Лучшая история времени (Геше Майкл Роуч), занятие 3

[Speaker 1]
Hi, like 10 minutes ago nobody was here, I was very nervous, now I'm nervous because everyone's here. So, we're going to pick up where we left off yesterday. The purpose of this three days of talks, actually there's a movie that just came out, I guess a week ago called, is it called?

A Theory of Everything or something like that, and it's a story of Stephen Hawking's early life. And, you know, Hawking is the latest of a generation of, of several generations of physicists who are exploring quantum mechanics, which is how do tiny pieces of stuff behave, electrons, protons, neutrons, quarks within a, leptons within an atom. And then, they've got this really good idea that they, if they understood how little tiny things work and busted them up and just watched how they broke apart, then they might understand how larger things work, like our universe, and it might help them understand the birth of this universe, and then that would help them understand where we all came from.

And his book kind of, it kind of attracts me because, first of all, it's a great book, it's called A Brief History of Time, and it was five years on the London Times bestseller list, which is a record. I've heard someone say it's also the least finished book in history, meaning people started into it and kind of couldn't finish, you know. I heard his editor said, advised him, when he first submitted the book it had a lot of equations in it, and the editor told him, for every equation you put in this book you're going to lose 10,000 readers.

So, he cut it down to one equation, which is E equals mc squared, I have no idea what that means. But, I like the book, I think it's a great book, and I wonder in my heart, why are so many people interested in a book like that? Because it's a difficult book, and why did that become a bestseller?

And I think it's because all of us would like to have some explanation of where we came from, you know, where did life come from? There's a deep-seated feeling inside of each of us that we want to know why we were put here, and what we're supposed to do here. I think the popularity of his book is parallel to the popularity of super, what do you call, superhero movies, and you can count like ten of them right?

Iron Man, Superman, Spider-Man, three Transformer movies, Wonder Woman, Batman, Green Lantern, Wolverine, etc. Okay? They say in Hollywood if you make a superhero movie you're going to make money.

The three Transformer movies in which a nerd gets the three great goals of every young American male, three times. What are they? First is a good car, he gets a Camaro, that also turns into this robot, and then he gets a blonde, the cutest girl in high school, and then he saves the world, in that order of importance.

And then, you know, and those movies together have made over a billion dollars, okay? And why are we so attracted to that? I think we have this deep, deep yearning to know how did we come here, and what are we supposed to be doing here, you know?

And then, you know the Bible gives one explanation, the Buddhist sutras give another explanation, but in the end, all of us accept what science says. We believe in science, science has guided us. We believe in science because cell phones work, laptops work, cars work, airplanes work, you know, and science is also kind of like God in that it could blow us up, it could kill us all tomorrow or tonight, you know?

If nuclear war was unleashed in the world, we would all die, and our world would die. And the nuclear weapon was invented by a man standing at a blackboard, Einstein, and just thinking this might work. When they blew up the first one, they weren't sure it wouldn't ignite the whole atmosphere.

They didn't know for sure if it wouldn't end life on earth, but they did it anyway, right? So, we have—so, science has become sort of like a very powerful presence in our life, and we look to science for answers. And it's not a bad thing, you know?

I think science has a good methodology, we're going to talk about it today, called the scientific method. The system of, I don't know, 18 components or steps that you go through to decide if something is correct or not in science, these are very healthy and very good. And so, I think we turn to science to find out why we're here, how did we get here, what happened.

Fewer and fewer people turn to spiritual books to find out where the world came from, and more and more people buy books like The Brief History of Time, and that's why it's on the bestseller list for five years, because everyone wants to know, you know, what the heck is going on. They even made a movie, right? What the bleep is going on, or something like that.

So, our goal today—there are certain fundamental paradoxes that science has crashed into, you know? There are things that can be observed, there are events that science cannot explain, okay? And we covered one of them up to now, okay?

Yesterday we went into atomic theory, which started a long time ago, it started with Aristotle. Aristotle outlined an idea of four elements that were present in all physical matter. And, you know, if you're like me, you think it's kind of foolish, you know, that someone would believe that there was a little fire in the seat that you're sitting on, and there was a little water, and there was a little air, and there was a little earth.

And that's what makes the wood feel different from the metal of your chair, okay? And we think that it seems kind of simplistic, and we have this great habit of all generations of mankind, that we think the last few generations were really stupid, because they didn't understand what we understand. But, you know, sit down with an American, a normal American, and ask them to explain why a satellite stays in the sky or something, and then you'll really hear some crazy superstitious things, okay?

We can't really, most of us don't understand how the things work, okay? So, one part I skipped yesterday was where the atomic theory came from. Aristotle, it was proposed just before Aristotle, it was proposed in 400 BC, he lived 325 say.

Alexander was active in India in 325 BC, and his teacher, Aristotle, the idea was expressed in Greek philosophy a generation before him, that perhaps things were made of atoms, and he rejected it in favor of the theory of the four elements, okay? And I thought, just for interest, you know, the theory of the four elements is very popular in Buddhism, in a system called the Abhidharma, which, the greatest classic of the Abhidharma that's used nowadays was written 17 centuries ago. The original books of Abhidharma were written down by Maudgalyayana in the time of the Buddha, okay?

So, and those describe the four elements. So, we didn't get to that yesterday, I'm going to mess up, Tim. Can you find the four elements thing?

I don't know. I'll tell you, I'll give you a five minute thing about the four elements, okay? Then we'll go on to problems with the idea of atoms, okay?

Which are similar. So, we tend to think, oh, Buddhist philosophers were dumb, they thought the world was flat. There are two conflicting presentations in the Buddhist scriptures.

The Kalachakra Tantra says that the world is built around a cylindrical mountain, cone-shaped mountain, and then the Abhidharma says it's built around a square mountain called Sumeru. And there's a very interesting idea, which I'll throw at you, I'll plant a seed in your head, you know. Pabongka Rinpoche, who was the teacher of Thich Nhat Hanh, and who also taught my teacher, and Thich Nhat Hanh was the teacher of the current Dalai Lama, he says in his book, that's a proof, the fact that there are two presentations in Buddhism of the very shape of the planet that we live on.

And you could also say in Christianity, the differences between the synoptic Gospels, okay, Mark, Matthew and Luke, even with the crucifixion, the accounts are totally different. For example, the last words of Jesus are given differently in the two of the most important books of Christianity. And then that doesn't seem to bother people, you know.

Whether he said, I forget what it is, I give my soul up to God, or whether he said, why have you forsaken me, which are opposite. It's interesting that in Buddhism we have the same thing. We have, but in Buddhism, Pabongka Rinpoche, who's your great-grandfather in the lineage, said that this is evidence of where things are really coming from, okay.

The fact that there can be different accounts by different people of the same thing should be encouraging, okay, because it reflects what we believe. And we'll get to that later, okay. So, just briefly, the four elements are SA CHU ME LUNG, SA means earth, CHU means water, ME means fire, LUNG means wind.

Sometimes later presentations add NAM KA, which means the ether in the Greek presentations, or space, and then sometimes we add NAM CHE, which means consciousness. And in the Chinese system, the system as it came from the east rather than the south of Tibet, adds what? Wood, okay.

And then Tibetans Buddhists have used wood as one of the five elements in the presentation of what, do you know? How they count the years, okay. So, years are combinations of twelve animals and five elements.

So, you might say, he was born in the wood ox year of the eleventh cycle of twelve year cycles, like that. So, but there are four main elements in the ancient books of Buddhism, and they make the chair you're sitting on the way it is, okay. And they're not dummies, the Abhidharma is not stupid, okay.

And listen to this, okay. They say, don't mistake the elements, which are called bhūta in Sanskrit, with what the elements produce, which are called bhāvata, okay. So, in Sanskrit you vṛdhi, or you strengthen the vowel, and it becomes a derivative of that thing.

So, citta means mind and caita means mental functions, okay. So, bhūta means the four great elements. They're called great elements because they create all things, and then bhāvata is the chair you're sitting on, okay.

The thing with jungyur in Tibetan, that which produced by the elements. So, what are these four elements that are in all things? The Abhidharma is careful to say, they are not the visible things that you see, okay.

Don't think that we're stupid, and we think that the element of earth is some brown thing that's under your feet. Don't think that we think the element of the sky is a blue thing above your head, okay. These are not the elements, these are results of the elements.

These are the results of combinations of different elements. But the four elements are what we call in physics fundamental forces or fundamental interactions. In physics there are the four, right?

We did them yesterday, gravitation, electromagnetic, weak nuclear forces, and strong nuclear forces. So, the four elements, the Abhidharma is careful to say, are not the manifestations of their energies, they are the energies themselves, okay. So, that's very cool.

The four elements in classical Buddhism are the forces, the four forces, which create all physical matter, and they exist in all physical matter. If you're interested, and you want to go deeper... And now I forgot.

Oh yeah, they also describe how molecules are created, okay. So, molecules are combinations of atoms, and even in western science, there have to be compatible outer shells, valence shells on the electron shells, for atoms to bond into molecules. But it's very interesting, in Buddhism they do describe molecules, and they say every molecule of physical matter should have at least eight atoms in it, okay.

So, every basic bonding, and you can go up to more than that, much more than that, like the atomic numbers, okay, in western science. But every molecule of stuff in the chair that you're sitting on, and what was the example we were working on? Your partner, okay?

The body and face of your partner is there, okay? We're discussing the molecules in your partner's face, okay? We're trying to get at applying the ultimate theories of where all things come from to the things that matter in your life, you know?

Why do you get diseases? Why is your husband cranky today, you know? Why can't you pay off your credit cards, okay?

If all events in the universe should be explainable if we can understand atoms, okay? So, we're not just talking some theory, alright? When you get out of here today, you should be better able to deal with your life, with real stuff in your life, that's the idea, that's the only reason to do this, okay?

That's the only reason to talk about it. So, Abhidharma says every molecule in the chair under you has at least eight subatomic particles, okay? Four are the four elements, okay?

Why? Because they each have a different function. The element of earth is the fundamental force of cohesion, okay?

So, earth makes things hard. The hardness in the chair that you're sitting on means that it has more earth than water. If it had more water than earth, it would be a river or something like that, okay?

So, there are atoms, there are subatomic particles of the energy, the fundamental force of earth, which is cohesive, right? It keeps things, it, what do you call it? Retains things and prevents them from dissolving, okay?

And then the fundamental force of water, sometimes that's referred to also as gathering, or keeping things in drops, okay? But also, this definition is the fact that things can be wet and flowing, okay? So, each element in the classical presentation of Buddhism has two descriptors.

So, SA is the SA BZHIN THEG PA, SA BZHIN THEG PA is means, it's, what do you call it? It's hard and it supports things, it keeps them up. And then water is NAN CHING SHER BA, which means it's wet and it flows.

And then fire is SA BZHIN THEG PA, it's hot and it burns things. And wind is YANG CHING YOD PA, which means it's light in weight and it tends to be motile, it moves like the wind, okay? So, if those elements are, those elements are in all things, all molecules have subatomic particles of these four elements, okay?

So, the chair has some degree of wetness, okay? And if it lost that wetness, it would split apart, the wood would split apart. So, if this, you leave these chairs for 20 years or 30 years, they will split apart, they will dry out, they are losing water molecules all the time, okay?

And they are hard because the earth element is there, otherwise they would fall apart, okay? The earth element is keeping them in one piece. But, there is also this thing called entropy, what's entropy?

It's the ultimate, it's the idea that all things which are clumped together eventually will fall apart, okay? And the universe itself, according to western physicists, will gradually reach a state of entropy, where all the atoms are just equally spaced out, okay? And everything will be dust, you know, dust floating in the black of the void, and that's called maximum entropy.

When we reach maximum entropy, all stuff has dissolved and is equally far apart now, like dust in the wind, right? And it's an interesting idea because what happened before maximum entropy, according to western physicists, at the beginning of time, 13.8 billion years ago, give or take, I think it's 0.2 billion years, all matter was contained in a single point. And then there was the cosmic egg, according to Monsignor Lamartre, who was a catholic priest, and later his cosmic egg was renamed the Big Bang, okay?

And people still accept that, scientists still accept that. So, what they say happened at the beginning of time, measurable time, was that all stuff in the universe was contained in a single point of infinite mass, okay? And then it blew up.

But when it blew up, it didn't blow up smoothly, and some parts blew up bigger than other parts blew up. So, things clumped together, okay? So, if you want, if you don't want to call it a singularity event or something like that, you could just say stuff clumped together.

Because in the original few seconds, three or four seconds of the beginning of the universe as we know it, some stuff was closer to other stuff, and it has stayed that way. So, things clumped into galaxies, other things clumped into stars, other things clumped into planets. But in the end, the Buddhist would say, the early Buddhist would say, the element of wind, the tendency towards entropy or dissolution will result in a universe where it's all dust, equally far apart, and it's heat death, it's totally cold, it'll be absolute zero, okay?

If there weren't the four elements, that would happen faster, okay? The four elements are working on your chair to keep the atoms together, and if they weren't there, your butt would hit the floor, okay? Let's put it in normal language.

All atoms according to Buddhism must have at least four other subatomic particles, and they are the objects of four of the five senses, okay? In the Heart Sutra, what? WUSOSHO, how do you say that?

MIG MED NAG MED NAG MED CAN MED LUS MED YI MED SU MED DRAG MED PHYIN MED DROG MED REG CAN MED PHYIN MED DOG, there are no eyes, there is no ear, there is no ... we go down the body in Buddhism. No eyes, no ears, no nose, no taste, and no touch, okay?

Four of the five objects of those senses are considered to be atoms, present as subatomic particles, and four of them must exist in all molecules. Which one got left out and why? Do you guess?

Do you remember? Huh? Sound, yeah.

Sound is considered to, to ... what do you call it? Ephemeral, to be, to be included in all molecules, okay?

And then why would you put in all molecules things you can see, things you can hear, things you can smell, and things you can taste? Why? They must be observable, okay?

There must be something in them that your senses can interact with. So, we don't mean that the eyes should be in there, or the ear, or the nose, but the objects of the eye, and the ear, and the nose, there must be some tactile thing in all atoms, or we couldn't measure them. You couldn't see them, you couldn't hear them, you couldn't smell them, okay?

So, all molecules in Buddhism have to have at least four observable qualities, and four elements that are forces that keep them together. So, it's not a stupid, lazy, ignorant system, it's very sophisticated, okay? But, there are the same problems with this system as there are with science, the quantum mechanics.

There's behavior that we cannot explain using either system. You could, uh-oh, there goes the atoms of my cell phone. That's the llama phone, okay?

Llama has the number. So, there are, both systems are mistaken, both systems are not satisfactory. We talked about one problem yesterday, about western science, which was what?

We were talking about atoms of Fe, iron. I think it's, is it atomic number 25 or 25 or 26? And, which means it has 26 protons in the nucleus, and it has a certain unique number of electrons filling its shells, and its outermost shell not filling it, okay?

Then, if you take an atom of iron, it's gotta have parts, okay? Why? Even a helium atom has width, like an angstrom, it's one, I think it's a trillionth of a meter, but it's an angstrom wide, okay?

So, even a helium atom has width, and an iron atom has width, okay? Because it's made up of other particles, subatomic particles. For example, protons, and every proton has at least six, has exactly six quarks, okay?

Quarks, okay? Alright? But when you, now get this, okay?

Try to, I'm sorry it's Sunday afternoon and this is boring, okay? When you crack open an iron atom, when you get down to the atom, and when you shoot something at it and break it, bust it up into its subatomic particles, right? Then it loses the quality of being iron.

Unless you can make contact with all of the quarks, okay? And electrons, and protons, and neutrons, and leptons, then that thing won't be iron anymore, and it won't be hard anymore, it will change. If you knock off one electron, you get to manganese, for example, okay?

If you knocked off, I don't know, 24, it would become helium, okay? Once you get down to its particles that make up the atom, it loses its unique identity, okay? So, that's a problem.

How does one side of the smallest thing that has an identity retain the identity of the whole? If you can only touch one of the electrons, or the outer layer of electron shells, then how could the thing be hard still, okay? Meaning, how do you clump them together into iron?

How can it be hard? How can a piece of iron be hard? Okay, that's a basic problem, okay?

When my finger touches the computer, how can I feel hardness if the atoms on the edge of my finger, the subatomic particles, are interacting with subatomic particles that don't have an identity of being iron, okay? They're not hard, yet, okay? I cannot touch all the particles at once, why?

Subatomic particles. They have a width, if they didn't have width, they would not exist, duh, okay? If they have width, I can't touch the ones in the back of the atom while I'm touching the ones in the front of the atom.

If I'm only touching the ones in the front of the atom, it can't be iron anymore, okay? Try to understand. It doesn't make sense, it's not possible.

What they think is happening cannot be happening, and they know that, they're not stupid. Scientists are the smartest people around. Now, there's another problem, okay?

I'm going to give you another problem, then we're going to solve all the problems and you can go home. But you have refreshments between there, which is good. There's another problem.

I have a video, it's a cartoon video, it's really good, you can see it on YouTube. We don't have time to show it. It's like a six minute video about what's called wave particle duality, okay?

So, I'll just tell it to you and you won't understand anything. No, you'll understand. So, there's a thing called a diffraction grating, okay?

And the early ones were feathers, bird feathers, and there were these fine filaments inside the bird feathers, and then some light could get through between the filaments, and then it would show rainbow patterns. So, that's also true of opal, for example, or other things that exhibit diffraction. So, diffraction is the splitting of light into its component elements, like we get with a prism.

So, the prism was the first thing that Newton and other people were using to split light into its component colors, okay? And then later they discovered these bird feathers. And then later they used fine wires between screws and got them really close together, and then they would send light through the slits between the feather filaments, or between the wire, the very fine wire, and then because the width of the, we call it slot, slit was so narrow, it would break light into its component colors, you know?

So, then they did these experiments, they put, they got a grating, which nowadays I think is made of silicon, fused silicon, and they cut small slits into it, and then they did an experiment, they cut one slit, they got an electron producer, like a gun, okay? Shooting out electrons like ping pong balls, okay? So, just think of a, what do you call, those play guns that shoot out ping pong balls, okay?

And then they had a piece of silicon, and they put a slit in it, and they would shoot electrons through the slit, okay? Then they would have a screen on the back, okay? Behind the slit.

And then they would observe the shape of the split. Guess what the shape of, guess what the shape of the slit was on the screen behind the grating? Exactly the shape of the slit, okay?

So, if you shoot electrons at this piece, can you show the, I think you have a single slit, somewhere in there. That's a, oh, go back. No.

There. That's a single slit, okay? So, you're shooting electrons through it, and they pass through, and they hit the blackboard, say, okay?

Which is not, it's a, it's a screen. And then, if you shoot enough electrons through the slit, the shadow, or the impression created by the electrons passing through the slit will look like the shape of the slit, okay? So, that indicates that light is moving, for example, from the sun to you, which is important, or you would die, in little tiny ping pong balls, in little tiny particles, okay?

That indicates that. Good? So far good?

Alright? You with me? If you're not, just have, just relax, and have a good snooze.

Now, if we put two slits next to each other, we would expect the image on the screen behind it to look like two slits, shaped like two slits, because ping pong balls, some would get stopped by the grating, right? And some would go through in a straight line, and we would get two slit shadows on the screen behind the grating, the diffraction grating, okay? Here's what really happens, okay?

You get a pattern like this, alright? How do you get a pattern like that? That's called a wave diffraction pattern, okay?

So, imagine you're sitting in the bathtub, I had a good week because I got to go to Nancy Karen's house, and Francis has rubber ducks, I got to play with the rubber ducks in the bathtub, and, you know, I can't do it at home because people think I'm weird, but if they're already there, if they're already there and no one's in the bathroom except me, I can like, have wars and stuff. So, you're sitting in the bathtub, up to your waist, and the water is all still, okay? And then if you plop a rubber duck over here, and you plop a rubber duck over here at exactly the same time, you have to be careful not to move too much, and then what will happen?

There'll be little ripples will come out from each duck, okay? That's why it took so long in the bathroom, they have one bathroom for 23 people. That's what I was doing, I was working on the reading, and the ripples come at each other, okay?

And then they collide, okay? They bang into each other. Some of the ripples are moving exactly opposite each other, and they cancel each other.

Like, in that little space, the water's flat, because this ripple hit this ripple, and they cancelled out, okay? And then in some places, because the ripples are circular, right? The one ripple from the one duck hits the ripple from the other duck, and they reinforce each other, and you get a tsunami ripple heading towards the edge of the bathtub, okay?

Like, you get a stronger ripple hitting the side of the bathtub just in that spot. So, there's spots on the side of the bathtub, we're going to try it later, okay? That are, the ripple hits them stronger, because it's doubled, because they're moving in the same direction.

And then there's interweaving spots, interweaving slits, where they cancel each other out. So, there's a very famous, well-known pattern, which is this. It's a wave interference diffraction pattern, okay?

Now, interesting thing. If you put two slits next to each other, and you send electron ping-pong balls through them, you would expect to get two slits. In fact, you get a diffraction pattern like that, okay?

You get a rubber ducky ripple pattern. This is, any scientist looks at that pattern and says, I don't know what stuff it was, but it was in a wave. And it was in two waves, and they canceled each other in some places, and they reinforced each other in some places.

This is a very distinctive pattern that can only be created by something which is moving in waves, okay? Okay, got it? Cut one slit, the same stuff acts like particles.

Cut another slit, and they start acting like waves, okay? Now, something more fun. Next slide.

If you put an observer at the edge of one of the slits, where they just acted like rubber ducky ripples, okay? I gotta remember that. They start acting like particles again, okay?

If there's an observer at one of the two slits, one of the two slits, okay? Then you don't get a wave diffraction pattern anymore, okay? The presence of an observer seems, and there's a joke in physics that says the electrons were shy because someone was watching, okay?

And they don't act like a wave anymore, okay? So first of all, it's inconsistent that with one slit they should act like a particle, like a ping pong ball, and then with two slits they should decide to change and act like rubber ducky ripples, okay? And then it's really, what's even weirder is if you put an observation device right in front of one of the two slits, they start acting like ping pong balls again, the electrons, okay?

This is called the wave particle duality. One, and Einstein, you know, I can pull out the quotation. You ready?

Here's Einstein's. Get this, okay? Einstein wrote, it seems as though we must use sometimes the one theory that they are moving as particles, and sometimes the other, that they are moving as waves.

Well, at other times we may use either. We are faced with a new kind of difficulty. We have two contradictory pictures of reality.

Separately, neither one of them fully explains the phenomena of light, but together they do. If you take rubber ducky ripples and ping pong ball bullets, then you can explain light, okay? Really.

And they're opposite. They're contradictory, okay? And they haven't figured it out yet.

There's no explanation, okay? So, what I propose to do this afternoon is resolve this question, okay? Can we resolve this question, you know?

And I propose, in Buddhist debate, you know, the best, we have the Winter Olympics every year, they're called Janggunche, and I was honored, I went to four of them, which is a lot, okay? You get, there's a team of 50 of the best monks of each monastery. It's the Olympics.

They choose only 50 monks, and you're lucky if you go once. I went to four, because I invited myself. And, so, to tell you the truth.

Okay. And, so, we debate with each other, and we have trouble debating, because we are trained in the yikcha, or the textbook of our monastery. So, Sarah May uses Choney Lama Dhakpa Sheru, or Kedrup Dhammadakye, or other great lamas, Chim Champa Yong.

We use, we only, in our own monastery, we always use our own books against each other, okay? But then when you debate with the other five great colleges of the Dalai Lama's lineage, right? Two from Ganden, two from Debrung, two from Sarah.

You can throw in Tashi Humbo, but they're not really up to snuff. And the ones from, anyway, we won't talk about that. When you debate in a group, with six different colleges, then what becomes the source of authority?

You have to use Je Tsongkhapa himself. Suppose some Sakyas come, which happens. Then you have to go back to India.

You have to use Dharmakirti, or you have to use Chandrakirti, or like that, okay? Nagarjuna. What if Bumbos come, which happened one year?

These are shamans. These are shamanic followers of the ancient shamanism of Tibet. They came to the winter debates to debate.

Okay, what scriptural authority do you use then? There's nothing, okay? There's nothing.

I mean, there's the chronicles of King Gesar, but they're just stories, okay? So, you would, then you have to go to logic, okay? So, what's really sexy when you're debating a scientist is, don't use Buddhist books, use Newton, use Aristotle, use Hubble, okay?

Use Copernicus, or Ptolemy, or Einstein, or Hawking, okay? Use their own books. So, in a strategy session, in the monastery, getting ready for an intercollegiate Olympics, you actually put a guard at the door and the window, and then you set your strategy against your opponents, and it can take weeks, you know?

And then, what you do is memorize huge chunks of their books, okay? So, I thought the best way to disprove science would be to use the scientific method, okay? So, to use the scientific method, I think we should go through the scientific method, okay?

So, just pretend you're back in seventh grade, with, for me it was Mr. Clark, and I haven't thought about this stuff since then, but it all came back when I started reading Wikipedia, which I hope to God is correct, okay? Because as I said, all the articles on Buddhism are bogus, 100% bogus, they're worthless, okay? Worse than worthless, okay?

They're all completely wrong, and it's depressing. If I had time, or one of us had time, we should fix them, okay. So, we're gonna skip to scientific method, which you have in your reading, okay?

We even have a photo on the front of 18th century scientists using the scientific method, okay? This is part three. Okay, so I consider this the jewel of science, I think the scientific method is super cool, I think it's really good, I think it should be used by scientists.

Okay, but we're gonna use it because we're in a debate with scientists, okay? So, we should use their books, okay? We should use their systems, alright?

Here's a quotation from, here's a quick quotation if that's possible from Hawking, okay? Ready? Brief history of time.

By the way, you're all invited to the movie tonight. We're all gonna go see Hawking's movie tonight, 7.40 showing at Union, just below Union Square, across the street from Juhamuthi. I forget what those theaters are called.

Huh? Lowe's Union Square, probably. South side of Union Square, 7.40, be there or be square, which some schools of Buddhism says implies those atoms must be square, but anyway. Okay, 7.40 showing, everyone's invited, we'll eat popcorn together. We'll probably be the only people there, but I think it's fun to see a movie about Hawking this weekend. That's why we had these particular talks.

Let's quote Stephen Hawking's book. Today's scientists describe the universe in terms of two basic partial theories, the general theory of relativity for big stuff and the quantum mechanics for little stuff. They are the great intellectual achievements of the first half of this century, if you ignore the rest of the world.

Wait, he didn't say that, sorry. The general theory of relativity describes the force of gravity and the large-scale structure of the universe, that is, the structure on scales from only a few miles to as large as a million, million, million, million, one with 24 zeros after it miles, the size of the observable universe. Quantum mechanics, on the other hand, deals with phenomena on extremely small scales, such as a millionth of a millionth of an inch.

Now, here's the clincher. Unfortunately, however, these two theories are known to be inconsistent with each other. They cannot both be correct.

One of the major endeavors in physics today, and the major theme of this book, is the search for a new theory that will incorporate them both. It's called a unified theory, a quantum theory of gravity. Can we unify these two ideas?

How we explain big stuff and how we explain small stuff, and how we explain the thing in between, which is called your partner criticizing you in the evening, okay? That's why we're having this talk, okay? I don't care about atoms, but I care about the people around me.

I would like them to be happy and I'd like to have a good relationship with them, okay? If we understand atoms correctly, we should be able to deal with people we have relationships with, okay? That's the idea of this three days of talks, okay?

All right. So, we're going to go to scientific method. You got those two kids, Tim?

Listen, yeah, okay? These people are engaging in scientific method, all right? There are 18 steps of scientific method that I would like to use, okay?

I got them out of Wikipedia, okay? Which is a great source, okay? I'm going to go through them very, very quickly, and then we're going to try to answer some questions using scientific method, okay?

We're going to use scientific method to go at the question of why are there these two inconsistencies about how matter exists, okay? Number one, why do atoms of iron exhibit hardness, okay? And easily oxidized, like a high reactivity, things like that, okay?

Why do they—why do atoms of iron act the way they do? First question. Second question, when iron interacts with other particles, why do they—how can one particle bump another, okay?

What's happening there? Because they can't do their functions externally. Please, understand, okay?

An atom of iron that hits an atom of oxygen, and there's oxidation, rust of the iron, is impossible. Why? They have to touch each other.

Well, what's the problem? They can't touch all the stuff of one, can't touch all the stuff of the other, it'd be like a French kiss or something, okay? It's not possible for them to be in the same space at the same time, because they have width, they would bump into each other.

If they don't bump into each other, they can't oxidize. If the air never reaches the iron, like if you put the iron in a box and lock it, it'll never rust, okay? For the iron to get rust, what has to happen?

Tell me quick, don't be so British. Yeah, the oxygen has to hit the—it has to make contact with the iron. The oxygen must—atom must make contact with the iron atom, but the problem is, only a part of the oxygen atom will ever make contact with the iron atom, or they would take the same space, okay?

If they don't interact with all of their parts together, they can't be iron or oxygen, because if you knock an electron off an iron atom, it becomes manganese, different thing, and it would act like manganese. If you only touch some of the parts of an iron atom, it won't act like iron, it might be mushy, understand? Okay, this is not me, this is you, I mean science, okay?

Now, that's—so far we have two problems, okay? Number one, why does iron even act like iron, okay? Number two, how can iron interact with another thing if they just bump into each other and they don't hug each other?

Got it? Understand? But there's a deeper question which I promised you to answer during these three days.

The moment of truth has come. Why should our description of how atoms and matter work allow for the destruction of our race, okay? Why—is there a moral component of science, you see?

And I don't mean should scientists be nice. Should scientists refuse to make—I listened to this really scary NPR show on the way to the airport, okay? Oh yes, we—the CDC—I had to ask somebody, what's CDC?

What is CDC? Serendipity Control in Atlanta has successfully synthesized smallpox virus, okay, which can kill millions of people. In Canada they've synthesized the influenza which killed millions of people in 1918, okay, in the world.

They've—they synthesized it from—what do you call that? Dysentery samples from a soldier who died in 1915, okay? They synthesized a disease which could kill tens of millions of people if it got out of the bottle, okay?

Why would they do that? The questioner was like, oh, why would they do that? And the guy was, well, it's being done in Moscow and in the United States, and that was his answer, okay?

So, what I'm saying is, can we come to a theory of science which is non-violent by its nature, okay? Not because we decided to be nice to each other, not because we had the capacity to make smallpox viruses in a test tube and keep it in case the other people did something we didn't like, okay? Right?

What if it were impossible? What if atoms, like in front of a diffraction grating, would refuse to be made into weapons? What if electrons refuse to cooperate?

What if they said, that's not nice, okay? We don't want to be made into smallpox virus, okay? Alright?

Because the Buddhist theory, the most advanced Buddhist theories of how all matter works states that you cannot make a weapon if you understand how atoms work. It's not possible. A person who truly understands how things work and where the universe came from cannot, even if they want to, make a weapon, okay?

I feel like I'm talking to—anyway, try to imagine, okay? Try to imagine that a correct understanding of physics, the people who understood that couldn't make a weapon if they wanted to, okay? Got it?

I'm not saying that when you reach a certain point of understanding you don't want to make weapons. I'm not saying that. I'm saying that if we understood how atoms work, we couldn't make a weapon if we wanted to, okay?

That's how cool atoms are, if you really understand them, okay? Struggle. Struggle to understand that.

We talked about the first theory of the shape of the world. What was it? Turtles all the way down, okay?

And now you laugh. I swear to god, if you are successful as students, then in 15 years when someone says, people used to make smallpox virus, you say, what's smallpox? What's a virus?

Okay? There won't be things that correspond to those words, okay? Try to understand.

They will look back at us as if we were primitive, or cavemen, okay? All right? Talk about George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, about slavery, okay?

About slavery. Ask them why do you keep black slaves? They say they're not humans.

Okay? Then you're like, don't even say that Geshe Michael, it's offensive, okay? I'm not, I'm quoting, I'm not making it up.

They believed that, okay? The founding fathers of this country believed that. Now come forward to the present time.

The chair you're sitting on, and the husband you're not getting along with on certain occasions, when he's tired or whatever, doesn't exist the way you thought, okay? And if you understood how he really existed, you would always have blissful perfect relationship, okay? Got it?

That's what I'm saying, okay? 20 years from now, I hope, I hope I'm alive to see it, people will say, I can't believe people used to not get along in the kitchen, okay? Didn't they understand where atoms come from?

They say, no, they didn't. They thought they were made of little bits of stuff. That's so funny, how could they?

All right, okay? So, there are three paradoxes we have to, oh, now, I'll examine you. You're hoping for a break, but just keep hoping.

Number one, why does an iron atom act hard, okay? Number two, when an atom, iron atom hits an oxygen atom, why do they interact if they can't touch each other, okay? Number three, what's number three?

Why does still, why does science still allow for violence, okay? Why, why is our understanding, as it stands now, so liable to be used as violence, okay? Like, 40% of the budget of research in the United States is for weapons, okay?

And, and I'm not saying that in the end the scientists will decide to be nice, I'm not saying that. I'm not saying we should make them meditate and do yoga at the three jewels, which is another reason to keep it open, until they agree to be nice. I'm not saying that.

I'm saying a scientist who understands where the universe really comes from cannot be otherwise, okay? Cannot be otherwise, not possible, okay? Now, prove it Geshe Michael, yeah, I'm gonna.

How? I'm going to use a scientific method on you, man, okay? All right, got it?

That's perfect Buddhist monk thing, you know? I'm going to use your own method on you, okay? Got it?

Ready? Here we go. Let's review scientific method, then I promise you a refreshment break, and, and yeah, and then we'll, then we'll resolve everything after the refreshment break, so you can't go anywhere, okay?

Probably you will anyway. Number one, formulate your question through observation and reflection. Give me one of our three questions.

Yeah, why does iron atoms act the way they do? What is the second one? Quick, quick.

Why does iron interact with oxygen? Okay, number three. Why does science lead to violence, you know?

Why is, sorry, why is violence even permitted by the rules of science, okay? Number two, make a hypothesis about how we might answer the question. I'm going to give you nine Buddhist hypotheses to answer the three questions, okay?

I'm going to give you nine Buddhist hypotheses about how to resolve these three problems, and eight of them are, I wouldn't say wrong so much as incomplete, so in that sense they resemble science itself. Science is not stupid, science is not like wrong, I wouldn't call it wrong, I'd call it, it hasn't been polished yet, you know? If they just get the icing on the cake, they would be perfect, okay?

They just need a little tweaking of it, of science, and then it will be perfect. Who's going to do the tweaking? We is.

Okay, that's another thing. Okay, number three, you should predict what will happen if your hypothesis is true, okay? What did we promise would happen if our hypotheses are true?

Science could not cause violence, and you would have a perfect relationship with your husband, okay? He would never ever criticize you again. I would go further, he will wash the dishes every night, forever.

I had this lady, Jenny Huang I think it was, in Singapore, she said Geshe-la, let's go farther. I'm like, what? She's a Chinese housewife, right?

I mean, businesswoman housewife, and she's like, let's not be satisfied with the husband washing the dishes, let's make him cook dinner also. Every night, a Chinese man cooking dinner, even though his wife works all day and earns all the money in the family, she did it, okay? She proved it, she took me home and showed me.

Okay, so if what I'm saying is true, you should have perfect relationships, and the system of the understanding of where stuff comes from and how it acts should itself not allow for violence or death of people, okay? A car produced by these theories should never crash. A plane produced by these theories could never fall down, couldn't hurt anybody, okay?

Got it? That's a very radical idea, but the prediction is, if we could make a closed, what do you call it, system experiment, we should see ... if we did an experiment with a particular couple in this room, and we said, we're going to try this new theory of stuff on your relationship, and then if we had sort of a closed experiment, and they both agreed to do everything we told them to do, which never happens, sorry, it does sometimes, they should have the most blissful perfect marriage that you ever saw, okay?

Got it? That's our prediction, that's part of scientific method. Number four, then we should design the experiment, okay?

We should lock them in a retreat cabin for a thousand days and fill them up with these ideas and see how it comes out, okay? Number five, documentation, we should keep a careful account of the steps we took during the experiment, okay? Why?

Other people have to be able to replicate it, okay? I understand that you claim that two of your retreatants who did a three-year retreat and observed all these principles now have a fairly blissful relationship, but that could be just something else. We have to be able to repeat that experiment over and over again, okay?

And hopefully it wouldn't take a thousand days. How about 30 days, okay? Like that.

Okay, number six is vital here, okay? Look at number six. We must be watchful against bias during the experiment, such as expectations, previously held beliefs, a desire for novelty.

So, that's messing up a lot of scientific experiments right now. There's big pressure on scientists and authors and movie makers to make something shocking and different than what came before. You don't, your experiment won't make the newspapers unless it says something novel, okay?

And it's the same with the American media and things like that. Unless it's shocking and novel, it's not gonna sell, okay? So, there's pressure on scientists to come up with weird results, okay?

Because it makes press, and that makes funding, okay? Peer recognition, we shouldn't be undertaking the experiment so that people like us or admire us or buy our books and like that, okay? And we should use double blind tests, meaning we should, we should use, we should lock two couples up into retreat cabins and teach them these things in different states of the United States, and then we should see if we get the same results, okay?

Seriously, all right? That's called a double blind test. And then hindsight bias means we already did one successful experiment, this is what result we got, therefore I expect the next one to be the same.

But we have to be free of those preconceptions, okay? Number six is crucial for the continuation of our discussion today, which is all the time we have, okay? We have to make sure that when we do an experiment to test our new ideas of reality, we shouldn't have preconceptions.

We shouldn't have the old beliefs that would blind us to the results of our new experiment, okay? And Buddhism is very strict about that, and we're gonna go over nine different strongly held preconceptions that all living beings share, whether you're an ant or a bird or a human, okay? There are certain preconceptions that come along with any form of consciousness, okay?

Once you are alive, you have one of nine preconceptions, okay? So, we have to talk about them. Then we can have a straight experiment, then we can have a neutral experiment, but it's so long as someone has one of those preconceptions, which you are born with.

Once there is a mind present in the world, that mind has nine preconceptions built into it, okay? Hawking has them, Einstein has them, we all have them, okay? All right.

Number seven, be open to new possibilities and discoveries, including the recognition of the role of chance or serendipity. Somewhere between, this is a quote from Wikipedia, 33 and 50 percent of all scientific discoveries are estimated to have been stumbled upon by accident, okay? And then we have Pasteur there because he said, if your mind is well-trained, you're more likely to have a good stumble, okay?

A person who's been to the 18 ACI courses or struggled through the Vajrayana courses is much more likely to have a mystical experience than someone who hasn't, okay? Because Pasteur said, quote, luck favors the prepared mind, okay? By the way, Vajrayana students in this room, if you have Vajrayogini or Yamantaka empowerment, you are welcome.

Tomorrow is a special moon day, it's I think the 25th of the moon, and we'll be having a breakfast together, okay? But you have to have permission, it's a, you have to have had a lama give you those permissions. So, if you're interested in that, talk to ...

where's Teddy? Are you here? No.

Can you stand up? Okay, so if you're interested, talk to him, because tomorrow, it's like Easter or something, okay? For Buddhists.

So, if you're interested, talk to him about ... we'll have a small ceremony tomorrow. We delayed our flight, hee hee.

Okay, because New York has better restaurants than Rimrock, Arizona. Okay, number eight, we do have a restaurant, okay? Statements that we don't have a restaurant are wrong.

There's a place called Crickets, they're open till 2 p.m. on some days of the week, okay? Number eight, recognition of the limitations of the equipment, staff, and process, okay? We have to be aware, when we perform an experiment, that the instruments we use may not be good enough to observe all the possible results.

Until the time they could shoot individual electron ping-pong balls through diffraction gratings, which is only recently, we couldn't have done the experiment that proves that matter acts illogically, okay? Until we had that equipment, we couldn't have done that. Now, listen, okay?

About that point, Buddhism says your instrument is pre-broken, okay? Your perceptual facilities, faculties, are delivered broken, okay? If you bought new eyes on Amazon, or ears, or tongue, or brain, it would be delivered broken, okay?

Your instrumentation is messed up, from the beginning. All your rulers are 11 inches long, okay? You cannot take an unbiased sample, because bias is built into your brain, and your senses, okay?

So, just a side track, okay? Does that make it impossible that we can fix stuff? If you cannot measure anything correctly, if the lens of your eyes are twisted, okay, and you see two of everything, can you ever realize it?

Can you ever understand that there's not two of everybody you ever meet? It's something wrong with your eyeball. Can you ever understand that, if you have to use that eyeball to understand it?

Who said yes? Oh, why? Good.

Logic, okay? Buddhism, everyone agrees there's two kinds of perception. One is wunsum tsemam, which means pramana, which is pratyaksha, direct, okay?

The evidence you gather with your eyes, and ears, and your mind, okay? But then we say you have another set of senses, they are called thinking, deducing, okay? I have a feeling there might not be two of everybody, okay?

I mean, my eyes are—there's something about my eyes, and I see double everything, okay? But, you know, I've talked to people who I trust, and they said, your eye's messed up, man. It's just your eyes are messed up.

And you're like, no, no, there's two of everybody. They say, no, there's not, you know? And then, how do you figure out there's not two of everybody?

You figure it out, okay? So, you have another set of senses called your ability to think out things, okay? So, in Buddhism, your direct faculties are defective.

Just using direct faculties, and even your direct thought processes, without training, without someone telling you, hey man, there's not two of everybody, okay? You will always come up with the wrong conclusion, okay? Your instrumentation is messed up.

You have to outfox your senses, okay? You have to outthink the evidence of your eyes, and ears, okay? Got it?

Sorry about that. Okay, let's go quick. We have to define things properly.

For example, in this lecture you have not heard the word, I don't think, karma, okay? It's where we're going, it's a very beautiful system of thought, but the word is so abused and so misunderstood that I will avoid it. I will not use it.

I will train you in a new way of explaining atoms, but I will not use the word karma, okay? Because it's not clear what it means to people, okay? So, your terms have to be defined clearly.

Both parties to the experiment have to agree to the meaning of the terms, okay? Number eleven, you have to admit that there might be some—you have to tell people the degree of possible uncertainty in this experiment, okay? With a—what do they call that?

With a degree of uncertainty of 0.4%, scientists have said that, for example, time began 13.8 billion years ago, okay? There's a—they give you a degree of uncertainty, and so a good Buddhist should do the same, okay? My teacher told me this, I tried it out, we went into—we did an experiment in the kitchen for three days, we tried these new principles, we have some extraordinary—what do you call it—harmony going on in my relationship right now.

We think it's because of what we did, but—but you know, it's possible we just had a good breakfast on three days in a row, okay? You have to admit those kind of things if you're a scientist, okay? If you're a Buddhist also, you have to say, I think it's working, but we need more tests, okay?

Publication of these results means, if what we talk about here today is possibly true, and if it's possible that a correct theory of how the world works would disallow violence, then it's—I would say it's your responsibility to share it with other people, okay? Publication of your results. Publication doesn't mean you have to get it into Scientific American.

If I wait until they print my stuff in Scientific American, we'll all be old, okay? Like, we have to start in the kitchen, and over coffee in coffee shops, like kopi kopi, and we have to start sharing what we've learned. If it's possibly correct that a relationship with a correct understanding of atoms will always be smooth, then if your sister's having a bad marriage, how can you not share it, okay?

That's called publication of results, okay? Archiving of data and conclusions for the future, okay? Teaching such as this, or any of the other ones for the last thirty years, should be archived, okay?

Maybe someone will use them later, okay? So, it's our responsibility to archive things, okay? And in science, you archive things because you don't hang—you don't stay on the same experiments forever.

You do new experiments, you get into other fields, but the old experiments you did, especially if they're true, they should be archived for future generations to play with, and then that saves them time and work, okay? Oh, that's already been done, okay? Archiving correctly, bringing the video camera to the talk, and not leaving it in the hotel room, okay?

External review of experiment inclusion by peers. You should talk to your friends, say, I tried this new thing, this new theory of atoms with my wife, it seems to be helping our relationship. Could you try it with your wife and tell me how it works, okay?

And then you compare results with your peers, okay? Replication of the experiment by others, preferably neutral parties who are not related to the original researchers, okay? Because there's a bias factor, you know?

People in Geshe Michael's group have a social pressure to get the same results as other people in Geshe Michael's group, okay? So, you have to go outside of your immediate circle of friends, and you have to go to people who totally don't know you, and don't care about your ideas, and you have to try to ... you know, like DCI is that, you know?

Three and a half thousand people came to the seven days of talks in Mexico, and then you see if those people get results, okay? They're under no social pressure to be a Buddhist, or to wear a red robe, or to have a Dai Lan picture at their house, okay? They're just normal people.

So, we should seek out if we can find any normal people, and they should check what we're trying, and then if they get the same results we can believe in it. But there's always a bias inside a social group, okay? And we have to go outside of that group, okay?

Seventeen, the clarity and the presentation of these ideas should evolve, it should get clearer and clearer every year, okay? As we go deeper, Americans were not exposed to these ideas before about 1980, okay? No American was exposed to these ideas before 1980, in any correct form, okay?

Even after 1980, okay? Very few people. So, as we go on from year to year, the implementation of these ideas should evolve, it should get more and more sophisticated.

Relationships following the rules of these kinds of ideas should get sweeter and sweeter every year, and the way we present the ideas should evolve every year, more and more cool, more and more relevant to people, okay? Like you can't do 1998 ACI course, you shouldn't present it that way in 2014, okay? It should be more relevant to people's relationships, or their health, or you should tie it more clearly, and that evolves from constant teaching, okay?

I heard a Joni Mitchell concert, those of you who are over 40 you know what that is, and everybody was screaming at her, do both sides now, or do you know, some song from your 1968 album, and she got really frustrated and she said, if Picasso were here, would you ask him to paint the same painting he did 30 years ago? You know, I'm evolving, I'm an artist you know, I don't do what I did in 1968, and you should be the same, as a teacher, as an explainer of these ideas, they should get more and more, the presentation should get more and more clear, more and more sophisticated, and more and more especially what? Relevant to people's real lives, because that's all people care about, okay?

I like your philosophy, it sounds very good, I'm having trouble at home, okay? Alright, last one, there should be confirmation and then utilization of the conclusions by the community, this is the last step of scientific method, general acceptance of the ideas, what's the goal? You know, somebody asked me, newspapers often ask me, in other countries, you know, what's the ultimate goal, what is your mission, what are you trying to accomplish, what do you want to happen?

I would like to see an anonymous use of these concepts in the personal lives of seven billion people, what do I mean by anonymous? They should be using kindness, compassion, you know, consideration of other people in their daily lives, as a way to make their own lives perfect, and they should forget where it came from, okay? It should just be part of their life, okay?

It should just be part of world culture, that people get things by providing them to others first, okay? And then, if somebody says who started that, the answer should be, we don't know. It's like the, what do they call it in Ebola?

What do they call the first person? Huh? The index patient, you know, they try to find who was the first patient.

My dream is that nobody figures it out, you know, where did these ideas start? I don't know, but they work, and I'm happy, I have a good relationship, my car doesn't kill anybody, okay? Like that, that's my dream.

Speaking of Ebola, that was smooth, right? We're about to take a break, but I have some announcements. Let me see, I tried to remember them all.

Tomorrow at 10 o'clock, this doesn't have to do with Ebola, at 10 in the morning, Lady Ruth Lauer, who's an old friend of our community, is giving a yoga class at Jivamukti Yoga near Union Square, and if you'd like to come, please feel free to come. So, a lot of us will be going, it's a holiday, it's a Buddhist holiday, we thought it would be nice to practice together. So, that's open to everybody who has two legs, or wait, we're about to learn that's not true.

That's open to anybody who would like to come, okay? 10 a.m., Jivamukti Yoga, one of our greatest teachers, Ruth Lauer, who's just going to be coming back into town tonight I think, will be giving a yoga class, and we'd like to go. If you do come, I would encourage you to bring some flowers, because she's one of our teachers, okay?

Second thing, don't forget the movie tonight, 7.40, right? Those of you who have Vajrayana permissions from your teachers, you're welcome to come to the ceremony tomorrow, but you have to tell Teddy, okay? And there was some other stuff.

Oh, there's this thing called Three Jewels. This is the center in New York where these ideas are given away for free to people. It's free yoga classes, free meditation.

We didn't have time to do meditation during these talks, because I'm assuming you're doing the Three Jewels every day, okay? There's a center which has existed in New York for almost 20 years now, continually, with just minor rent payment problems. No, they kept it open all these years, without a break, and there's free classes in yoga, there's free meditation classes, and there's a free series, there are free short-term classes like weekends, but there's also a free series of classes that goes on for, I don't know, four or five years, and you can learn all the subjects that a Tibetan monk learns in the monastery, okay?

So, we have a 10,000 page syllabus which is taken from the original books. It's all the original books, there's not a single sentence that's not taken from original books. You can immerse yourself in the wisdom of two and a half thousand years for free at the Three Jewels, and there are several great teachers teaching there, and I encourage you to go.

We need money to keep the place open, this is a chronic, unpleasant truth of life, that the owner of the building refuses to take yoga classes as payment for the rent, and we're moving, we're looking for a new space. So, I'll ask you again what I asked yesterday, if you can help, Hector, where are you? At the back of the room, holding up his hand with the rabbi's beard.

He's one of the very fine teachers at Three Jewels, very, very fine teacher, very kind, and he's heading the search for a new space. If you would like to help, we are looking for a space. I want two walls made of windows, okay, ground floor so we can have coffee going on, and somewhere in Manhattan, okay?

The Brooklynites tried to convince me, I'm sorry, I'm too old fashioned, you know, I came here before the Brooklyn thing happened, so it's still stuck in my mind that the kind of people who live in Brooklyn are people who can't pronounce coffee, quaffy, quaffy, sorry Michael. Anyway, and then our proposal is that the overseas arm of this organization, which is called DCI, we will take care, I made this proposal without asking them, you don't mind, we'll take care of half of the rent forever, and we'll take care of half of the moving costs. I think the moving costs will be around $30,000.

We will raise $15,000 if you in New York City, who are the people using the place, raise $15,000. So, that's not a big deal, according to me. In a city where the average salary is $100, or $60, or $80, or something, okay, for normal people.

So, you raise half, we'll raise half, okay? You raise $15,000 for the move, we'll match you, but we ain't gonna match you if you have nothing to match, okay? If you come at us with a helium atom, we're not gonna give you an iron atom, okay?

Then, we'll match you on the rent, okay? If the rent is $10,000, we'll pay $5,000, if the rent is $15,000, we'll pay $7,500, okay? That's the proposal, okay?

And we'll keep it as long as you keep it up, okay? That means that people who live in the New York area, tri-state area, during the break, you should head for that door, you should ask Hector, where's the table where I sign up for ... we call it DAD, it means a dollar a day, okay?

It means you give them your credit card for 30 seconds, they pass it through the cube thing, and then for the rest of your life, a dollar a day leaks out of your credit card. You won't notice it, you know? It's like, I don't know, anyway, something slowly bleeding from your body but you don't notice, okay?

So, please don't be, just don't be dumb, okay? I think the Three Jewels is like an oasis of sanity in New York. It's free, it's open all the time, people are working there for nothing, for 20 years.

Any person who's having a hard day can go there and hang out, okay? And look at books, and do meditation, and do yoga, any time of the day, you know? And have beautiful teachings.

So, it's like insane not to keep it open, okay? Especially if somebody offers to pay half, okay? So, do it, okay?

Sign up for dollar a day, please, alright? Do it today, okay? That's the first thing.

Second thing, I think a spiritual practice should have, I don't know, four or five elements to it. One is some kind of physical practice that keeps your prana going, like yoga, or tai chi, or something like that. Baseball, walking, okay?

That's one. Two, you should meditate every day. Three, you should study every day.

But four, you should serve somebody, okay? Like Jeff Eddy's prison project, okay? Like, I think spiritual practice is incomplete if you're not—you can study, you can meditate, you can do some kind of physical practice, but if you're not actively, in real terms, serving the poor, or the hungry, or the sick, then I would say you're not having a good spiritual practice, okay?

Everybody in this room who would like to have a spiritual practice, you should be doing something practical to help other people who are not your friends or your family, okay? So, one of the projects that we're helping is taking place in Rwanda, Africa. It's a very beautiful project, and we're very fortunate today that the director of the project, who spends all her time in Rwanda, happens to be in New York at the same time that I am, and I've asked her to give us a small presentation of her project in Rwanda, which is relating also to Ebola, and she's gonna give us just a quick video presentation of—I think it's a video that was done on CNN about her project, and it's also recognized by the United Nations, and I think we should contribute to it.

After you do the dollar-a-day table, you go to the Rwanda table, okay? All right, so I'd like to introduce Deirdre Summerbell, and thank you for coming. Yeah.

[Speaker 2]
Hello. If I'm nervous, forgive me. Let me thank Geshe Michael for the opportunity—immensely thank him for the opportunity to introduce you to Project AIR, which is a small and striving charity currently in Rwanda.

It works with HIV—people whose lives, let me say first of all, are very far from your own in many different ways, not just geographically. We work with HIV-positive women, men, and children, largely a 500-strong orphan population, all of whom—louder? Okay—all of whom were either direct, or if they were younger than 20 years of age, directly affected by the Rwanda genocide, which was in 1994, which to all of you will seem like a long time ago.

Unfortunately, the damage done by circumstances such as the genocide is so catastrophic that while you might fix people physically, to fix them psychologically, emotionally, and otherwise, is a much longer undertaking, which is the undertaking that Project AIR has sort of taken on itself. You're going to see a story with more details about the work we do, but we're exceptional. There are lots of organizations working in the area and all over the world.

What exceptionalizes our program is that we use yoga and yoga-like, for lack of a better term, modalities to help mitigate the traumas that have been left in these people for any number of different reasons, most especially that of the genocide and their illnesses and the social stigma attached to their illnesses there. It's an unusual—it's a one-of-a-kind organization in that there is no other group using yoga and like techniques—forgive me if you don't like the word technique—in conflict and post-conflict areas. Above all, the most exceptional thing about it is that it works.

It gives these people back their lives. It helps them re-inhabit their own bodies and in re-inhabiting their own bodies. It gives them not just a life, just the physical thing, the physical truth of life, but it gives them a reason to live again.

We have been invited—you'll see the work we do in Rwanda. I'm here seeking assistance, seeking help, because we've been invited to take the program to the conflict, the war in the country next door to Rwanda, which is called Congo. It's an awful war.

It's been going on for a very long time, and it represents the largest loss of life since World War II. The last census of the dead was 5.4 million people, and we've also been invited to take the project to Iran. We hope, we pray, that you might be able to help.

Thank you very much. Hello, everyone, and welcome to Inside Africa. I'm Jim Clancy, and for Righteous to Say, on our program this week, how an NGO is using yoga to help rape survivors in Rwanda not only heal, but grow stronger.

All right, let's begin with an idea that almost no one thought would work— yoga for HIV-positive rape survivors and their children in Rwanda. It all began as an experiment. That was back in 2007.

The non-governmental organization We Act X brought in Deirdre Summerbell, a yoga enthusiast and writer, to set up a yoga program. Even she thought it had a very slim chance. She quickly changed her mind, though, because she saw results, real results.

Project AIR was born. Project AIR founder and director, Deirdre Summerbell, tells us about her work. I was skeptical, but I was also very curious.

And this was a challenge that I thought maybe it was worth actually taking. After I arrived, within the two classes, I had women shyly coming up to me afterwards and telling me that they had slept through the night for the first time in 14 years after doing the yoga classes. That was 14 years, represented the time since the genocide, and it really took off.

Appetites increased tremendously. People, the women that we worked with, you know, they became, their depression seemed to lift, they still seem to be lifted, and there was some indication that there were improvements with the health markers, the HIV health markers as well, though we don't yet have hard data for that. One has only to look at the photos.

A lot of the women that we met, that we work with, have PSTD, and if they don't have PSTD, they suffer from clinical depression or the long-term sort of really seeded depression. After yoga classes, on a routine basis, they're measurably happier. They will come up to you, and they will tell you that they feel young again.

When I turn up with my volunteer yoga teachers at a women's sewing co-op, and I roll out my yoga mats, for them, this is something they've never seen before. This is something they don't understand, and in the beginning, it's something they say no to. The women that I work with vary in ages.

They will tell you that they're far too old for this, and with a little bit of encouragement, within half an hour, they're out in the middle of the room on their yoga mats, and they're absolutely having just a wonderful time. In the case of the UN, the fact that we're beginning to be taken seriously helps with what is natural skepticism about the idea of yoga in post-conflict and in conflict settings, which is where we want to go. Summer Bell is currently trying to raise a million dollars in just 100 days for Project AIR.

She plans to use that money to expand into Eastern Congo, and to provide food and water for the women and children that her group serves.

[Speaker 1]
So, if you'd like to donate to this project, there'll be a table out back, and they're also taking, what do you call, quick swipes. They don't hurt much. A lot of the people got HIV during the fighting, people cut off their limbs and wiped the HIV blood in their body, okay?

So, it's a very serious project, very beneficial, and one of the best ways to deal with Ebola, which has now reached Congo, which is next door, it doesn't really help to send a bunch of American Army guys, you know, ten months after it's started. What's important is to support groups that are already in those countries, already doing charitable work, already set up to deal with the crisis when it hits, okay? So, part of our motivation is to strengthen that program, which is in the capital city, to be ready for when Ebola comes to their country, okay?

So, and we can pretend it's not happening, and we're in a different country, but it could very well spread here, and I think it's important that we help, okay? That's a big part of our practice, okay? Anything else I was supposed to say, I don't remember.

That's all, so try—oh yeah, one more fundraiser thing. There's a bake sale table back there, it's covered with unhealthy, sweet things. I did my yoga today, so I deserve them, and every time you eat a cookie, that money goes to help young people go to my monastery and study for a month.

Every year we send five to ten young people, who hopefully will be standing up here in ten years or something, okay? That's the plan, that's the general plan. They're actually leaving on Sunday, the group will be leaving on Sunday.

I think one of them is here at least. Word, are you here? Right, he's there.

He's a very good Tibetan scholar, he and his compadres, we have a big group going from our students in Mexico, and I just think it's a very beautiful project that we we drop them into a traditional Tibetan monastery where almost nobody speaks English, and then they just have to struggle to train themselves for months. So, the theory is to appeal to your desire, and there are chocolate chip cookies and brownies and other things, and the idea is that you have permission and you have a reason to eat them. No, and you overpay, okay?

So, in the last two days the results have been dismal, like New Yorkers have not eaten well, and I'm sort of disappointed. So, I expect you to walk back there, take a cookie, pay $20 for the cookie, okay? And eat as much as you can of $20 cookies, okay?

So, don't be cheap, okay? So, now how many tables you have to go to? Three tables to go to, okay?

All right? Dollar a day for three jewels, give a donation for the Rwanda project, and then eat something, and bring me something too. Can quickly the teachers stand up please?

Three retreatants. Teachers from the Three Jewels Center and teachers from Diamond Cutter Institute, please stand up here, face that way, so they can check out the goods. Quick, quick, quick, quick!

Oh, it's hopeless. These guys have had, I guess, an average of about 10 to 15 years of training. They go all over the world, they help people with two things, number one, problems in their lives, such as a critical partner, or number two, dreams that you have in your life, such as starting a new business, or something like that, or learning a language, or playing an instrument, some kind of wild dream you have in your life.

They are dream fulfillment experts, they've had training for many years to help advise people on how to have a happy life, how to get the things they would like to happen in their life, how to overcome challenges in their life. If you happen to have a challenge in your life right now, or if you happen to want something cool in your life, then come and ask them how to do it. The sentence should begin with, can you tell me the karmic seed for...

and then fill in making your husband cook every night, or fill in, you know, getting a promotion at my job, something like that, and then come and ask them what's the karmic seed for that, how do I plant that seed in my life, okay? And they can do it, they can help you, okay? Don't think, you'd be foolish to go eat a cookie before you ask them, or you'd be foolish not to get a cookie and then come ask them, okay?

So, please don't be shy, and don't be so New Yorkie, okay? Don't be so standoffish. Come up and bare your soul to them, they are taught to be discreet, okay?

You can ask them anything, alright? But they can help you in your life, okay? So don't be, don't be shy and don't be proper, just open your heart and come and ask them something you'd like to achieve in your life, okay?

And they can seriously help you, okay? We'll take a 15-minute break, we'll come back at 4.10 and we'll do, Hector, 4.30, okay? We'll do, we'll resolve the universe's problems in the 20 minutes after that, okay?

I'll also be here if you'd like to come up and say hi. Rachana? I gotta talk to you.

Okay, we'll start again. We have about 15 minutes to get through eight schools of classical Indian thought, so we have to get moving. When we saw the list of scientific method, the 18 steps of scientific method, one of them was, you shouldn't enter an experiment with a lot of preconceptions or biases, right?

And then I would say we have two kinds of preconceptions, one are the ones that we're aware of, and then one are the ones that we're not aware of. And I would guess that more of our preconceptions we're not aware of than we're aware of, okay? Buddhism says that if we're going to do this experiment successfully of solving these three problems, right?

Why does iron atoms, like, why do iron atoms act like iron? How can they interact with other atoms? And, is it possible to reach a version of science which is inherently, not moral, okay?

It's not that they are behaving nicely, it's not that. It's that they cannot behave in any other manner, there's no choice, okay? Because if they're following that system, it doesn't allow for cars that kill people, okay?

It's not that anyone would purposely design a car to kill people, but if a person with a correct understanding of atoms designed a car, it would never kill anyone, okay? Got it? Automatically, whether they were mean or nice, okay?

So, I'm not talking about making the world nice, I'm talking about making it accurate, okay? Alright, so there are nine preconceptions that we all have. Preconception means you were born, your brain was wired with nine wrong ideas in it already.

And it's interesting that in Buddhism they say that even insects and fish and birds, brains, are wired in the same way. You don't get to be on this planet unless your mind has wiring problems of nine different kinds, okay? People who don't have those problems don't get to come here, okay?

Why that's true is a long story, but it is true, okay? But we won't go there. So, I'm going to go through quickly the nine preconceptions, okay?

And then by the end we'll have like 30 seconds to describe, you know, how to complete science, okay? How to make it complete. And then I'd like to play a small song with you with a friend, okay?

Which is a good luck end of the program song, okay? So, here we go. The first preconception is called takpa.

Say takpa. Takpa means, I'm going to relate all of these to your partner, okay? Of the problem of having a partner who's been critical of you, okay?

The first preconception that all living beings have, all of us have, me too, is that we believe that this problem will last, okay? We believe that this problem will continue, okay? We have a visceral presupposition, we have a gut feeling that this is going to go on for a while, okay?

We may, if someone asks you, is it going to last ten years, you say no. But if they ask you, is it going to go on for the foreseeable future that your husband continues to criticize you, you'd say I'm afraid it's probably the case, okay? That presupposition is a preconception that blocks you from making progress in your relationship, okay?

If you feel that something is probably going to go on for a while, you're already victim of the first bias. So, if we try to do an experiment with you, it's going to be a problem, okay? So, first lesson, any condition in your life, no matter how old it is, 20-year problem in a marriage of the husband criticizing you, can end in an hour, okay?

Can end in an hour, all right? You just have to understand how to do it, okay? So, don't, don't go into this experiment thinking that it cannot end in an hour if you fix it, okay?

That's the first one, okay? One down, how many to go? Eight to go, very good.

Second one, this is a very long word, say cik. Cik. Okay, cik means singular, okay?

It means that the human mind and the minds of other creatures tends to isolate problems or challenges or objects into singularities, you see what I mean? So, in this case, when I'm relating to my partner who is critical of me, I tend to isolate them from their context, you see? I tend not to think about what was going on in my husband's life today when he was at work, I tend not to realize that he's, I tend not to remember that he's grumpier just before dinner than after dinner.

Like that, I tend, there's a human tendency, a sentient being tendency, to isolate a person and make them cik. Say my, say, what is it, khyo ga mayinpa le lokpa, say khyo ga mayinpa le lokpa, khyo ga mayinpa le lokpa. One perceptual theory of Buddhism, of how you can perceive your husband standing in the kitchen says that you actually cancel all that is not your husband, and you arrive at your husband, got it?

The perception of your husband, according to Buddhism, one idea of Buddhism is that the way you see your husband in the kitchen as he's about to criticize you is khyo ga mayinpa le lokpa. You are aware of everything in the universe which is not your husband, you cancel that, and you arrive at your husband, okay? Which of the six causes in the Abhidharma is that similar to?

Okay, forget that. The first one, which was the fish, 200 miles off of San Diego, 80 feet down, who caused, caused what? Yeah, who didn't prevent your husband from criticizing you tonight.

A fish, a yellowfin tuna, 80 feet down under the Pacific Ocean, 200 miles off the coast of San Diego, didn't prevent your husband from criticizing you tonight in Manhattan, therefore he contributed to it, okay? We tend to take the husband out of the husband's context, we tend to treat them as chick. Chick means one thing, okay?

My critical husband. We don't remember all that's happening that might make them criticize us, okay? Got it?

There are direct causes of the criticism which are his frustration, we went over that from Dharmakīrti. There are indirect causes of his criticizing me tonight which were, I don't know, trouble he had at work, okay? There are direct things which turn into my husband's criticism, which is like his frustration, the moment before.

There are indirect causes like, I asked him to take out the garbage this morning, okay? And he rests in a net of causes, and that's why he criticizes you, okay? That school believes that, got it?

Chick, is it correct? No, why? It's incomplete, it's incomplete, okay?

It doesn't explain everything. It helps explain his behavior, but you've been aware of those problems for a long time, and it didn't fix him. He hasn't got fixed yet.

Were you aware that he has bad days? Yes. Were you aware he doesn't like you talking about taking out the garbage?

Yes. You know, did it fix him in the past? No.

Will it fix him in the future? No. It's not a solution, it's not a permanent solution, okay?

Got it? We got to go fast. I'm sorry, this should be five days of talks.

Okay, third, say rāngwāng qiān, rāngwāng qiān. This means operating on their own. The word rāngwāng in Tibetan means independence, by the way, okay?

So, rāngwāng qiān means my husband's operating on his own. He wills, he has will, and his will is to hurt me and to criticize me, okay? We think that, we believe that, okay?

He wants me to be hurt, okay? Got it? That's one of the ideas you could have about causality of husband criticizing wife, okay?

You could have that idea, okay? He wants to, okay? He decided to, got it?

Okay, next one. We're going super fast, you are getting the whole Geshe course in an hour. Okay, rāngyā tūpe zeyu, say rāngyā tūpe zeyu.

This means there's a director, it's very similar to the last one, rāngwāng qiān. He's the director of his thoughts, he's the director of his words and his actions, okay? He's in charge of his words and actions.

The important thing here is the idea that if he wished to, he could stop criticizing me, okay? If he wanted to, if he could be reasoned with, if I could say enough things that were convincing enough, he would stop criticizing me, okay? Is it correct?

We say incorrect, incomplete, okay? It's not, it's not a complete explanation of what's going on, okay? If you reasoned with your husband and explained him how it hurts you to be criticized, and how what he's criticizing you about is wrong in the first place, okay?

It's not true I don't cook delicious dinners, ask my mother, ask anybody, okay? Like, reason with him. You feel like then he could decide to stop criticizing you, but in this system it's incorrect, it's incomplete, okay?

Has it worked that everybody you ever reasoned with to stop hassling you, stop hassling you? No, but you keep trying the same thing over and over and over, okay? You keep trying to make sense with them, you know, okay?

And you still do that after 30, 40, 50 years, you keep trying. Let me just explain to you why you're wrong, you know? And then you do, and then they just criticize you anyway, okay?

Apparently it's not coming from their decision, or their decision not to stop criticizing you, okay? Reasoning doesn't work, okay? It's not a cause of a perfect relationship.

Being logical with your partner is not a cause of a perfect relationship, or you would have had one already, okay? Next, we're at number five. GZUGS DANG GZUNGS RDZIN GYI TSE MA ZAD GZHAN GYI STONG BA.

Say GZUGS, DANG, GZUNGS RDZIN. Here I simplified it, okay? PA, ZAD GZHAN, okay?

This is very cool, we had it before, it comes from the Mind Only School. The name of the Mind Only School is misleading, don't jump on that, it's not what it looks like, okay? They don't think you're just a head without arms, okay?

What it means is the branch thing, the V cause, okay? When you walk into the kitchen, and your husband says something to you, critical, those two people in the room, a husband who criticizes, and their partner who is criticized, according to this idea, are popping out of one single karmic seed, okay? That's the gist of this idea.

So, we're getting very sophisticated now, okay? We went way past atoms already, okay? We're already past atoms.

Right around here, the ideas of where stuff is coming from diverge from science, okay? We think science is very, what do you call it? If you get stuck in believing that stuff is made of atoms, you will never reach even number five, forget number nine, okay?

You will never get, you'll never make real progress, so long as you don't understand that the observer is changing the behavior of the atom, okay? It's astounding to think that scientists could scratch their heads for years and years about the presence of the observer at the diffraction grating slit, changing the results of the experiment, okay? Maybe, maybe, there's this Louis C.K. thing, maybe, maybe there's something going on in the head of the observer, okay? And maybe that explains why the atom is acting in two contradictory ways, okay? Maybe, when you put an observer at the diffraction slit, and then maybe, when he's there, it becomes a particle rather than a wave, maybe it has something to do with the observer, okay? At this point in the nine preconceptions, we depart from what we call outside objects, okay?

It's not true that stuff is made of atoms, and those atoms are interacting independent of a human perception, okay? They are dependent on the perceiver. Something about the reality of what's, of the iron interacting with the oxygen, is coming from the perceiver, okay?

That, that science is flirting with it, but they're not there yet, okay? At this point in Buddhism, we start describing outside, the lack of outside things, okay? So the, what outside thing are we talking about?

Your partner criticizing you in the kitchen, okay? That's the outside thing we're talking about. What we're proposing is, you yelled at your kids for not putting their shoes on, because it was time to go to school, right?

And you accused them of being the stupidest kids in Manhattan, which they probably are, but you yelled at them, and you said something unkind, that plants a seed in your mind, then that seed opens, how it opens we went through it, a small mental image occurs in your mind, and then you impose that image upon your husband, okay? You hear, critical image arises in your mind, and then your mind imposes that on your husband, okay? Without that image he might have been washing the dishes or cooking, okay?

Got it? Why he's not washing the dishes or cooking, but rather is criticizing you right now, is coming from you, okay? Who brought you into the kitchen?

You did, when? When did it start? You yelled at the kids, who brought him into the kitchen?

You did, when did that start? When you yelled at the kids, both events, the criticizer husband and the criticizing me, are coming from one event that happened last week, okay? Got it?

Why is that wrong? What's wrong with that preconception? Excuse me?

Yeah, the me in this higher understanding of things, which is still not complete, okay? The me is looking at the husband and believing that the husband is made of stuff, of atoms, out there, okay? And that's the next preconception, okay?

So, let's go to number six. That was a pretty good segue, and now we're way over time. Okay, let's just keep going.

Say dulchen, sakme, kongbu. Kongbu is a good word to learn, okay? It means clump, okay?

If you ever want to say a clump to some Tibetan, just say kongbu, and he'll go, huh? Alright, it's like my Chinese, okay? Nunchan knows that.

I like study for six months, and then I say something, and all the Chinese people go, huh? And then I repeat it like three times, and they go, oh, that's Chinese. I said, oh yeah.

Okay, dulchen, sakme, kongbu means the belief that the husband, who grew from the same karmic seed, okay, is made of atoms, okay? It's made of atoms, whether they have little subatomic particles of the four elements, and the four tangible things, etc., or whether the atom, they're made of quarks, which compose electrons, which compose part of an atom, which compose part of a molecule, and therefore your husband is there. Either way, it's a preconception, meaning what?

When did that viewpoint start? When did you start to view things that way? When you were born with a human mind, because that instrument is defective, okay?

That instrument is defective. You believe, every person in this room, I don't care if you've been doing ACI courses since you were born, okay? You still believe stuff is made of little pieces, okay?

You believe that, okay? You take an aspirin when you have a headache, I think that's proof already, alright? You don't go help somebody with a headache, you take an aspirin.

Am I right? I do too. Okay, alright, dūten sakpe gombo.

Alright, next one. This is a little more complicated. Rangyirangyice bitanijubijukshiri yimba ranggitsenikidrupa.

You don't have to repeat that. A rose by any other name would spell the same, okay? We tend to name an event, and then we hold on to that naming of it, and we can't let go of it, okay?

And we think it's correct. My husband is criticizing me. He could have chosen not to, but he's criticizing because he wants to, okay?

So, we have named it in like six different ways. My husband criticizing me because he decided to, even though I reasoned with him to convince him why he shouldn't, okay? That whole sentence describing the guy standing in front of you in the kitchen, you label him with that...what do you call it? Phrases, right? And then you hang on to that, okay? You name it, and you think it couldn't have been any other way, okay?

Maybe he went to your marriage counselor, maybe the marriage counselor told him, criticize her tonight, it'll make her more real, okay? And then he said, no, I can't do that, I love her too much, and the marriage counselor said, if you care about your marriage, criticize her tonight, okay? Then you'd have to label the event as, marriage counselor talked my husband, who wants to save our marriage, into criticizing me tonight, okay?

Is that a good thing or a bad thing? It's a good thing, I think so, if you like your marriage, okay? Got it?

You name it, but maybe the name is completely wrong. You don't know, you really don't know, okay? But you hang on to the name you gave it, the story you wrote about it, you believe, okay?

And that's wrong, okay? It couldn't be anything. There could be an angel sent from heaven to help you, later, it's already over like half an hour.

Okay, you can come up to me afterwards, if you go to the prison. LONG NYIN MED DANG LANG BA'I WANG GI ZHAGSAN MA YIN PA'I YI ROL RANG GI THUB MONG BA'I YIN PA'I DU LUG ZHIG DRUG PA Ready? That's the next one, number eight.

This one says that there's some evidence coming from my husband's side that indicates that he's really being critical of me for no good reason, sorry. There's some indicators or signs or evidence, physical signs are coming from his side that indicate this was not the idea of our marriage counselor, okay? There's evidence, you know, his face looks too like, like, if it was the marriage counselor's idea he'd be like, you know, and there's just evidence coming from him that supports the way I'm interpreting this situation, okay?

I understand that part of it is my trip and that I'm laying it on him, I understand part of it's coming from my history with him in the last 20 years, I understand that. Part of it's coming from me, but part of it's coming from him, okay? There are incontrovertible signs in his behavior and his language that indicate this is not some angel trick, he is really an irritating male, okay?

And I see signs that coming from him that confirm that, okay? Got that? Got it?

Half of the problem is coming from him, I admit half of it is my interpretation, okay? The highest schools of Buddhism say it's not that you are interpreting things, because there's nothing out there to interpret, it's all coming from you, okay? The signs that you say indicate that this was not the marriage counselor's idea are also coming from you, got it?

And you're interpreting, the interpretation is coming from you, but the signs you get from his face and his words and his body language, you also created those, okay? Don't fool yourself into thinking that it's half his fault and half your fault, okay? Got it?

All problems in the world are 100% your fault. Even this lecture, if you don't like it, or if the guy keeps you late, whose fault? It's your fault.

Okay, all right, if you like the lecture, it's me. Okay, okay, last one, last one, then we're done, okay? miṁ deśākṣāṃ mayyāmbār yurāṅgī-dhūla-suṅguṇa-dṛpa.

That's very similar, except it's that I don't believe that it's possible that the way my partner looks tonight is popping out of a seed I planted last week with the kids. I can't believe it, I can't accept that, you know? I can touch his chest, I can shake him, I can yell at him, his face changes, he's not some kind of phantom, okay?

He's not just popping out of some image in my mind, okay? That's not possible, okay? I mean, I understand that parts of the situation are coming from how I behaved last week with the kids, but to say that the physicality of his face, and the way he's standing, and the way he's speaking, is all popping out of seeds in my head, it's too much, it's too much, okay?

That's the ninth, what? Preconception. You are born with it, okay?

If you undertake the experiment I'm about to describe in your life, and I promise I will finish it within five minutes, if you undertake the experiment which I'm about to propose, okay, in the next five minutes, you must be aware that you have nine preconceptions that are going to stop you from succeeding, okay? You have to, I'm telling you already what the nine problems are going to be. They go from thinking the thing could last forever, or at least for another month, up to believing that it couldn't be the case, that everything about your husband is coming from how you acted with the kids last week, okay?

From one to nine, those preconceptions are wired into your head. You have them all the time. Don't blame scientists for atomic theory.

It was been in their head since they were born. They believe that stuff is made of little balls of stuff that can't touch each other, okay? It's part of us, we're built that way.

How do you overcome that? Raw understanding, raw personal spiritual education. You got to go to the Three Jewels and sit through Hector's classes forever, okay?

Only raw training. Years and years of repetition of what? The pen thing.

It's time to talk about the pen thing. It's the only— I'll do the pen thing in one minute, okay? And then we're gonna have a song, okay?

Here's where stuff is really coming from. We have to do some experiments to prove it, like we have to figure out how to—metrics, Dharma metrics, that's our next big challenge in our life. Paying the rent is just the first part.

Okay, quickly, what is this thing? Don't be British, give me an answer. Okay, I'm apologizing to any Britishers out there.

I did—anyway, if a dog came up here and it's a young puppy dog and I wave this thing in their face, what would they do? Does the puppy dog see this as a pen? No.

Now, who's correct, the dog or the human? Both, okay? Why?

You can chew on it and enjoy it, that's no problem. A human can write with it, no problem. They both are correct, okay?

Animal rights and human rights, okay? Next question, if I place this object on the lectern and all the people in this room leave the room, and all the dogs in this room leave the room, then at that time, when everyone has left the room, is this a pen or is it a chew toy? You have to say neither, okay?

By the way, that's what Buddhists mean by kongshing, emptiness, okay? And we're not going to talk about it because it's too confusing, okay? By itself, it's neither one, okay?

Up here on the lectern, without dogs and humans standing around, it's neither. Next question, we're getting close to the end, okay? If the human comes back in the room, what does this become?

Therefore, is this object coming from the mind of the human or was it always a pen before they walked in? Duh, okay? I mean that's very simple proof, it must be coming from the human.

Ah, now, if you walk in the kitchen and your husband starts yelling, criticizing, I guess Buddhist husbands don't yell, they just kind of like, okay, they're more controlled than that, and he starts giving you, you know, then is it coming from you or is it coming from him? It's coming from you, okay? Why?

How? Yeah, because you planted a seed in your mind. If you understand how those seeds open, you can buy into this thing, and then you can have a happy life for the rest of your life, successful happy life, anything you want you can make, okay?

It's important what we're talking about. You can, you can clear your credit card debts and become a zillionaire, you can change your health, you can have energy forever. This reading was finished last night at three o'clock, okay?

It was cool, you know? And then you can, you can be happy, inside your heart you can be happy all the time, okay? Just understand how these seeds open.

You planted the seed by? Yelling at the kids. More specifically, you planted the seed by hearing yourself yell at the kids, okay?

The atoms of the yelling hit your eardrum, and then you interpret it, okay? And that planted the seed. Watching yourself do or say anything, or even think anything, creates a seed.

How does that seed open? Suppose I want to plant a seed for something in my life, and I don't want to wait three lifetimes for it to open. What should I do?

Think about it, just think about it, negative or positive, okay? If you want your partner to be more jealous than they are now, think about how jealous they are, okay? Think about it.

That will open all the seeds in your mind to see them as jealous, okay? Just keep thinking about how jealous they are, okay? And then the next day you'll see them more jealous, okay?

Because it's all coming from you. The more you think about a negative seed in your mind, the more it flowers. Jesus called it a mustard seed tree.

There's a joke for exegesis of the Bible. Why? Mustard seeds don't make trees.

That's another story. Anyway, so you criticize yourself, plants a seed, okay? And because you focus on it, it grows fast, alright?

If you don't focus on it, it can be lay dormant for a long, long time, okay? So, if you want a good seed to open fast, what should you do? Think about it, think about how cute, cool it is, okay?

I helped an elderly person today, you know, I brought them gifts from, where were we last time? Guadalajara, Sayalito. And I brought them these gifts, and they were happy about those gifts, and I'm glad I gave them the gifts, because the smile on her face was so, what do you call it?

Heartwarming, okay? Then by enjoying the good things you do for others, that makes those seeds grow faster, they open faster. Last thing, then we're done.

I yelled at the kids, I kept thinking about how my husband is so critical, and that made those seeds grow faster, okay? How do they open? What happens when they open?

My husband walks in the room, he's a black stick, okay? The seed opens in my mind, a luminous image of a mean husband comes out of my mind, it's about a quarter inch, okay? Your husband is six feet tall, or whatever, the mean husband, the image of the mean husband is about a quarter inch high, because it's popping out of your head.

There's no room for a six-foot husband in your head, okay? An image of a critical husband is coming from where? A seed in your mind.

Who put the seed there? You did, when? Last week, when you heard yourself yell at the kids.

That seed opens, karmic seed opens, an image comes out, and it leaps out on top of the husband, okay? I like to call it like a silver hologram, it feels silver when you start to see them. You can reach a state in meditation where you can watch them, okay?

And you see, you know, your impression of Hector, or what you think of Hector, is really just flying out of how you treated people last week, okay? Got it? How you apply it now?

Let's answer the three questions and we're really done. First one, why does iron act like iron? Why does an iron atom act like iron?

If you're using it to support the roof of your head, it's because you caused other people to have a home over their heads, literally, okay? Got it? That's what gives iron the capacity to hold up things, okay?

There's nothing in the iron atom. How does iron turn to rust? If you have a laptop that you really like and it starts to wear out, who's causing that?

Is Apple company really getting incompetent? No, okay? Your kindness to others to share information is lagging, it's flagging, it hasn't been enough, you haven't done enough, and so your computer is having problems, got it?

It's nothing to do with the atoms in the computer, okay? Okay, now, how does that imply that no one in the world who understood how a computer works could use a computer to hurt another person? Tell me that and we're truly done and Claudia is going to come up and we'll sing a song, okay?

You ready? Don't get nervous. How then, why would it be true to say that if I truly understood how a computer works because I share information kindly with others, that my computer could never be used to harm someone?

You'd never have a computer. The computer wouldn't work. The minute you decide to harm somebody, it would break.

Try to understand, okay? Science, which is based on a correct understanding, a complete understanding of atoms, cannot hurt other people, it's impossible, it cannot be. Thank you.

We'll play you one song, it's it's a tradition at the end of a talk that we play it, it's a song to our teachers, okay? Om Guru Mahaguru Om Mahaguru That song was a beautiful offering.

[Speaker 2]
Thank you. You know, on behalf of Three Jewels, I've been working for Three Jewels a little bit for a while and we're really grateful that Geshe Michael started Three Jewels and is still here with us in New York and we would like him to come back very often, more and more, and we really appreciate his offer to help us keep the Three Jewels in New York for not just for New York but for the entire world because New York is an important place and some of you have been, you know, very thoughtful today to help others around the world and we appreciate your help.

This offering is very minor and nothing matching teachings but it comes from all of us here and we really love you and thank you and hope you come back often. Movie at 7.30. Movie at 7.30. On the road again. Just can't wait to get on the road again.

Love is making music with my friends. I can't wait to get on the road again.