Книга: практика тундук (Нью-Йорк, Геше Майкл Роуч), занятие 1

[Speaker 1]
This class started because of a talk we were having, can I borrow your pen, about emptiness. And we were having a Friday night class about the emptiness of a pen, for example. And I was holding it up and people were practicing looking at it as a stick, a blue and white color, and then they practiced looking at it as a pen.

And then they started to examine how do they feel about the pen. And there were three different modes of seeing this object. One is to just see it as a green and white cylinder.

One is to see it as a pen. One is to see it as a pen that you really like. And those are three different modes of seeing the same object.

We say that the fact that you can see it three different ways, and each of them is valid, each of them is okay. You can look at this as a green and white cylinder. You can look at it as a pen.

And you can look at it as some kind of pen that you really like or that you really hate. Those are four different ways, for example, of looking at the pen. And each of them is valid, each of them is okay.

They happen to be contradictory. For example, in the case of being a good pen or a bad pen, some people in this room will see this as a good pen, some people will see it as a bad pen. Being good and being bad are opposites.

One object cannot be both at the same time to the same person. Although we talk about love-hate relationships, but that's another thing. So we say that that indicates that this pen is empty.

This pen doesn't have any nature of its own. I'm sorry, this cylinder doesn't have any nature of its own. If you have a certain state of mind, you see it as a pen.

If you come in here with a dog state of mind, you see it as something to chew. And you don't see it as a pen. If you're in a certain state of mind of not recognizing either, you might see it as a green and white cylinder.

And there are beings in the universe who wouldn't even see a green and white cylinder. There are beings that can't pick up the color range that we pick up. There are beings that only see infrared.

There are beings that only see below that. It's not necessarily even a green and white cylinder. It's just to you what it is to you.

That proves its emptiness. What I got to do with tonight's class, that indicates the emptiness of this object. Buddhism says that every single object in the world is the same as this cylinder.

Every single object is the same, meaning no object in your life has any nature of its own. None. Nothing.

And that's what the Heart Sutra is about. The Buddha says there's no body, there's no mind, there's no anything else. What he's trying to say is, of course you perceive your own mind.

Of course you perceive your own body. But independently of that, there is no body or mind. This is not a pen until you have the state of mind that thinks of it as a pen.

So everything is empty. Your mind, the thoughts that go through your own mind, are the same way. The fact that the sun comes up in the morning is the same way.

The fact of how your body looks is the same. Whether or not you get cancer is the same. Whether or not you even die is the same.

It doesn't have to be that way. You see what I mean? It's empty.

It doesn't have any nature of its own. It depends for its existence on your perceptions. And nothing has any other nature than that.

So with pens it's just kind of interesting. Yeah, okay, if a dog walked in here, he wouldn't see a pen. If an Eskimo walked in here, he would just see a cylinder.

When I walk in here and it's still early in the class, it looks like a nice pen. When it's still getting to the third hour of the class, I hate this pen. You know, I understand all that.

But what I'm saying is that the very existence of this object is the same. It depends on your perceptions and the existence of your own mind for you and the thoughts that circle around, the thoughts that you have to listen to all day, those are coming from you. And the body that you live in is coming from you.

And the city that you live in is coming from you. These are what we call world imprints, okay? Karma has a certain effect on your mind.

Karma leaves certain imprints on your mind. And what you see is only the result of what you did in the past. Every object in your life.

I'm not saying karma determines whether you had a good day or a bad day. Karma determines whether you even exist. Karma determines whether New York City exists.

Karma determines whether the sun comes up in the morning. Karma determines the details of every single thought that you have during the day. It's very profound.

There is not an object in your life, which is not in your life, because of certain imprints on your mind that are ripening. And that's the only reason they exist. There is no nature to the world.

And it's proven by what we just said about the pen. You can apply the pen to your body, your mind, the city you live in, the friends you have, your life, your death. It's all the same as the pen.

It's all depending for its very existence on imprints that are ripening in your mind at this moment. They ripen at a speed that it makes it look like a film. They're ripening at the rate of 65 per finger snap.

So it looks like motion. Time itself is a projection of your mind. Time itself, the passage of time from seven to nine o'clock tonight, is the result of your mind, imprints in your mind, ripening like that.

And it looks like time is going by. And your life is that, and your death is that. Buddhism says that you can take the lousy parts of your life.

What? The relationships that you have that are failing. The objects, the material objects that you want that you can't get.

The fact that your body is falling apart. And the fact that you eventually will have to die. That those objects are empty.

They are a result of the ripening of imprints in your mind, and you can change them. You can avoid them. You can stop them.

I heard someone say today, it was very interesting, the state of every living being on this planet having to die is a tragedy that never had to happen. You see? It doesn't have to happen.

Being sick, getting in an accident, being depressed, not being happy, being upset, not being able to be contented, and the very fact that you are getting old and that you're going to die, these are unnecessary tragedies. They don't have to happen. You can prevent them.

And that's what Buddhism teaches. It's very profound. Because of emptiness.

And you don't need more than a pen to prove emptiness. I already proved emptiness. If this was not empty, everyone in this room would see it the same way.

And that's not the case. It ain't coming from the pen. It's coming from you.

And your whole life is that. Your body is that. Your mind is that.

The passage of your life and your death is that. So you can change it. Then you go to the whole other side of Buddhism.

How do you change it? You fix your imprints. What do they say?

It's the economy, stupid, right? It's the imprints, stupid. Just change your imprints.

Fix your imprints. Can you fix today's imprints? Very difficult.

Extremely difficult. Can you fix the imprints that are going to happen to you in three months or six months or one year? Totally feasible.

Totally feasible. And so this class is how to fix your imprints. How to collect good imprints.

What are the imprints that would cause you one day to look in the mirror and see Tara or see Manjushri? What are the imprints? How can you put imprints in your mind to cut off your lousy world and to start a new world?

Like the word mandala means that. How could you enter a different realm? How could you get your mind to see a different realm?

Right now you have very mixed karma. You're healthy. You were healthy enough to get here tonight.

And you have all these aches and pains in your body, probably, or all these things happening to your face and your teeth and stuff that you don't want. Your karma is mixed. How do you get your karma to be totally pure?

This is beyond the mind of a human being. You can't see it. You never will.

For a long time. Until you change into that kind of a being. You can't sit here and tell me how to get the best imprints.

You have to go to an enlightened being and say, can you please make a list of the best imprints I could plant in my mind? Because I don't want to be like this. Give me the good parts and take away the bad parts.

Give me the good imprints and teach me how to get rid of the bad imprints. And they do. And they can.

So there are in existence three lists that have been provided by enlightened beings of these imprints. And tonight's class is how to create a regimen or a daily practice where you watch these imprints and you try to plant these imprints in your mind. That's all.

We do it with a book. The early Buddhists used to use stones. They carried around a bag of white pebbles and black pebbles.

Every time they did something good during the day, they would take a white pebble and put it in their left pocket. And then every time they did something bad or said something bad, they'd take a black pebble and put it in their right pocket. And then at the end of the day, they would take out the pebbles and count them and say, this is how many lousy imprints I plant in my mind.

This is how many good imprints I plant in my mind. Now that paper's been invented, we have books. And my goal is to teach you how to do a book night.

This is a real one. This is mine. I've gone through dozens of these in the last ten years or so.

And I have them piled up in my... You can't look at them, okay? I won't even show you where they are.

But anyway, that's a typical day. So I'm going to show you how it works, how to keep your book. I did not teach this in New York before, I don't think.

Because I consider it too holy. I consider it... There will be only probably 15 people in this room that get it tonight, and they keep their books.

And there will probably be like 25 who try it for a few days and give it up, or who try it for a week and give it up. And I hesitate to teach it because those people will not come back again to hear it. You see what I mean?

It's very dangerous to hear about it and then not do it. If you keep this practice on a regular basis, the imprints in your mind change. You're putting new imprints in your mind.

In the short run, as those imprints start to ripen in your mind, you will notice a change in your life. What? Within six months or so, you start to have small changes in your life.

For example, colors seem brighter. Music seems nicer. Things taste better.

People are generally more friendly. Out on the street, things are going a little bit better. Your work seems to be going a little bit better.

And you get minor signs that your life is purifying, that your imprints are purifying. Your imprints, the new ones, are starting to make themselves known. And your world starts to change slightly.

Then you get this encouragement. I want to see a t-shirt someday that says, Hey, this stuff really works. You get some kind of confirmation personally that it works, that the book works.

And then you get kind of into it. And then you take it more seriously. And then I would say, within a year or something, major changes in your life.

Major, major changes. Your financial situation clears up. You have housing.

You have sweet relationships that are starting to happen with other people that you were waiting for, that you were looking for. And you start to have sweet Dharma classes on a constant basis, and teachings, and you start to get it more and more. And you're understanding Dharma better.

You see, that also depends on the imprints. So everything is shaping up. Things are getting exciting.

And then you're on a roll. And then you really start getting serious about the book. Then I would say things start to, they start to shade into the amazing.

Like, give it a year or two years. Then what you would classify as amazing things start to happen. Like, somebody gives you $100,000, or somebody gives you a place to stay, or you find these incredibly holy beings to be near, or you open up a book on emptiness and suddenly everything is totally clear.

And you go to a Dharma teaching and it just freaks you out. You start crying and stuff like that. Things in the level of amazing start to happen.

You get really excited about doing your book. And then you're really getting serious about it. Later on, I would classify like supernatural things.

Things that are not possible according to your current understanding of the world. You know what I mean? Like, things that you didn't think were possible.

Things that you would classify as miracles. Or things like that. Things that you didn't think were physically or naturally possible in this world start to happen.

You start to meet special kinds of beings that you've heard about but you never really believed that they existed. Or events happen to you that could be classified as miracles or supernatural things. And then you're getting hotter and hotter.

And then finally, if you keep up this practice on a serious basis, the imprints become totally pure. And then you just pass into a different realm. And this body changes.

The trick is to try to do this before you die. If you wait till you die, according to Buddhism, you have imprints for lots of other bizarre realms to be in for a long time. It's not necessary that you come back to this realm.

If you don't take care of this stuff before you die, the odds of taking care of it later are very, very bad. You have very bizarre imprints in your mind that are waiting. Once you die, they start to be triggered.

And they could lead to very, very terrible realms. And they will. So you have to try to do this process before you die.

There are three lists. And what I'm describing is, without being improperly describing my own life, I'm saying this is the way it works. It really works.

You can reach these things. And Buddhism's intention and Buddhism's goal is only that. That's the goal of Buddhism.

It's not to make you feel better, a little bit better, or to make you feel a little bit more happy or something like that. The goal of Buddhism is to actually transform your entire body and the world you live in into a different realm. And you can.

And this is the key. This is an extremely important class. And if you do it, those things will happen to you.

If you do it half-assed, those things will happen to you half-assed. If you do it for two weeks and quit, your life will be exactly the same as before. And when you hear somebody get up and describe these things, you'll say, I don't believe it.

Show me. And they'll say, I can't show you because your mind's not pure enough, because you're not keeping your book. I literally can't show you the things that are happening.

I could bring a tantric deity into this room and say, here, see? And you'd say, looks like a normal person to me. And I'm not joking.

And you'll never know. That's the irony. It'll be what you could categorize as a tragedy.

They could have seen angels, and they didn't keep their book. So they'd just end up in some hospital somewhere dying, or in some nursing home somewhere. It's really a choice.

The choice is very real. You have that choice. And you can go either way.

And it depends on keeping those three myths. It's learning them, and learning how to do your book. The book is an exercise of stopping six times a day, every two and a half hours, depending on how long you sleep, of checking yourself six times a day.

Alright? It's checking yourself, your activities, against those three myths, six times a day. Here's what the book looks like.

This is the... It takes two pages, okay? Left page and the right page.

This is the left page, and this is the right page. By the way, when you get to the highest teachings of Buddhism, the highest secret teachings of Buddhism, you're still doing this. And there's a very clear method there for doing this.

It's Tunduk. It's the meaning of Tunduk. It's all Tunduk is.

And it is one of the highest secret teachings of Buddhism. So I'm going to teach you the non-secret part. So the secret part, when you're ready for it, it'll come to you.

So you divide... The left side is six boxes, because you're going to check six items on the list. Okay?

Six times a day. So this box is going to be filled out around... It's just an example.

7 a.m. This box is at 9.30 a.m. This one's at 11 a.m. Sorry. Two and a half, right? Twelve.

This one's at 2.30 p.m. This one's around 5 p.m. This, for example, this one's 7.30. Okay? Something like that. But you're stopping six times during the day and examining your life, your mind and your speech.

Okay? How long does it take? Not more than a minute or two minutes.

But don't tell me you can't do it. You know what I mean? Seriously.

If you get really good at it and you're in a rush, you can get it down to 30 seconds, okay? But don't tell me you can't stop. People tell me...

I worked in a corporation for 16 long years. When it came time to do it, I went and pooped. And I was in the stall with the book.

You know? And people were wondering why it's taking so long. You know?

So, even in a board meeting with the chairman, you know, you can always poop. You know? And I never had him hassle me.

You know what I mean? It seems to be something magical about I have to go to the bathroom now, excuse me. Even in the middle of...

So, I can't imagine any other circumstance. I mean, if you're a doctor in the middle of a surgery, maybe you can wait until the end of the surgery. But don't tell me you can't do it.

That's a lie. You're cheating yourself out of your own enlightenment. You're just cheating yourself.

You're not cheating me. You're not cheating Lord Buddha. You're not cheating anybody else.

You don't have to come to me and say, I'm sorry I couldn't do my book. Just go to apologize to yourself. All I can do is show you how to do it.

If you don't do it, that's your problem. And it's your death. That's your choice.

And it's a stupid choice. But, what am I to say? You know?

Okay. What are the three lifts? You see, you have to know the three lifts, right?

One you can call ethical life. These are ethical life lifts. In Sanskrit, pratimoksha.

In Tibetan, sosor, tarpa. By the way, the word pratimoksha means individual liberation lift. Individual liberation.

Why is it called liberation? If you follow them, if you keep them, if you check them six times a day, you are out of here. Seriously.

Why do they call it individual? Because those individuals who check it, get out. And those individuals who don't, don't.

And that's the prati in pratimoksha. That's the meaning of pratimoksha. And the Buddha thought it was important enough to make that point that he named it that.

It's kind of like, up to you lift. You know? Keep it and you're out.

Don't keep it and don't complain to me. You know? Okay?

You start here with the refuge commitment. And there's twelve of them. The day that you decide to become a Buddhist formally, and you do it in a special ceremony, and that ceremony is going to take place here on...

What day of the week? Wednesday? Friday the 12th, if you have never done it.

It's a lifetime commitment to be... It's like saying, I'm a Buddhist. Just to sit there and say I'm a Buddhist doesn't do anything.

There are twelve guidelines for a person who decides to become a Buddhist. I'll give you some of them. It's not my goal of this class to give you all of them.

If you come that night, you're welcome to listen to them. If you think it's reasonable, you're welcome to take a refuge commitment. And if you don't think it's reasonable, you're welcome to sit there and watch other people take it and not repeat it.

And that's perfectly fine with me. You know, I don't have time tonight to teach them, but if you want to catch it, you can do it on the 12th. The first one, for example, once you've taken refuge in Buddhism, you can't take refuge in other things, meaning money, career, things like that.

Does that mean you can't have money? Obviously not. Who was the richest person in Tibet?

The Dalai Lama. Did he take refuge? I hope so.

Because if he wasn't, he wasn't a Buddhist. But it means you don't spend your life looking for it or struggling for it. If you get it, you use it wisely.

If you don't get it, you try to do your book better. And that's all. You commit yourself to living a spiritual life.

That's all. Does it mean you have to divorce your wife, sell your house, etc., give up your job? Not at all.

If you're a good Buddhist, all those things will get sweeter and more satisfying. Of course. For example, offering the first part of your food and drink mentally to enlightened beings.

Before you eat or drink, for example, you take the time to stop for a few seconds. You close your eyes and you picture some enlightened being and you say, I believe in you. I want to be like you.

I will become like you. And in honor of that day, I hereby offer you this brownie I'm about to eat. And you actually do that.

And that gets your mind into a very sweet place. Every time you eat, and Americans eat often, every time you do that, you picture an enlightened being and say, I want to be like you. Here, have a bite.

It's a very profound impact on your mind, especially if you snack like I do. And for example, putting all your faith in these beings. Before you do something, like you're about to undertake a big project at work, and you say, I'm doing this project so I can make money to support my family and to promote goodness in the world.

And that's my motivation for this project. And whether or not it turns out good or bad, which depends on my past karma, and it's really not under my control that much, I commit this to the goodness and to the benefit of all living beings. I commit this to that purpose.

Now whether or not it's going to work out, I don't know. But I go into this project or this activity with that intention. And for example, those are examples of refuge commitments.

There are twelve. These are those freedom vows. At the most basic level, there's a list of ten deeds that no Buddhist is supposed to do.

What's supposed to mean? Supposed to mean there's no guy with a big white beard keeping a list somewhere. Karma is recorded by your mind as you watch yourself doing it.

There is no Saint Peter keeping a list. The list is being kept in your consciousness as you do or say anything. You can't get away.

You can run but you can't hide. In the privacy of your own room, everything is being recorded quite nicely by your mental consciousness. Anything you do anywhere is recorded by your consciousness.

That's how karma is stored. So there are ten deeds that if you do them, they will hurt you. And the nature of them is that they hurt other people.

What are they? It's not my intention in this tonight to teach them to you, but I'll just go over them quickly. For example, killing or endangering the life of any other being.

Period. Stealing anything of value. Bigger than a pencil, say.

And a pencil if the person is attached to it. You see what I mean? Sexual misconduct, especially in the form of adultery.

Lying to another person about anything. Giving another person a misimpression about anything. Saying things to split up other people.

To alienate other people. Even if they're already not friends, to alienate them further. Or if they are friends, to alienate them.

Harsh words. Saying something that hurts another person's feelings. Wasted speech.

Sitting around gossiping about stupid things that you can't change anyway. Or things that don't matter and you won't remember in two days. The whole Sunday New York Times, if you will.

I'm not kidding. Then, Sri in your mind. Craving the things of other people, like being jealous of what other people have.

Plotting to get what other people have. Ill will. Being happy when other people fail.

And then, wrong views. The classic one would be to think that you can ever get away with anything because you can't. Anything you do which has the slightest negative effect on another being is imprinted in your mind and it will bring you suffering.

Period. If you believe anything else, it's wrong view. You're in trouble.

You're in big trouble. And conversely, that anything sweet you do to anyone else has anything but an incredibly good effect on you. Karmically.

Those are the ten. Minimum is ten. If you decide to, there are eight other sets of commitments.

For example, you can take five vows for your entire life as a lay person. You don't have to become a monk or a nun. You don't have to wear these robes or anything.

They are not to kill a human being or a fetus. Not to steal anything worth more than a quarter or a dollar or something. Not to commit adultery with a person who is clearly married to another person.

Not to lie, especially about your spiritual life. Like to say you've seen things that you haven't seen. And then finally, not to use intoxicants like alcohol and drugs.

If you want to, you can take those five. And it's very powerful. Ten is minimum, okay?

Ten would be minimum. Let's say you stop there, okay? This is, by the way, minimum for any Buddhist.

Anybody who says they're a Buddhist or anyone who wants to have any kind of happiness in this life, let's put it that way. If you want to have any effect on the state of your happiness, you must learn these twenty-two. And you must learn to keep them during the day.

Okay, so twenty-two of them here. Anybody who has any hope of being happy at all in this life, has to keep these twenty-two. What's twenty-two divided by six?

You know, three something? Okay, so what you do is you start out with one, four, seven, ten, thirteen, sixteen. Let's do it like that.

That would be a recipe for one day's activity, okay? You would take those twenty-two and make a list that went from one to twenty-two. And at 7 a.m. you would check number one to see how you're doing on it. And at 9.30 you'd check number four and see how you're doing on it. And at 12 noon you'd check number seven and see how you're doing on it. Let's just see what they happen to be.

Number one is not to take no other refuge. It's very important in Buddhism, it's very important in this process that you identify the closest you came to breaking it. We call it the negative.

It's very important to identify, according to Buddhism, what you're doing right. It's equally important in Buddhism to track what you're doing right. We consider confession and rejoicing to be equally important.

If there's ever huge Buddhist churches all over the United States, they will have little rooms for confessing on the right side. And on the left side there'll be little rooms to go in and tell the priest all the great things he did. And Buddhism says you must do both.

You must track both. So we put a plus up here. I like to do that one first.

If I die I'd rather be rejoicing. If I die between here and here, I'd rather die with my good stuff on my mind. And then we put down here a to-do.

By the way, did I today... I had a choice between taking a worldly refuge and a spiritual refuge and I made the right choice. That would be a positive.

For example, what? I don't know. I had a chance to either meditate or go to a movie or something.

But I'm not saying movies are bad. There's a time to go to a movie. Sometimes a movie is the best thing to do for your spiritual life, seriously.

But I had a choice between I was tired, I was thinking not to meditate, and I was thinking to read a fiction book or something like that. And I meditated instead. So you say, OK, decided to meditate.

You don't put down something vague, general, lousy, any fiction thing like I like food. You know what I mean? Don't put...

This book is not for vague generalities. It's not for Oh, for all sentient beings, you know, blah, blah, blah. Forget it.

We want something specific. When you get to be good at spiritual life, you'll find out it consists of the small things that happen with the people that you work with and your family. It's not this, you know, mystical visions up on a mountain somewhere in a cave, although you will get there.

OK? But for us, spiritual life is what did you actually say to the person at work who turned to you and said, that's a lousy way to do it. You see, the success of your spiritual life, whether or not you pass into a Buddha paradise in this lifetime, whether or not you escape death, whether or not your body turns into the body of an angel, all depends on these little, tiny, specific good deeds or bad deeds that you do from moment to moment.

Forget these all-living being things, you know. When was the last time you had a chance to hurt all living beings, you know? But when was the last time you said an unkind word to somebody in your family or at work or your spouse?

You know, this is what I call low-level radiation. You know, low-level radiation doesn't kill you. It just adds up in your body.

It kills you over the period of 20 years. You know, little unkind words to other people, little irritated thoughts, little thoughts of being upset, little questions about your spiritual life, these accumulate in your body and in your mind and they kill you. They are responsible for your death.

If you didn't have them, you would not get old and die. Okay? It's amazing.

They're what kill you. They're what kill, that literally kills you.

[Speaker 2]
Okay?

[Speaker 1]
If you can avoid them, you have a chance. How do you avoid them? This.

It doesn't work to go to church on Sunday morning and try to remember what you did on Monday. You know, the little thing you said to somebody on Monday. You have to be watching it every few hours.

This is the practice that was taught by the Buddha in his highest form. And this is the requirement he made in his highest form. Negative.

What would be a negative? Told a small lie to get some... Told a small lie at work.

Why is that another refuge? You're taking refuge in the stupid thinking of the world that says small lies are okay and that small lie got you out of trouble at work, which is wrong, which is a lie itself. It's an illusion.

Small lies don't work.

[Speaker 2]
Okay?

[Speaker 1]
That's another story. Okay? Lying never works.

But when you lie, you have rejected the idea of refuge. You have taken refuge in a in a system of thinking which is totally wrong and harmful. To do something very, very specific.

Okay? Like half hour meditation for sure tonight. And that's one entry.

That is the key to enlightenment. That's the ticket to Buddha paradise. Do it or don't do it.

It's up to you. That's all. Do that six times a day.

Honestly. Okay? And specifically, don't say these vague things like, I'm a jealous person.

We know you're a jealous person. You know. We want to know where it was.

Two o'clock. I heard her mention him. You know.

And I got this twinge in my heart. You know. We want that.

You know. That's what you can fix. And if you fix all the little ones, the big one is fixed automatically.

You can achieve a level of high spiritual purity by working on the little things you said to somebody at work. At nine o'clock. Yeah, John.

This is important. Why am I jumping? Why didn't I just do one, two, three, four, five?

This is important especially in the higher vows. When we get to the bodhisattva list, this is your ethical life. Ethical lifeness.

What happens is, if you don't do it this way, when you get your bodhisattva list, when you get your secret list, you spend like a whole month on the secret list and you don't go back to the foundation. So it's important to skip around. Or you might be only into the very heavy bodhisattva commitments and not into the minor.

Or you'd be in the minor ones for two months or something. You see what I mean? This spaces us out very nicely.

What's number four? I'll give you one more example and then we'll go on to the next one. 9.30 a.m. You're checking number four. This is to respect all... I'll give you just an example. Respect all dharma materials.

If you take refuge, if you become a Buddhist, you cannot throw this on a shelf somewhere with the New York Times and Time magazine and all the recipes you found under your door. You know what I mean? This paper happens to be the thing that if you used it properly would save you from the condition of dying itself.

So it would be really stupid to throw it in with the menus. You see what I mean? If any of us really understood what this was, you would go out and get a golden box and you would keep it in there with a key.

And every night you would go and touch it and hold it to your head. This would be the most important object in your life. Like everybody has a favorite picture, the only picture of their mother.

I have one. Or the coin that Ken Robinson gave you the day you got your Geshe degree. You have these objects in your life that you treasure and you keep them in little boxes and stuff.

This paper is a million times more important. It can save you from dying. It can bring you eternal happiness, this little stupid paper.

So that vow is very important. That's a refuge commitment. Treat them for what they are.

Because one day you'll see what it is. You see what I mean? What's positive?

I cleaned up the loose homework papers from the last course that I never finished laying around my window sill. Negative. Still didn't fix up my binder for class.

Binder is still unorganized. Does this have to have happened since 7 o'clock? Not at all.

Search today. If you don't find anything, search yesterday. If you don't find anything, go to last week.

If you don't find anything close, start to free associate. Seriously. Start to free associate.

Like what? Got Tricycle Magazine the other day in the mail. It has a Buddha on the front.

I threw it in with the phone book and stuff. That picture is of a being that could take you to a place where you would never ever again have a sad thought in your life. And if you understood that, you wouldn't throw Tricycle Magazine under a flowerpot like we had downstairs the other day.

You know what I mean? You have to be very careful with those things. Which, by the way, means we shouldn't publish them easily.

They should be very... If you're pretty sure people are going to abuse them, you have to be very careful about printing them in the first place. To do, clean up my binder by Saturday night or something like that.

It's like some kind of activity you're going to do. And that's all. It seems insignificant, but if you keep this up over a long period of time, things will change.

Your life will change. It doesn't have to be in the last few hours, but it should be in the last day or two. If you haven't done that one, like kill a human being, then start free associating.

Downstairs there was a cord stretching across the room. Somebody conceivably could have tripped on it. We had people falling down these stairs.

Try to make sure there's some pads on the stairs by next month or something like that. Anything you might have done to endanger another person's life. Anything.

Was talking while I was driving my car. You see what I mean? Was going too fast.

Didn't buckle my seatbelt. By the way, they all apply to you also. Killing yourself or endangering your own life is just as bad as endangering other people's lives.

To eat irresponsibly in a way that could hurt my body in five years from now. You see what I mean? A Buddhist is under a responsibility to take care of your own body also.

And even to eat irresponsibly is endangering a human being's life, a precious human being's life, which is yours. You see what I mean? It's very interesting.

So you can start associating on these vows. That's the ethical lifeless. If you're a Buddhist at all, you have at least 22 items to be checking all the time.

To be checking. How many days will it take you to get through 22? It's like four days.

Every four days you'll be cycling back. If you keep this up over the course of six months, you'll just start to become a spiritual person. Sorry.

You see what I mean? You see, it's no good just to go and study all the time. That's what we've been doing.

And you know all the theory and everything. This is how to actually, on the 10th cycle through this thing, it starts to become part of your life, which was the whole idea, right? And you'll start, you'll get into a conversation with somebody, you're sitting in a diner, you start to talk about some negative stuff.

I've seen it. The people who do this book well, they're very good at going, and you know, you see this look in their eyes and they're realizing that this is going to go in their book in about 20 minutes. And they change the subject or something.

And if they're cool about it, you hardly notice. It's sort of like the conversation's going a negative way, and then suddenly this person is refusing to continue and is steering it the other way. And you know this is a Buddhist.

I met a Buddhist. I'm sitting next to a Buddhist. Here's a Buddhist.

They are watching their mouth. That's what makes you a Buddhist. You see?

To understand the theory doesn't do anything unless you're doing this. And you can't watch your mouth unless you're doing your book. Every two hours you have to stop and remember all the stupid stuff you've said for the last two hours.

You'll change after a while. And isn't that what you always wanted? You know?

I mean, even if all this stuff is a lie, even if there's no karma, even if there's no future life, even if you couldn't become an angel, this is still the best way to be a person. You'll still be happier than you were before. List number two.

Bodhisattva list. These are major items. These are the big time ones.

These are the most important ones. By the way, what is a bodhisattva vow? You have to take a special ceremony.

Anyone can do it. You have to agree to keep these 22 first. Minimum.

And then you're eligible to take to take on this list of rules or life behaviors. Can you learn them before you take them? Yes, you are allowed.

It's not like the secret list. The secret list, you can't even look at it until you agree to keep it. It's not very fair, but that's the way it is.

The bodhisattva list, you can look at it beforehand. You can try it for a year or two without accepting it formally. And that's what I ask you to do.

Tonight you will get the bodhisattva list also. And I ask you to try to keep it. You have to try to get proper instructions on it.

Some of them are a little difficult or obscure. They're not very clear. And you need to have a formal course on it.

There is a course, and Mary's the one, right? Raise your hand. It is one of the ACI courses.

There's a whole notebook. There's ten tapes on it. You can take that.

You can have it for free if you can't afford it. It's free. And take it home and study it and learn these things.

And then if you like them, if you keep them, then at some point we can have a ceremony and people can take them formally. What's the difference between taking them formally and not taking them formally? Much, much heavier imprint.

The imprint that's created in your mind, if you agreed to keep this for the rest of your life, is much more powerful than if you didn't agree. So, even though you may not intend to kill anybody in this life, a human being, it's much more powerful if you swear never to do it again. You see what I mean?

It has a much more powerful... If you want to see that process I mentioned, going from slight improvement in your life and world up to miracles happening in your life, if you want to see that happen seriously, it's much more important, much more powerful to take a vow and say, I swear for the rest of my life I will not kill a human being. It's much more powerful.

The imprint is much deeper and the imprint takes off much faster. Like amazing. Like really cool.

This stuff really works. All the other theories you thought of, all the other theories that you have ever been taught how to be happy, don't work. This one works.

I can prove it. Just try it. This is the way.

If you keep this stuff, if you keep this book, noticeable changes soon. Amazing changes rather soon. Miracles, shortly.

I'm not kidding. I'm really not kidding. It's everything you ever dreamed of from a religion.

Seriously. It's all the stuff that religions were supposed to do. And it works.

It really works. You're lucky you hit it. Major items, how many?

Eighteen. In the formal list, as it's taught down through the tradition, there are eighteen items. Any one of them might have five or six different events in it.

For example, once you take a bodhisattva commitment, you can't commit one of the five big, big, big deeds, bad deeds. What are they? Killing your father, killing your mother, killing someone who's reached nirvana, trying to split up spiritual people, and then trying to hurt a Buddha.

Those are the big five. Unfortunately, they are only one of these eighteen. I think you should track them separately.

They seem to be pretty major stuff. So, we've made it into five parts. Actually, the list that you're going to get, if I count it right, it's about thirty-five, actually.

It actually equals thirty-five. So, if you were just going to do those thirty-five, they would last you about four days? Six days.

About six days. Like that. Get it?

Like some of those vows that they were written in sixteen centuries ago. They're all jumbled up. There are five things that are included in one.

We split them out for you. And you have to track them separately. So, there's thirty-five there.

Major, major ones. What's the difference between the motivation here and here? Why are there two lists?

This list is to accomplish one thing. Don't hurt other people. Stop hurting other people.

List number one is that. List number two is, these are the imprints that will get you to the state of enlightenment so that you can help other people. You see what I mean?

This one is basically don't hurt other people. This one is, if you keep this list, you can do incredible miracles to help other people. You see what I mean?

So, the emphasis here is not to hurt other people. The emphasis here is, what kind of imprints do you have to do to get to be a Dalai Lama or something like that? You see what I mean?

And you can be. And you will be. What kind of imprints do you have to collect to be the world's greatest spiritual leader in helping millions of people?

You know what I mean? You can do it. You can collect them.

That's called a bodhisattva list. That's the bodhisattva list. And that's the emphasis of the bodhisattva list.

Then we have the the secondary one. How many usually? Forty-six.

Translates into What's 125? Sixty-eight. I mean roughly.

Yeah. Sixty-eight important items. I'll give you a taste of them.

Going to a Dharma class and focusing on whether you like the teacher or not. And not focusing on whether what he says or she says is true or not. You see what I mean?

You're more interested in the charisma or, you know, do they have meat robes on? Do they speak nicely and very sweetly? And what they say is just useless garbage.

You see what I mean? When you take the secondary item, you're not allowed anymore. You break that commitment if you go to a teaching because you're attracted to the format and not to the meaning.

You see what I mean? What's another example? Failing to repay someone who has helped you.

Failing in gratitude. Someone has helped you a lot and you don't show them gratitude or you don't help them back somehow. If you get a chance, if you get a good chance to help them back and you fail, then you've failed in this.

How did these get chosen? Why are these particular ones important? An enlightened being, a being who can see all of your future, a billion years from now, a million years from now, can see what's going to happen to you 10,000 years from now, precisely, has made this list.

Basically, you want something to concentrate on? You want to know the best imprints to create a Buddha paradise for yourself? Keep these.

That's how this list got made. It wasn't made by some Joe Schmo. It was made by an enlightened being who knew that these are what you should concentrate on.

Sometimes they don't seem so important to us. That's because we're not enlightened beings. Others.

There are some other bodhisattva items. Let me see. Let me count them.

142. 17. And they're divided into two categories, but you don't need to know that.

So basically, if you're going to get serious about your bodhisattva list, it's 120 different items. That'll last you for 20 days. You'll get through those in 20 days.

And if you add the 22 from up here, it gets you through about 23, 24 days. In 24 days, you'll be going through another cycle. Got it?

Is that clear to everybody? Because I got some blank looks. All right.

You will get this list tonight. You're allowed to try to keep it with no obligation. You don't have to commit to them.

If you'd like to commit to them, you can do that later. If you've ever taken any kind of initiation from any lama, anywhere, even if it was for half an hour and you never knew even what was going on, then you have these 142 already. And you should know it.

To take an initiation and to not know them and to take an initiation and to break any one of them is extremely serious karma. It's very, very bad karma. It will cause major problems in your life.

If you wonder why you're getting sick, if you wonder why you're getting hassled at work, if you wonder why the West Side Highway hasn't been fixed yet, and I'm not kidding, it's something to do with your vow. You are ignorantly breaking something. It's not your fault.

They breeze through town, they do the initiation, and they leave. But if you've ever taken initiation, you already have 142 items that you are required by that initiation to check on an hourly basis. Period.

And it's a grave misservice not to teach people that and not to teach them what they've agreed to. And I hope when Buddhism in America flowers that we never get into this. I hope that we can do it properly.

And if you ever get to where you're giving initiations, and I hear that you haven't taught your students the 142 commitments they just took, which if they break, they will have horrible suffering, I will personally come and yell at you. Really. It's a very bad car for me to criticize, and I am criticizing.

If I do it meaninglessly or if I do it with bad feeling in my heart, it's not. It's very, very improper. And it's a disservice to the people who take those initiations if you don't teach them what they agreed to.

By the way, if you did take initiation, you have another list. And they impart it to you in secret. That's the only way you get a secret list.

If it didn't happen to you yet, keep your other ones nice, because that will force it to happen. You see what I mean? By the way, that's the only way to get it to happen.

You can't go and say, please give them to me. I want them. It doesn't work that way.

They are granted in secret. And it will never happen if you don't keep your book on these other ones. It just never happens.

Okay? If somebody comes and gives them to you the other way, they're not secret. And you didn't get them.

Okay? I don't care if they sit and explain to you twelve volumes from the Tanjir on secret teachings. If it's not done in the proper way, you will never get it.

And it will never work. Good. Okay.

How many we got here? I can't tell you the vows. I'm not going to tell you the vows.

But I can tell you the general categories. I'd be happy to tell you the general categories. First one is behavior towards your secret teacher.

Who's your secret teacher? You'll know it when they come to you. How many?

By the way, this is rough, okay? I mean, you can count them different ways. Thirty-four.

These are the most serious in the secret teachings. Serious how. Serious why.

If you finally get them from somebody, and if you keep them seriously, if you keep them very, very well, you must enter a paradise in this lifetime. You will. Okay?

Bingo. Okay? Really.

Seriously. That's how serious it is. If you screw up on those, you will not and cannot.

So it's a very serious thing. When you're ready, they'll come to you. And they have to judge if you're going to be able to do it or not.

And that's a very, very... It's almost like deciding whether someone's going to live or die. It is, actually.

And from the Lama's side, it's extremely delicate. They have to judge whether you're going to make it or not. Because if you blow it, you die.

If you don't blow it, you enter a Buddha paradise. So it's a very, very serious decision on the Lama's part. And trust me, they don't do it in groups of 5,000 people.

Alright? Secondly, major items is 15. Secondary items, 11.

What we call the pledges of the 5. And if you don't know what 5, you're not supposed to know. There you go.

48. And then what we call the... I'll call it the Mother 8.

It's a code word, okay? Which actually add up to 11. What's the total there?

I don't know. 45, 60, 71. 119, something like that?

Is that right? Something like that. 239, 251.

I'd like 6 or 7 off, doesn't matter. If you've taken an initiation, any of the most common initiations, you already have those 119. And you are required to examine them throughout the day.

By that initiation. In addition to the other 142. Alright?

If you're a monk, I've added them up. It took me a while. 484 separate commitments.

What I'm saying is if you're very serious to take an initiation, if you don't keep them, extremely serious karma. Very, very, very serious karma. If you don't know them, you can't keep them.

And I would say only 1 out of 50 Americans who ever takes initiation has any clue what the vows are. What they're committed to. It's really dangerous.

What about the positive aspect? If someone comes and grants you the secret list, and if you keep it, if you track it sweetly, and it's not a big deal. It's not like you have to eat nails or anything like that.

It's not like that. They're very friendly, very nice, very happy vows. Sweet vows.

Sweet, deep, holy, sacred, pleasant, beautiful, radiant vows. Really. And if you keep them, you have to enter a Buddha paradise in this life.

Sorry. They're really, really nice. And they're really sweet.

And you have to learn them. And you have to get the correct instruction on them. And they work.

So that's all. If you have all of those, it's like 250 something, you would go through a cycle every 40 days or 45 days. Like every 40 or 45 days, you'd be working on the same six again.

You see what I mean? So spread it out like that. 250 divided by 6 is like 45.

So in that case you'd be checking, at 7 o'clock you'd be checking number 1. At 9.30 you'd be checking number 45. This is if you have a secret initiation.

At noon you'd be checking number 90. At 2.30 you'd be checking number 135.

[Speaker 2]
Like that.

[Speaker 1]
And within 40 days, you'd be back to that again. You see? The next day you do number 2, number 46, number 91.

You see what I mean? It's just 45 apart each day. Got it?

Anybody doesn't get it? Because I had problems. I had, like, some people I taught this in California, and they were trying to check 484 vows every day.

I've done it. I've done it. I started at 3.30 in the morning. I just wanted to see if it was possible. I got up at 3.30, I started checking. I stopped at around 11 p.m. I did not finish. And I had nothing else to do the whole day. I ate, you know. You can't do it.

You can't do it carefully in one day. Spread it out, stop six times a day, and check them. We didn't cover the right-hand page, and then we're finished, okay?

What's the right-hand page look like? By the way, it looks like a lot of numbers and a lot of details. It's not a problem.

It's fun. It's a beautiful list of stuff. It's really, really...

If you try it, you'll enjoy it. Okay? I heard a beautiful French monk, Mathieu Ricard, a great monk, he had an interview, and they said, don't you find it a hassle to have all these restrictions on your life?

You can't do all this stuff. He said, forget it. You don't get it.

These things are like wings. I can fly with this stuff. Every day that I keep them, every day that I check them and I improve myself, I get happier and happier.

Amazing things are happening in my life, and I know what's happening. I know it's because of these things. Forget it.

Don't take this thing of... I don't know where it went wrong in the West, where these nuns, monks are frustrated, unhappy, bottled up. It's not like that.

It's really not like that. If you're keeping them and if you understand them and if you're tracking them, it's incredibly happy. You'll be happy all the time.

You'll be really happy all the time. It'll be very rare that you have even a bad mood. And it's nice.

It's really nice. And then, by the way, you're collecting this extraordinary karma. Imprints are being put into your mind and your actual physical reality around you is changing.

And your body is changing. Your body changes. You see what I mean?

And your intellect changes. You get smarter and you know it. You see what I mean?

And things are brighter and you understand things better and you can do things you could never do before. It's fantastic. Your mind is empty.

Your mind is the creation of your karma. And if you clean up your karma by doing the book, everything starts to change. You see what I mean?

The body physically begins to change. It's not improper to say that a Buddhist who is practicing properly will get younger. You see what I mean?

It's a gradual thing. It's not like you just don't die one day. You see, it's a gradual thing.

Your body starts to feel better and actually starts... the aging reverses itself. Well, I never saw anybody do that.

Well, you wouldn't because you didn't keep your book. Okay? And I'm not kidding.

Okay, I'm not kidding. That doesn't prove anything. It makes sense that you wouldn't see it.

I'm trying to say you would never see it. It's one thing to have it happen to you requires a certain kind of extraordinary good behavior. To see it happen to somebody else requires almost that much good behavior.

See what I'm saying? To see it happen to yourself requires an extraordinary amount... To see yourself walk on water requires an extraordinary amount of good imprint.

And you can do it. To see another person walk on water requires a very similar amount of imprint. So don't go around telling me that because you didn't see it, it's not happening.

Okay? Of course you didn't see it. You're always turning the wrong way when it's happening.

There's a movie called Maid in Heaven. You've got to see it. There's an angel trying to catch this guy and he keeps turning away at exactly the wrong time.

Through his life he runs into her like five times. She's about to meet him and he's always turning to look at the magazine or something. It's like that.

You'll never get it. All these things will be happening all around you and you'll be blissfully ignorant of them. You'll say, Oh, the world is crappy.

I'm getting old. You don't have to do it. It works.

It really works. Okay. Right page.

Long. Your pen comma ran out. Anybody want a chewable oven?

Still works. Okay. Last thing.

If you are ordained or if you've taken any kind of lifetime vows, I suggest you track them separately.

[Speaker 2]
Okay.

[Speaker 1]
So I have 253 monks vows. A fully ordained nun has 364 vows. To me, I'm not going to wait until I cycle through it every six months or something.

So I do my monks vows too. If you're ordained, I suggest take the major ones once a day. And when you get down to the minor ones, which I'm not supposed to tell you, which are like this being like that, okay?

That's like vow number 238, okay? I can't do that. I'm not supposed to do that.

I mean, I'm not supposed to walk around with my shirt tail hanging out or something. Sorry. When I get down to those, I do three a day or something.

Okay. And when you get down to the minor ones, you cycle them faster. But I reserve that for, if you've taken separate vows of ordination or novice vows or even lifetime vows, I would keep them there, okay?

Most people, it doesn't affect you. Here I keep my meditations. There's an AM and a PM.

At least once a day you must do a major meditation period. At least an hour. At least once a day.

Why? If you do not do this once a day for an hour, you will never see emptiness. Period.

Impossible. Can't be done. You'll never see emptiness directly if you don't meditate at least an hour a day.

Period. Can I skip every two days? Can I skip every fourth day?

No. It doesn't work. You have to do it.

So AM or PM, I record it. I say, I did meditate. I say who I was with.

I say one hour with the meditated on visualization. And I make some notes. I say, didn't go very well because I had that two goose pizza half hour before.

Maybe next time eat it an hour before. I make myself little notes about my meditational life. And you should.

Make yourself little notes like, stop sleeping two hours a day. It doesn't work when you try to meditate. And then PM.

Frankly, most Americans are too tired or too burned out or too exhausted or too distracted. I don't know of many Americans who can do an hour in the evening. But I suggest something in the evening.

Twenty minutes. Half hour. Something.

Some kind of sitting. And track it. Outside of your sadhana.

Outside of your prayer. I'm talking deep meditation. I'm talking no sense objects.

No sound. No looking at things. I'm talking samadhi.

I'm talking samadhi. Not at all. If you're doing it with your eyes closed and you've memorized the appropriate text, then that's okay.

But I'm not talking, sitting there and reciting some words that you probably know you're thinking about. I'm not talking. That does not count.

And you will not see emptiness on the basis of an hour in the morning of reciting some words. I'm not saying they're not important. They are.

And you've made a commitment to do it. That doesn't count. If you can do that same sadhana, mentally, if you can go through each step as a visualization, that does count.

She generally said so. Okay. What's this last thing here?

What if you killed somebody today but you don't cycle around to that vow for fifteen days? Okay? Okay.

Where is it going to go? Let's put it here. At the end of the day, I say at 11 p.m., like as you're about to go to sleep, now I lay me down to sleep. You know. A Buddhist has to clean their conscience before they sleep. It's very important.

You don't want to die with anything on your conscience. By the way, this two hour thing is not just random. The point is, you die clean.

Because there will come a day when one of these is going to be blank. Because you died between this one and that one. Okay?

If you don't practice secret teachings well, okay? But, otherwise, the point is to die clean. The Catholics have it right.

You know, the priest comes and says, let's clean you up before you die. Unfortunately, there's not always a priest there when the car hits you. So, the point of being a Buddhist, every two hours, you've cleaned up your conscience.

You can die happily. And one day you will die between these two. Between this one and this one, something will happen.

If you don't succeed in your practice. Alright? If you don't succeed in your practice, there will come a day when you die.

And then you'll be clean. So the point is, if you killed, if you broke a heavy one, like you killed somebody, and it's not going to cycle around for 15 days, Buddhism teaches that the power of that karma doubles every day, exponentially. You see what I mean?

The power of killing a person, by 24 hours from after you killed a person, that karma power has doubled in your mind stream. And it's quadrupled in 48 hours. And like that.

Like it goes up by exponents. Very dangerous to hold on to karma. You want to clean karma as quickly as possible.

The act of writing it down does a lot to remove bad karma. It does a lot. So you want to do it quickly.

You want to clean it quickly. So, actually, I don't wait until 11 p.m. if it's a really crappy one. You know, like if I got mad at my lama or something, it's in my book within 10 minutes or something.

Like I'm going to get my book out and write it down. So, the left side is the good side, and the right side is the bad side. And it's okay to repeat stuff from over here if it happened to hit on one of these.

You see what I mean? Like if you did get to killing that day, and you did kill somebody, it should be in two places. Negative over here, and right side over here.

That's okay. That's fine. That's alright.

That's alright. But this is reserved for the biggies of the day, whether or not it related to those six on the list. These are reserved for the biggies of the day.

Last thing. I mean, I'm not going to teach it tonight. You have to learn purification.

You can buy Tricycle magazines. It's on the newsstands now. There's a clear article on there.

Actually, there's an article that I took. We took from a sutra, and it tells you how to purify bad karma. So, it's in there, and you can just do that.

That's very important. For the very big ones, you should learn there's four steps to purifying karma. You can remove bad karma from your mind before it ripens, and you have to learn how to do that.

The other thing is this. I strongly recommend that you get a Dharma buddy. Very strongly recommend that you have someone close to you in your life, and preferably someone who's around you a lot, like someone who's around you much of the day, and make a deal with them that you will help each other check, that you'll pull out your books together, and support each other, and read them to each other.

Find somebody who's discreet, and somebody that you're close to, and help each other. Get a buddy. To do with your book on a buddy system is very, very good.

On the days that you don't feel like it, they will help you pull out your book and get you going. On the days that they don't feel like it, you can pull out the book for them and get them going. It's very, very good to have someone.

I used to do this with someone on the West Coast. We used to call each other once a week and read it to each other, and say, we would pick a day, and say, read me Tuesday. You say, oh, not Tuesday.

Any other day. You'll find that you're kidding. It's uncanny ability to pick the worst day.

And then you read Tuesday to each other. It has to be someone who you're really sweet, Dharma friend, and it's really, really good. Find somebody that you can do your book together with.

At least once a week, check and read each other. And what you'll find is that, I'll tell you the common problems. One is that you just don't do it.

Which is really stupid, because you won't get to a Buddha paradise. Second one is that you'll skip a couple. Your book will look like blanks here and there.

The other one is that you wait until 11 o'clock and you do all six. Which is what Tunduk has degenerated into, and I'm not embarrassed to say it. This idea of doing it once a day or twice a day.

The name is Tunduk. That's a corruption. You're supposed to stop Tunduk and check.

And your book shouldn't get like that. It shouldn't get to be like midnight, and you're sitting there filling out all six. And believe me, you'll do a really lousy job at midnight.

You won't remember everything. Then what happens? That imprint gets put in your mind and it stays there.

And if you don't write it down, it gets much more powerful. So you have to look, you have to check. You have to stop every few hours.

Last thing, I find it very useful to do it before I do, I do it in the breaks between the day. Like before I eat lunch, I do it. Or before I take coffee break, I do it.

I do it just before I go to sleep. You know, connected, I like to do it before I do something important. Like if I'm going to go into an important meeting, just to get the good karma that I can take it into the meeting with me, I do my book.

You see what I mean? Or just before I teach a class, I do my book. Or just before I meet with some students, I do my book.

Or something like that. Just before you do a meditation, do your book. By the way, you will never have good meditation if you don't keep this book.

People don't understand that. You hear about these yogis in these deep meditative states, floating off of their cushions, entering level after level of highest bliss. They exist.

You can get there. But what people don't get, it's a very, very important thing in Buddhist teachings. Your conscience has to be clear to meditate properly.

People don't get that. People don't teach that. And it's true.

If you want to become a great yogi, if you want to fly off your cushion, if you want to enter the twelfth level of samadhi, of extraordinary, exceptional, third quality bliss, your conscience has to be clear. If you have any kind of low-level radiation bad karma, I'm not talking about trying to kill your mother or something like that. I'm talking about a slight gossip about some other student in the class.

True or not true. Keep that up for a day and your meditation will be crappy for sure. Do two or three of those in the morning.

Try to meditate in the evening. Forget it. And you're always going to wonder, how come I can't meditate?

Why is my mind distracted? I don't get it. I sit with those other people.

They seem to be in seventh heaven. And I can't even keep my mind on my breath for like five seconds. What is it?

It's your conscience. Is it major bad deeds? No.

It's the little things. It's the little low-level radiation. That's what kills a human being.

If you don't do it, you don't have to die. If you do do it, you will have to die. It's your choice.

Buddhist ethics is save-your-ass ethics. Mainly. The big beneficiary of all this is you.

If the world all lived this way, it would be a really happy world. That's a by-product. But you will never be happy unless you keep this.

You never. Impossible. Yes?

[Speaker 2]
I'm sure there is a better way to appreciate it.

[Speaker 1]
What I mean is like this. Don't forget you have light. You go from the vows of not hurting people to the ones of trying to help people to the secret ones which are trying to help people by reaching your own Buddha paradise in this lifetime.

So, to spend the whole day in number one, it doesn't give you the... It's nice to take one of not hurting people and a couple from trying to get to Buddhahood fast and then a couple from Buddhahood in this lifetime. And it gives you the right mix.

Otherwise, for example, when you get to the last eight secret vows, it's very weird to check all of them in one day. Try it. The feeling is strange.

And then you go from that to the next day to not gossiping or something. It's just totally... It's too heavy.

It also gives you that flavor of... That list I made is not a list of priorities. It's not the case that the secret vows are more important than the bodhisattva vows.

And it's not the case that the bodhisattva list is more important than the morality list and the ethical living list. If you think that, you don't get it. It's a building.

The ethical vows are the ground floor. The bodhisattva vows are the second floor. The secret vows are the third floor.

And if your ground floor is lousy, the whole thing will collapse. Trust me. It's built like that.

If somebody comes up to you and says, monk vows are not so important. I've got secret vows. It's like the most ignorant thing you could ever say.

You know what I mean? It's a building that you're constructing. And the vows not to hurt other people on a small, concrete, day-to-day basis are the whole structure of the secret teachings that allow you to become a Buddha in this lifetime.

You see what I mean? So don't ever think that the D's are more important than these or something like that. These don't work.

The tantric vows don't work at all if you don't keep the little ones at your office. Get it? If you're stealing pens at your office, if you're making unauthorized phone calls, of which I am the expert, you can't keep the higher vows.

They don't work. It's very subtle. If you are bad-mouthing people at work, even on a very minor level, your secret vows will not work.

That's the way it works. And you can check it by doing this. And then you'll see.

There are probably several thousand Americans, there are probably ten thousand Americans who have taken secret, who have the secret list. I can't tell for sure, but I have doubts that almost anyone is getting the result that they're supposed to get, which is that aging process stops and reverses itself. You start meeting angels on 6th Street, out on the sidewalk or in a cafe somewhere.

And I'm not talking, oh, I think I'm talking to come up to you and tell you what's going to happen three days from now and say, check it out, get back to me later. Stuff like that. Amazing stuff.

Just random people come up to you and start telling you about the teaching you got from Khen Rinpoche last weekend, directly. Stuff like that. Because you'll never know if you don't keep the ones at work and the ones in your family and the ones around your friends and the little gossip and the little bad words about somebody and the little, you know, hurting other people's property.

Don't clean the bathroom. You know, I'm not saying that I don't like to clean the bathroom downstairs, but just the act of cleaning up nicely when you walk away from someone's house. You know, washing a glass.

This is the level of morality I'm talking about. If you are careful on that level, you will reach a temporary paradise in this life. That's what I'm trying to say.

It's not these milarepa, you know, flying in the sky. That comes later. But it starts with, like, washing out a glass or cleaning up after a teaching or something.

It's not very glorious. It becomes glorious later. But those are the high spiritual deeds which thrust you into a Buddha paradise.

Very cool. Really cool. Yeah.

[Speaker 2]
Yeah. Yeah.

[Speaker 1]
No, always fill it out. Always fill it out. Three best and three worst.

Whether or not it came up in the list today.

[Speaker 2]
Okay?

[Speaker 1]
So, and Buddhism, I tell you this, as a Westerner, growing up in a Judeo-Christian society, a culture, you tend to beat yourself up too much. You know? Buddhism says, Buddhism demands equal air time for examining your good part.

You know? You're required in Buddhism. And I'm not just saying this because psychiatrists say you should do that.

The Buddha said, you have to give your good part equal air time. You must spend as much time on what you did right as on what you did wrong. Now, even as I speak, because I grew up in this culture, I'm, like, emphasizing all the lousy stuff, right?

I should have given equal time to, you know, the good side. What's the closest you came to not breaking this thing? Did you help anyone?

Did you protect someone's life? Doesn't mean you push someone out of the way of an oncoming truck. No.

It means you handed a vitamin C to someone with love this morning. And if you keep up that level of morality or ethical living, you will enter a Buddha paradise in this lifetime. That's what I'm saying.

It's not the pushing people out of the way of an oncoming car or something like that. It's protecting life on an immediate level with the people around you on a personal level. On a micro level.

And getting your life, the ethical part of your life, down to the fine points. And then you get pushed. Then your karma forces you to see all this stuff happening.

Because everything's empty. You see, those imprints will force you to see, when I hold up that white cylinder next time, you might see some glorious, shining light. You know what I mean?

It depends. There is no pan here. There's nothing here.

You know, what I'm holding up depends on you. It could be anything. I could be stuck in Libany and there's a plane coming out and entering your heart and giving you total compassion or something.

Really. If you had the right karma, you wouldn't see a plain old pan. And you can get there.

That's the neat thing. If things weren't empty, everything would be impossible. But luckily, things are empty.

Did somebody else? Yeah. Michael.

Well, if you have a secret list, if you've been granted a secret list, it's 120 plus 22 plus... No, it's 45.

[Speaker 2]
It's about 40.

[Speaker 1]
It's about 45 apart. Yeah. So on Monday, you do 1, 45, 90, 135, 180, and 225.

On Tuesday, you do 2, 46, 91, 136. And within 40 days, you're back on 1, 45, 90, 135. I get up after 7 if I'm sane.

I'm saying, I usually give myself an hour to collect some bad deeds. By that time, I've usually thought of people I don't like. You get good at it.

You get... By the way, these can be pre-printed in the future, but I think it's more fun, the exercise of... I do it during breakfast, usually.

I'm sitting there, and I eat some Cheerios, and then I write out my vows, from the list. And just the exercise of doing that, it helps you set your mind on, OK, these are the ones I'm going to concentrate on today. I'm sure in the future, when Buddhism in America gets big, there'll be all these pre-printed books, and if you love somebody, you buy them a gold leaf one, and it won't be as nice.

We are in the sweet days of Buddhism. We are the pioneers. Later, when your parents force you to do it, it won't be the same.

You can break plenty of them.

[Speaker 2]
No.

[Speaker 1]
Go back a few days. Go back a few days. Or, don't feel shy to free associate.

Absolutely. The fourth chapter of the Abhidharmaka Kosha says, lele jita naso kye, deni sempadambe kye. Opening line.

Lele jita naso kye. You want to know where New York City came from? It came from your mind, and your past actions.

The worlds of the galaxy come from the actions of the beings who live in those galaxies. Opening line of the fourth chapter. Deni sempadambe kye.

The essence of karma is thinking. I call it karma concentrate. The essence is thought itself.

Thought itself is karma. You can collect karmas at the rate of 65 per finger snap. You can have 65 discreet mental impulses in that much time, and each one is a karma.

And each one will have its own consequences. It's scary. I mean, when you really study karma, we're covering six out of hundreds of thousands that you had during the day.

Yeah.

[Speaker 2]
Yeah.

[Speaker 1]
Well, I'm saying that... I made the statement that the sun comes up because of your karma. Absolutely.

Okay? Absolutely. And I'm not kidding.

I mean... According to Buddhism, the fact that the sun comes up over this planet called Earth at a certain distance, with a certain heat, and a certain amount of light is caused by a good deed, if you like the sun, that we three billion people did together. Three billion people who are living on this planet at this time, who enjoy the benefits of the sun coming up, have created that sun through some action that they undertook together.

And that's... Buddhism teaches that. How does it work?

You have to study karma. But it's true.

[Speaker 2]
Okay?

[Speaker 1]
Well, isn't the sun there for anybody to see? No, there's people locked up who can't see the sun, who are in prisons. There's people who are blind.

And there's people who just died yesterday. And they don't get to see the sun. You see what I mean?

The sun is not self-existent. You know, it looks like... It's so big.

You know, it seems like big things should be self-existent. It's not that. It is a karmic ripening.

And if you experience the sun at any given time during the day, you are using up good karma as you... As it shines on your skin, you are using up the karma to see the sun. And it will end.

You will die. You will have your last day of sunlight. Wake up!

Of course. Of course the sun is a ripening of karma for you. And of course there will be a last day when you feel the sunlight on your skin.

Don't think it's self-existent. Don't think it's your God-given right to feel the sun. It's not at all.

You know what I mean? It's a temporary result of an imprint in your mind. And like all other imprints, it will slowly be wiped off your mind.

And there will be a last day that you see the sun on this planet. It's not at all self-existent. And it's not at all anything but a projection of your mind.

You got to get used to that. You don't even have the right to have your name. You see?

Your name will be stripped from you. Much less your body. You see what I mean?

Your name will be taken from you. People won't remember your name in a certain amount of years. You think you even have the right to that or something like that.

Or your body. It is of course a karmic impression. And it wears out because the karma wears out.

And that's called death. And it's reversible. And that's the cool thing about Buddhism.

But you'll never know if you don't keep your book. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.

You are allowed, encouraged, required by Buddhism. You're absolutely, the ethical living list and the bodhisattva list, you are welcome to try to follow it without any kind of initiation, without any kind of teachings, without any kind of permission. You don't need it.

The secret list is delivered to you by your secret lama. And that's the only way you can get it. And they're not going to do it until you're ready.

How do you get ready? What makes you ready? You keep the other two lists.

It's pretty easy. Keep the other two lists and there won't be one lama. They'll be like knocking on your door.

They'll be crowding into your room. Hey, I got a list for you. No wait, I got a list for you.

Seriously, that's what produces those lists. It's also a karmic impression. I don't know, who has the first two lists?

Is it here? Did it make it here? Do you have enough for everybody?

Okay. I don't know. Anyway, there'll be a list handed out at the door of the first two sets.

Try it. You will get discouraged after a while. You'll say, I would like to skip a day.

I even get phone calls. Could I skip today? Don't call me.

It's not for me. It's not an approval thing. It's not for God or anybody.

It's only for you. You see what I mean? If you keep it, those amazing things will happen, I swear to God.

As I stand here, God's cutting me dead. It works. It really, really works.

And it's amazing. I mean, things you always dreamed of, things you always heard of, I swear they will happen to you. If you do not keep it, if you don't keep it daily, A, I'm sorry, two-hourly, and if you don't keep it honestly, you know, from your heart.

Be honest when you examine yourself. Okay? That, I think, I didn't mention that, but that's very, very important.

Don't bullshit. You know, don't tell us that we want to know the real stuff. You see what I mean?

I mean, don't kid yourself. Don't put down, don't put down stuff that's partly relevant when you have something that's absolutely relevant.

[Speaker 2]
Okay?

[Speaker 1]
A, but I also tell you, as an American, you know, Judeo-Christian guilt trip thing, don't put down something that's not real. You know? I mean, after you keep your book for a while, I'll tell you something.

You'll start to realize that some of the stuff you used to write was not true. You know? You'll start to realize you didn't really hurt anybody by saying that.

Or you'll start to realize that it was absolutely the right thing to be harsh with that person at that moment. You see what I mean? You'll start to realize that some of the bad things you write down were not bad at all, and it was just this Judeo-Christian thing where you wanted to feel guilty, so you wrote something.

You know? You can reject those too. So reject the dishonest ones.

Don't put down some minor thing when you've got some major thing to put down. But also, don't make up bad stuff about yourself. After a while, you'll realize I'm happy to report.

There'll come a day you'll sit there and you'll be stumped. You'll say, I know this vow. I've been tracking it for three years.

I can honestly say that in the last three days or a week, I haven't even come close to it. I can't even free-associate to something. You know what I mean?

And then you have a really good feeling. Then you're really getting ready to go to a Buddha paradise. Your mind is getting pure.

What I'm trying to say is don't start making up stuff at that point. Just admit it. You're good.

And lastly, take a lot of time to think about your good stuff. Do not live in the crap. Buddhism says you must spend equal time investigating your soul for the great things you're doing.

And you are. And Buddhism says that if you take credit for it, honest, unprideful, healthy credit for it, it's extremely powerful karma. It's very, very powerful karma to say, I'm doing this right and I know it.

And it's not considered prideful or bad karma or anything like that. It's intelligent. It's intelligent rejoicing in your own purity.

So don't be afraid to do that. I find most Americans don't feel comfortable to admit their good side. And don't be shy.

If you're doing something right, write it down and spend some time describing in your book. Oh, another thing. Don't go on too long.

Don't make half-hour entries. Why? You'll quit after two weeks.

You'll quit altogether after two weeks. You stick yourself to like a minute or two minutes. You stick yourself to a sentence or two.

If you get into this long spiel and it takes you half an hour, I guarantee you you'll quit your book in two weeks. And then you've defeated the purpose of it.

[Speaker 2]
Does it just fix what you've done wrong? Or can it be like, say, another good thing to do?

[Speaker 1]
Oh, you can free associate. Free associate on it. Yeah, it doesn't have to...

You know, respecting all dharma materials, it could mean respecting the person sitting next to me at work. You see what I mean? Once you're on the subject of respect and make it minor and make it immediate and do it.

You see what I mean? It is not something like, I swear I'll never smoke again. Or I'll never lie again.

Or, you know, I'll always get up at 4 a.m. and meditate. By the way, all that lamas say, the lineage says, you're just setting yourself up for another bad karma. Don't make those kind of commitments.

You see what I mean? Don't say, I swear I'll get up at 4 a.m. every day. Say, I'll get up at 4 a.m. tomorrow. You know what I mean? And then if you still feel like it, then write it again tomorrow. You know what I mean?

But make it very concrete and very real. And do it. And it works.

Alright? Yeah. This is tindruk.

[Speaker 2]
I mean...

[Speaker 1]
Oh, you still have to... I mean, people ask me, should I still recite tindruk? Yeah, you should.

You should still recite tindruk. The process of tindruk is reciting over 150 commitments and reviewing each of them during that time. And no one can do it that I know, that I recognize.

That doesn't mean they're not there. But you still have to... You have a commitment to recite it and you should recite it.

I'm not saying you shouldn't recite it, but this is a practical way to implement it and to get the real benefits from it. You can recite tindruk for 20 years and I did for 15 years. And frankly, I'm not embarrassed to say I didn't get much result from it because I didn't think about it.

You know what I mean? And then a lama showed me how to do this and thank you, you know. It's just really tracking your vows.

I'm not saying that you shouldn't... You should continue to keep your commitment to do that in the way you were taught to do it. But this is how it works.

Obviously, right? I mean, you sense the truth of that. You know that.

You know that to sit and recite something and not think about it for even a thousand years would probably not have much effect on you. You know what I mean? Obviously, it comes down to changing your behavior.

Becoming a pure person. And you can do it. Master Shantideva is very adamant that if you start with the small stuff, you can become a saint in this lifetime.

And if you go after these big things, you know, like I'll never lie again and forget it. You know, I'll never lie to my boss between now and fifteen minutes from now. And that, no, that's a very reasonable thing to write in your book.

Seriously. And that's how you become, that's how you purify your karma. That's how you reach a Buddha paradise.

Trust me.

[Speaker 2]
Okay?

[Speaker 1]
It works. It's not the other way. The other stuff, you know it doesn't work.

Your heart tells you that. Your heart tells you that I'm telling the truth. You hear something in my voice that I can't fake.

It works. Yeah?

[Speaker 2]
Yes.

[Speaker 1]
The same thing. Plus minus to do.

[Speaker 2]
Not a, no.

[Speaker 1]
One per day. Yeah.

[Speaker 2]
Yeah.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah. I reserve this box for a lifetime commitment. I consider my monks now so important, and also that I haven't, how shall we say, I don't want to just look at them every 20 days or something.

You see what I mean? So I actually cycle through those separately. That way I get to see one every 30 days or so.

And if you're ordained, they become second nature. I'll tell you the truth, in Seramay Monastery, 900 monks, they don't teach you vinaya until two years before you do your Geshe exam. You're not taught your vows in detail.

You don't learn the fine points of your vows until you've been 16 years in the monastic course. I would rather know them and be reviewing them every few days, cycling through them every few days. And it's really nice.

It works. It's very beautiful. And it becomes second nature.

All right, we'll stop there. Please, I beg you, keep the book. It's really cool.

Really nice things happen to you. And if you don't, then, you know, I don't know. It's sad.

But keep it. Just the great things will happen. Amazing things.

All the things you ever hoped for. Everything you ever dreamed of, and a little bit better. Seriously, honestly, can happen to you.

All right? All right, we'll say some prayers and then finish.

[Speaker 2]
Thank you.