Вступление на срединный путь (текущий курс, Аризона), занятие 101

[Speaker 1]
Okay, let's start. Today's reading from the New Testament. It's, uh, Delta Deductive Retreat.

I'm sorry, I shouldn't have done that. And... So, uh, they're discussing, uh, we're in the middle, by the way, those of you who don't, who haven't had a, is the air conditioning cranked up?

[Speaker 2]
It's on my timer.

[Speaker 1]
Okay, uh, those of you who are not familiar with this text, uh, we, uh, in the monastery, the program for Agassiz is about, you know, 20, 25 years long. And, uh, each monastery has, uh, very special textbooks that they use. And those textbooks are written in a special, uh, format, a debating format.

So, one person questioning another. And this is tradition in India for 2,000 or 3,000 years that, uh, we arrive at the truth by questioning. So, this is a style of writing, uh, called, uh, Chidin and Tajik.

Chidin means, uh, on a particular subject, uh, a lama will write a book about the subject, which is more a general overview of that subject. And then there's a Tajik, which means, uh, a more, uh, what would you call it? Analytical presentation.

But, for us, the Chidin is already extremely analytical, right? So, I'm doing the Chidin, which is supposed to be the slightly easier one of the two. Usually, the monastic textbooks come in pairs.

A Chidin and a Tajik. So, there's a Parchin Chidin, there's a Umay Chidin, there's a Dzo Chidin, there's a Dovo Chidin. Each major subject has its own textbooks.

So, we are seven years into one of the textbooks. So, I'm not gonna, you know, even attempt to bring up the debate. Uh, we're just gonna jump into it.

And, you know, don't feel uncomfortable, alright? It's like going to an advanced yoga class. Don't feel strange, or just get what you can get out of it, and that's enough, alright?

I'll make it, you know, digestible. As far as I can. Uh, so, there's been a debate raging in the text.

By the way, I suggest we start these classes at 2.30, is that better, right? Because, uh, I don't think there's time to get lunch for the people in the heart of yoga class, and we need more food than the rest of you. Um, so, we've been in a section of the text where they are discussing a special question.

Uh, how is it that you can remove from your mind permanently negative emotions? Is it possible, is it even possible to remove permanently from the human mind the failures of the human mind, you see? Jealousy, anger, desire, can these be, is it even possible to remove them from a human mind?

And that's a difficult question, right? The human mind is invisible, the human mind is indestructible, the human mind is changing from moment to moment. Uh, how can you make a permanent change in an organism which is living, and which is constantly, uh, moving, right?

How can you eliminate from a living, constantly, ever-changing organism, all negativity? Is it even possible? And then the reply in this tradition, and in all the great traditions of Tibetan and Buddhist India, the reply is yes, it is possible to remove forever negativity from the human mind.

It is possible. Uh, and what's that called when you do that? Yeah, that's the meaning of nirvana.

So people have used the word nirvana in a lot of loose ways, even among Buddhism, right? Like Abhidharma says, the discontinuation of your body and your mind. But, uh, the highest definition of nirvana is simply the permanent elimination of negative thoughts from the human mind, okay?

Is it even possible? That's nirvana. So I'll ask you, if someone in this room achieved nirvana last night, would they look different to us?

Not, not, not obviously, not externally, okay? It would be a change in their own mind. And given how, uh, psychotic we are, we might even see them as having negative emotions, long after they have eliminated them, right?

So, uh, you can't really tell if a person has achieved nirvana, right? It's an internal thing. It's a permanent removing of your mental negative emotions, okay?

Now, how can that be achieved in the human mind? At what point can you remove, what tool can you use to remove negativity from the human mind forever? And then all of the Buddhist schools say the same thing.

Uh, you must see emptiness, okay? You must perceive emptiness. Shunyata, or tomba-ni, uh, all Buddhist schools agree that the only way to see, the only way to remove negative emotions from your mind permanently, which is to say the only way to be happy, really, in a permanent way, in a lasting way, an unending way, the only way to become truly happy is to see emptiness.

Uh, I'm gonna give a two minute, okay, five minute explanation of emptiness for those who haven't had one, just so we're on the same page before we go on, alright? I spent many years in the monastery trying to understand the text about emptiness, alright? And I always like to tell this story, which is slightly exaggerated, but so is everything else I say.

So, I was sitting, I came to the monastery in New Jersey. It was a Mongolian monastery. And they had a bunch of old, old, old Mongolian monks who had escaped World War II and had come to New Jersey.

And they were living in this little, tiny temple. And the Dalai Lama sent a monk to be the head of that temple. So, the monk was my teacher, right, Ken Rinpoche.

So I got there the first day and I sat down. He took me to this little, tiny room. And you can still see the room.

You can, what do you call it? It's so small you can almost touch the walls on both sides like that. And then he gave me a bed, he gave me his old bed.

And he was like five feet tall. I mean physically. I mean, when you met him you thought he was eight feet tall.

You know, people would tell me, your teacher's very short. I'd say, are you kidding? You know.

But he would, he gave me his bed so it was five feet, it was like two feet too short. And my feet used to hang off the end of the bed. And nowadays I can't sleep unless I hang my feet off the bed.

Because it was twenty years on this bed. But the room was very small. The first day he showed me the only empty space on the floor and he said, you meditate here.

You know, you meditate now. You know, and you meditate about, I said, what do you want me to meditate about? He said, emptiness.

You should meditate about emptiness. And then he says, do you know what emptiness is? And I said, I know.

You know, I know, I know. Later he gave me a he gave me a name, he changed my name. He stopped calling me Mike.

He started calling me I know, I know. So he said, I said, I know, I know. And he said, OK, you meditate on emptiness and then when I ring the bell, he lived upstairs.

We built him a room upstairs. We built him a house. I built him a house.

But then upstairs, he would live upstairs and he would ring a bell if he needed it. He said, you sit here, you meditate on emptiness until I ring the bell. So I sat down.

You know, I tried to do this whole, you know, full lotus thing and all that, even though it was extremely painful. And then I, here I am in a Buddhist monastery on my first day and I close my eyes and I thought about what I had heard about emptiness. And what I had heard from somebody was that it was just black.

You know, that you were supposed to close your eyes and think about black. And for me, it's not just a regular black. I think the best black you can get is in outer space.

So, I would pretend like I was up in what do you call it? Go past the atmosphere and go up in the skies, leave the solar system even, and find a space where there's not a lot of stars. You know?

Like, there's probably spaces in space where you can't see many stars at all. So I would go there in my mind and I would just think black. You know?

Then I heard the bell ring, which you're not supposed to hear if you're doing good meditation. And I, you have to run upstairs you know, we had to run. And then you knock on his door and he would say, Sho!

Sho means get your ass in here. And then I came in and you have to get down on your knees in front of him. And then you have to go like this and you have to go, Chupa, chupa, chupa, chupa, chupa.

And in Tibet that means respect. That means you're respecting the person. I asked him later, I said, why do we do this?

Chupa, chupa. He said, it's supposed to be that this person is so holy that they take your breath away. Something like that.

And then you're not supposed to look at them. You're supposed to look at the floor. And then he says, did you meditate?

I said, yes, yes, I meditated. He said, what did you meditate on? And I said, emptiness.

He said, what is emptiness? And I said, I know, I know, I read a book. And it said, emptiness is just nothing, nothing, black, nothing.

And he said, emptiness is black? Nothing? I said, yeah, yeah, not just regular black, you have to go up.

You know, and and then he looked at me and he said, you're a kuppa, you're a kuppa. Say kuppa. Kuppa means idiot.

So, it's a good word. Somehow people in foreign languages, they learn the bad words first, but they remember the bad words. So anyway, you can call each other kuppas, and you'll be reborn as an animal.

So he called me kuppa. And then he said, you go try again. I went downstairs, I started to meditate.

And then I read a book that said, what is it? Just try not to think about anything. Empty your mind.

I read a book like that. So I sat down, I crossed my legs, and I tried to not think about anything. And I really concentrated on it.

I really worked on it. Every time I started to think about something, I caught it, and I stopped thinking about it. And then I heard the bell ring.

So then I ran upstairs, knocked on the door, and looked down at the ground, and then he said, did you meditate? I said yes. Did you meditate on emptiness?

I said yes. He said, well what is emptiness? I said, emptiness is you close your eyes, and you don't think about anything at all.

Just don't think about anything. And he said, oh really? That means he was the greatest debater out of 10,000 monks in Hassa.

He won the award from the Dalai Lama in the Dalai Lama's palace. You know what the award is for being the best debater out of 10,000 people? You get a brick of Chinese tea.

It's special. So anyway, he got the award of being the best debater. So when he said, oh really, you know you're in trouble.

So he would say, and you couldn't even win an argument with him about anything. Like even if you were right, you couldn't win an argument. So he said, okay, well what is emptiness?

And I said, oh you just close your eyes, you don't think about anything. He said, when you're trying to not think about anything, are you concentrating? And I said, yes.

And then he said, well, when you're not thinking about anything, then you're just concentrating your thoughts, right? I said, well yeah. And then he said, so really you're just thinking really clearly, really hard, while you're not thinking about anything.

I said, that's correct. Then he said, then so you're thinking really hard about thinking about nothing, right? You know, and then I'm like, well I guess so.

And he said, oh, kupacemo. Kupacemo. Kupacemo means mighty, mighty idiot.

Then he said, you go back, you try again. So I went back downstairs, I got into meditation, I'm trying to concentrate. Then I read a book, it said it said, just think nothing good, nothing bad.

If something good comes in your mind, don't be happy. And if something bad comes in your mind, don't be sad. Just neutral, just be there.

Don't be happy, don't be sad. Just be, what do you call it? Like, equanimity, right?

Like, just based on and don't be happy about anything, don't be sad about anything. Whatever happens, just happens. Just watch it and don't worry about it.

So then I tried to do that for a while. Then I heard the bell, I went upstairs and he was sitting there and he said, okay, what's emptiness? And I said, I know, I know.

I read a book. It said, nothing's good, nothing's bad. Everything's an illusion.

So if a car hits you, it's just an illusion. If you win the lottery, it's just an illusion. Don't be happy about winning the lottery, don't be sad about getting hit by a car.

Just be there. Neutral. And he looks at me and he says, oh really?

Then he says, if you won the lottery, what would be the cause of that? And I said, well, it would be that you had done some great kindness to someone else, financially. Someone really needed some money and you helped them.

And then later that would plant a seed that would grow into the winning lottery. And he said, well, so that's a good deed, right? And I said, yeah, of course, that's a good deed.

To help someone who needs money badly, that's a good deed. And then he said, well, what's the cause of getting hit by a truck? And I said, well, it's karma.

Like, you must have hurt someone. Probably you put them in an honor star class and just beat the hell out of them. So, just kidding.

And then, you know, you worked and you hurt someone. So then he got hit by a truck. So I said, is that a bad karma?

I said, yeah. He said, that's a bad deed, right? I said, yeah.

And he said, if you're supposed to think there's no difference between getting hit by a truck and winning the lottery, then actually, in essence, what you're saying is there's no difference between being kind to others and hurting others, is what you're saying. It's all an illusion, right? And I said, well, yeah, I guess so.

I guess that's the implication. And then he said, shindunine kukpa. Say shindunine.

Kukpa. Shindunine kukpa means super kukpa. Kukpa.

Super idiot. You are a super idiot. And then it took me a long time.

I worked a long time on emptiness, right? That's the main thing we do in the monastery. So I'm going to teach you an emptiness.

You got a pen? Okay, I'm going to give you a five minute demonstration on emptiness. If you've seen it before, if it's not your three thousandth time, pay attention.

Pay attention. That's how many times they say it takes. And it's just a five minute demonstration, then we'll go to the text.

What is this thing? It's a pen. If a dog came in here, a little puppy, and they ran up to the stage and I waved this thing to them, what would they do with it?

They would chew it, okay? That's what little puppies do. So does the little puppy see a pen?

No. Who's right? The puppy or the person?

Is it a pen? Or is it something to chew on? Yeah, I mean, you can say neither one is right.

We call it valid, right? Both are pramana, both are valid perception. The dog honestly sees something to chew on, and the human honestly sees something to write with.

And it's not that the dog is mistaken, okay? Within a dog's world, that's what the thing is, alright? You can't blame the dog or insist that the dog write with the pen, right?

You can't do that. It is something to chew on for the dog, right? Now, if I take this object and I put it on the stage and we all leave, and all the dogs leave, then what is it?

Is it a pen or is it something to chew on? All the humans have left and all the dogs have left. Yeah, you can say neither.

You can just say neither, right? At that moment, it's neither. When the human walks in, it goes back to being a pen, right?

When the dog walks in, it goes back to being a chew toy. When they both walk in, somehow it's both at the same time, alright? But when everybody leaves, it's neither.

That's emptiness. That's all, okay? That's all.

Everything is the same as that. Everything is the same as that, okay? Everything depends upon the observer, right?

Is the pen coming this way, then? Or is the pen coming this way? Is the pen coming this way or is the pen coming this way?

Yeah, the pen is coming this way. If the pen was coming... If the pen was a pen from its own side, then the dog would write something.

I don't know why people think it's really funny, especially in the British Airways. I said, well, I guess the dog would write a poem to his dog girlfriend and he'd say, you have a really nice tail.

[Speaker 2]
And then everybody's...

[Speaker 1]
So the dog would be compelled to try to use it as a pen if it were somehow announcing itself as a pen. But that's not what it does. You...

You're doing something, right? But by itself, it's not. We say that's where karma comes in.

We say that's where karma comes in. If you have been generous with other people who needed a pen at a certain moment, right? Or something similar.

Someone needed something at a certain moment to express themselves. And you were kind to them and you offered them the pen. Then at the moment that the pen is...

You want to try? So at the moment that he needs a pen badly, at the moment that I consciously release the pen from my hand, a karmic seed is planted in my subconscious. A karmic seed is planted in my subconscious.

Thank you. And when... And then later, it will ripen in my mind.

How? It will make me see an object as a pen. This object is not a pen from its own side.

It's not coming this way. Pen is coming this way, under the influence of a kindness I did to someone in the past. Got it?

And it's just like a blank screen. The world is like a blank screen. Jenny said today something beautiful.

She said, you know, everyone you ever see who you like is coming from you. And everyone you ever see who you don't like is coming from you too. And that's the way it is.

Last thing we have to ask is why would understanding that kind of emptiness remove your negative emotions forever? See? If someone comes up to you and says, you get to Nirvana by understanding emptiness.

And then you say, what's emptiness? And then they say, oh, it's nothing. Or nothing matters.

Or everything's an illusion. Or black. Or don't think about anything.

Then you should like, you should like hit them right there. You should say, how's that gonna help me? How's thinking like that gonna help me?

You see, if you realize that the world is neutral and then the good things you see are coming because of seeds in your mind that you planted when you were kind to other people. And the bad things are coming from the seeds in your mind that you planted when you were unkind to other people. Something cool becomes possible.

What's that? You could create a perfect world. In theory, you could create a perfect world.

The world is coming from you. Iraq, Afghanistan, global warming, the oil spill in the Gulf, you know, the Republican takeover of the house. These are coming from you.

Everything's coming from you. If the pen is coming from you, everything's coming from you. Right?

You can take that in a negative way or you can take that as an opportunity, right? You could turn everything around. You could turn around everything, right?

The next time someone yells at you or criticizes you or does something that you don't like, you could think about how that's coming from something that you did recently, alright? Someone's yelling at me or someone's doing something dumb around me because I did something dumb last week. Okay?

If you kept up that kind of thinking, what would happen to you? You'd stop doing anything wrong, right? And you also would never get angry at anybody because they're coming from you.

I always brag about Diamond Mountain. When I go to British Airways or I go to Vienna or I go to Shanghai, I'm always bragging about Diamond Mountain. I say, we have more unfinished sentences at Diamond Mountain than anywhere else I've ever been.

And they say, what do you mean? And I say, people start to say, I met this person the other day who was a real... And then they have to stop, right?

Because everybody at the university understands that what they meet is coming from them. So to say you met a bad person is to say what? You're bad.

Okay? So it stops a lot of sentences. People start to complain about, you know, I can't believe what so-and-so did today.

I can't believe this girl. She's always bugging me, you know? And then everybody's going...

Okay? All right? Teddy, you had a question?

Everything is coming from us. Not like that. And then what about us?

Yeah, good. We'll get there. He said, what about us?

If everything is coming from us, where are we coming from? I think it's coming today. Let's see.

All right. So I'm going to... So in the text at this point they are discussing that mechanism by which you can stop your negative emotions by understanding the pen thing, all right?

By understanding emptiness. How is it exactly that you stop your negative emotions? This is important because in these schools, and also Master Patanjali would say, in these schools they say you can never ever be happy unless you get this.

It cannot happen. You can do temporary fixes on your state of mind. You can do a good hard yoga class and you feel high for about an hour or two.

You can eat a good salad at Paradise Bakery and Cafe and you feel elevated, you know, for a while. But to really change your mind in a permanent and lasting way, you must see that things are coming from you. You have to.

That's what we say. So here we go. They are beginning to examine the connection between a human being's capacity to feel and their reaction to what they feel.

When something feels good, you go after it. When something feels bad, you try to avoid it. If you see a cute boy in yoga class and he says something nice to you and makes you feel happy, then you go after him, right?

And if there's a person in yoga class who could do a better handstand than you, then of course you dislike them. Because they have hurt you. So, something that feels bad, you avoid.

Something that feels good, you go after it. Is that wrong? I say no.

There's no problem with that. I don't have any problem with that. That's not the message of the Buddha.

Don't like anything. And don't try to get anything. you know, that's not the message.

I mean, you look at these holy beings, these pictures, he's in a paradise, okay? There's donuts there. There's pizza.

And flowers. You know, it's not that you're trying to achieve a state where you sit in a corner and stare at a wall. On a concrete floor and you don't mind so much.

It's not bad. The purpose of spiritual practice is to reach a lasting happiness. And if that involves pizza, that's alright.

It's not bad to eat pizza. I mean, it's okay. If you enjoy that, it's okay for your health.

It's okay. It's not the point. He's talking about wanting things in a negative way.

And the parameter for wanting things in a negative way is what? You would hurt someone to get it. If you would hurt someone to get something, your liking the thing has gone over the line into a harmful thing.

You can call it craving. Something like that. Then it's a harmful thing.

Then it's wrong. Is it good to like to see people free of suffering? Yes.

Is it bad to avoid pain? No. It's not.

But they are examining now the connection between misunderstanding an object and wanting it or hating it enough to hurt somebody. So we're talking about liking and disliking in the sense of would you be willing to hurt someone to avoid the object you don't like or to get the object that you do want? Is it wrong to be attracted to a boy in a yoga class?

No. Is it wrong to be attracted to a boy in a yoga class who's already married? Yes.

Because that's harmful. So that's a distinction. Here we go.

Here we go. By the way, we're translating as we go. And we're reading the Tibetan as we go.

And this is an advanced class. And I'm not going to make it easier. Because I promised seven years ago to finish this book.

I have about 14 years to go. And I have to finish it. And it's meant for my advanced students to learn Tibetan.

But you can sit here and you can learn a lot. Even if you're not learning Tibetan. But we're going to read the Tibetan together.

Here we go. They're doing a debate. They're following this debate system.

That means, that means, that means, it is so the case that there is a connection between misunderstanding an object and hating it or wanting it too much. There's a connection between misunderstanding an object and hating it or wanting it too much. The example of the boss who you don't like.

The supervisor at your yoga studio or your office or whatever who bothers you. There's a connection between disliking them I'm sorry, between misunderstanding them and then disliking them enough to do something wrong. To say something unkind or something like that.

If you didn't misunderstand them you couldn't hurt them. And make bad karma. Hurting someone depends on misunderstanding them.

So they're talking That is so the case because they're talking about tun ken sang shing. Tun ken when we built that amount we kept talking about tun ken. What was it?

Do you remember? Yeah, they are good conditions for spiritual practice. Or tun ken, tun means harmony.

Ken means factors. So the tun kens for meditation are, you know, a good meditation cabin, a quiet place, healthy food, good companions, like that. Those are tun ken.

Sang shing. Sang means they are complete. Gal ken.

Gal ken means the opposite. So what would that be? Conditions that work against your goal.

So lots of noise, people sniffling, people shuffling, people fidgeting, people opening their backpack, walking around, people having a cup of tea, people carrying a baby into the meditation room, things like that. Those are gal ken. They are things which work against the process of meditation.

You want to avoid the gal kens, you want to get the tun kens. Here he's talking about dong jawa means they are free of those things. So what does that whole thing mean?

If you misunderstand your boss at the yoga studio, then you will get angry if the tun kens are complete and if the gal kens are not present. What's that mean? If the factors for you to get angry are present, you will get angry.

And if there's nothing there to counter that anger, you will get angry. So you need two things. One, you need the conditions which would support you from getting angry at your boss.

And you also need the lack of conditions that would prevent you from getting angry at your boss. What are the conditions that allow you to get angry at your boss? What's the number one condition that allows you to have anger towards your boss?

Not understanding where they came from. If you understand that your boss is complaining, is a direct result of your own complaining, would you get angry at them? No.

You would get angry at... If you got to get angry, get angry at yourself. You made the complaining.

You created the complaining. They are complaining. Is it unpleasant that they are complaining?

Should you want to get rid of their complaining? Sure. Is it the right way to get rid of their complaining?

By complaining about them when they complain. You create the more complaining. No, I create the more complaining.

They are going to come back tomorrow and complain. And that's the story of our life. That's the meaning of the word sansara.

Sansara means a self-perpetuating downward cycle. The boss yells at you. You complain back.

You make new receipts. They come back tomorrow. They yell at you again.

All the tunicans are there. Why? You keep misunderstanding them.

All the gelcans are absent. You never figure out where it's coming from. As long as the gelcans are absent and the tunicans are present, you will continue to have a bad life.

You will continue to have complaining people around you. Let's read it together. Can you scroll it down a bit?

Oh, that's me. Sorry. Can you scroll it down?

Yeah. Okay. One, two, three.

Good. Go up. This is poetry, so Let's go backwards a bit.

Here we go. One, two, three. This happens to be a quotation from Master Shantideva, who lived, what is it?

750 A.D. Something like that. And he says, sarve gandhi sepate. Because people feel things, they respond to them with unreasonable desire.

Because people feel things, they respond to them with unreasonable desire. sarva-deva layaya. Even they have feelings.

He doesn't specify who they are. Chaitanya. He's using that to prove that if the causes are there, you will have a bad reaction to things.

If the causes are absent, you will not have that bad reaction to things. What is the cause? Now he's talking about desire.

So somebody in the Paradise Café right after the yoga class, they plopped down two cupcakes in front of me. I'm having my almond milk and my fresh squeezed orange juice and they plopped down these two cupcakes. And I start wavering.

I start wavering. Then I'm looking at Nyingbo. I'm asking him for help.

I'm like, Nyingbo, how about I just take a bite? And he says, Geshe-la, you just took this amazing yoga class from Jenny. You had such a nice meditation.

Are you going to ruin that all with a cupcake right now? Even though I'm biting the cupcake right now? And I'm like, no, I'll give it to one of our newer students.

I got a gel can. He gel canned me. I got a condition that would prevent me from having my negativity.

But the supporting factor at that moment was what? Sarwa. Sarwa means I feel good about the cupcake.

I like cupcakes. I feel good about cupcakes. It makes me feel good.

When I taste it, I feel good for like 10 minutes. Then I feel bad. So Sarwa Kenki, the cause of feeling good about the cupcake causes desire for the cupcake in the sense that I would hurt other people to get it.

Was I hurting other people if I just quietly ate one bite of a cupcake in the Paradise Cafe that my student offered me? Would I be hurting other people? I would be hurting other people.

I mean, they would say, oh, Geshe Michael eats cupcakes for breakfast. And then they would use it as a justification why they should eat cupcakes for breakfast. Okay.

Cupcake. Okay. Is liking the taste of cupcakes always a reason for unreasonably enjoying a cupcake?

No. There are people who can enjoy a cupcake and not get carried away. And I always like to give the example that I was invited to dinner with His Holiness the Dalai Lama in Washington, D.C. along with a thousand other people. But we were sitting close to him. Not at the same table, okay? But we were within sight.

And because my Lama had to go and talk to him about running Sera Monastery. I was like the other thousand people in the room. I was watching him to see how he responds to a nice ravioli dinner.

You know what I mean? Everyone's like... And we were trying to see like if he would just take a little corner of it or he would just take one piece of lettuce and eat that for dinner.

And then everybody's judging him like heavy duty right then. And he dug in. You know, and he was like...

You know, he ate the whole thing. He polished it off. He was like...

And then we're all like... And then it was like wow, he's just having honest enjoyment of a ravioli dinner. Maybe that's alright.

You see? And it's alright. He does have feeling.

Good feeling about ravioli. And then he obviously enjoyed it but he didn't get... He wouldn't have farted for it.

He wouldn't have hurt someone to get it. I believe. Right?

So it must be some other kind of feeling that causes the problem. There must be informed feeling and there must be uninformed feeling. That's the idea.

The idea they're going to get to is you can enjoy something in a wrong way and you can enjoy something in a right way. That's where they're going. Ready?

Here we go. Let's go together. One, two, three...

Rang loop means what? Our system. First you present the other guy's system.

In these textbooks. The other guy gets to come up and present a wrong idea. And then we give a right idea.

And the cool thing is that in the third section he gets to come back and criticize your idea. So you hear this constant honest debate about a question. All written by one guy.

He's like writing a play. We've got to make a play at Hari Oka Works. Somebody has to help me.

I've got to take a year off and go to Broadway. Rang loop la. Our own system says that it is possible to remove the misunderstanding about the ravioli that causes you to hurt someone to get it.

You can start thinking of ravioli in a different way. And then you can enjoy it honestly and not hurt anybody. How?

You will have to come to an understanding about the three elements in an act of sensation. Feeling. The three elements in an act of sensation.

You can say the person who is feeling the feeling. You can say the object or person who is giving them that feeling. And then you can say you can say the person who gave them the ravioli.

The person who took the ravioli. And then the ravioli. Let's say giving.

The act of giving something for pleasure. Or you can say the feeling. The person who is feeling it.

And the thing which gives them the feeling. The feeling. The person who is feeling the feeling.

And the thing or person which is giving them the feeling. These are the three elements in an occurrence of a sensation. When you bite into ravioli there has to be the ravioli to taste.

There has to be you to taste it. And there has to be the tasting going on. Those three things have to be there.

These are called the korsu. And he says denme tu munsu du to. You must come to a direct realization that these are not real.

The ravioli is not real. You're not real. And the event that someone came and gave you the ravioli and you bit into it is not real either.

The ravioli is not real. You're not real. And the biting of the ravioli wasn't real.

Those three things were not real. Does that mean I didn't see His Holiness the Dalai Lama eat some ravioli? It doesn't mean that.

Was he eating real ravioli or was he eating unreal ravioli? It must have been real if it gave him a sensation, right? He was smiling.

He was into it. It must have been real on some level. Big question.

If you get this then you can enjoy things without becoming unhappy. In what sense was the ravioli unreal? These are all good answers.

I like yours. I wasn't going to think of yours but I will use yours. Was the taste...

I'm assuming His Holiness liked the ravioli because he had a big huge smile on his face but anyway, let's say he really enjoyed the ravioli, right? Was there a good taste in the ravioli? Was there...

Here's a clue. Was the good taste of the ravioli coming from the ravioli? No.

Where was it coming from? This way, okay? What's the proof of that?

Eggplant. Okay? I mean, my mom tried to get me to eat eggplant and people, ever since then have tried to get me to eat eggplant and then when I was in Paris they tried to fool me and said, would you like aubergine?

Yeah, but can you tell me what it is first? You know? So...

To me, eggplant is not a food. And I don't see why you would put it in your mouth. You know?

It doesn't even look very good, right? That means... But do some people like aubergine?

Is it? Am I saying it right? I am?

It's close enough, right? Some people like it, right? So is the good taste that they taste in the aubergine?

It can't be. Because I don't like it. I didn't bite into it.

And bad things happen. So, that means the taste wasn't in the eggplant. The good taste must have been coming from me.

That is a true understanding. That is ultimate wisdom towards eggplant. And don't laugh.

It's true. It's really true. When you understand that the taste you sense in an eggplant is not in the eggplant, you have understood emptiness itself.

There is nothing beyond that. You want a word to remember about emptiness? You want one single word to remember?

Don't say, empty of its own true intrinsic existence. Forget all that. Forget all the things.

Just say, it's not in there. Just use the word in and you'll be fine. If you don't remember anything else in three year retreat, just remember the word in with one M.

It's not in there. The taste is not in there. The pain is not in there.

That's all you need to remember. That's the highest worldview you could ever have. That's all.

Okay? If you do experience eggplant as something delicious, why did that happen? A seed opened in your mind and made you taste it as something good.

But where did that seed come from? Who put that seed in your mind? The answer to that is always the same.

There's only one person who can put a seed in your mind and that's you. The proof of that is that I still have eggplant in my room. Okay?

If someone could give away seeds, then all those Avalokiteśvara loving Buddhas would just put up those seeds in my mind and I would like everything and my mom would have been happy. You see? So, if it's possible to, what do you call it?

Share, if seed sharing is possible, it would have already been done by the infinite numbers of compassionate beings who have already become enlightened. But they didn't do that. And we still see children burning in accidents and we still see good people dying in other countries and we still see bad things happening.

You can't share your seeds with someone else. And the proof of that is that they're suffering all over. If it were possible to share, those compassionate beings would have done it before and we wouldn't see any of these things happening.

That's the proof of it. It's a, what do you call it? Undeniable proof.

If there's one person left in the world who is suffering, it means that you cannot share seeds. So the only person who can put a seed in your mind is you. How did you put the seed in your mind for tasting the eggplant as good?

Oh, you offered someone else food which you hoped they would find tasty. And that's the best you can do, by the way. Why?

You can't share your seeds with them. You can say, taste this chocolate almond cake I made. It's got no flour.

I did it the other day. It's just ground up. It's in Julia Child's cookbook even.

You should find it. It's like just ground up almonds. And it's a fancy French cake and I made it for somebody with chocolate.

I put chocolate sauce on the top. And then I'm like, this is it. And I gave it to them and they ate like three bites.

They gave me the ultimate insult for a cook. Do you know what that is? It's interesting.

And then I said, what's wrong with it? Why did you say interesting? And they said, well, apparently you don't know that I'm allergic to chocolate.

I don't like chocolate. You know. But what I'm saying is the intention to give someone else something delicious, that's all you can do.

About the delivery, you don't know. You don't know how the delivery is going to go over because that depends on their seeds. So don't get upset when people call your chocolate almond cake interesting.

The best you can do is offer it with a good heart. The rest is up to their seeds. And you're not going to sit there and say, that's your seeds.

You're going to say, well, next time I'll make it with vanilla ice cream. You know, that's all. And you try to please them.

But don't get upset if they don't get pleased, right? Because that's their seeds. So, he says, it's not true that all sensations of feeling good must necessarily lead to negative states of mind.

Because if a person enjoys a ravioli in Washington, D.C., with, guess who was there? You know? The person who introduced his heart, he was up there in the front.

And I went with my lover, right? And I said, Rinpoche, do you know who that is? And he said, I've seen him on TV.

Is he a senator or something? I said, no, no. And he said, oh, I know.

He said, that's Indiana Jones. I said, yeah, yeah. That's how I said it for him.

So anyway, you can go to dinner. It's okay to enjoy something, but understand the elements. Understand the three elements.

Who made it taste good? You did. Who put you there to eat it?

You did. Who made it reach you? There's the ravioli.

Here's you. Who put the ravioli there? The good tasting ravioli there.

Who put it there? You put it there. Who put you there?

You did. Who made the ravioli meet your mouth? You did.

These are the three elements of an act of eating ravioli. It's in some scripture somewhere. Okay?

But these are the three elements here. These are the three elements. In any action, someone gives you a gift.

Who created the person giving you the gift? You did. Who put you there to get the gift?

You did. And who brought the gift to you? You did.

Does that mean you shouldn't thank the other person?

[Speaker 2]
No. Okay.

[Speaker 1]
All right. You can get rid of wrong kinds of... We call it grasping, right?

Grasping to reality. Did I just prove that eggplant wasn't real? No.

I just proved that eggplant wasn't real in the way you thought it was, right? If I say eggplant is actually coming from you, does it make you feel like it's not real anymore? A little bit, right?

To be honest, you have to say a little bit. It feels a little bit unreal now. You're telling me that eggplant comes from me?

I said, yeah. Then I said, well, that's kind of... It's kind of not as real as I thought it was.

If it's just coming from me, it's not as real as I thought it was. In this school, in this tradition, in this training, you have to get used to the idea that that's what makes it really real. Things aren't real because they are coming from you.

We are not even allowed to say things aren't real despite the fact they are coming from you. We are required to say they are real because they are coming from you. And to think they're not real because they're coming from you is even worse.

That's the worst thing you can say. Is there an eggplant that's coming... Is there...

How many of the eggplants in the world today, right now at this moment, as Jenny would say, God bless them. How many of those eggplants are coming from you and how many are coming from their own side? 100% coming from you.

Here we go again. One, two, three. Da ta de ge do yang gan se sol po ga me ching sol ang yo pa ma yin pa de se ne ga di ton ne se pa chi chil dong min yul se su me ching So if every eggplant in the world is actually coming from you, does that mean there's no reality?

No, it's real. But it's a different reality than the one you used to think was there, alright? The reality you used to hold to, the reality you used to grasp to, is not there.

There is no eggplant in the world that isn't being presently created by the seeds in your own mind. If you try to grab onto them, you will have trouble. If you try to grab onto eggplants that are not coming from you, you will have a problem.

You will work. You will try to make money. You will compete with other countries for oil.

You see? You will fight for your oil supply. You will do all these wrong things to get an eggplant because you don't understand where it comes from.

If you understand where eggplant comes from, you will share your oil supplies. You will live in harmony with other people in other countries. Because that's the only way to get eggplant.

That's where eggplant comes from. It doesn't come from fertilizer and land and water and seeds. It doesn't come from that.

I think it's important at this stage, especially since some people are maybe fresh and new in the audience, it's important to say that the things and the people around you, even though they are coming from you, they are separate from you. They are not you. And there's a discussion like that.

There's this overreaction you can have. If I make a good sales pitch and you come to believe that everything is coming from you, there's this overreaction you can have that you will think that you are living alone in your mind and everything else is just little pictures in your mind. It's not true.

You did create what you see around you. It's the implication of what Jenny said this morning in Yoga class. If you say that people who are kind around you are coming from you and if you say that people who are unkind around you are coming from you, then the implication is that everybody around you is coming from you.

And they're not coming from your fingernails. They're coming from your mind. Therefore, you are living in your mind with all these people.

And that's kind of lonely. They are just kind of phantoms of your own mind. And it's not like that.

I mean, it's important to understand that everything around you is coming from you. Especially the content of it. But it's equally important to understand that they are coming from you in a way which is outside.

Rob is coming how I perceive Rob and even the existence of Rob is coming from me. But in such a way that he's there and I'm here. And so we can relate to each other and I do live in a world where there are other people.

That was such an important misunderstanding that Dharmakirti wrote a book called Yushan Drupal. The Proof that Other People Are Really There. He had to write a book called The Proof that Other People Are Really There.

Otherwise, you get all these weird things. You can go crazy thinking that Teddy's in your mind. And you know, he's not.

He's over there. Alright, here we go. Suppose you understand that the person who experiences the ravioli is coming from you.

Suppose you understand that the experience of the ravioli reaching your mouth is also coming from you. And suppose you understand that the ravioli is coming... Did I say you or the ravioli?

You are coming from your seeds. The ravioli is coming from your seeds. The fact that the ravioli encountered you, they are all coming from your seeds, right?

Then he says, don't you get it why that would stop you from being unhappy? That's Master Shantideva again. Don't you get it why that would stop you from ever being unhappy?

Why? If you want ravioli, then you would become a person who is constantly cooking stuff for other people and offering it to them. A person who understands reality deeply is only interested in helping and serving other people.

That becomes their only interest. Does that make you happy? Yeah.

And other people like you too. People like people who make ravioli for everybody. Actually, I like ravioli.

But not eggplant, okay? If you really understand the objects around you, you become a happy and kind and pleasant person. Because you have to do nice stuff.

It's nice. Understanding leads to being a nice person. And Jenny said today in class, it was very nice, we believe that understanding is promoted by the free flow of prana in the central channel, in the sushumna.

We believe that the physical practice of yoga is a direct method of promoting understanding itself. Why? Because prana has been injected into the central channel, into the sushumna.

The reason we do yoga in the morning before a class in this tradition is that it places prana into your central channel and then you understand what I'm saying better if you've done yoga in the morning. So don't stress. Just do any yoga you can.

That's why we have the first yoga class. Do whatever you can. And it will move prana to the central channel.

And then read one of these books and you'll get it. So in a very real sense, the goal of yoga is to make you a kind person. In a very real sense, that's true.

Here we go. One, two, three. ka-chi-gi lam-de-nam-ki-dan lam-po-rang-shin-me-pa tok-pa-lam-ma-te-pa ka-sa-rang-kya-tu-pe-ze-yo-ki to-wa-tok-pe-ye-shin-ki Let's stop there, okay?

Because it's kind of a long sentence. Now, Lord Buddha, during his time on this earth, which was 81 years, right? He gave a lot of teachings.

He taught constantly, his whole life. He gave thousands of teachings. Many of them are missing.

We don't have a record of many of them. We have four and a half thousand, well, fifteen hundred left, recorded lectures of the Buddha. And in those lectures, he described emptiness.

And in those descriptions, he contradicts himself. He gives a talk in the afternoon at British Airways and he says emptiness is something. And then in the evening, he gives a general talk to a whole church full of people and he says emptiness is something else.

And then in the afternoon, the next day, he gets his close students together and he says something completely different. And then that led to a lot of confusion. Lord Buddha changed his presentation of emptiness to fit different audiences.

He simplified it. What do you call it? Dumb it down.

He dumbed it down for British Airways and these executives. And then for a general talk where people came, he sort of presented it pretty well. But among his own close students, he really explained what it really is.

But of course, a thousand years later, that caused a lot of problems. Some people quoted him at British Airways. Some people quoted him at the general talk.

Some people quoted him at the personal class. And then there were problems. So there are lower versions of emptiness that were taught by the highest authority.

But they're not emptiness. They are ideas that help you approach emptiness. But they're not emptiness.

They're like, we're going to have a really nice teacher here on Friday and Saturday from New York. And what I like about her class, her name is Allison West. What I like about her class, the class that I went to that I asked her to try to do here, is that she picked a difficult pose.

And she said, the whole class will be about how to get there. To the pose. So she said, we're going to do Pika, Mayurasana.

And with a full lotus. By the time we finish the class. And then every pose was aimed at getting to that pose, you see?

I can't do Mayurasana at all. Much less than a full lotus, right? Either one.

I mean, I can't do it in a full lotus. So then I was like, but what she did at first, she just said, okay, just put your foot on your knee, you know? And then lean over this way.

And it stretched out something, I don't know what. And then she said, now do this kind of Bhakasana thing, and your arm gets a little stronger, and you lean this way, and you see how it supports yourself? And she did easy poses.

She did a lot of easy poses. And then suddenly she said, okay, now do Mayurasana with a full lotus. And we're all like, boop!

And we're all into it. And we're like, wow! It's a really beautiful approach.

And she must think it over very, very carefully. But she gets you to lean the right way, and she opens up this, and then she opens up that, and then suddenly at the end of the class you're suddenly in this pose that you never could be in. So that's what Lord Buddha was doing.

He was giving people easy versions of emptiness who couldn't get it. And then suddenly they were like, oh, yeah, I get it. The real one.

So here we go. say, Rangyatupa Jayugi Tongwa Rangyatupa Jayugi Tongwa Rangyatupa means self-standing, self-supporting. You are the boss of your body and mind.

I like to call it the New York skyscraper crane thing. I like those skyscraper cranes in New York. There's this huge, huge thing on track, what do you call this?

Treads? You call them treads? Yeah.

So there's this huge, huge thing on treads. That's huge. And then it's moving.

It's almost the size of like a ten-story building, right? And it actually rolls across the pavement and crumples the pavement. And then there's this little glass box up in the top and there's this little guy there.

There's one little human running this ten-story thing with two hands. And I love to watch them, you know? The guy's going, and this huge thing that could knock over a building comes out, you know?

And it's just cool to watch. We have that feeling about ourselves. Raise your left arm.

Okay, you can let it go. There must be somebody who was in the control room up here, right? And he heard, raise your left arm.

And he went, and then the left arm came up. That proves that you're in control of your body, right? That proves that you're the owner of your body, okay?

Think about some refreshment you might get when I take a break in five minutes, okay? Right now, just in your mind, picture a refreshment that you might get five minutes from now. Go!

I didn't think that cupcake came back to me. Alright. You see, you do have control of your body and mind, right?

You tell your body to raise the arm, and it raises. You tell the mind to think about refreshments, and it does, right? And when you get cancer, you tell it to go away, right?

And when you get depressed the day after tomorrow, you just tell it to go away, because you're in control, right? You control your body, and you control your mind. The fact is, we don't control anything, alright?

We have no control. We have no control at all. There's some other thing that's raising your arm, and it's not by willpower.

And some other thing is bringing the cupcake into your mind, and it's not by willpower. There's an illusion of willpower. There's an illusion of willpower.

And it is destroyed. That illusion is destroyed by life itself. You know that.

When you're depressed, you can't get undepressed. I used to laugh, because Rinpoche, my teacher, people used to go up, constantly bother him in his room, you know? There was a steady stream of people up to his room.

And they would sit down, and they'd say, Rinpoche, I'm not happy. And he'd say, stop that. And then I would be in the corner, I was translating sometimes, and I would just giggle to myself.

I'm like, Rinpoche, if they could stop it, they wouldn't be unhappy, you know? It's not like they wanted to be unhappy, but he would say, stop it. Just stop it.

And it was a joke in our monastery. Somebody would say, I broke my arm. We'd say, just stop it.

And you can't. You don't have control over your body and mind. That's an illusion.

What makes you raise your arm? It's some seed in your mind that makes you see the arm go up. What makes you think of refreshments when you want to?

It's some seed in your mind from allowing other people intellectual freedom or something like that. But the reality is, you don't have control, because you can't always have control. Because when you get breast cancer, you can't tell it to go away.

And when you tell your mind not to be sad, it won't go away. You don't have control over your body and mind. So, describe to me what the Michael Roach who has control over his body and mind looks like.

Is he tall or short? Describe to me what the Michael Roach who has control over his body and mind looks like. Is he tall or short?

You can't say. You see, describe to me I don't know. Describe to me how big is the purple elephant who's rampaging through this room right now.

How big is he? How many inches does he weigh? And then you have to say it's a dumb question.

It doesn't exist. The Michael Roach who has control over his body and mind never existed, never could exist, doesn't exist now. So you can't discuss how tall he is or how short he is.

Got it? He just doesn't exist. That's the emptiness of that Michael Roach.

It's important to understand that we are normally, in our normal life, we are dealing with objects and people who don't even exist. Your normal day, as you struggle through your normal day to be happy for just a few hours, you are constantly trying to manipulate events and people that couldn't exist anyway. The things you think are there are not there.

If you understand that there's no Michael Roach who controls his body and mind, have you understood emptiness? I mean the real emptiness. No, you haven't.

That's not the ultimate form of emptiness. It's just one idea that gets you there. It's like an Alice in the West post number three that gets you to the last post of the class.

It's not the real thing. I'll give you this debate, then we'll take a break. Somebody says Master Shantideva is not talking about what you said he was talking about.

You don't have to see that things don't work. That's my big deal nowadays, right? Things don't work.

What do you mean? We did it in Sherman Oaks, I think. We were talking about Aspen, I think.

We were talking about whether Aspen works. Does Aspen work? Yeah, I mean, if you're honest, you'd say sometimes, right?

Would you get in an airplane if it only worked sometimes? Would you get in an airplane if it only flew sometimes? No, you wouldn't get in it.

If I asked you does that plane work, what were you going to say? Should I get on the plane? What are you going to say?

If you're my friend, I mean.

[Speaker 2]
It might work.

[Speaker 1]
No, I don't think so. If you knew the plane had a chance of falling down, and I were headed towards the jetway, what would you do as a friend? You'd say, don't get on the plane, man.

You know, this company doesn't know what they're doing. There's a good chance there's a bomb on the plane or something. I can't tell you for sure whether there is or there's not, but why not just go walk across the hallway and take the other flight that you know is going to fly?

You see? Things that work sometimes don't work. Do you get it?

Stop taking Aspirin that works sometimes. How many Aspirins work sometimes? All of them.

Are you saying I shouldn't take Aspirin anymore? No. Aspirin works sometimes.

What makes it work when it works is the big question. What makes Aspirin work when it works is the big question. What makes an Aspirin work when it works?

You've helped someone else who had a headache. That's all. When an Aspirin works for you, it's a seed in your mind that makes the Aspirin work.

And that comes from helping someone else. I don't say throw away all your pens. And I don't say throw away your Aspirin.

I say take care of other people who have headaches and then take your Aspirin. I don't say stop doing yoga. I say take care of sick people or elderly people and then go do your yoga and it will work on you.

Yoga is the same as Aspirin. It doesn't work. Airplanes don't work either.

Neither do cars. Neither do teachings about emptiness from an ancient book from my monastery. They don't work.

Nothing works. If you've been kind to others, you will hear something that's valuable. If you haven't, you will get deadly bored.

Alright? It's not my fault. Alright.

Alright. I'll say what it means and then we'll take a break. I keep saying that, right?

Is it possible to get rid of your negative emotions if you understand emptiness? Yes. We say it's the only way.

I mean, that's pretty radical. It's not possible to become a happy and contented person unless you understand that the world is coming from you. It's not possible.

We say that. We say understanding that you don't control your body and mind is a lower form of it's not even emptiness. It's a good idea which can help you sometimes.

It's true and it's helpful. It's not the highest view. We are talking about view.

Relative value of different views. It's helpful to reflect on the fact that you can't control your body and mind. It's helpful.

When the cancer comes or you feel depressed, you don't get the extra depression on top of the depression. At least you can sit there and say, well, it's out of my control really. I can't really control it.

That's not a healthy worldview that will save your life. But it's a worldview which will make your day go a little bit easier and that's okay. I don't have control over these things.

Just calm down a little bit. There's going to be traffic at 5 o'clock. You can't control it.

So stop screaming at the traffic. That's a lower worldview. What would be a higher worldview?

Stop blocking other people on the highway and there won't be any traffic at 9 o'clock on Monday morning. You can go from Sun City to Mesa at 65 miles an hour without slowing down once. They're like, Geshe-la, what kind of voodoo did you do?

I'm like, it's just good karma, right? So it's okay to say there's traffic and I can't do anything about it. It makes you feel better.

And that's good because then you don't scream and make bad karma. But it's better to arrange that there's no traffic that morning. Got it?

I hate to say got it, but it's true. It's more fun to arrange that there will be no traffic that morning. It's more fun to arrange the $155,000 check comes.

I was disappointed. I said I wanted it to be $158,000. We had a discussion yesterday.

I said I wanted it to be $158,000. They said, why Geshe-la? I said, because we have to give away $50,000 and then we'll come to $108,000 and that's a holy number in Buddhism.

I said that's a problem. $156,000 $155,000, $700,000 is a problem. I said I wanted $158,000.

Today we got it better. I said, you know the lawyers were holding back a little bit in case there were extra expenses and they decided there won't be and the amount was just raised to $158,000. So what I'm saying is that it's good to think that I can't control this stuff.

It makes you calmer. But in the end you've got to go to a higher road here. Now the last question before you go to your questions.

Would it be enough to remove your mental afflictions, your negative emotions forever simply to reflect on the fact that you can't control this stuff? Would it be enough to remove your feeling fairly upset at the traffic? It's not enough.

It will break down. You will lose it. You can keep it for 30 minutes in traffic.

You can keep it. I'm talking dead traffic. No movement on the Highway 10.

You can keep it for 30 minutes. I can't control it. Let's not be upset.

Then you're like half an hour late for the talk. You can feel the tension rising in the car. You know?

And then you're like, no just stay cool Geshe Michael, you can't control it. 45 minutes, everyone loses it. Everyone's not complaining.

It's not a worldview which can remove your negative emotions permanently. The other one is the other one is understanding that you have created these things can remove it. I would even go further to suggest that it removes your mental afflictions because there's nothing to be upset about anymore.

You can control the traffic. It's not that you're such a good person anymore. Probably if there was traffic you'd get upset.

But you've controlled the traffic. Got it? That's kind of cool, right?

Alright. So what they're saying here is that they're discussing can that lower worldview remove your negative emotions? And the answer is temporarily.

Under certain conditions, temporarily. But not really. Alright?

[Speaker 2]
Do we have any refreshments?

[Speaker 1]
Is there still like a bake sale for the good of the world or something? Alright. I'll sit here.

What time are we supposed to stop? Even with the extra time? Yeah, I know.

I set it up that way. Let's take like a 10-15 minute break and I'll be here if anyone needs to talk about anything.

[Speaker 2]
Alright.

[Speaker 1]
We just have a... Maybe we'll go another half hour or something, alright? This is just sort of dessert.

And Jenny promised to come back to our next session. Every time. She promised.

All future sessions. She doesn't know.

[Speaker 2]
Can she come into our retreat? Yeah.

[Speaker 1]
Who needs the Pacific Russian? Alright. Here we go.

So, the opposite guy, the debater here is saying something interesting. He says, suppose you never understood the pen thing. But suppose you understood that you're not in control of your body and mind.

Okay? You only got that far in Allison West's yoga class. You know?

You got to the preliminary idea that you don't control your body and your mind. Okay? He says, I think that would be enough to remove nyomol kundak, but not nyomol khenke.

Say nyomol. Kundak. Nyomol.

Khenke. Kundak. Khenke.

Kundak. Khenke. Now, this is a distinction which is made in attitudes.

Alright? This is a distinction which is drawn in the scriptures between different kinds of attitudes. Kundak means, I'll start with khenke.

Khenke means sahaja. It means an attitude which you have been born with. Alright?

From your previous lives. From thousands or millions of previous lives. You are born with a certain predisposition.

I mean, you look at Bella. She's, I don't know, now she's how many months old? Ten months old.

She's ten months old now. Even in the first few days you could see that she had some predispositions. She liked certain things and she didn't like other things.

And, you know, psychologists struggle to explain what happened in the first 13 minutes of conception that now this baby doesn't like this kind of food, or cries at this time or doesn't cry at that time. We say it comes from thousands of lifetimes. Khenke.

This is sahaja. These are attitudes which this being has had for hundreds or thousands of years. And children, infants in the arms two days after they're born, exhibit likes or dislikes or habits or certain attitudes or certain facial, you know, idiosyncrasies that came from long before.

Those are khenke. Kundat means something that you have picked up in this lifetime. Something that you have picked up in this lifetime.

Like, you know, you stayed with angry people for a while or you stayed with lazy people for a while and you became angry or you became lazy, like that. Obviously the seed for that came from long ago. But these kinds of negative habits or negative emotions are much easier to deal with.

They can be removed much more easily. Ones that you have learned, for example, from the influence of people who have them, can be fixed faster if you just leave their company. Like, you move away from those people, like alcohol or stuff like that.

You get out of that crowd and then you change. Your behavior changes. It's not so hard.

What do you call it? It sounds like intractable. What's it called?

Intractable, yeah. Those things you are born with are almost intractable. Things you have picked up in this life are not so intractable.

You can deal with them easier. So this debater is suggesting suppose a person never understands that things are coming from them. A.

B. Suppose that they do understand that they're not in control of their body and mind. That understanding is enough to stop their learned bad habits, but not their inborn bad habits.

Alright? Got it? A lower understanding of emptiness, really.

I agree that it's not enough to stop anger, jealousy, desire, which you have had for thousands of lifetimes, and you've carried those seeds into this life. But the sort of temporary bad habits that you've picked up from other people, those you can overcome with this lower view of emptiness. Alright?

Here we go. This last line that I'm showing now on the top, it says khyepa je phaya merek Making that kind of distinction is wrong. Trying to make that kind of distinction is wrong.

Trying to say that a lower understanding of emptiness could help you with small mental problems, small negative emotions, but can't help you with big negative emotions, is wrong. Our position. Ready?

One, two, three. ... ...

... ... ...

... ... ...

... ... ...

... ... Understanding that you are not in control of your body and mind is enough to stop resik.

Resik means for the time being. Temporarily. ...

... ... You can remove the manifest forms of believing that you are in control of your body and mind whether those came from your last life or you learned them in this life.

If you understand for ten minutes that you are not in control of your body and mind, and then that will stop for ten minutes the misunderstanding or the belief that you are in control of your body and mind. Whether that belief has come from your last life or whether you have learned that belief in this life. Alright?

Both forms of misunderstanding your body and mind can be removed by someone explaining to you carefully why you're not in control of your body and mind. They can be removed for the ten minutes that you're sitting there in the church and the guy is reminding you. They can both be removed.

You don't have to make a distinction between wrong ideas that you picked up in your past life and that you've had for thousands of lifetimes or wrong ideas that you got in this life because you hung out with the wrong people. Both of them can be removed for the amount of time that you can hold your mind on the idea that you're not in control of your body and mind. You will probably not get upset if you drive out of here after this class and run into some traffic.

As we talked about it. We talked about it and we talked about how you could reflect how you're not in control of rush hour traffic of Phoenix, Arizona and you can be a little more calm about it. You'll probably remember it when you leave the class today.

Will you remember it a week from now? Can't say. Maybe a week from now you blow up again in traffic.

So whether your tendency towards anger and traffic has come from your past lives or whether it has come from some learning something in this life, both can be addressed by understanding in a class. Okay so far? Then he says dey nige sarvan pol minne sun And equally we can say that someone standing there and explaining to you how you're not in control of your body and mind equally in a temporary way.

Sorry. It's not enough to remove your habit, the seeds in your mind for thinking that you're in control of your body and mind. Coming to the church and having me explain to you that you're not in control of your body and mind will never be enough to remove the deep-seated seeds for misunderstanding your body and mind.

Because that's not the deepest view. That's not the most powerful view. I can stand here all day and explain to you why you should be a calmer person while bad things happen around you because you can't control it.

Alright? But still sooner or later you will get upset again at that because it doesn't remove the root of the problem. Whether you're talking about the problem as having come from your past lives or whether you're talking about the problem as having come from hanging around with certain people.

It's not going to fix the seeds for either one because it's not real emptiness. It's not the ultimate view of emptiness. I can stand up here all day and describe to you why you're not in control of your body and mind.

For a few minutes you can reflect on that, understand it, use it and not get upset when you get into trouble. For a few minutes or a few days it will work. But it will not remove the deep-seated seeds for either the kind that came from your past life or the kind that you learned from somebody else here because it doesn't address the real problem.

It doesn't address why are you not in control of your body and mind. It doesn't explain that. So, mistaken views of lower ideas about how to make yourself calm can work for a while.

But they will always fail until you get to the pen thing. Until you get to that, they will always fail you. Does that mean you shouldn't think in traffic?

Somebody came up to me recently and they started explaining to me problems with their ex you know, ex-partner, ex-spouse, whatever. And then I'm like, I said let's go to a worldview one. There are six big worldviews.

Number one is the worst one. It's hardly usable. It doesn't really solve anything.

But, you know, we were sitting there together, we were talking about exes. And then I said, you know, given enough months we won't even remember these problems. You see, if enough months or years pass you know, you can't even remember the name of the ex who gave you all the trouble.

You see what I mean? Time passes and you forget. And it'll be okay.

That's worldview number one. Everything is impermanent. Everything passes.

That worldview won't protect you against everything. That worldview won't help you change the reality of the world around you. Especially it won't help you to make future problems future problems.

What's maomba mekewe chuche? What's maomba mekewe chuche? A future non-event.

It's a beautiful word in Tibetan. Maomba mekewe chuche. Maomba mekewe chuche.

It means a future non-event. You were supposed to have a car accident and then you did some good deeds and then the car accident that was supposed to happen never happens. I would rather deal with problems that way.

Alright? I don't want to have to be I don't want to be in a position to think oh, six months from now I won't remember this problem. I would rather not have to not remember any problem.

Got it? We want to deal with that kind of reality. We want to shift reality now in advance so that crap never happens to us and we don't have to cope with it.

I think a person who got really good at this would become poor at coping. Because there wouldn't be anything to cope with. My dad went hunting in Utah.

We lived here. I grew up here. We had vacation from my elementary school and high school for a week to go shooting deer.

It was a thing here. We learned to shoot when we were 10 or 12 years old. 257 Magnums.

30-06s. Then we went up to Utah or Idaho or the mountains and we shot deer. My dad went hunting in Utah and he fell down hunting.

He slipped on a rock. He was with his wife. His second wife.

Then he cracked a rib. Then he went to the local Mormon hospital and they took an x-ray. He's sitting there in the emergency room and they came in.

The doctor came in and said, Mr. Roach, it's so amazing. It's God's work itself. My dad said, What?

They said that you fell down. You're so lucky. He's like, well, why?

They said, well, we have to take an x-ray. They said, well, what happened? He said, on the x-ray we saw that you have really bad lung cancer.

If God hadn't made you fall down, you never would have known you had lung cancer until later. Then my dad looks at them and says, Why did God give me lung cancer in the first place? It was really funny.

Then there was this big silence. What I mean is you won't imagine a life in which you're not trying to cope with bad stuff. Imagine a life in which you're not trying to be a better person in traffic.

All of these lower worldviews, which are helpful, band-aids, they're okay. You get in traffic, you say, well, nobody ever got stuck in I-10 forever. Yeah.

Maybe tonight, maybe tomorrow I'll get to my house. It's just a matter of time. This too will pass.

I will get to I-10. I will get to my house. There's never been a car that permanently got lost on the I-10.

They all got help sooner or later. It will make you a little calmer. Tonight, tomorrow, two days from now.

I was going to Flagstaff. There was a snowstorm in 2017. I got stuck for two days.

They couldn't open the highway. Yeah, but eventually they opened it. That's okay.

You can have that worldview. I would rather take steps now to assure that the traffic never happens. I would rather take steps to assure that I never got lung cancer than to have somebody tell me I detected it two months earlier that I will die for sure in six months.

Thanks a lot. I don't want that kind of fixes. I want the problem never to happen in the first place.

It's so extreme that it's very hard for you to understand. It's hard for you to imagine a life in which no problem ever comes to you so you don't have to learn to cope. We were working very hard with British Airways.

We were trying really hard to get the executives to imagine a company where problems that they've experienced could be stopped before they came. You see? We had a really hard time describing to them or getting them...

They kept rubbing their heads. And we were like, we're not going to teach you how to deal with your financial problems. We're going to teach you how to make them non-events so you don't have to deal with them.

You will not have meetings about your financial problems next year because there won't be any reason to have a meeting. Alright? That's what the person is thinking.

Let's go one more. One, two, three. sva-pa-tok ni-ni-pa-dam pu-po-la-shen-me-pa-tok-me ni-la-ka-sa-la-shen-me-pa-tok-me ni-pe Normally, when you're trying to understand something, it's helpful to break it down.

I had a problem with my swamp cooler. OK? The swamp cooler wasn't working right.

So I took off the cover. And then I learned about filters. Alright?

And that didn't seem to work. So I took off the filter and there was a fan. And I figured out how to tighten up the fan.

Then it still didn't work. So I took off the fan and behind that there's a pool of water and there's a float valve. And then I checked the float valve, which I had never met before.

And then he has a nozzle, a spray nozzle. And I got to know the spray nozzle. And then I found a feed wire, the feed tube to the nozzle thing.

Feed nozzle. And that required going outside and looking somewhere else. And that goes into the house and there's two valves there.

And one does one thing and one does another thing. And I got to know them. And then that didn't work.

So then I thought it must be the outside filters. So then I took off all the covers of the swamp cooler and I got to know the outside filters. Then I got to know about the water pump inside that breaks sometimes.

And then I went to the store. I thought oh God, this is going to be expensive. And I went to the store and I said here's the water pump that's not working.

What do I have to do? And they said here's the new water pump. It's like $12.

I'm like really? And they said yeah, it's just $12. And I put it in and the whole thing works great.

But to understand a problem or to find a solution to a problem normally means breaking it down. You take it apart. You check if the problem is here.

And if it's not there, you check there. And if it's not there, you check there. If you can keep disassembling a problem, you get to the solution of the problem normally.

You understand the whole by understanding the parts. You understand the whole by understanding the parts. If you want to come to an understanding of Michael or Rob or Pat or Kathy or whoever it is.

If you want to understand me, it helps to go to the parts of me. Understand your consciousness. Understand the different functions in your mind.

Understand where your physical reality is coming from. Understand where your identity and the parts about you which are neither physical nor mental are coming from. Break down the body.

Break down Michael into Michael's parts. And then examine the nature of those parts and then sooner or later you will understand the swamp cooler. The whole swamp cooler.

Alright? It's the same with emptiness. We don't try to right away to understand the emptiness of Michael.

We try to understand the emptiness of the parts of Michael. So we break Michael down into parts like an air conditioner, like a swamp cooler, and then we try to understand each part. The pump, the outside filter, the inside filter, the valve, the float, the water supply, the drain, the supply from the house, the electrical supply, everything.

You try to understand the parts. It's the same with emptiness. If you want to understand your own emptiness about you, you could take for example the emptiness of your physical body or of your mind or of your feelings or of your capacity to discriminate between things.

What are those? Those are the five heaps. Examine the pieces of you to get at the reality of you.

This is a standard in plumbing and standard in philosophy. rāṃśrīṃ me bhaṭṭo vinuṇā He says, if you cannot come to an understanding how none of the parts of you has any quality of their own, that's a tough word. That's a tough word.

Let's talk about that and maybe we'll pick up later, alright? Then we'll stop. We'll just stop.

What does it mean to say nothing has any quality of its own? What does that mean? rāṃśrīṃ me bhaṭṭo asva bhava.

What does it mean to say nothing has any quality of its own? Does fire have a quality of being hot? Is fire hot?

Yeah, I mean, that's why you use it to cook tofu donburi. Is it uncomfortably hot?

[Speaker 2]
Can you touch it?

[Speaker 1]
To anyone who touches fire? I mean, see. It's a characteristic of fire that isn't self-existent to it.

Right. Is uncomfortable amount of heat inherent to fire? No.

I mean, some fires are toasty warm. When you're cold, a fire which is the same temperature that it was last summer becomes pleasant. Right?

Does pen-ness exist in this thing? Does the quality of being a pen exist in this object? No, we already talked about that.

A dog chews on it. A dog isn't aware of that quality, because that quality isn't coming from the pen. That quality doesn't reside in the pen.

That quality isn't imputed or imbued or laid on the pen by your own mind. Nothing has anything about it that's in it. Is that alright?

Try to understand it on a philosophical level and then let's take it to the level of your family or your work or something like that. Nothing has anything in it which comes from it. Nothing has any quality about it at all which is in it.

Alright? If that's true, then you can do anything. You can make things do what you want.

You can make money. You can make checks show up on schedule. You can make your body stay young.

You can do anything. You can make your husband change. If your husband's coming from you, you can fix him or upgrade him.

If your husband's not coming from you, then you should be unhappy. But the fact is, he's coming from you, so you can change him. You see?

There's nothing about your husband which is in your husband. Anything you see about your husband that you don't like is coming from you. So then you just stop doing whatever it is you don't like about him.

Alright? So he says, if you cannot come to understand that the parts of a thing are not coming from their side, you will never understand what? That the whole thing is not coming from its own side.

Conversely, if you have a problem understanding how a cat is not coming from her own side, then work on a cat's physical body. Or work on a cat's feelings. Or work on a cat's awareness.

Things like that. Work on parts of a cat. Knock them down one by one.

Unscrew the covers. You know? And then sooner or later you will grok the whole swamp cooler.

Which I do. I don't think there's any part of the swamp cooler that I didn't see. And I feel good about the swamp cooler now.

We're like friends now. I can fix him when he's cranky. I know when he needs something.

I can give him what he needs. Because I took him apart. We'll stop there.

That's a good place to stop. Just to summarize. Just to summarize.

There are many, many useful spiritual truths in life. Today we spoke about one of them. We spoke about two of them.

One was the truth that ultimately you don't have current control over your body, your mind, and as an extension of your body, the physical world around you. You don't have control over the traffic in Phoenix right now. You don't have control of your body.

You can't control if cancer happens in your body. You can't control the condition of your veins. You can't control your own thoughts.

If depression comes, you can't control it. In the present moment, you can't control it. You don't have control.

To understand that is comforting and useful and will make you a better person and a happier person. But it's only temporary. It's only temporary.

What would be preferable is to figure out why any problem comes to us. Why does traffic come to me? Why did cancer come to me?

Why did my veins do this or that? Why does my mind get depressed on Thursdays? Find out the real reason behind things.

Stop learning to cope with them and just stop them. From ever happening at all. Stop all future occurrences of problems.

Then you don't have to learn to cope with them. I would rather do that. People always tell me, oh you're a Buddhist, you should turn problems into opportunities.

And I look at them and I'm like, couldn't I just have opportunities to start with it? Like, why do I have to have a problem and then work so hard to make it into an opportunity? Why can't it just be an opportunity in the first place?

That's what we're talking about. And that's our goal. And you can do it.

And that 150, how much thousand? 80,000 proves it. I don't know how much proof you need, but anyway.

You can do cool stuff. You can make things happen.