single 2022 22 metaphors f q a

[Speaker 1]
Hi, welcome back to Lam Rim, special class for sponsors and volunteers. You are our VIPs. And we're going to do a little bit of question and answer.

Mr. Tim, oh, the first question is, what are you having for breakfast, Geshe-la?

[Speaker 2]
Well, all right, thank you, Geshe-la, for sharing all this with us ahead of time. So the first question, we're going to dive right in. And this is a question from Susanna from Austria.

Okay. And we're going to dive right into the emptiness of mantra. So the question is, I have this challenge where it's like a devil and angel challenge.

Where on one shoulder, the angel is saying, hey, mantras are good, do them, they help you. On the other shoulder, it's like, this is a waste of time, why are you doing this? How do you believe that these words are going to change the world?

So my question is, how do mantras actually work? And how can I get the devil to shut up?

[Speaker 1]
Nice question, fun question. So, you know, in some ways I'm lucky because a couple of things. I grew up in a country where we didn't have any Buddhism.

And so I had a fresh start, tabula rasa, blank stone. It's an ancient word. I had a fresh start.

I didn't have any background in anything. And I grew up in a skeptical time. We don't believe in, I wasn't brought up in superstitious.

I mean, we have superstition called science, but we didn't have, we like to think that we don't believe in things that are superstitious. I guess everyone thinks that. So I was skeptical of everything about Buddhism, and especially like mantras, things like mantras.

And I was very skeptical of them. And when I first started to study, a lot of hippies came with me. I mean, we ended up in India, in the Himalayas, and there were like 30 hippies in a little Himalaya village, and we're studying with this lama.

And I guess you could divide us into two parts. Half of the people were very excited about mantras, and almost in a superstitious way. And then the other half were like, I'm interested in the concepts, but I'm not interested in the superstition.

I don't want to learn the superstition. It's not interesting to me, and I don't believe it. And so I was kind of like that group.

And I didn't really believe in mantras, but my lama did, my teacher did. And he kept encouraging me to do mantra retreats, for example, like to do a three-week retreat and try to do 100,000 mantras. And I'm like, why 100,000?

Why not 93,000? What's the big deal? And he'd say, no, 100,000 is important.

And I'd say, well, it just seems like superstition to me. And I was against it, and I didn't want to do it. And he kept encouraging me to do it, and like to do a retreat, try to do 100,000 mantras.

And what helped me a lot was one day he taught me how mantras work. And that gave me a lot more faith, at least to try mantras. So he said a mantra works if two things are present.

A mantra works if two things are present. And mantras, like the pan, they don't have any power from their own side. If a mantra works, something's coming from you.

There's something in your mind is making the mantra work, but mantras have no power of their own. Mantras don't work on their own. If a mantra has power, then somehow that power is coming from you, as with the pan.

And that's a very simple thing. A dog sees this as a chew toy. A human sees this as a pan.

That indisputably, unarguably, 100% positive, just because a dog doesn't see a pan, it must be coming from you. And someday you'll understand that. It's not Geshe-la's opinion.

It's not some Buddhist teaching. If two beings look at the same thing, the same parts, and see two different things, the necessary conclusion is that it's coming from you. There's something in your mind organizing the parts into a pan.

There's something in your mind organizing a mantra into something powerful that works. So my teacher said two requirements for a mantra. Number one, it must have been introduced by a holy being.

So the mantra must have been taught originally. The person who first made the mantra should be a good person. A good person, like a bodhisattva.

Somebody who has bodhichitta. So the author of the mantra, the person who created the mantra, must be morally, ethically a good person. That's the first requirement.

And then this is interesting. The person using the mantra must be a good person. And that's hard.

So if a person ignores their morality and hurts other people, and then does a lot of mantras, even the mantra system says we don't work. The mantras are declaring we don't work for people who are mean to other people and then do mantras. Then mantras don't work.

They won't work. But if you're a good person and the mantra has some authentic source to the mantra, then the mantra will work because the mantra is also coming from your seeds. And that's logical.

That's just logical. Now, there's three kinds of accurate perception. Pratyakshamanama, Yoga Sutra, Ngun Tsum Tsema, direct perception, Je Prak Tsema, and Lung Gi Tsema, Agama, which means you can believe something because you see it directly.

You can believe something because it's logical to you. And you can believe something because someone you trust says it works. And so logically, it's logical that a mantra would work if it comes from an authentic source and if the person doing the mantra is trying to be nice to people, which is called morality.

And then, but there's also Agama. Agama means if there's someone that you kind of trust and they say, look, I didn't believe in mantras and I'm from a country that doesn't have mantras and my teacher said they work. And I tried it.

I did the 100,000 mantras. He said it has to be 100. I'm like 97, no.

98, no. 100,000, okay. So I tried it.

I actually did 100,000 mantras. I did a three-week retreat with the very fast mantras. And it worked.

Everything I wanted, it happened. So that's the third kind of convincing I can give you is that a person who didn't believe in mantras, who came from a country that doesn't believe in mantras, tried it and it worked. And exactly what I wanted happened.

And it happened right after 100,000. And then he said, 400,000 is really special. I'm like, okay, I'm up for it.

And that took four lay roots. So four, one month retreats basically. If you're doing Vajrayogini mantra, it takes about four weeks, three, four weeks.

And it worked for me. And he's like, wow, the day you finish 400,000 something super special is going to happen. I'm like, okay, I'm on it.

I kind of believe you. And then I did it. And I got something that was impossible to get.

And then I'm like, okay, I'm a mantra fan. I believe in mantras. So if the mantra is authentic, if you have a good motivation, and if you have a teacher who understands mantras and can help you learn them, I personally say they work.

And I did not believe in them. And I thought it was just superstition. So I'd say try.

I'd say there's an English expression, what do you got to lose? What do you got to lose? I mean, give it a try.

You just lost a couple of weeks of blah, blah. You just lost three weeks of Netflix. Maybe that's healthy anyway.

So the worst thing that could happen is you stay quiet for three weeks and get some fresh air. So that's my mantra. That's what I think about mantras.

And I don't have this devil anymore. Okay, next question. One more thing.

There's a thing called a name mantra, which is where you're allowed to create a mantra from your personal teacher's name. And it's very easy, and I'll teach it to you. And when I did my three-year retreat, I used a name mantra.

I did not use a Vajrayogini mantra. Although I had done Vajrayogini mantras before. So you just say OM, then AH.

Then you say the person's name, like your teacher's name, Daniel. OM AH Daniel. And then you say HUNG.

HUNG, which is not HUM. Okay, it's HUNG NYID. So you say OM, AH.

Birgitta Mayer, HUNG. Yeah, and that's your teacher's name mantra. And if you have a teacher named Birgitta Mayer or something, you can say OM, AH.

Birgitta Mayer, HUNG. And I found that to be the highest mantra. And it worked for me.

I got something that was impossible to get. So I'm a big fan. Okay, next, Tim.

[Speaker 2]
Thank you, Geshe-la. So speaking of the trusting your teachers, the words accompany your teacher. The question, this comes from Cheryl Wang, and she's asking, I find it very easy to serve my teacher completely.

And when I'm with my teacher, I have this capacity to follow what they say, follow their advices. However, I can't do that with all people. What is it about my teacher that creates that motivation?

And then how do I create that motivation with all people?

[Speaker 1]
Yeah, nice, nice question. So this person has a sort of a natural tendency to believe their teacher, follow their teacher, and I'm assuming you had good results. And then there's this kind of faith in your teacher.

And then it would be nice if you could spread that to people just in the normal world, people that you meet in the normal world. And this person's saying, look, I have the karma that when I do what my teacher suggests, it seems to work. And then when I go out in the world and meet people, I don't get the same kind of trust, or I don't get the same results from the interactions that I have with normal people.

And wouldn't it be nice if my relationship with normal people could be as sweet and productive as my relationship with my teacher? And that's the goal of Vajrayana. That's the goal of Diamond Way, is to reach a place where all people are teaching you.

So Vajrayana has two levels, khyerim and dzogrim. I'll tell you a funny story. This is totally irrelevant.

So my first teacher, he's a Lama from East Tibet. So he has a special accent of just, East Tibet is all valleys. They spread out from, the four great rivers of the world start in Tibet.

And they come down, the Mekong in Vietnam, the Ganges in India, the Yellow River. What do you call it? That goes through Guangzhou, or whatever.

Yangtze. And then there's another one, I forget. The Sindhi.

So anyway, they created valleys like this. And then the mountains between them are so high that the valleys develop their own dialects. So the people in one valley talk like that.

And the people in the other valley talk like that. And they got so bad that they couldn't even understand each other. So my first teacher was from one of those valleys.

And he was my first teacher. I didn't know anything when I first met him. And they were starting a Shantideva class.

And his assistant was a beautiful reincarnated Lama, Chukwu. And I became close to him because we were neighbors. And we got to know each other.

And then he said, oh, the Shantideva class is going to start. You should join it. And I'm like, yeah.

And he said, but you need to know Tibetan. And I said, well, I just got here. I don't know anything.

And he said, well, there's an examination to see if you know Tibetan. And then you can get into the class. And I said, and he said, take it.

Trust me, take it. And I'm like, okay, but it's crazy. I don't know a single word of Tibetan.

And then I went to the exam. Here's Geshe Dargye, this high Lama from the valley. And here's Sharpa Chukwu, who is in the Vajrayogini lineage in Tenzin Tinle.

And Sharpa Chukwu leans over and he says, you ready for your Tibetan exam to get into the class? I said, yeah. He said, what's the translation in Tibetan for papa and mama?

And I said, papa, ma, pa, ma. He said, exactly. You're in.

And I was like, wow. Then, so I started Tibetan on that day. I remember the first word was gyelpo, was king.

And then, so go 10 years ahead. I've been working really hard on Tibetan. My teacher, the Geshe, is coming to New York City.

Will I translate for him? And I'm like, yeah, I can do it. And so I thought, oh my God, he's going to be so impressed with my Tibetan.

And then I went to the place, I wore a suit. It was under a subway, elevated subway. You couldn't hear anything.

And it was about 150 degrees. And I was pouring sweat and he gets up and the teacher says, de ri de ri jirri jirri, de ri de ri jirri. And I'm like, what?

He's like, jirri jirri, jirri jirri, jirri jirri. And I'm like, jirri jirri, I don't know jirri jirri. And he's like, God, you're so stupid, gukpa.

And I was trying to impress him. And I'm like, there's this tense moment. I don't know what the hell is jirri jirri.

And there's this other monk who speaks both dialects. And he says, kye rim and dzog rim. And I said, that's jirri jirri?

He said, yes, kye rim and dzog rim, which is the two levels of Tantra. And what do you call it, kye rim? Creation stage and completion stage.

So then he said, kye rim dzog rim. I said, creation stage and completion stage. And then it was a very funny talk because he had to translate the valley talk into Tibetan.

And then I translated from him. So it was a three-way translation and it was really cute. Why am I talking about that?

Get to the point, Geshe-la. Two parts of Tantra, kye rim and dzog rim. Kye rim means, and never forget this, okay?

I don't care all the definitions. I don't care whatever you hear. If you study Tantra with some lamas.

It just means make contact with the Buddhas in the universe. Just make contact. It's like a telephone connection with enlightened beings.

So kye rim, the goal is just to make contact with them. Real contact, direct contact. And if you do kye rim well, then you make contact with them.

Dzog rim means, having made contact, they help you become like them. So dzog rim is the, dzog, completion means they complete your transformation from a mortal being to a divine angel. So you got to make contact with divine angels, kye rim.

And then there's thousands of technical things to know, but just never forget. That's the bottom line, kye rim and dzog rim. As your own seeds become better, you start to make contact with divine beings because all the shmucks become divine beings.

Shmuck means dumb person. All the dumb people become divine beings because your seeds are improving. There's no pan, there's no chu toy, there's no normal people, there's no divine beings.

You make them divine. So as you move from chi ri to dzu ri, chi ri, as you go from chi ri to dzu ri, then you are making people divine so you can have contact with them. And like that.

So what has it got to do with this question? I'm getting there. Sometimes I forget the train of thought, but today I remember.

What's happening with you is, you're having a chi ri with your teacher and you're having no chi ri or dzu ri with everybody else. And if you work on your seeds, then the people who are not chi ri's now will become chi ri's, and the chi ri's will become dzu ri's. You get it?

Okay, so, but in our tradition, if anybody, teacher or not teacher, in our tradition, if they tell you to do something and it doesn't make sense to you, you are required to refuse, in a polite way. If they say, go rob a bank, then you're supposed to say, logically, you taught me these 10 good deeds. The second one was...

Yeah, don't steal stuff. And then now you're telling me I should go rob a bank. I mean, I believe in you, but I think you're testing me.

So in this tradition, Tsongkapa's tradition, you are not allowed to do something that doesn't make sense to you. But you're also required to be respectful. So you say, Lama, I love you.

I believe in you. I think you're testing me, and I refuse to rob a bank. So in the end, you must decide according to the training you've received, whether you're going to follow what a teacher says or not, and you cannot break that rule.

That's a higher rule than all the other rules. So in this tradition, you cannot do a thing which you believe is harmful, even for a Lama. Cool?

And you may change your opinion later and realize they had some special powers, but based on what you know, you have to act on that. But you have to be polite and say, I love you, and I refuse to rob a bank.

[Speaker 2]
Okay, next. All right, thank you, Geshe-la. In the same topic here, this is a question from Olga, and she would like to know, it's kind of the opposite question here.

I have a heart teacher, but it seems like with this person, I go in between being able to really be present with them, and then other times I'm just criticizing them all the time. It's hard to stop my thoughts of judgments. So what's going on here, and what's some of your advices?

[Speaker 1]
You know, as I get older, I learn more and more, which is hopefully the case, right? And so I had a personal teacher, and we lived in the same house for 25 years. You want to hear a conversation at breakfast?

[Speaker 2]
Eh, eh, mm, mm, mm, mm, mm, mm, mm.

[Speaker 1]
It's just like two people been married for 50 years. You ever seen two people been married for 50 years have their breakfast, they're like, mm, mm, mm, mm? So we were really, really close.

We didn't even have to say words to each other. We're like, mm, mm, mm. And, but I, but I had problems all the time.

I had trouble all the time. I had, I lost faith frequently. I broke his, I broke all the holy rules he gave me.

You know, I couldn't follow everything he said. I just couldn't do it. So he would say, never kill anybody, or never, never think bad thoughts.

And I'm like, okay. And I'm like, ah, ah, and it's impossible. It's just impossible.

Then I felt really bad about myself. Like I'm not supposed to do this. I'm not supposed to, you know, there's like 430 things I'm not supposed to do.

I, Dr. Schimmer, CHU GNOD MI DE BZHIN ZHAG BSGYA MED NEN DE CHEN PO'I DBANG DBANG DGOR BYED DGOR There's like hundreds of things, you know, and I keep breaking them. And I made a funny rule. I said, this is a cool rule.

I said, every time I break this, I'm going to tell him directly, within 24 hours. And it was so bad, it was so hard. I could knock on his door.

Can I ask you, can I say something? He says, I know what you're going to say. You broke rule number eight, right?

And I said, yeah. And he said, okay, that's bad, go away. And close the door, close the door on your way out.

And I kept trying not to break these hundreds of rules, and I kept breaking them. And then finally I realized if I didn't break them, I wouldn't need a teacher. You see, if I could keep the, I have 365 vows, something like that.

I have 253 monks vows. I have 64 Bodhisattva vows. I got 12 Maitendra vows.

I got 17 or 19 five-family vows. I got a bunch, 50-something Lama Ngacu vows. And I break them.

I don't break them lightly. I break them because I can't control myself. So, then finally one day I'm about 68.

When was that? A couple months ago. And I'm like, if I didn't break any of the rules, I wouldn't need the rules.

You see what I mean? I don't have a vow against eating breakfast. Because I already don't not eat breakfast.

So I don't need a vow that says, remember to eat breakfast. I can, if you could keep the vow all the time anyway, you don't need it. Because the word in Tibetan for vow is restraint, self-restraint.

It's holding yourself back from doing something you naturally want to do, which hurts people. So, what I'm saying is if you have tension with your teacher, or you have doubts about your teacher, or you have trouble doing what your teacher tells you you have to do, then you're a student. Duh.

And if you could not do all those things, you wouldn't need a teacher and you wouldn't be a student. So, you understand? So if you have trouble doing what your teacher says, and if in your mind you criticize your teacher from time to time, that proves you're a Buddhist.

Okay, got it? And I'm not kidding. You know, I'm not kidding.

That's all. If you doubt your teacher sometimes, if you can't keep all your vows, if you smash your vows sometimes from lack of self-control, that proves you're a Buddhist. Welcome to Buddhism.

Okay, got it? Otherwise, you don't need those vows. You don't need a teacher.

So your attitude about your teacher is going to, there's going to be tides, low tides, high tides. There's going to be days when they seem like a glorious, enlightened being. And there's going to be days when they seem like a pain in the ass.

And that just means you're a student. So hang in there. My deep advice is just stick around and don't give up.

And I saw many people give up. And I didn't give up. I was a hard-headed, I'm going to stick near this Lama and break everything they said.

But I'm going to stick with them. And I think that's a great strategy. So you're not going to see your teacher as a Buddha all the time.

Because you are who you are. And that's why you came to get a teacher. So try to smarten up.

You're dumb. They should write that somewhere. Okay.

Next question. And I still break stuff that my Lama tells me every day. Okay.

But I'm hanging in there. I'm persistent.

[Speaker 2]
Okay. This question is from Christian, a Christian. And this person's interested in understanding the difference.

They grew up as a Catholic and there was a description of heaven and hell. And earlier in this course, you were talking about, and made that description of, well, you're going to break your vows anyway and you're going to go to hell. Yeah, yeah.

And it seems like that hell might be worse than the Christian hell. No, they're the same. Could you talk a little bit more about what is this Buddhist realm that you're talking about and how can we avoid going there?

[Speaker 1]
Okay, good. So I grew up Christian. And my wife is a very devout Christian Catholic.

And she's not a Buddhist. And so we have an interesting relationship. And I grew up a Christian.

And it's funny, my history with Christianity is that I had a great time and I loved it. And I just had wonderful experiences. I didn't have any traumas.

Nobody tried to molest me. I had beautiful priests, very fine people, devoted, beautiful, intelligent, creative priests. And then I was actually signed up for a seminary after Princeton.

I was supposed to go. I was already accepted to Episcopal Theological Seminary in Boston. And then I went to the Himalayas and the rest is history.

But, so I don't have, I have, in my personal life, the more I learned about Buddhism, the more I believed in Christianity. So I don't have a contradiction or I don't have a problem with being married to a devout Catholic. And we're very much on the same wavelength.

So, as far as heaven and hell, I think there are some basic differences. But I also had a six-month course in Dante's Inferno. So Dante, Gabriel Dante wrote a book about, a third of it is about hell.

And if you read that description of hell, and then you read the Buddhist descriptions of hell from the Abhidharma third chapter, they're extremely similar, extremely similar. So that's weird, right? I mean, it almost implies there is a hell and different people saw it and different people are reporting what they saw.

According to Buddhism, it's possible to go visit hell and observe it in the same way that Dante in the Inferno goes with the help of Virgil to hell and observes what's going on. And it's, in Buddhism it happened to Maitreya and Shantiputra, I think, they had a chance to go to hell. When they got back, they were like, and Buddha said, now make a picture of a wheel and let's hang it in every temple.

And that's what's one of the Wheel of Life stories. So, to me, who straddles both traditions, I think it's very consistent. I think the description of hell is very consistent.

I think if you are objective, it might indicate that there is a hell, that two different traditions from so far from each other, probably not culturally connected on that issue, have come up with very similar descriptions. It makes you think there might be a hell. As far as heaven, and the one difference I would say, though, is that in Christianity, traditionally, and this could be just later corruption, hell is considered to be permanent, that you would always be there and you would never get out of hell.

So a Buddhist would not say that. We wouldn't accept that. We would say that the seeds wear out by being there.

And then, naturally, you would move to a different birth after the seeds wore out. And heaven, in the Christian current tradition, and we don't know if that's the way it was taught originally, says that heaven is eternal and permanent. But in Buddhism, we would say that's true, that once you understand emptiness and take certain actions to a certain point where they are irreversible, you would be in heaven forever.

In Buddhism, there's a temporary heaven and a permanent heaven. Okay, so temporary heaven means a state where for thousands of years you are born in a place where you become a powerful being who is very similar to Marvel's superhero. Seriously, I personally believe the Marvel's superhero writers are recalling what they saw on a deep subconscious level.

So we believe in a temporary paradise that you go to if you keep your morality, for example, pretty well. And we think those temporary paradises are a waste of time because when you get there, you're having too much fun to do anything useful. And the whole being there uses up those seeds.

And according to Buddhism, people who go to a temporary paradise always go to a hell afterwards. And it's a temporary hell, but you use up all your good seeds in a temporary paradise. So a temporary paradise in Buddhism is not the same as a Buddha paradise.

A Buddha paradise is permanent and lasts forever. I think one of the main qualities of a Buddhist paradise is that you get to be with your family again. So people who died, your grandfather, like you would both be healthy and normal and super beautiful.

And you get to hang out with all your, the people you were with temporarily in this realm. So I guess that's the main differences. There is a, we wouldn't say that hell is permanent, but the description of what goes on in hell is frighteningly similar.

And that's all. Did I cover that? I think so, yeah.

[Speaker 2]
Huh?

[Speaker 1]
Oh, how to stay out of hell. Listen, you can't, as a student of Buddhism, you're going to break your vows. You're going to make mistakes.

And they could take you to a hell. So the practice of confession is extremely important. It's extremely important.

And confession mainly means telling somebody what you did. In the Bodhisattva vows, for example, the person you tell, it's very, very recommended to just tell your friends. You don't have to go to a Lama.

You don't have to go to a confessional. You don't have to go to have a big ceremony. There's a big, big emphasis in the Bodhisattva tradition of confessing your mistakes with your friends on a regular basis.

That's what sojong is all about. I like to think of the AA tradition of alcoholics who get together and tell each other what they did. And the recovery rate for AA is something like 80%.

The recovery rate for personal psychiatric therapy is something like 7%. So if you can develop a kind of a social group where you hang out with your friends and you just talk about stuff you're having trouble with. Like, oh, I got this vow not to criticize other people, but I just can't stop.

With this one person, I'm just having trouble. So that whole exercise, if you can develop, and that's the meaning of sangha. So if you can develop a group of healthy friends, good friends, and you can hang out with them and you can be honest with them, like you have this trust in this close relationship where you say, look, I fucked up yesterday, okay?

And I'm sorry. And they're like, yeah, I did too. And that's very powerful karmically.

So it's my opinion that if you develop that kind of sangha where you can be frank with each other, and I don't mean it should be your friend who works at CNN, because I'll tell you what happens then. I had it happen to me, okay? Be careful who you choose to be your sangha confession friends.

They should be people who are trustable and they will help you, but they'll also be confidential about your weaknesses. But it's my opinion, and it's the opinion of Lord Buddha, that if you have that kind of relationship with even one or two other students, you cannot go to the house. How's that?

If you regularly meet, admit your faults, and that's purification. And then you, in my opinion, you couldn't go to the house, okay? How's that?

[Speaker 2]
Okay. Time? Hi.

[Speaker 1]
So we're going to wrap up there. We're having breakfast pangs here. So we're going to go have some breakfast.

Tonight at seven o'clock, we'll be doing a fire offering. The fire offering has two main purposes. One is that idea of burning up your bad seeds, okay?

And it's very healthy practice to write down the worst things you ever did on a paper and burn them up tonight. While we're doing a fire offering in Arizona, you can be in, I don't know, Antarctica and burning your little piece of paper with your bad deeds on it, and that's very powerful. It's the same fire offering.

It'll be the same fire offering. So that's the first thing. And then secondly, tonight, just imagine that the smoke from the fire, logically it should, that pollution particulates should reach all the places on the planet in time, right?

The winds will blow that smoke around and eventually the ash from what we burned today, tonight, will eventually reach the whole planet. And so you're encouraged, as you do a fire offering, to imagine that the blessing, it's called a SHI BA'I JIN ZEG. Say SHI BA'I JIN ZEG.

So SHI BA means shanti. It means there are four kinds of fire offerings and we're going to do a peaceful fire offering. So it has two purposes tonight.

One is to burn our bad deeds mentally, in your imagination. And then secondly, this world right now, we all know it needs a lot of peace. And if we do a fire offering with a strong motivation of seeing peace come in this world, then we believe it can help a lot.

So we'll be doing that at seven o'clock. Hope to see you there.

[Speaker 2]
Yay!