratitude to the books. Usually you can see him here in the yellow hat.

He's holding a stick of incense. This is a package of incense. When a great person comes into the room, you're supposed to show gratitude to them and burn this big incense package.

For example, if a Dalai Lama comes to the Mongolian temple, they will burn this whole package of incense. Tsongkhapa wants to show his gratitude to the Tenrim Chenmo. Tenrim Chenmo is the mother of the Lamrim.

This is the mother book 1,000 years ago of the Lamrim. It's the first Lamrim that was ever written 1,000 years ago. The book was lost.

In Tsongkhapa's time, the book was lost. One of his students found a copy. In this picture, Tsongkhapa is saying thank you to the book.

They are carrying the book on their back. The monks are bringing the book on their back. It's a big, big book.

I think they split it up. He's showing gratitude for this huge book. It's 2,000 pages.

It's the mother of all Lamrims. He's showing gratitude to the book. I'll tell you a beautiful story.

This book was lost again about 100 years ago. There were no copies in the world. John Brady and his team found a copy in Russia.

They input the whole book. Now it's free online on their database. Their database has 16 million pages of great books.

This book is one of them. It's all free. The database is free.

A lot of you guys helped support this, Singapore team especially. Thank you for that. Okay, I got to go.

I know Tim. Okay, two more thank yous here. We can go over Tim a little bit.

Yeah, he's getting mad at me. Look at this guy here. You see, he's a boy with a rosary, crystal rosary.

This is the past life of Tsongkhapa, before he came to this world. He met a Buddha. This Buddha in his previous life, he met a Buddha.

He was just a boy. The Buddha taught him about emptiness. Then Tsongkhapa was so grateful that he offered the Buddha this rosary made of crystal.

He couldn't do a diamond rosary. It's too expensive. He said, these crystals represent diamond.

By offering this rosary to the Buddha, I pray in my future life, I can teach emptiness to many people. I pray in my future life, I can teach emptiness, which is like a diamond, to many, many people. Then he offered this rosary out of gratitude.

Then he did become an emptiness teacher in this world. I love this story. There's one more I want to show you.

Let me see. This is Tsongkhapa. I think he's seven years old.

He's taking his first vows from the Karmapa of his time. This is a Karmapa about 600 years ago. Tsongkhapa is getting his first baby vows.

He's like his Bodhisattva vows. His mother is teaching him how to show gratitude. They are offering some scarves to the teacher.

This is his grandma, I guess. They are showing gratitude to the Karmapa. Really Tsongkhapa had Sakya teachers, Nyingma teachers, Kagyu teachers.

He's a master of all these traditions. I'm going faster, faster, faster. Look for the good in other people.

Look for the good in other people. Try to. Don't waste your time.

Geshe-la is 69 years old. Now he's an old man. You know me when I'm a young man.

I didn't learn a lot of things, but I learned one thing. Don't waste your time thinking about stupid people. Don't think about them.

Don't talk to them. Don't worry about them. Don't talk to other people about them.

If you see, in Tibet they say, if you meet a bad person, then just turn away and walk away. There's a funny saying. Tim, do you remember?

du ri nyang kya mi nyom du ri nyang kya mi nyom Don't smell a fart twice. If someone makes a fart, and the smell is bad in the room, then just leave the room. Don't smell again and again, try to find out who's making the smell.

Don't waste your time thinking about people are bad or people are mean or people said something to you. Just walk out. Go look for good things in people.

There's so many good people in the world. You don't have to worry about the bad people. Save your time.

That's how Geshe-la did so many translations and teaching in so many countries. I don't waste my time looking for bad in people. Just look for the good things in people.

This is a beautiful painting. Here's the original painting, down here. Tsongkapa is meeting one of his teachers.

He said suddenly the teacher looked to him like Yamantaka, like a tantric Buddha. Suddenly Tsongkapa looked like Manjushri. Tsongkapa is meeting his teacher and the teacher sees Tsongkapa turn into Manjushri.

Tsongkapa sees the teacher turn into Yamantaka. Here's Ory Karin's painting. This is Tsongkapa.

He became Manjushri. His teacher became a tantric deity also. It means they saw the good in each other.

They saw the good things. There's a something good in every person in the world. You can meet them and enjoy the good things in other people.

Don't waste your time thinking about somebody stupid or somebody said something bad about you. Don't waste your time. Next picture.

Where is that? Don't forget we're going to make some resolutions about this tomorrow. This is Do Your Yoga.

Geshe-la loves to make bets with his students. Amalie, I'm sorry in your time I didn't do this. But nowadays I will give the student $100 if they give me a good answer.

Are you guys ready? $100. I will give $100 if someone can tell me why this picture is important today.

This is Tsongkapa riding a tiger. As a yogi. As a yoga teacher.

Tsongkapa, as a yoga teacher, riding on a tiger. I'll give $100. Tim, you watch.

Watch the chat.

[Speaker 2]
Someone has to...

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, that's correct answer. Who got it?

[Speaker 2]
Alona did.

[Speaker 1]
Okay, $100. Then Xiaoping has to try to get the money to them. Good luck.

Yeah, it's the year of the tiger. Starting the day after tomorrow. Starting tomorrow will be the year of the tiger.

This is a famous, famous painting. It's actually a block print that I got from Mongolia, Amalie. I was given this in Mongolia.

This is a famous vision that Kegu J had after Tsongkapa died. He saw his teacher come to him in a dream. He's riding a tiger.

He's dressed like a yoga teacher. This is the ancient yoga teacher's dress. It means spiritual practice, especially with a partner, especially yoga, is difficult.

It's like riding a tiger. You can go very fast, but you shouldn't fall off. You should do your exercise every day.

Keep healthy and keep doing your yoga every day. This other picture, the circle picture, is the 80 Mahasiddhas of yoga. This is a vision that Tsongkapa had.

These are all yoga teachers from ancient India. Here's a beautiful carving that John Brady's team brought from Russia, Petersburg. These are all the yoga poses which here Tsongkapa is studying.

These yoga poses, how to do these yoga poses. These are called the yoga poses of Naropa, from the six yogas of Naropa. Tsongkapa studied them and throughout his life he did yoga.

It's a great way to stay healthy. It's a great way to lose weight. You can have a lot of energy even when you're older.

Here's the book, you can see. This book also came from Mongolia. By the way, this book here...

Hey, Tim, another $100. You ready? Someone has to tell me, why is this carving these circles?

Why they carve these lines like this in this yoga book?

[Speaker 2]
Why? A word said poses. Nah.

A word should pay me $100. Jigme said music. Yeah, Jigme is right.

Jigme is right.

[Speaker 1]
So listen. MI GME'I TSE MI DE CHEN CHEN PO TSUL CI ME'I KHYEN PA'I DBANG PO TSUL This is actually how to put music in the ancient books. It tells you how to go up, how to go down.

That's another part of yoga practice. Which brings us to the next painting. Sometimes you should sing.

Sometimes you should dance. Sometimes you need to have fun. The most important festival in Tibet is Zul in the Mongolian calendar.

This is the great prayer festival. They dance, they sing, they have fun, they eat too much. Just like Christmas time.

Here is Tsongkapa. He is dressed up like an angel. He is doing angel dance.

He is learning how to do the sacred dance. Here is a very rare photograph from the 1940s. An American military plane crashed in Tibet.

The captain of the plane was the nephew of Tolstoy from Russia. He was an American captain. He took some very rare photographs when they got stuck in Tibet.

These are called angel dress. This means the monk will dress up like a lady. They will sing, they will dance, and they will pretend that they are an angel.

They are tantric deity. Can we do it nowadays? This is Jimi Hendrix when he visited Arizona long ago.

Can we do this kind of practice nowadays? I am going to try to... Tim, let me see if I can do this.

[Speaker 2]
Hang on you guys. Let me try again. Can you see it Tim?

Let me try again.

[Speaker 1]
That is Stanley doing spiritual music. I have one more to show you guys.

[Speaker 2]
Here it is from the top. Here it is from the bottom.

[Speaker 1]
It means sometimes if John Brady can play music and Stanley can sing like them, then sometimes celebrate, sometimes have fun. That is part of Tsongkhapa's tradition. Sometimes we should have fun.

Tim, I am going fast. I am going to finish soon. One more, one more, one more.

The last one, the last painting is about doing retreat. We should learn how to do retreat. Here is the great retreat teacher Milarepa in Tibet teaching us how to do retreat.

Hey Cap, how old was Milarepa when he started his retreats? How old was he? Do you know?

He was old. He was 50. He started to do his retreats when he was 50.

In Tibet it is like 80 at that time. He started. The most famous retreat master in Tibet started to do his retreats when he was 50 something.

Don't tell me you are too old to do retreats. Cap did a three year retreat. John did a three year retreat.

Many people here did long three year retreats. You always start with one day. Then you do a weekend.

Then you do a week. Then you do two weeks. Then you do six weeks.

Slowly you reach a three year retreat. Last picture I want to show today. I love this painting.

This is Tsongkapa is crossing a river called Kyur-ma-lung. Because he wants to escape his students. He is very famous.

He has thousands of students. Manjushri says, you are getting too famous. You have too many students now.

You are so busy. You are not doing your retreats. You are not doing your meditation.

I want you to go and do a retreat. Do a nice long retreat. Then he said, no, no, no, Manjushri.

You don't understand. I am a famous man. I am very busy.

I have many organizations. I have to stay. I don't have time to go on retreat.

Manjushri said, this is what my teacher always said, Khen Rinpoche. He says, I told you to go on retreat. You go on retreat.

Leave the students for a while. Go take a nice long retreat. This is the answer that Tsongkapa got from Manjushri.

He said, you take eight students only. You guys go cross the river in this little boat. This boat is made from a skin of a yak, by the way.

There is no room for more students in the boat. Nobody can follow you. Go away and go do some deep retreat.

This is the last lesson that we can learn from Tsongkapa. Again, I encourage you guys to do your deep retreats and do your... You need to do retreat.

We spent a lot of money to buy Diamond Mountain Retreat Center. It's a thousand acres. It's the largest retreat center in the United States.

Cat and Hana and Hanmi and Senem, they are working so hard to keep this retreat center open. This spring, we hope to invite people back for the first time after the pandemic. We have to do deep retreats together.

It's very, very important to do your deep retreats. Please, don't forget about your retreats. Tim, should we skip the question and answer?

What do you want to do? It's kind of late.

[Speaker 2]
There's a couple of things you had planned to do around fundraising if you wanted to do it today.

[Speaker 1]
I was going to do them tomorrow. Just one thing I'll repeat. Try to order this book.

All the proceeds go to the Mongolian temple, Amulyi's family and the other families there in their temple. Don't forget there's an auction for a mug that was used by Geshe-la for 25 years at the temple. You're welcome to help support the temple in this way.

Tomorrow, Tim, let's do the other ones tomorrow. That's okay. I think we stopped there.

I'm sorry. Geshe-la usually talks too much. We'll try to do some questions and answers tomorrow.

What's the schedule tomorrow in Arizona? We will be meditating from 7 in the morning. That's one hour before the program starts.

This program starts in Asia tomorrow. Tim, am I correct? 11 p.m. Then we will go for one hour until midnight. Then we'll celebrate the New Year together. Arizona time, 8 a.m. for this program. Tomorrow the class will be open to mainland China students.

I'm not allowed to teach religion in mainland China, even by internet. We haven't had mainland students here in these two days. Tomorrow we will have a New Year's resolution, New Year's ideas for the Year of the Tiger.

We're inviting all of our friends from mainland China also. It will not be a religious program tomorrow, but we'll talk about ways to improve yourself and how to have a better life using these famous paintings. We'll see you tomorrow, 11 p.m. Asia time, 8 a.m. Arizona time. I don't know how it works in Europe. You guys are probably like 4 p.m. or something. Although you guys are going to be 7 a.m., right? Something like that. Thank you for coming. Amalie, thank you so much for speaking.

Please give my regards to all your family and all the other families there. I'm very proud of you. I'm very proud to see you guys.

All right. See you guys later tomorrow.

[Speaker 2]
Thank you.

[Speaker 1]
Bye.