The New Beginning: Opening the Door to the Diamond Way

[Tim: Hi everybody. First of all, welcome to Diamond Mountain. I'd like to welcome everybody who's here and everybody who's online. This is our first course post-Lam Rim, where we're going to start the Lam Rim again. So this is the very first class.

First of all, I'd just like to welcome every single one of you who's made the journey here. I know it's difficult. I know jet lag is difficult, hard and tiring, and it's one of those things that we all do because we find this and everything we do very, very important. So I'm sorry and I empathize, I just went through it last week so I know what's going on. And everybody online, thank you for joining. I want to thank the ACI team and everything you've done to make this event happen. It has been quite a journey for us to expand from our normal program size to now we have over 2,000 people online plus 140 people here. So we must be doing something right, and we're looking forward to doing a lot more with you. Geshehla, thank you for continuing to teach with ACI. We have a small offering to begin the class. Thank you very much and thank you.]

How everything began

All right. Thank you.

So I don't know, in 1993 or something like that, I started ACI with some other friends, and I said I would do 18 courses. It took seven years, and that covers the highlights of the Geshe course. I finished my Geshe in 1995, so I was excited to do it and I really wanted to share it.

I was excited to share it and I was working more than full-time, and I was doing a class every night.. most nights. And then it got more and more deep, and then I was going to start my three-year retreat and my students asked me would I teach Diamond Way afterwards? And then I said, yeah, I think so. And then I had a lot of time to design a Diamond Way course. And so we did it.

When I got out of retreat, we started seven years of Diamond Way courses, and I think the total pages is 30,000 or 40,000 pages of translations for the two courses, and it took 14 years. And the problem is everybody gets to be an old person by the time you finish. No, I'm just kidding.

I felt happy about it, and I really sincerely believe that that Diamond Way course, the 18 courses, is the best in history. Because Diamond Way was all broken up by many historical problems, and it was taught by different people in different parts of the world, and no one ever put it together, put it all together. So I was really happy to do that.

I attended one of the two tantra colleges in the Tibetan [tradition?]. There's two: Gyume [and] Gyuto. My teacher was the administrator of Gyume, and before he left, before he ran away.. So I was there debating when they opened their debate ground and I felt we could do a better course. I thought we could do a more thorough course and a deeper course in Diamond Way. So I spent almost those three years in retreat designing a course and thinking about a course, and then we did it. And then I put people into three-year retreat and we had a lot of trouble. It was hard. The courses were hard.

This place, you have roads and you have a cafeteria and you have toilets; and we had rocks and it was not easy, but everyone worked hard and they did a good job.

30-something people built their own cabin and they donated it to Diamond Mountain when they finished. Is anybody here from the three year retreat? Is there anybody there? You want to stand up? And that all was possible because of Rob Rusinger and I'd like him to stand up.

Then, did I threaten, or I told my students, that I felt it would be better if they taught the Diamond Way courses after me because I thought it would force them to be Diamond Way teachers. You know what I mean? So if I teach, then people sometimes don't come to their course. So I said I wasn't going to teach Diamond Way again. And I kept that promise for, I don't know, 18 years, almost 20 years. And then I'm very, very happy with how they're teaching Diamond Way: John, Connie, Elly, other people. All teaching. Gyelse. Teaching very nice. And I'm very proud of that. And I feel a little jealous sometimes because I don't get to teach with them.

[Ven Gyelse: You can teach with me]

And yeah, it's okay. But I want to say those who are teaching Diamond Way from the first Diamond Way group, I'm really, really happy. Sarahni and David are teaching. And I'm really, really happy with that. And I feel very content with that. They don't really need me to do the 18 courses and I don't have time anyway, to tell you the truth. We have 42 organizations and I'm just.. I just got back from a 30-day tour. My wife is a little excited about that. But my life is very, very hard. I was in Dunghuang a few days ago, then I was in Kyoto, then I was in [Huanjong?], and then I don't remember before that, but it's very, very stressful. But I don't feel stressed, I feel happy, but I can't do more. I can't do more, there's no hours left to do that.

My health is okay. I don't have any pain or anything like that. I have kidney, what do you call it, disease, which is a thing that gets worse every year. And it's called silent, you don't feel anything, it just gets worse every year. And so I don't have unlimited time. I would say I have maybe, I don't know.. But I don't have extra time to spend, you know what I mean? I have to do the things I have to do. And more than other people, I see the impermanence of life. I see it's not endless and I can't waste time and I have to be very smart how I use my time.

Then a few people, good people, asked me to teach them Diamond Way privately. And I started with a few people. I tried to do the 18 courses with them and it just didn't work out. It was just impossible for me to go through. The homeworks were insane, I don't know who wrote them, they're like crazy. And it's like crazy, and so those all failed, we all stopped. I didn't continue them. And then when I was in Kyoto, a group.. somebody invited me to dinner in a restaurant and I never say yes because I'm too busy. And then I said, 'yeah, okay, if I have time, I'll drop by'. And I made a mistake and I dropped by and they were just finishing dinner and it was some 30 students. And some guy sat across from me and looked at me and said, 'can you teach us Diamond Way?' And I said, yes. And then I was like, [surprised I said 'yes'] wait. But it was a special group of people that I have worked with for, I don't know, eight years or something. And I felt like I could do something for them. I could do something special for them. So I've been doing that lightly, I don't know, like one day every two months or something. And then they asked me could I do another Diamond Way for ACI. And I am happy to try. I am hungry to teach Diamond Way and I enjoy teaching Diamond Way, and I believe in Diamond Way and it just seems like the right time to do it.

So I just said 'yes' right away and I'm happy to do it.

I don't think I can... I used to know all the students personally. I used to interview every single student. There's like 200,000 students now, and people don't understand that. People say, 'Geshehla, I've just got to talk to you for an hour'. And I'm like, you multiply 200,000 times one and then divide by, you know, and they're like, 'yeah, but I need an hour'. And then I'm like, I just don't have that time, I can't do that anymore. I can't interview everyone anymore and I can't say 'you should come' and 'you shouldn't come'. How do I know? I see you once every few months or something and I just see your face. I get a flower and then I [go to the next person offering a flower]. I can't do this kind of very tough thing that I did, how many years ago, 32 years ago, I can't do that. It's got too many people now. And many people I believe are ready for Diamond Way. And it would be nice, it would be fun, to do Diamond Way together. And I think a lot of people would benefit. That's my opinion, and I'm sorry for you older people who had to work so hard in the old days, and you can yell at me later, but I'd like to have some fun and talk about Diamond Way as your grandpa. And let's do that.

There's some requirements. I'm not going to go through them. They put me to sleep. You can talk to Tim, me and Tim worked them out. There's not much requirements. You have to do what the tradition is, the lineage is, you have to follow that. And we built it that way, but it's a lot easier than it was 30-something years ago.

Seiji and I just finished the course this week, but we're in the middle where we change the SCIM course; we allow people to do it over a month instead of in 10 days or something. And then I taught some classes this week online for SCIM Step, I'm not supposed to say Flex. if you had to remember all the acronyms that I have to remember.. People come like, 'you got ALS because you're doing DCI with the SCIM'. I'm like, I don't know. So anyway, we changed the format so that.. we wondered what would happen if people didn't have to ask their boss for two weeks off. And suddenly we got a whole different group of people who were afraid to get fired. So we are doing two hours in the morning and an hour in the evening or something like that. And it was a lot easier. And I saw that there were some nice people who couldn't come to the more strict time zones. And I thought, 'wow, we should try that'. So anyway, I'm happy to do this and I don't expect you to come to wherever I am three or four times a year. I don't expect that. I know it's not possible. In a way, the people who do it, they get broke and then they sleep on people's couches and everyone gets upset. So let's just..in English, you say 'muddle on'. Let's try, let's see how we do. And I'm happy to make it easier instead of harder for you. Because I don't know how many times I can do this, I'm kind of feeling in the mood to do it. So I'll make it as easy as I can.

But then you have to pay attention to the rules they make and be serious.

I also don't expect 2,000 people [current online attendance] to stay. If I do my job, there'll be 20 people here in a couple months. No, [there will be] more. But I know it's not going to be 2,000 people. But anyway, you're welcome to try and I enjoy Diamond Way, I enjoy teaching. I think we're going to have a lot of fun. So just relax and enjoy and I'm happy to do it with you. And it's a special blessing from a different time in my life. So I'm happy to see you here. And next life, I'll learn everybody's name.

A Song of my Spiritual Life by Je Tsongkapa

Okay, first thing we wanted to do, Timothy, was to embarrass Gibson Chang. He's easily embarrassed. Where are you? Can you stand up? He's trying to raise his hand. So he's one of the 12 Mixed Nuts translators. And obviously to enter Diamond Way it is traditional to study Lam Rim or the Steps of the Path together. And I was thinking about a Lam Rim that would be very appropriate for this kind of friendly group, like new kind of diamond ring. And I thought it would be nice to have a kind of special Steps of the Path just for you guys. So me and Gibson have been working on this book for a while, and we finished it, and then we give it to Anatole who checks these things, and then we gave it to Rosa who prints these things, and if you're here, you get one in-person. And it is free, if anyone tries to charge you, tell them to ask me.

Okay, Rosa, we'll figure out the finances later. That's my mantra with her.

It's a beautiful piece of work. Can I see one? I haven't seen one. Not bad. Gibson, will you sign it for me? Nice. I like the smell of a new fresh book. So this is part of a series of books that I started 30 years ago, and it's called Classics of Middle Asia. And the idea was to make some books that you could carry in your purse, or you could carry in your Good Night Book Club carry bag. Ao that's the idea. And we started this series of translations 30 years ago. I was on a very terrible bus ride with my teacher in India, overnight bus ride with wooden seats. It was one of the worst nights of my life. And then we got off the bus to do diarrhea in the field. I picked a special leaf because it looked like.. I didn't have any more toilet paper, and turned out to have little needles on the bottom of it. And I had an exciting time riding on the wooden seat with the needles getting pushed in. And we got off and there was this guy, some westerner came up to us and he's holding one of these books from this series in his hand. And he says, 'I read this every day, I carry it everywhere because it's so nice to carry, and it changed my life, and thank you so much.' And I was like, 'wow, that's worth the diarrhea.' So anyway, we tried to choose a book that would be easy, and easy to carry around.

The other thing about this book, it's called Song of My Spiritual Life. Nyamgur.

GUR means a song, a spiritual song.

And the most famous GUR is the [GUR BUNG?], which is the Hundred Thousand Songs of Milarepa. Milarepa lived about 800 years ago in Tibet, and he was a normal business person or something. And then at the age of 50, he started Diamond Way, and I think he's a good example for us. He started Diamond Way, he became a great meditator, and then he started writing songs, poetry, beautiful poetry called GUR. And GUR means a song, a spiritual song. And the English translation has an interesting history. There was a Chinese Garma C.C. Chang who went to Tibet in the 1930s or 40s or something like that. And anyway, he ended up at Princeton University as a professor of Buddhism, and he translated Milarepa's songs. And I missed him, I got there just after him. The year he died, I came the next year. So anyway, these songs are very, very famous. His translation is very famous. And so these are similar GUR. GUR means a song.

Then NYAM is interesting because NYAM means experience. [NYAMNYONG?] in spoken Tibetan.

It means personal experience. It means inner life and the person's inner life and their personal experience. Tsongkapa..I spent my whole life translating these books, maybe almost 50 years or something. Every morning I spent six hours, five hours, for a long time. And I'm working on one of his books now. I think we've done about 3,000 pages of Tsongkapa in the last year. He's unbelievable. He's the greatest. And I don't feel shy to say it. No one came close to him in history. He's unbelievable. He's beyond. But he never talks about himself. And maybe those two things come together. He's so focused on what Nagarjuna wanted to say that he doesn't talk about Tsongkapa, never. I can't recall ever, anywhere. He wrote the greatest book in Tibetan history, the Lam Rim Chen Mo, the Great Lam Rim, and he doesn't mention himself once. I think at the end of the book he says, 'my name's Tsong' or something, 'see you later'.

But in this book, and that's why Gibson and I decided to work on it, he says, 'I'm going to share with you my personal life and I'm going to tell you how I went into Diamond Way, what did I do to get ready for Diamond Way'. And his Diamond Way writings are the greatest.

Mr. Binh contacted me from Vietnam like 10 years ago, and he said, 'Gehshela, we don't have much Diamond Way here, and people don't feel comfortable with it, people are not sure if it's real or...'. And then I sent him the Tohoku catalog, Tohoku University's catalog of the scriptures, which is 4,600 books. They're in Tohoku. I went and saw them. There's 3,700 commentaries and 990 sutras. And that's Buddhism. That is Buddhism. And so I played a game with Mr. Binh. I said, 'how many of those are tantra? How many are Diamond Way?' And he said, 'I don't know, how would I know?' And I said, 'can I send them to you?' And he said, 'yeah, you can send them to me'. And then I... It's exactly half.

From the kangyur, from the ancient sutras, it's 500 of the 990 books are tantra, are Diamond Way.

So to say 'it's not real' or 'Buddha didn't teach it' or something like that, is ridiculous. If you understand anything about Buddhism, you're like, hahaha. It's crazy. Buddha spent half his time teaching Diamond Way. And it's amazing and it's beautiful and it's wonderful and it's clean and there's no weird stuff.

It's not weird. We don't kill chickens, we don't have sex in the temple. If you are expecting that, you're going to have to go somewhere else, I don't have any recommendations.

But it's very, very beautiful and sweet and kind and compassionate and wonderful and happy. Okay?

I was in Uruguay. I went to Punta Del Esta to teach a soccer team, professional soccer team. I thought it was going to be Messi [like?] John. He does that all the time. I mean, he goes and teaches large groups around the world and he just shows up and suddenly it's the New York Jets or something. I don't have this problem. But it was a bunch of soccer players and they're all drunk. Some guy fell in the pool, he almost drowned. But they stayed until three in the morning and we had a beautiful conversation. We had a beautiful meeting, and they couldn't stop talking about the ideas and it was so beautiful.

The next morning I went back to the airport, you have to fly over the river back to Rio de Janeiro. And I was in the airport and I saw a big sign that said 'Tantra'. And I'm like, 'whoa, in Uruguay'. And I went over there and it was terrible. It was a terrible, terrible book. Something really dirty and strange, and I was so disappointed. I felt so sad that this kind of thing had come to Latin America, and this is how people think of it. And I was very sad and I'll never forget it. I was just walking through the airport with some of the soccer players and it was so sick. And I was like, 'wow, that's bad'. So yeah, it's not like that at all. Okay. Diamond Way is beautiful fun. It's like sitting with your grandmother and it's very, very sweet.

So I wanted to talk about, I have a thing called a flow document, which is how I teach nowadays. And it took me, I don't know, 50 years to come to here. I came to a way of teaching where I have a document that I prepare..I meditate on the teaching maybe for a couple of weeks or something like that. So my morning practice, maybe I'll meditate on these classes two weeks ago, and I'll get ready for the class and I'll meditate on it. And the meditation is based on images, I use pictures to remember what I'm going to teach. I find pictures are more powerful than words. And I think it's very fascinating to have a language like Chinese where you use pictures as your words. And I think there's something important about that.

But anyway, I do a flow doc, and we're going to talk more about that, especially in the next class today. Because I want to talk to you about learning how to do it yourself, when you teach especially. Okay?

So I use pictures and they help me ground my talk, they help me go through the talk, they deepen my understanding of the talk. So I'm going to follow these pictures. And it also helps keep grandpa on track. Old people like to tell stories, and then suddenly it's the end of the class and you didn't learn anything, maybe. Okay, next picture.

So again, this is how we're going to start.

My stepson painted Tsongkapa, he's a very great painter. And he should be a painter, I don't know why he's running this little cafe, but he's really, really good. He had a one-night show, he made $14,000 last week, but he wants to make coffee all day, so I don't know. But it's a beautiful painting, and we tried to get the feeling of Tsongkapa finally willing to talk about his personal life, and finally willing to give us some trade secrets, what to meditate about. So NYAMGUR.

There's a tradition that Tsongkapa is Manjushri. And as I get older, a couple things happened to me. I used to get confused by the Sanskrit names. There were some terrible ones, I can't remember, Saraswati.

I felt like an outsider because it was all a foreign language. And I studied in India, I started with them, and I was there for many years total. And as I get older, I think it's not so important what their name is. And I don't think it's so important to call Manjushri or Maitreya or.. People get confused, 'What's the difference, Geshehla? Do I have to be Indian to study this? Do I have to remember his name to get to know him?'

And I just feel sort of.. as I get older and as I learn more and as I master all the languages more, I think they're less important to call him Manjushri or call him... Tsongkapa, forget it, Mr. Onion Field, where'd that come from? Like I keep trying to think of onion field in a tantric way and I still haven't figured it out. He smells sweet, I don't know.

So anyway, what I wanted to say is, personally, I think Je Rinpoche.. Tibetans calling him Je Rinpoche, they rarely call him Tsongkapa. Je Rinpoche means 'precious Lord' or something like that. Jewel, Mr. Jewel, or something like that, and he's supposed to be Manjushri.

And then I feel guilty. My teacher says, 'don't forget, Tsongkapa is Manjushri'. And I'm like, 'I forget, what's Manjushri?' And he says, 'the God of wisdom'. And I'm like, 'what do you mean God? Did he make the world?' And then it gets all confused. And then I just didn't feel very comfortable with the whole thing. Am I supposed to have a big hat to be a good person, or do I have to have a foreign name to be a good person? And then at this stage.. there's probably nobody alive who has worked harder on the scriptures, I think so. And who has translated more of them, who understands them. And I want to say, the whole question of Tsongkapa boils down to.. when you look at the cover of the book, when you see the first image here,

And you're going to get lots of images in the next.. I don't know how many years it's going to take. But when you look at the picture.. carry the book around with you and look at it. Open it every morning or open it at night, it's a good luck thing. Just say, 'I had a lousy day and I'm grumpy and I'm going to bed'. Okay? Read a few sentences, shut up and read a few sentences, and then go to sleep.

'I didn't understand anything, Geshehla'. That's the point. It's something new, something that's going to change you. Okay?

So what I want to say in the first class, and I'll probably say it in the last class, the first thing Geshehla said in the new Diamond Way class is: is he [Tsongkapa] a Buddha? Is he the Buddha? Is he the Buddha of wisdom? Is he Manjushri?

And I want to say my opinion. I have not met him directly. In my meditations, in my experiences, I have not met him directly.

According to Diamond Way, the most important teaching of Diamond Way, I'll tell you tonight in case we all die, is that.. There's a joke, there's an inside Buddhist joke. How many Buddhas are in the audience today? 'I dunno, two, Kyeri and Sushuma, for sure those two, who knows? I don't know.' And then by tradition, according to a Diamond Way..What's that Kala Danda thing? Well, how's the opening lines of Hatha Yoga Pradipika go? Anyway, [mortu kala danda?]. They have killed death with a stick.

The opening lines of Hatha Yoga Pradipika say that there are people walking around among us who are Buddhas, they're enlightened. They killed death. Kala danda, they killed death. They don't have to die. And they're just walking around all the time. And what else they going to do, I don't know.

So according to.. the way I like to present it, we were in Dunhuang last week. Dunhuang is on the edge of the Gobi Desert. There's 700 meditation caves. Seven-hundred meditation caves were dug out of the cliffs. At any given time, a thousand years ago, there was 700 people meditating in caves. And they would practice there, this stuff.

Then in 1900, on June 25th, the rumor is that some monk was smoking and he saw the draft of air coming out of a crack, and they broke the wall and they found 60,000 books, 60,000 manuscripts. And it's unbelievable. It's just unbelievable, I've been there a couple times now. And they found the oldest book in the world there, they found the Diamond Cutter Sutra there. It's the oldest printed book in the world with a date, which is 867, I dunno, something like that. So anyway, the oldest book in the world was found in these caves, and we went there and we were just feeling our way there. And you can feel the..

We had a program there, Innovation Retreat program, and it was unbelievable. And the feeling of the Gobi Desert, the sand dunes and everything, it's like unbelievable. We should go there sometime again. And we had this amazing, amazing time. And then I had to go to the hospital for some kind of little problem, and they found out I was a translator. And they gave me this suite with the director and assistant directors, and they said, 'oh, you're a translator, you get the..[best treatment]'. It's not like America, in America, they say, 'what? is that like..?' So anyway, think about the Diamond Cutter Sutra. It is the most printed book in history. It beats the Bible by.. as far as printing, probably the sales were double or something, to be honest. And I'm loyal to the Bible, I like it and I grew up with it. But the Diamond Cutter, the sales are about twice, and it's been printed for a hundred generations. And you can go to Dunhuang and people still give you a special room if you can translate it. And why did it survive so long?

Why did it last so long? John [Foley] and me wrote a book..he wrote a book, I helped with the grammar and stuff because he's a pilot, but it got very famous. The book got very famous. And I was at the airport in Phoenix and I saw a hundred copies on the wall and I was like, 'yeah, it's a bestseller'. And I was running to the plane with Scott and Orit and I didn't have time to buy it. I thought, well, we're going to be back in a week, I'll buy it then.

So we came back and I went to the bookstore and it's gone.

And I said, 'where's that book by that famous Blue Angels guy?' And they're like, 'oh, we only keep books here for a week'.

And I'm like, 'what?' And he said, 'yeah, we sell for a week and then we sell the [next book] next week'.

And I'm like, 'well, I really wanted a copy'. And they said, 'well, you'll have to order it online or something'.

I'm like, okay.

What I mean to say is that the Diamond Cutter Sutra has been reprinted in the bookstore called The World for two and a half thousand years, for a hundred generations. And the purpose of that book is to help you touch the diamond world, to see emptiness directly. And that's all it's used for. You can't use it for much else. It doesn't have any recipes, nothing. And people have passed it on to their kids for a hundred generations, for two-and-a-half thousand years, which means to me, there's a possibility that it works.

Because you don't pass on a book if it didn't..if you're going to choose one book to give to your kids in ancient times, which is expensive..books in those days, if you had a library, you had to be wealthy. There were no public libraries. And people spent the money and the time to print the Diamond Cutter and hand it to their kids and say, 'if you don't ever read anything else, read this'. And what happened was, it must have worked. I say logically.. in my opinion, logically, you don't pass on a book if it doesn't work. You see what I mean?

Can you tell for sure if someone is a Buddha or isn’t a Buddha?

They found a clay tablet Babylonian recently, like 20 years ago, and it's the oldest writing in the history, and it's a clay tablet and it has Babylonian letters on it. They found it and they worked on the translation.

They worked and worked and worked. And then they figured out what it says.

It says, 'I sold a horse to this guy and he didn't pay me, and I want to take him to court. And if you can help me sue the guy, you can have half the horse'.

This the oldest printed thing in the world.

What I'm saying is that things survive when they're important, when they work. Which means, okay, you ready? That somebody must have gotten enlightened by all those sutras and stuff. John Brady, this cool guy, his target is 300,000 ancient books. His target. He has finished 19,000. He has finished 80 million words. He is 7% done. So he has to live another, nevermind.

But there's all these books, why do they survive?

Somebody used them and they worked for somebody. Which means that logically, not religiously, logically, there's Buddhas walking around. Otherwise the book would've been stored with the Babylonian clay tablet. You see what I mean?

Why would it be printed over and over and over again if it didn't work? So logically, there's Buddhas walking around. Logically, okay, you ready?

It's possible that this guy [Je Tsongkapa] is a Buddha. And logically it's possible that he's not.

And I think that's why Buddhists, real Buddhists, spend 10% to 20% of their time studying logic.

Logically he could be a Buddha. You can't say he's not. Can you say he's not?

Can anyone in this room say he's not a Buddha? That he is not Manjushri, the God of wisdom?

Can you say for sure?

And then everybody's like, 'I don't know'. Even the Buddhas in the room are faking it and saying, 'I dunno'.

And then on the other hand, can you say logically that he is a Buddha? No, you cannot.

I don't accept it. I don't say so. I don't think it's logical. I don't think you can say he's a Buddha.

You don't know. There's a lot of indications that he might be.

Nobody else could write..in my opinion, it'd be difficult to write it if you're not a Buddha.

But my first Diamond Way class, which you'll never forget, even if you never come back, which I'm ready for, that's okay, I don't mind. The one thing you'll hear from me in the first Diamond Way class is that you can't say he's not, and you cannot say he is. And that's Diamond Way.

And if you never hear anything else from me about Diamond Way, if we all get blown up tonight by all the terrorists, you heard that. You heard that from me, okay? And I don't think you can prove it's wrong.

There could be Buddhas..the person sitting next to you right now could be a Buddha. And it's possible that they're not also. And I can't say, I cannot honestly say. Okay, got it?

I can tell you one thing from personal experience, and I'm an old man, and I don't care if you don't believe me. I saw emptiness directly. I spent my life trying to teach it to people.

I don't know anyone else in the world who did, but I cannot prove it to you. I can discuss it with you, I can share my experiences, I cannot prove it to you.

And you cannot say for sure that I have. But I know what it feels like to walk around the whole world for almost 40.. for 50 years, and look at people and know they don't know who I am. You see what I mean?

I meet people on the plane and they say, 'what do you do?' And I say, 'forget it, if I try to explain, you won't believe me anyway'. I learned a long time ago, I don't talk on the plane anymore, I just watch a movie. No.

But I know what it feels like to be something..I know what it feels like to have been to every planet in the universe. I know what that is, I've been there. But I also know what it feels like to walk around the world and no one sees that. No one can see it. I know what it feels like and I'm okay with it, I have fun. I still have pastries, don't tell my wife. Yesterday I stopped at the health food place, Arcadia Farms, and I found a walnut pastry.

So anyway, I know what it feels like to be anonymous at a different level. You see what I mean? And I'm okay. I don't mean I'm upset, you don't have to rush up to me after class and say, 'I'm sorry I treated you like a schmuck'. That's okay, I don't mind at all.

But I know what it feels like. I can sit here and I have seen every planet, I have been there personally. I have met every person who's alive in the universe, and I have done that. But I know what it feels like to walk around the world and nobody knows, or nobody would believe it anyway, and nobody except the people here would care. But what I'm saying is the Buddhas in the room, they probably feel the same way. They're like, 'yeah, okay, I'm just here, if I can help you, I'm available'. That's their job. That's what they do.

They infiltrate groups, they sneak into the room. They look like normal people. They act like normal people. And then right at the moment that you need some patience, meditation, they do something to piss you off. Okay? Understand? That's tantra. That's Diamond Way. Okay?

If you're not a Buddha, and I have no idea who you are, if you're not a Buddha, you can join me in the Secret Buddha Admiration Club and doubting who you're sitting next to in the airplane and trying to figure out who they are. And what happens after years of thinking like that is you feel sort of peaceful and happy and you've accepted that there may be a Buddha sitting next to you and you deal with it. And when that person is good to you or that person is mean to you, you turn on your Diamond Way sensibility. You say, 'well, maybe they're trying to help me somehow'. You have this reverse paranoia. Diamond Way is reverse paranoia.

Paranoia people say, 'everyone hates me, everyone's trying to screw me'. They're looking like this [suspicious] at everybody. Then Diamond Way paranoia is like, 'maybe she's a Buddha, maybe he's a Buddha, oh my God, I'm so lucky'. Okay, that's Diamond..if you never come back to this class again, and maybe you don't have to, just remember. That is the whole Diamond Way, okay? There's nothing else. I mean, can I say in the first half of Diamond Way? That's the first.

Next picture.

The King of Dharma – The Life of Je Tsongkapa

Me and Rob Rusinger, we worked for I don't know how many years. There was no good life story of Tsongkapa. There was no biography. There was some small things in Wikipedia that were ridiculous, and there was no information about him. And it was very frustrating to me. And so here's the story.

I lived in a Mongolian temple in New Jersey for 25 years, and my teacher taught me privately for 25 years, in addition to going to the Geshe course. And then he would teach..he had a small group. He had maybe, on a normal night, he might have 15 people or something, 20 people. And we didn't have any money at all.

We were broke and we were living in this Mongolian temple.

All of the people in the town were refugees from the Nazi concentration camps. They jumped over the fence and they were tough. They were real Mongol warriors and they were.. a lot of them were messed up. There was a lot of drug addicts and alcohol and it was a hard, hard time. And he was a visiting monk, he was supposed to serve them. He didn't speak their language and it was a hard time for both of us. But anyway, I snuck in, I helped him, he taught me for free, whatever.

And then he would teach in the summertime, he would have a special retreat and everyone he ever met would come and we'd have like 30, 40 people. And we'd sit in this big Mongolian temple and it was bitterly, uncomfortably, it was New Jersey hot. Arizona hot is cool. New Jersey hot is miserable, it feels like being in a Japanese sweat lodge. You're just sweating, it's all wet. It's like Kyoto in August or something. We don't go there [to Kyoto in August]. But it's uncomfortable. And so, by the way, Kyoto is my second home, but don't tell my wife. And it's my favorite place to be in the world, maybe, physically. But anyway.

So we would sit there and cook. And then we had this steeple and it had windows at the top and he'd [Khen Rinpoche] say, 'you climb up there and open the windows'. And it's very dangerous. It's triple ladder. I was scared out of my mind to go up there. And one day I almost fell. I think I fell and I think Buddha pushed me back or something. I was like this [falling off ladder] and then I was like this [straight on ladder], and I was like, what just happened? And it was.. So anyway.

I'm up there and I'm scared to death and I'm looking through the ladder and I can't quite reach the window. And there's paintings all around me. There's paintings way, way up there. And I'm looking at them and I'm like, wow, these are cool. And they had a little writing on them. They used a single horse tail hair to paint the letters. A single hair. And they sit there for like three years to make one thangka, to make one painting. And they write Tsongkapa’s life story. And you can't see the writing from down below. Your Lama has to send you up to die, and then you earn this right.

I was like, 'wow'. I went down and I went to my Lama's room. I said, 'there's writing on those paintings'. And he said, 'I know'.

And I said, 'why you never told me?'

He goes, 'oh, that's called called [1:03:48 Tsongka Gechu?]. That's the 80 major events of Tsongkapa's life. And there's 15 paintings. Very, very rare. Extremely rare. There's only a few sets in the world.

And anyways, so me and Rob Rusinger, we worked on them for many years and we finished and we did a book. We wrote a book called King of the Dharma and it has all the paintings.

And we found the original, John Brady found the original of [unclear] and what to write on the painting. It was a big deal. [unclear], which is always easier.

You don't have to be Kyeri and read the 200 books of Harry Potter in the same week. You can get a good picture of his life. So me and Rob.. I started to go to museums and teach the paintings. I was at the National Museum of Argentina, I was teaching these paintings. And then I asked Rob, could we make some posters to put around the room?

We identified 12 themes of Tsongkapa's life, 12 roles that he played in his life. And then we made posters. He and I made posters. And I thought we would show you the posters during this Diamond Way classes. And then we'll give you the posters. I mean, I don't know if I can afford it, but you might have to help me to pay for it. But we'll give you one by one, we'll explain the poster.

Each poster has one of the important parts of Tsongkapa's life. For example, he thought it was important to learn to sing and to learn to dance. And people don't know that. People don't know that it's a Diamond Way practice. And he was doing all these special dances. I learned some of them in Mongolia. And singing these special songs and it's amazing. Stuff like that.

Okay, so you'll get a poster once every session, like every time we meet together. We will meet together on the Lam Rim, four times a year. I think it will take six sessions. I think it will take a year-and-a-half. Okay, then we'll start Diamond Way, haha. No, my joke, it's an inside joke. The whole Lam Rim classes will be Diamond Way. Probably we'll finish Diamond Way by the time we finish the preparation for Diamond Way. That's my secret plan. No, don't worry, I'll give you more.

But my idea is if something happens with my health, I want to make sure you get all the important stuff. And so I'm not going to hide it for the first year-and-a-half. I'll dump it on you for a year-and-a-half and then after a year and a half, we'll start real Diamond Way and you'll say, 'that's exactly what you taught for the last year-and-a-half. I'm used to it, it's okay. Okay.

So anyway, this book will be important for you, okay?

And try to get a copy. It's on the Diamond Cutter Press website [king-of-the-dharma-paperback].

Recently Rob and me worked on a paperback because the old one was really expensive. And the income from that book, we give it to the temple where they are keeping the posters. So we just give it all to them and they depend on it. So we've done that for many years now, almost 20 years. They came here, some of them came, you met them.

Je Tsongkapa’s Refrain

Yeah. Okay, here's the most important thing in this class. From Gibson's new book, and thank you Gibson, and it's a beautiful book. The most important two verses in the whole book. It's a refrain. It means he keeps repeating every time. Every time he goes through an important idea of Diamond Way, he says the same two lines. And Gibson's going to recite them.

[Gibson: 1:09 Tibetan]

Here's the English, ‘I, the deep practitioner’. What's the Sanskrit for deep practitioner? Yogi. Well, he calls himself a yogi. This is the only book where he calls himself a yogi. I, the yogi, meaning high practitioner, deep practitioner,

[I, the deep practitioner]

Have accomplished my practice

This way;

And you who hope for freedom

Should do your practice

The same.

And that's the refrain.

That's over and over in this book, you'll see the same two lines.

After every instruction page, he says, 'Hey, you guys, that's what I did, look at me, you should do that'. And it's very, very.. again, he doesn't talk like that ever. Never. He never claims to be a Buddha, he never claims to be an arya. He just teaches you how to do it. But in this book, he comes out of the closet and he's like, 'that's what I did, maybe you want to do that'. Okay, that's the structure of this book. So don't forget that line. [1:10:30 Tibetan] That's what you guys should do.

Next picture.

Kedrup Je’s Dream of Je Tsongkapa Riding the Tiger

That's Tsongkapa, okay? He's riding a tiger, which is Diamond Way. And during his lifetime he didn't tell people what he was doing, much. Almost never. And then after he passed away, he came to his student, one of his famous students, Kedrup Je, in a dream riding a tiger.

And he said, 'that's what it's all about, Diamond Way is what it's all about'. And riding the tiger is what it's all about. We'll talk about that. We'll talk about riding the tiger.

In Mongolia they keep that dream very dear, and they carved this carving and someone gave me a copy.

My Lama, when I became a monk, he sewed the robes. It's very complex, it's very, very secret, how to sew the patches. And he sewed them himself.

And he said, 'get me a sewing machine. You want to be a monk, get me a sewing machine'.

I'm like, 'you don't know how to use the sewing machine'.

He says, 'you never saw me use sewing machine'. He used to say, 'there's a lot of things you don't know'.

I said, 'I didn't know you could use the sewing machine'.

He's like, 'there's a lot of things you don't know about me'.

Anyway, he made the robes. I wore them for many, many years, 20 years, 25 years. Then they finally, they fell apart. And I was in three-year retreat. I couldn't, I didn't want to lose the robes. So I made the frame for the painting. I sewed the frame, those are my old robes. And that's a three-year retreat stick that we used to use to keep the rattlesnakes out of the house.

All right, I've got four more minutes, I think we can do it. Next picture.

The Meaning of the Posters

There's one of the posters, okay? And each one has a quotation of some kind. And each one has an instruction from Je Tsongkapa. And each of the paintings or pictures has a story. And I'll teach you this story. Each one comes from somewhere.

Like the black and white one, the Americans during World War II were trying to make contact with the Chinese army so they could work together. And they tried to see if they could fly from India to China, which you cannot because it's too high. The engine runs out of oxygen. But they tried and they crashed in Tibet. And Tolstoy, Russian famous Tolstoy, one of the most famous authors from Russia, his nephew was the pilot, American pilot. And he had a camera.

Then he took all these pictures of these secret rituals, like he snuck in and he took all these pictures. So that's a Diamond Way meeting at tsok in Tibet in 1940-something. And he took a picture.

He shouldn't take a picture, he wasn't allowed to take a picture there.

Then one monk going like this [as in the black and white image]. And so I'll teach you all those things and I'll share with you the stories. And it's kind of cool. And they are having a dance. They are dressed for dance, okay? We'll talk about it.

You don't have to dance, okay? If you're old and your knees are bad, you can just snap your fingers or something.

All right, next picture.

Follow the Steps

Yeah, I'm sorry for the big bottom, I have an AI. I say: show a lady walking up the steps. And we tried like six times and this is the best one. You should see the other ones. Anyway, we're going to go step by step. That's what Lam Rim means. And it's very, very fun. It's certain steps, you have to do the same steps. There's certain steps that Tsongkapa identified and the Buddha identified and said, look, don't worry about anything, there's ten things you have to do, just do these ten and you'll become a Buddha. And don't worry about it. Just take each step that I ask you to take and in the end you're going to say, Hey, I'm a Buddha. And I'll say, I told you so. Okay? So that's Lam Rim.

What's funny is that the Lam Rim teachings, even in this book.. don't read the last part without reading the first part.. because you're allowed to teach Diamond Way in Lam Rim. As part of the Steps of the Path, Lam Rim, you're allowed to talk about secret Buddhism, Diamond Way. Ella's already looking at the last verse.

Anyway, there is tantra in this book. The last section is about Diamond Way and he wants to share about that. But you have to go step by step. It's not like lightning is going to hit you if you look at the back of the book. And it's not true that you'll never become a Buddha if you cheat. The Buddhas wouldn't give you the book if that was true because they know you can't control yourself. So they probably want you to look at the last page first.

But anyway, have fun with it. You can read any part you want, I don't care. If you read any of it, I'm happy.

Okay, that's the idea. Just do what we say in the class. We will be meeting for a year-and-a-half. You can come online if you have to. I'd rather have people with real jobs who don't come once in a while then lots of unemployed people who want to sleep on my couch because the cat's there full time.

Okay, I think we'll start the next one tomorrow. Yeah, that's a good place to stop. Okay. And thank you for coming. Thank you for asking me to teach. Again, I want to repeat, if you have your own teachers, which you should have, and they're teaching you Diamond Way, which they should, then keep going. I'm not a replacement, I'm just dessert. Okay? So please study with your regular teachers. Please study Diamond Way with your teachers when they say you're ready. They know you and I don't know you, necessarily. And you're very welcome to come to Grandpa's class and I'll just wander around and talk about stories and it'll make your Diamond Way studies more deep and more beautiful. And you don't have to study with other teachers if you don't want to, but if you're in the mood, it's very important. They will give you detail that I can never give you. I will never have time to do all those courses. So I think let's do both. Okay. And that's the best thing.

Class 2 - The Angel Debating the Devil

18 April 2025

[Tim: Welcome back everybody. So first we have one short announcement. We're sorry for the people online that you have to register every time you log in, which is annoying on Zoom, however, we are tracking you in order to know whether you've come to all the classes so you could qualify for the Diamond Way teaching that you're not getting for the year-and-a-half that you will be getting in a year-and-a-half, right? That's why we're doing it. So I'm really sorry, but not sorry.

Then secondly, as ACI and Five Houses are growing, we're beginning to add new events and we're having our first hybrid online / offline event happening simultaneously. They are in Malaysia. Jasmine Yeoh has recruited over a hundred people who are in Malaysia right now, studying with us simultaneously.]

Yay, hi! Woohoohoo!

[Tim: And so we’re waving at Jasmine]

Thank you, Jasmine.

[Tim: So apparently she's not hearing us, but we are waving to her. We're saying thank you very much and next time we'll have a more synchronized wave with them in Malaysia. So thank you very much, Geshehla, for teaching.]

Okay, cool. So when we were planning this retreat, Tim and I, and we were thinking about what classes to do, and it's bad luck in Buddhism not to finish a teaching. So like the last Lam Rim, we took 12 years, but we finished it and we should give ourselves a hand.

And there's another important teaching, it's called [BDAG ‘DZIN GSHAGS 'DEBS]. [BDAG ‘DZIN] means the tendency to think the pen is coming from the pen, grasping to a pen that was made in a factory and not from you. You see what I mean?

When you believe that the pen was made in a factory, you have this mental illness called [BDAG ‘DZIN] and everybody has it, okay?

Even when you're teaching the pen, you have it, heehee, that's funny. But it's very, very old and it's inside of you.

The fight in our mind

[GSHAGS 'DEBS] means hassle between two people. Like in America we have a special thing, sometimes you can see it if you visit. It's called road rage and drivers hit each other by accident or something and they both get really angry and they jump out of their car and they start [raising their fists].

My friend said he got road rage, he hit somebody in Rim Rock, not Stanley, and he got out of his car and he is going to yell at the guy and the guy shows a gun and he goes, 'it's cool'. That kind of meeting somebody is called [GSHAGS 'DEBS].

In Tibetan, it's called [shangdup?]. It means like a fight, fight meeting, something like that.

In this book, it's a long book of poetry. It's called the fight between the good part of your mind and the bad part of your mind. And it's a bitter fight.

It's like a road rage fight. And my teacher introduced it to me many years ago, probably 35, 40 years ago. He taught it to us. It's very long and he could not finish. He died before he could finish. And it's kind of bad luck to not finish. So I thought I would like to teach it and I would like to finish the translation, and then I feel like I finished it.

It's an amazing book. It's a fight in your own mind. It's like your own mind is split into two and the good side and the bad side, like devil and the angel, are fighting with each other, and it's an amazing conversation.

It's a conversation that we have all the time. Like, 'oh, this guy really did hurt me'.

And then you say, 'no, remember the pen.'

You say, 'yeah, I know about the pen thing, but this guy's different.'

We all say that every day. We all say it a hundred times, every day. I do it every day.

I sit in my outhouse, freezing bottom. What's the cruelest thing you can do to a Lama? Put them in Kyoto, all the toilets are warm, they have electricity in the seat. It's like I feel like I'm in paradise. Then I come back to Diamond Mountain in my outhouse, I actually stand up and I say, I don't know if I can sit down. Then I sit down, it's like [freezing].

Anyway, even then I'm arguing in my own mind. My own mind is fighting with my own mind. And it's a beautiful, beautiful book. So we started it, what year, Tim, do you remember? We started it 14 years ago and we're still working on it and I don't have much time to teach it, but I refuse to give up. Okay? So I'm just stubborn. All right?

And if you are following Diamond Way, if you're a Diamond Way person, maybe the Buddha sent this book to you this time. Maybe. You can't say yes for sure, and you can't say no for sure. It's possible that your Diamond Way path is with this book also, maybe this book is supposed to help you in your Diamond Way. And I take it that way.

I am not finished with it. It's going to take another three, four years, probably, and I want to finish it. It's never been translated correctly and I would like to have it in the world. I would like people be able to use it. And for me, when I teach it, I can understand it better by teaching it, by explaining anything to someone else. Which you will learn as teachers, you guys as teachers. When you want to teach well, then try it out on your sister or your son.

So anyway, I think Buddha sent you this book and you're supposed to finish it with me. Okay, so I'm making it part of the Diamond Way course. It is mainly an argument about the meaning of emptiness. And it's a unique book because it's funny and it was written to be funny. Okay? So I expect you to laugh. Sometimes just laugh even if you don't understand it, just say hahaha, okay? It's funny and it's very, very true. It's a self criticism.

Here's what half of grandpa's mind thinks just before I sit down on that special seat, okay, here's who he blames for the weather.

Who made it so cold in the morning?

Why didn't they make it warm in the morning when you do your big stuff and then it's colder later in the day?

It doesn't make sense, right?

No, I mean, so you complain in your own mind and that's called the Devil. In this case, the bad guy is talking in your mind. Okay?

The 5 Houses

Tim and I worked very hard on this text because you've heard about the idea of the Five Houses and what's happening with ACI is that I think it's one of the oldest organizations we have. It started I think in 1993 or something like that, so it's 32 years now. And it grew and it grew and it grew. YSI came out of it, and DCI came out of it, SCIM came out of it. All the others, SSD, DDL, BBB, they all came out.

ACI has been almost 40 years and it got too big. In a way, it's too big. If you take the 18 courses, foundation courses, it's supposed to take six to seven years. Then if you take the Diamond Way courses, it's supposed to take six or seven years. That's 14 years. Then you're supposed to do all the meditation stuff, that's another five years. That's 19 years. Then you're supposed to do a three-year retreat someday.

It gets to be like you don't have enough time to finish ACI before you die. It's too much. It just got to be too much. So what we thought was.. what's happening is we would like you all to be teachers. We really want you to be teachers. If you're so stubborn that you come to cook yourself in the desert in these classes, then probably you can be a teacher. Because to be a teacher is very similar to cooking yourself at Diamond Mountain. It's a lot of trouble. And we thought that the people who come, especially to Diamond Way, you're going to be great teachers. And that's my dream. That's been my dream. That's what I've been working on all these years.

So what we thought was, it's so many things to learn. You can't study for 40 years and then be a teacher; you don't have any hair left after that. Right John? You and me. So our idea is you can specialize. It's like when you go to university, you don't try to get a BA in science and then do a BA in English and then do a BA in literature and then do you don't try to do six BAs at Columbia, except some special people.

So our idea is you could start specializing. And you're welcome to come to all the classes, you don't have to stop coming to any classes. But maybe you could look inside your heart, and there's five choices, basically there's five specialties. You can get your BA or your PhD and then start teaching in one of five houses. It's like fraternity house or at Princeton you had to join a house and then you're very loyal to your house and you get support and you get friends and you study together and you graduate together in your own house.

So we wanted to make five houses. And the choices are, what's the first one?

By the way, the first rule as a teacher, when you can't remember something, ask the audience. Can you remember the first one?

1. The Classics House

[Audience: Classics]

Classics, yeah. You can go the traditional ACI way, you can study all the classics. You can learn the 18 plus 18, 36 courses, learn them well. You can learn the technical..it's basically Geshe, it's basically a Geshe course.

If you pass the first 18 foundation courses of ACI, you have covered the important stuff of the Geshe course.

Okay? By the way, they don't sit there for 12 hours every day. They constantly take breaks. In fact, you never know if there's going to be a class. You go to class and it's empty and they say, 'oh, we didn't have a class today'. You're like, you didn't tell me that. They said, 'we don't tell people'. And they don't study like at a Western university. It's very crazy. The system is very crazy.

So anyway, you're going to finish the philosophical..Some people like that, or some people are nerds and they want to study the philosophy. I'm like that. I enjoy the philosophy and I like to talk about it. I learned things that way. If I ever reach Buddhahood, it will be philosopher path. You see what I mean?

2. Samadhi House — Meditation

Then some people prefer Samadhi House, which is meditation.

Some people are just really into meditation. You say, study this book, here's another book, the last 35 books were not enough, and read this one. And they're like, 'can't I just meditate once in a while? I don't want to read books all day'.

Some people prefer meditation, and some people go deep into it and they enjoy it. And their dream is to be a meditation teacher, not to be a Tibetan teacher. You see what I mean? And that's fine. And we should have a degree like that, we should have a house like that. You should have the privilege and the pleasure of joining Meditation House. We call it Samadhi House. And probably you have to look like that [like in idim above] when you graduate.

By the way, great meditators, really great meditators are low profile. They don't show off. John Brady's probably the best meditator I know, and he doesn't look like that [like in idim above]. The beard's a little different. But no, I mean, it's a quiet thing. And you don't look like something, you could look like a businesswoman. You could be a import / export corporate owner in Vietnam, for example, be a great meditator and nobody knows, right? So it's up to you, okay?

If you are more attracted to meditation, and when you see your future, when you close your eyes and dream about the future, you're teaching meditation to a group of people, then you're welcome to join Samadhi House. It doesn't mean you can't listen to philosophy classes, but it means you specialize.

When I decide what I am, it's what I tell people on the airplane. So you sit down next to somebody. You don't know them, and they say, 'well, what do you do?' And if you're the person who's going to say, 'I'm a meditation teacher', then you should join Samadhi House. Okay?

If you want to say, 'I want to be a Geshe, got it?' [debate motion of clapping hands]. And they're [leaning back] 'Oh, you're in Classics House'.

Okay, third house.

3. Mountain House — Retreat

What are they called? Mountain House. 'Look, I'm really attracted to retreat'. And there's some people who, they're hungry to do more retreats.

You say, 'look, I got a new book for you and I'm going to teach you a new meditation'. And they say, 'I'm sorry, I'm busy'. You say 'what?' [They say] 'I'm sitting in my cabin. I can't read a book.'

Their thing is they want to be up on a mountain by themselves in deep retreat. They want people to see them every six years or so, like Lama Pelma. Yeah. So anyway, if you're that kind of person who dreams of being one of these great people who stays in retreat a lot, then you could join this house. Okay? Mountain House.

I'm not sure the percentage of people..like I don't know which house is going to be more popular. But I do believe if you can get about five people in a house to start as the beginning, it's enough. I don't care if there's a hundred people in the Classics House and there's only two people in the Retreat house. I don't care. I want you to be where you want to be. Okay? So then what's the fourth one?

4. Stairway House — Lam Rim

Yeah, Stairway House. Yeah, Lam Rim. Okay. Everyone's going to call Lam Rim anyway, it's easier. So as you saw the last 12 years, this is a huge topic. We covered one Lam Rim. John's database has a few hundred Lam Rims. You can spend the rest of your life in the Lam Rims. And there's many, many beautiful.. like the one we just finished is 12 years. If we did Lam Rim Chenmo, it's 12 years. It'd be 24 years just to do two of them. And you can become a master of Lam Rim and it's very sweet and maybe that's what you like. Okay?

5. Diamond Way House

Then everybody wants to be in the fifth house, which is Diamond Way House.

Because everybody wants to be in Diamond House, we're not going to allow you to be in Diamond House, because then you'll ignore the other four houses. So we have a plan, me and Uncle Tim, is join one of the four houses. You don't have to decide today. You don't have to cut your blood and sign the contract. Just think about it, which one are you more attracted to?

I'll tell you something very profound. My teacher's advice to me, of all the five Geshe topics, he said, 'is there one that you really hate?' And I said, yes.

And he said, what? And I said, it's course 13.

Why do you think unlucky number? I said, 'logic, I hate logic'.

And he's like, 'okay, you're going to master that'.

His advice was, join the house you don't like because that's the one that you are not so good at. And when you balance your life, when you master something you're not interested in, then you become a master of both.

You see what I mean? You're already a good meditator, so okay, learn to do retreat or learn to do philosophy or something like that.

I mean, there's that option. I'm not forcing you. If you always dreamed of sitting in a cabin and avoiding other people, you're welcome to join Mountain House.

Whatever you like, you're free, okay? You're very free. But what we ask is, this week, we're even going to ask you to kind of pretend you're in one of the houses. Just see how it feels.

I told you my wife's story, right, that you will never repeat to her? I took her to buy jeans in Cottonwood at the cowboy store where they don't have a seat for the husband to wait. You have to stand. And she tried on 42 pairs of jeans. How many did she buy? None. Okay.

So what it means is: try on different houses, see how it fits. You're not forced to take one or the other. Okay? You can say, 'that doesn't fit me so good, I‘d like to try..

What's the greatest thing I ever did on a tour? Stanley knows. I was brave and I bought her a pair of jeans and they fit. I mean, if you write my life story after I die, it should start with 'he bought his wife jeans and they fit'. So house is like that. In Harry Potter, how do they decide which house you're in, Slytherin and all that? How do they decide? Yeah. The sorting hat. Yeah. We couldn't get a sorting hat. In Harry Potter, you put a hat on and the hat talks. And it says, 'Kyeri should be in Meditation House'. So anyway, we don't got this hat, so you're going to have to decide for yourself.

Where would Harry Potter go if he could decide by himself? Which house for Harry Potter? Slytherin. As a bodhisattva, he'd go to where he doesn't like the people. Okay?

So anyway, the game this week is, you're going to by, whenever Tim says, you're going to choose a house that you might like to be in. Which means what would you like to be a teacher of, and what would you like to teach other people mainly? And then you're going to focus on that, and we'll help you focus on whatever you choose to be a PhD of. We will help you focus on that. And we will design special courses for you. And it doesn't mean other people can't come, but it's mainly for the house. So we'll design specialized courses to make you a great teacher of your own house.

Then, if you fulfill certain requirements in your house, you're allowed to also join Diamond House. You see what I mean? So your house of the four is a path to the fifth house. Because everybody wants to go to the fifth house and they're all going to go around the four houses. So we're asking you to choose one of the four, and then you go to Diamond House from there. Kind of Diamond House is the Super House for the people in the four houses who do really well.

And then you become a teacher in one of those five things. So think about what you would like to be a teacher of. Visualize yourself, picture yourself as a teacher. That's Diamond Way. One of the most important Diamond Way teachings is to imagine yourself what you're going to be like when you're a Buddha, okay? That's one of the most important Diamond Way meditations is what do you want to look like?

Me and John are going to have full hair, like a lion, and my tummy is going to go down. So one of the Diamond Way exercises is to visualize yourself as how you want to be. Okay? And sometimes you can do that. We'll talk about it.

Now, the fun we're going to have with what I call the Angel Devil book, the fun we're going to have is you're going to help me make a flow doc for this book. Flow Doc means it's a file that I use. I take the book, like the last class we had, I have Gibson's book in my computer, and I cut open a space and I put a picture there. And I teach from the pictures like I did last class. I teach from the pictures.

So what I did for Angel Devil is, I don't have pictures. Why?

You are going to do the pictures. And each house is going to do pictures for teaching that part of the book your way. Okay?

So I'm going to teach you today some of the next verses of Angel Devil. It happens to be the devil being a real bad guy and he's being very disrespectful, which is what he does. And then I would like each house, and Tim's going to lead you through it, but you're going to sit together and you're going to design the idims [idea images]. You're going to design the images to teach it. Then we're going to have some special classes. They'll be cut into four parts. Each house will get up, 'Here's our picture for the first verse. This is how we will teach the first verse from our house, which is the best house'. You've got to be loyal to your house.

We got a Harry Potter expert here. He went through all the books in like three days or something. He even reads while he is walking around. There's called rattlesnakes here, you can't do that. So you're going to make an idim. So I used to have a contract with a photo agency, and I bought photos from them for many, many years. You search online, you say, I want a photo of [unclear], it's kind of a stupid AI, but it got better and better and better. And now you can design an image. It's called a prompt. And you write a sentence. You say, 'a lady spilled her spaghetti on the guy's head and he's meditating'. And you write that, and then the AI makes the picture. And sometimes they even put five fingers. Okay? No. But I really like it and I use it a lot. And probably in your future you'll use video from your AI or something. But anyway, in my age, it's pretty cool. And so you're going to use AI, you're going to make an image, and it's a great teaching tool. It keeps the audience interested, it's entertaining. You show a picture. And then it's great for quizzing your students. 'What's this picture? What's this mean?' So the picture should have a power. It should have some kind of powerful picture that tells a story. And then it's much easier to remember philosophy from a picture.

So we're going to tell a story with pictures. So I did not choose the pictures this time. I want four pictures for each major teaching I'm going to give you, and I want to see what your houses can do. And then me and Tim, we'll decide who's the best, and you get a gold hat or something. No, that's too American. But anyway, we'll have fun with it, okay?

There was a famous guy [Juan Jasso] from Mexico who has a news show. We did this long ago. Do you remember? We had a contest for idims here. How many, ten years ago or something. And he did the best one. He won the award and it was amazing. It was really cool. I think he used up everything on that day. Nah, I'm kidding. But by the way, he just got back from Kyoto, teaching, and we should give applause, him and Adam. They did a very nice course in Kyoto. And thanks to Japanese friends that babysat them because they're kind of wild. But he and Adam Andrade gave a great class and they got a grant from Tim and Nick to go there and give their course. And it was very fun for them.

Accidentally, the plane stopped in Hawaii on the way, and Juan went to Oahu and the North Shore. And just to teach you, Hawaii, I lived there for six months and surfed there. But which of those two beaches do you go like this [mouth gaping open]? Oahu or North Shore? Both of them. In Oahu it's the bikinis. In North Shore, it's the surf. Right, Juan? So I don't know which beach you were at. But anyway, if you want to try something like that, you can apply for a grant, talk to Tim or Nick. And they went to Kyoto and they had a really good time and they helped a lot of people. They had a great course and it went really well, and anybody can do that. Okay. It's called GEBOCS. I'll talk about that someday. So here we go.

I'm going to teach Angel Devil. And then as I talk, think about which image you're going to create with the AI and it'll help your teaching career. It'll make you a better teacher. Pictures help people stay awake, and they help people remember things. So I really encourage you to use them. And my opinion is that everybody in this class or everybody online, you can learn to be a teacher. I believe every person, it's your responsibility to teach this to other people. Everybody's different. Adam's not here, I'll tell you something. His first class, can I show you? It was about 12 years ago. It was in Phoenix. And I trained him what to say, and he got ready and he stood up and he went like this [mouth frozen open]. And I'm like, 'Adam?'. He's like [mouth frozen open]. 'Adam?' Adam, sit down now. He's like, sit down. Okay, we'll work on it. And, no, he froze completely. I also froze in my first class. My teacher told me to sit down and shut up. And so you learn, okay, you can learn. You will learn. In my opinion, everybody listening right now can be a teacher and should be a teacher. And in the tradition of the ancient books, you're not allowed to take a class if you don't intend to teach it. Okay? If you don't intend to share it with someone, you're not allowed to sit here. In the old way, in the old way. That's why my cat heard so many teachings. Sometimes nobody wants to listen. I'm like, will you listen? She's like, if you've got that special cat food that I really like, I'll listen. And I'm like, I got it.

The Angel Devil debate about Meditation

All right, so here we go. I'm just going to read it fast.

,CI YANG MED PA’I NGO SPROD BYED,

,YID LA CI YANG MI BSAM PAR,

,BSGOMS PAS TING ‘DZIN ‘PHRAL MANG SKYE,

,’DI NI NGA YI BSGOM SGRUB MKHAN,

[From translated text:

Lead people

By the hand

To the nothing at all;

Teach them

Not to think

Of anything.

Make their concentration

Filled with busyness

Every time they meditate;

Ah, these are

The masters of meditation

Inside my system!

]

The devil's talking, the bad part of your mind. And he says, you should lead people by the hand to the nothing at all. Teach them not to think about anything. Make their concentration filled with busyness every time they meditate. The masters of meditation inside my system. Sit down, cross your legs, don't think about anything. Ommmm. Okay? Who's talking? I hope you know.

Yeah, it's the devil. Okay? And he's like, this is my meditation system.

And you laugh.. but so in the old days, when I met my first yoga teacher, I said, look, I don't know if I can do this yoga thing. It was Lady Ruth and David and Sharon, and I said, I don't know if I can do this yoga thing, I'm so busy, I travel all the time. And they said, we have a suggestion - when you get to the hotel, go online, find the nearest yoga class, go. Every country you go to.

There's a wonderful story in Hong Kong about the Chinese language pregnancy class I went to. And the lady's like [no, no]. I'm like, [yes, yes]. I said, I got the money. She said, [no, no]. Then I went in there and it's all pregnant ladies, and that's the best stretch I ever got here [hips]

So anyway, but I'll tell you something, because I went to so many yoga classes in so many countries. Every country, I went to a yoga class and I never met the teacher. I heard hundreds of terrible meditation classes, hundreds. 'Omm, think about nothing, just let your thoughts float away'. I'm like, okay. And then I suddenly, by accident, I realized how much bad meditation is being taught, and I was shocked. It's like very rarely anybody was teaching meditation.

So this is happening 400 years ago, and this teacher, this great writer, Lobsang Chukyi Gyeltsen, he by the way, he's the one who personally stopped the war from his retreat cave. So anyway, he's saying even 400 years ago there was a problem that people taught meditation like that. Just try to think about nothing. Just try not to think about anything.

In this book, it's the devil. And that's an important thing. When you make your picture.. this is not a bad yoga class or something. By the way, oftentimes the yoga is good. Oftentimes the asana is quite good. The meditation before the asana is ridiculous. But oftentimes the teacher is a good yoga teacher and they teach great asana. So that's why I still go. I just kind of.. they give you in the airplane these earplugs, right? When they start the meditation, I put the earplugs in. When they start the asanas, I take them out. So you can go, you can go and you can learn.

But it's an ancient problem of people who think that meditation is thinking about nothing.

Now listen, in a tantric sense, in a Diamond Way sense, the goal of Diamond Way is to get the job done before you die. And you don't think so. You think, 'oh, Geshehla's health not so good'. Who's going to die at first and who's going to die last, we don't know. Don't think it's.. it usually goes out of order. I often sit here and there's no one left. You see, we don't know who's going to go first and we don't know who's going to go last. And that's the way it is. Okay?

In this system of Diamond Way, you're trying to reach the goal before you die. And it's a race. There's always this background thing called you might get in a car accident tomorrow. They might say, 'oh, you remember that nice lady who was in'. 'Yeah, she's gone, she had a car accident'. You're like, 'oh my gosh'. It lasts for about three minutes. Everybody's like, oh my gosh. And then you're like, what's for lunch anyway? So we're all in a race. Diamond Way. See, I'm sneaking you Diamond Way.

Every verse, I'm sneaking Diamond Way to you. It's a race, okay? The purpose of Diamond Way, the reason for Diamond Way, one of the important ideas of Diamond Way, is get it done and then relax. Then if you don't die, you're okay. If you do die, you're okay. Okay? My death is different from your death already. I know where I'm going. I know what's happening. I know where I'm going to be five minutes later. I got everything ready. The teachers are waiting for me, and it's all set. You've got to do that. You've got to take care of that while you can. You've got to take care of that. That's Diamond Way. Diamond Way is the big emphasis on one life. Okay?

So this person who teaches you 'meditate about nothing' is literally killing you. It's not like a joke or they don't know how to teach meditation. They should have gone to Samadhi house. Stupid guy, wasting my 10 minutes before class. It's not 10 minutes before class, it's your irreplaceable life, which is priceless.

I've sold my company to Warren Buffett, I'm pissed at him. He went from $81 billion to $143 billion riding partly on my company. Now he's 94 and finally, his mind's going. And if he's got $143 billion, he should be able to buy a couple hours from somebody. Like can't he go to some poor person and say, 'okay, a hundred million dollars a day, I'll buy, I don't care what it costs, I'll take some of your lifetime'. And they can't do it. Nobody can do it. The person who teaches you lousy meditation is killing you. They are stealing your priceless time. It's not a small thing, it's a terrible thing. It's a tragedy. It's better if they give you diarrhea, right Rob? He just had an epic case. I'm kind of jealous because he lost eight pounds. Anyway, it's not a joke and it's not a small thing. It's not that you wasted 10 minutes before yoga class, it's that no one can give it back to you, okay? Teaching meditation wrong is like cutting someone's arm open or something. It's probably kinder to cut their arm open, at least they can put on a bandaid and keep going. So it's very serious. It's really serious. This is not a.. it's a funny debate, but it's not a funny debate. This guy really is the devil because he's killing people's hearts, not their body. He's teaching them wrong meditation. It's a terrible tragedy. It's like someone dying in a car accident or something. It's terrible. It's a sad thing that someone would waste their time.

,’DI PHYI GNYIS KA MED PA YI,

,BSGOM GYIS ‘BRAS BU SANGS RGYAS ‘THOB,

,ZHAG GSUM PHOG NAS ZLA GCIG BSGOMS,

,DE YIS THAMS CAD GROL BAR ‘GYUR,

[From translated text:

And they will attain

Results of meditation

That exist in neither

This life or the next;

And they will reach

To Buddhahood.

They can fool around

For three days,

And meditate

For a month;

And with this

Every one of them

Is liberated.

]

Okay. This is the devil bragging about how fast his system works. He's like they will attain results of meditation that you cannot find in this life or the next. They will achieve Buddhahood. They can do it just goofing off in three days with my system. Or they could just meditate for a month and reach Buddhahood and they'll all go to freedom, they'll all get liberated.

Who's talking? The devil.

Okay, listen. Diamond Way is the fastest way and it takes a long time, duh. Okay? If someone promises you instant liberation, let me tell you something. As an old man, let me give you some wisdom. Okay? Someone sit down next to somebody. This happened to me. Somebody sat down next to somebody on a plane and they're like, 'you want to know a secret about the stock market?' I'm like, what? It's like, 'you got to invest in Nvidia. It's Nvidia. They got the chips, they got the advanced MDM chips. It's unbelievable. You got to get the money in right now'.

And then the founder of Sony Corporation, what's his name? Akio Morita, Mr. Morita, here's what he said. And it's a great book. What's the book called? 'Made in Japan'. Great book. And I love him.

He said, 'let me tell you something. If someone really knows which stock's going to go up tomorrow, you think they're going to tell you?' The logic was undeniable. If someone knows for sure a stock's going to go up tomorrow, why would they tell you? They'll just put their money there and they'll make the money. You got it? And he was laughing. He said, I don't play the stock market, I don't have any stocks.

Here's the founder of Sony Corporation, and he says, I don't buy stocks. Why? Because it's just gambling. It's the same as horse racing, or.. it's exactly the same. Nobody can tell you where it's going to go tomorrow. You can take all the experts in the world and they all say something different. And if they knew, they wouldn't be an expert, they would quietly make more money. You see what I mean? Duh. Why am I talking about that?

This guy is promising you impossible. 'Okay, listen, I'm a tantra master, I got a special hat. I got a [tantric accoutrement] ding, ding, ding, ding. I can say [tantric sound], ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. Look at this thing. Look at my robe. That proves I'm a tantric master. Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. I have sex with every other student. I drink all. Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. I could get you there in three days'. Then it's like a stock market thing. It's like, come on, you go, ding, ding, I've got to go to class. Okay? Understand?

The hat doesn't.. it doesn't get you to Buddhahood, I'm sorry. I have a hat, I never.. you ever see me in it? I don't wear it. Okay? Unreasonable promises that you can get to enlightenment instantly delay your enlightenment. Okay? It's going to take hard work, steady work. You're going to have to sit on your butt in the retreat cabin and have many bad days. Right, JB? And many hard times. And then you get to the goal. Okay? Diamond Way is not a piece of candy, but it works.

Okay. I like this next verse. It's called a moron who cannot tie their shoe. Moron in English means super stupid person. Okay?

Who's talking? Who would say such a thing? The devil. Okay. And he's accusing this beautiful angel called Wisdom, understanding of the pen, Miss Emptiness. He says, you are just a moron.

And she's like, why you say that? She doesn't get upset, of course. And he says, 'I am capable of mighty deeds. And you, you're just some nice lady. I've got the real wisdom. You are like a moron.' In English, we say you cannot tie your shoe. It means you're so stupid, you can't even tie your shoe. For Word Smith, ‘KHYOD RANG YI MUG SKYES ZHAN ‘DRA‘. You never saw these words. This is [Utsang?] dialect in 1600. Very hard to translate. YI MUG means ‘dumb head’ and SKYES ZHAN means ‘weakling’ and ‘DRA means ‘that’s who you are’.

[From translated text:

,NGA YI ‘PHRIN LAS ‘DI ‘DRA NA,

,KHYOD [f. 254a] KYI ‘PHRIN LAS GTAN MED PAS,

,KHYOD RANG YI MUG SKYES ZHAN ‘DRA,

,KHYOD NI LAN GCIG YOD PA LA,

Thus are the mighty deeds

That I am capable of;

Whereas you can do

No holy work at all.

You are like a moron

That cannot tie their shoe;

You appear but once,

And then are gone.

]

He's accusing her of being too nice. Okay? Who's talking? The devil? 'Yeah, you are moron who cannot tie your shoe. You appear once and then you are gone'.

He accuses her of not sticking around. He says, yeah, 'you're so beautiful. You're so wise. You understand the pen. You live by the pen. And then why are you never home? Where are you all day? Who are you running around with?' In English we say, who are you running around with? 'Why don't you ever come home? You're so beautiful. You're so compassionate, you're so wise. And you're never home. Why?'

What does he mean? Yeah. To really understand the pen is like once a month like for two minutes. Okay? He's accusing her of being a bad lady, being a bad wife. He has to live where with her? In a brain. The devil has to live with the angel in one person's mind all day long and she's never home.

He's like, 'who's the guy? What's his name? Where do you go? What do you do? Why are you never here?' Got it? It means people think about the pen like once a week. All week long, they're complaining about other people. 'I can't believe this person do this, such a bad person. Hurt me so bad'.

And then you're like once a month you think, 'oh, it's coming from me. That's what I do.' She's not home very often. Got it?

You're supposed to go, ha, I got it. So I think it's cute. He's accusing her of being, what do you call that? She's cheating on her husband. Who's the husband? Ignorance. They live together. In our heads, they are a couple and she's not home very often. Got it? It's cute. Okay. You're going to make a nice, not X-rated picture. Okay? On the AI.

,BSOD NAMS DPAG MED SOG DGOS NA,

,NGA NI BCAR MAR SDOD PA LA,

,PHRAG DOG KHYOD KYIS BYAS ZHAN ‘DRA,

,YID THANG CHAD PAS MI ‘ONG NGO,,

[From translated text:

Those who hope

To accumulate merit

Beyond any measure

Should come and serve

Here at my feet.

You must live

In envy of me,

Too weak to do a thing;

By now you must

Be entirely exhausted;

I suggest that now

You stop coming to me.

]

'Those who hope to accumulate good karma beyond any measure should come and serve me at my feet'. Who's talking? You can call him two-minute Buddhahood. Two-minute Buddhahood. He's got the secret for two-minute Buddhahood.

'I don't understand why the whole world isn't bowing down to my feet. If they did my meditation on nothing at all, they would get Buddhahood in a couple days'. Okay? 'If you really want to make good karma, come serve the devil'.

By the way, the devil in Western, they're asking you to cheat on your taxes or something. But in Buddhism, the devil's asking you to think the pen comes from its own side. That's his job. That's his only job. If he can make you believe that the person who insulted you yesterday was not coming from you, then he did his job.

He's trying to get you to believe another person could hurt you, okay? And if he does that, then you are his slave and you will have a terrible life. You just keep blaming other people your whole life. All right. 'They should serve me. You should be jealous of me because I'm so powerful and you're so weak'. Who's talking? Yeah. The devil's bragging. Is it true?

It's not true that she's weak, she just doesn't show up much. She's never home. When she's home, she beats him every time. If you think of where the pen's coming from, you will be patient with other people, okay? But if you can't remember, you are weak. She's weak. Okay? Got it? She's stronger, but not if she's not at home. If she's never visiting home, she doesn't get a chance to show her power. Got it? Okay.

You've got to learn this ancient Geshe Michael student thing. When you're asleep in the class, you're like [nodding]. That's third level skill. Second level skill - sleep with your eyes open. Third level skill, just stay up and don't go [fall over asleep]. Okay?

'By now, you must be so exhausted trying to fight with me, why don't you just don't come home? Okay? 'It's such a trouble when you're at home to doubt whether this person's coming from me or not, why don't you just don't come home?' Okay?

We'll just decide. The person who hurt me is coming from their side and they're bad person. And then we don't have to keep trying to remember Buddhism, okay? It's a hassle to be schizophrenic. What's the schizophrenic? He hurt me. He said something to me and he's coming from me. Wait, he's coming from me. Wait, he can't come from me, he hurt me. No. Isn't it easier if you just forget all your Buddhism? Someone hurts you, you say, 'what an asshole. Let me meet your mother. Who brought you up like that? I never met such a stupid person'. Wouldn't that be easier than this Buddhist struggle inside your mind? 'Maybe he's coming from me. No, no. I mean some people, but not him'. He's like, why don't you just leave the house and stay out? Okay. That's his last word.

Now the beautiful lady reappears.

,,SHES RAB KYIS NI LAN SMRAS PA,

[From translated text:

And Wisdom, she replied:

,BDEN PA ZER BA’I NGA RGYAL CAN,

,RANG LA YON TAN GCIG MED KYANG,

,KHYOD KYIS KUN LA MKHAS PAR RLOM,

,YON TAN LTA ZHOG GROGS MED PO,

Ah, you arrogant one;

You don’t possess even

A single good quality,

And yet you

Grasp to this delusion

Of being a master

For everyone.

Not only do you have

No fine qualities at all;

You lack as well anything

That would bring them.

]

It means the beautiful lady is Wisdom. She comes back home. 'I'm here, honey'. What's that? She understands the pen and she uses it in her real life. Some people understand the pen and never use it in their real life, and they're complaining about other people all the time. And I'm complaining about them. Okay, now she's talking to him.

Okay, we have one minute. Okay, hang in there. When I was sitting in the Geshe course in a refugee camp in 120 degree, that's 45 Celsius, with rain dripping on my head from the roof, and everybody around me has tuberculosis, I made a promise.

I said, in the future, when I'm a teacher, I'm going to make them suffer. Now it came true. I really had that thought. I mean, it's not a very good thought.

Oh, you arrogant one, you don't possess a single good quality and yet still you have a delusion that your meditation is so cool, you're a master meditator. You can sit there and think about nothing. Okay? Not only you don't have any fine qualities, you don't have the tools to get those qualities. Meaning in this case, you don't know how to meditate. No one ever taught you meditation. 'You think thinking about nothing is meditation so you will never be a good person, you don't have the tools.' You don't have the skillset, you don't have the toolkit, which is meditation, because you think meditation means sitting and thinking about nothing.

Okay, cool? Yay, we’ll stop.

Meditation - Angel Debates the Devil

19 April 2025

Welcome to.. so on Saturdays in the capital of the universe, Rim Rock, Arizona, Saturday morning we have meditation at seven o'clock. Once a week we meditate together and then we have our translator class, Mixed Nuts translator class. And then usually we relax and watch Juan Jasso. He does a great news show and then we go to Peachtree Cafe and stress them out. So anyway, this is our Saturday schedule, and we're going to do it here. So I guess it was about a year ago or something, I agreed to teach 101 different meditations for ACI so that it could be recorded and people could use it in the future. So I've been doing that. How many are we up to Tim?

[Tim: 12]

No way. No, you said 30 last time. Seriously 12?

[Tim: not audible]

So 20. I was a diamond dealer, I know how you guys work. Okay, about 40 I finished, haha. People tell me I exaggerate, but I dunno. Okay, so anyway, we are going to do 101, inshallah. So these are recorded and it's sort of a bribe, which I mentioned before in English, there's a word called 'bald faced bribe', which means you actually show the money to the politician and you say, look, it's a bribe, okay? And so I'm showing you the money, the meditation is a bribe. And what's it a bribe for? If you would join the 30 30 30 club. You do 30 minutes of exercise a day, you lose 30 pounds, and you keep it off for 30 months. No, no, this is different 30 30 30. It was for the 30th anniversary of ACI. And we asked people to commit to give $30 every month, which is $1 a day. And my experience is you don't miss it. I actually throw it in a jar at home. I have coins or stuff in my pocket, I throw it in the jar and I give it to Tim at the end of the month because it's so irritating to count the coins, let him do it. So anyway, if you're not signed up for 30 30 30, then please consider it. And then what they do is they give you the meditation faster, they give you the video or whatever faster. So it's just a small bribe to try to get people to sign up. You don't notice a dollar a day, but so many people are doing it that it keeps ACI going. ACI has expenses. We don't charge for the class; we charge for the food and the house sometimes, but we don't charge for the class. So somebody has to pay for Tim to fly around and stuff like that. We did go to the airline and we told them how nice we are and they should let us fly for free and I got hurt here when the guy kicked me. Okay?

So there's just some things that people are not going to donate and so we do need some funds, we do need some money. And still ACI, from the beginning, it's been free. For 30 years it's been free, the classes have been free. And the teachers teach for free and you're always welcome to make them an offering, but that's up to you, it's not required. Okay.

All right, let's start. You guys ready? Get comfortable. Comfortable means you're not going to move for 45 minutes or something like that. And usually we just do 45 minutes on Saturday morning so we have peepee time.

Diamond dealers also know how to set you up. This tech stuff is really getting old, it's not working that well. I'm planting seedS. Okay. Alright, here we go.

So when we meditate in a group, we have to be considerate, more considerate. Try not to.. you can clear your throat now. [students clear throats]

Okay, wow, that should be a yoga pose. Probably is. Okay.

And then try to be considerate to the people around you. If you're alone and you have to scratch something, who's going to know except every Buddha. But when you're in a group, you might disturb someone else, right? So it's a bodhisattva activity to just let the fly crawl around on your face.

Then relax your face. Little bit of a Mona Lisa smile. Spread your shoulders a little bit like wings. Tighten your lower abdomen slightly. Don't go crazy, just slightly. And that has an effect on your lower back and makes your lower back stronger. Make sure your fingers are relaxed. As I get older, I kind of think it is important to put your fingers the way you feel is most comfortable for you. I do think that if your first finger and your thumb are close to each other, the chi can move through your hands and arms.

Then for many years I taught 10 breaths to prepare for meditation. Then later I tried a hundred breaths. It takes longer, I think it's seven or eight minutes.

But for me personally, it helps me to focus much better. Ten goes by too fast for me.

So we're going to watch a hundred breaths at my breathing speed, sorry. And just relax and start to enjoy having some quiet in your day. You don't have to think about any plans, you don't have to worry about anybody. Your job is to get ready to meditate and it's okay morally to let go all of your concerns, even if they are for serving other people today and things like that. Let them go and focus on the moment and focus on your breath. If you lose count of your breath, then just come back and don't stress if you don't remember if you were on 36 or 37. What I do personally, if I can't remember if I was on 36 or 37, I go to 35 to be safe. So we're going to do a hundred slow breaths. Don't go so slow that you are having trouble breathing. Breathe normally, your heart will slow down, your breathing will slow down.

Start the count on the exhale and finish the count on the inhale. And I'll see you in a hundred breaths.

Then we'll start meditation. I like to do their preliminaries every meditation session. Begin by thinking about somebody that you admire and somebody who's really got good qualities that you would like to have.

Personally, I find different good qualities in different people. So one person may be amazingly honest and sincere, and then maybe another person is more hardworking or something. Usually I focus on one good quality of a person that's really amazing about them. So you can choose a Buddha, you can choose a bodhisattva, but just personally, I like to choose somebody I know and I think about some very good quality they have. Maybe they are weak in other areas, but they have one amazing quality and this preliminary is the prostration - by thinking about another person's good quality, that is a prostration. That's the real meaning of prostration.

So make this mental prostration. Think of somebody you know who you really admire and ask them to come and sit with you and meditate today. And maybe some of the good quality will rub off on me.

Then think about some small gift you could give to this person. It's not the value of the gift. It should be exquisite. It could be a flower, a single flower. Offer it to this person and in your heart say, I would like to be like you. I hope I can someday be the same way you are in this one way that you are so special. Okay, so this is the second preliminary - making an offering to this person.

The next preliminary is we think about some mistake we made this week. Maybe we yelled at somebody or maybe we were jealous of somebody, something like that. Maybe they know we did it, maybe they don't know, but we know. So this is the chance to check - in the last few days, did you hurt somebody or did you think about hurting someone? Admit it openly. And that really helps to clean the seed.If you get in the habit of admitting our mistakes, and we all make mistakes, when you get in the habit of admitting them, it makes you a much, much happier person and your life goes much, much better.

Now think about something nice you did this last few days. Just coming to this retreat or sitting in this meditation online is a huge powerful good seed. And I think DCI teachers know around the world that people seem to have trouble admitting their good deeds. People, most of us, can admit the mistakes we made, but it seems like people have a really hard time to admit that they did something good. And in the process of planting seeds and planting our future, it's really important to think about the right things we're doing, the good things we're doing. So try to give it equal effort. Try to give it equal time. Think about some of the good things you're doing. Some of them are just habit from a long time ago. 'Geshehla, I didn't have to work on that, that's just the way I am.' But trust me, you worked on it long ago. Whatever good qualities we have, our past life, our past self in this life, worked very hard to develop that good quality. Good qualities don't happen by accident. So you can rejoice in all the good qualities you have. Everybody has amazing good qualities. Many, many of us have trouble to admit it, recognize it. So let's rejoice in the good side of us that we all have. Think about some specific good things you've been doing to help other people.

And then ask for teachings. Ask that people share things with you today that make you a better person. A lot of times teachings come as challenges. Someone gets angry at us, someone cheats us or something. There's always a good side, there's always something we can learn when something bad happens in our lives. So those people who hurt us are our best teachers. So this is kind of a dangerous moment in your day, but we're asking the universe to send us teachers today and teach us something about ourselves. And these might be difficult teachings and we are brave to ask. We ask that you send us even difficult teachings today, and I will listen and I will learn.

Then the last preliminary before the meditation is to ask the teachers in our life to stay. Personally, I take this time to pray for the long life and good health of the people who are in my life who are helping other people the most. And my wife is one of them. And I pray for their long life and I pray that they stay in this world as a good influence on me.

Okay, now we'll start the meditation. And I know that personally I spend more time getting ready for the meditation than I do in the meditation. But over many years time, I believe for me, it works well. We yesterday started in retreat, here at Diamond Mountain, going back to a book called Angel Debates the Devil. And there was a cute couple of verses where the devil was talking inside one person's head and they were making fun of the angel and they were accusing the angel of being weak and sometimes not even showing up to fight, not even showing up for the debate.

Then the Angel came back and started to talk about.. by the way, she's going to talk about how she's everywhere all the time and everyone is her friend. The next section of the text, which is very beautiful, she tells the devil, 'I'm here all the time because I'm friends with everybody, even bad ideas or harmful thoughts, I'm always there to help and I'm their friend'. So let's have a debate, let's set up a debate. You and I, we have these debates all day long anyway. We just don't always notice it, but we are debating. Inside of our own mind, we're arguing something. The good side of us is trying to get us to be more patient, and the bad side of us is making lists of why this person hurt me.

And so I'd like you to set up a debate in your own mind, purposely, artificially, this morning. And I like to split my head into two rooms. It's good luck in Diamond Way to put Angel on the left side of the room, so I kind of divide my skull. Or if you're a person who sees their mind in their heart, you can do that. The left side is a separate room and I put the angel in there, and then on the other side of the wall I put the devil. And I put a little like window between the two parts where they can talk to each other. So try to set that up in your own head, your own skull. The left half is like a separate room and right half is like a separate room. Invite the angel to come. And by the way, if you're in the mood, it doesn't have to be like a closet, it can be like a really nice living room at the beach or something. You can make a beautiful penthouse on each side of your head. So get the place ready, invite the angel. I think all of us have a slightly different picture of what an angel looks like, and feel free to make any kind of angel you like. And then on the other side, put the devil. Devils can look all kinds of ways. They can look like monsters or they can look like your best friend. So create these two penthouse living rooms, and the angel is on one side, the devil's on the other side. Invite them to come. They're always there anyway.

Now they're going to have a little debate. And we're going to do something special today because of the subjects we're talking about this week at Diamond Mountain. We're going to put a Diamond Way flavor to the debate, okay? It's not going to be a normal Angel / Devil argument. We're going to have an Angel / Devil Diamond Way argument. What are we going to argue about? I'd like you to take a difficult situation in your life. I think normally it's with another person, and somebody or some group of people is causing you a problem. It's been difficult with them. I think happiness is.. almost the definition could be the day you run out of people like that. Unhappiness is having that kind of people nearby. So try to think of someone or some group of people maybe you're having some trouble with and the devil's thinking about those people. And let's think about what the devil might say. And then think about the angel, and then think of a lengshi. Lengshi means something happened. There was an incident with this person or with this group of people. Try to recreate the incident. Maybe it took place yesterday or a couple of days ago and you were having a conversation with this person and it was difficult. They said something that hurt you and think about that, or some situation like that. Don't go crazy - it's better to limit this meditation to one or two people, and limit it to one or two incidents, meetings, that you had with them, and something specific that they said to hurt you.

Now the devil's going to talk first and he's going to say, 'oh man, that person is, I don't know, maybe they're tired or maybe they're having some trouble, it doesn't really matter. They're just really unpleasant to me. This last few days they were saying really unkind things and really not thinking about how it felt to me. They were so inconsiderate and insensitive to say things like that and they must understand that it hurts me and they just went ahead and did it anyway'. So that the devil is feeling hurt and the devil is making assumptions about the mind of the other person. We cannot see another person's mind, ever. Nothing, almost never, directly. We don't know why the person did something to us that hurt us. We don't really know. But the devil is sure. The devil is, 'oh, this person is a bad person, this person is insensitive and this person hurt me and they don't even care.' Like that. So let the devil talk for a little bit, okay?

Then the angel comes in, okay? Try to feel it on the other side of your head. The angel is kind of relaxed and the angel can look like whatever you think an angel should look like. You don't have to follow my idea of an angel. The angel's like, 'listen, we don't know, maybe the person had a hard time or maybe they didn't sleep well'. I remember finding out that one of the people who insulted me most regularly had a bad back. They had a bad, bad spinal pain and I didn't know about that for many years and I was making assumptions about how such a bad person they are and how unkind they were. And then I suddenly found out that they were in great pain all the time, all day long. Of course, they were sometimes had bad temper, sometimes they said bad things. So listen, here's the angel trying to be more reasonable, 'Oh, Geshe Michael, just calm down. You don't know. Remember that guy who had the bad back? Maybe this person yesterday was having some big trouble at home. Maybe they're even physically sick and you don't know about it. Cut them some slack'. Cut them slack means try to give them the benefit of the doubt. Maybe they're having some special personal problems, and maybe you should just be more patient with them. That's the angel talking. Let the angel talk a little bit. I'm afraid the devil talks louder than the angel. Usually the devil outtalks the angel and that puts us in a bad mood. Remember yesterday the devil told the angel, 'you almost never come home; you're almost always gone.'

Now we'll take it to the Diamond Way and then we'll finish. The devil is like.. let's go to the angel first. Angel says, 'look, maybe since we can't read this person's mind, maybe they're like a Buddha. It's possible. It's not impossible'. We said yesterday, if the Diamond Cutter Sutra survived at Dunhuang caves, Mogao caves, for 1,300 years, if people kept them carefully that long, maybe some people learned them, this sutra. Maybe some people followed it. Maybe they thought it was valuable because it helped them. Maybe they even became a Buddha. Maybe this person who hurt me yesterday is a Buddha. Maybe they're trying to help me. Maybe they are trying to challenge me. I was a tennis player in high school and I was on the team. And during the tennis season, the coach would not let us play tennis with our girlfriend and the coach would not let us play a match against another player who was worse than us or equal. During the season, we could only play against people who were better than us and it made us better. It made us stronger. We always lost, but we got stronger and stronger. Then we could play on the team and compete against other schools. Angel says, 'well, maybe this person's trying to make you stronger. Maybe this person's trying to help you get stronger.'

By the way, when it rains in Arizona, it's a blessing and something good is happening. It's raining right now.

'Maybe this person is trying to help me'. Then we're almost done. Okay, one more minute.

The devil says, ha ha, come on. I mean, maybe somebody else is special, but this person is, you know this person's not special. They are just a grumpy, unhappy person. If it was someone special, I can understand this divine paranoia. Divine paranoia could be the name of this meditation. Maybe this person is an angel, maybe this person is a real Buddha. Maybe they're trying to help me. But the worst devil in your head, the very worst devil in your head, according to Diamond Way, is the one who says, 'come on, you must be joking. I can imagine Rob Rusinger could be a Buddha, John Brady, Connie, but this person? Come on. That's not possible'.

Then the angel has to come back and say, 'well, they're not going to look like a Buddha. They're going to try to look like a normal person'. Let this debate go on in your mind, another minute or two, okay? A real debate. What are some reasons why this person is normal and they're just a asshole, and what are some reasons that they might be a Buddha? And let yourself debate it. Really debate it. The devil's talking to the angel through the window.

Then the final sentence, the final thing the angel says.. can you guys open your eyes now? You ready? You ready? I usually give a hundred dollars, but I'm going to give the first copy of All the Kinds of Karma in the gold edition, which has gold on it. It was shipped from Asia yesterday. Okay, what was the question again? What's like the ultimate argument that the angel can give to the devil in this case? Don't forget they're arguing about this person who gave them a problem. They're arguing about this person who gave them trouble, right? And what's the, can I give you a real easy clue? What's the most reasonable argument that the angel could give? Anyone who can tell me both parts of that argument gets this book right now, and Tim chooses the person so they don't get mad at me.

[Anastasiia: You never know if it's Angel, if it's Buddha or not. You never know for sure.]

Give me two...Say it the way I said it yesterday and I'll give you the book.

[Anastasiia: This person can be Buddha or can be not Buddha, you never know. You need to consider.]

Split it into two parts, two obvious parts. Okay, I'll give you a clue. If you say they are a Buddha..]

[Anastasiia: You never know if it's the Buddha or not. You're never sure for 100% if it's Buddha or not.]

Yeah, but say it the way I sent it yesterday. Who's going to help her out?

Yeah, nobody can tell for sure that they are. Logically, nobody can prove it. And nobody can prove that they are not. This is called [tetsom?]. This state of mind is called [tetsom?]. It's on the line between the two. It is not some superstitious belief that this is a Buddha, because you don't know. You can't say, 'oh, I'm a Buddhist, everyone's a Buddha'. Come on. So logically, totally logically, anybody in the world, Buddhist, non-Buddhist, fish, roach, okay? They have to agree. I can't say if they're a Buddha and I can't say they're not. Leave it at that. It's called divine doubt. Divine state of doubt. And it is divine, it makes you a good person. Just suspicious. Not sure. Because we're not sure. Don't lie to yourself either. You're not sure either way. But if you're not sure, you better be nice to everybody. It's like you don't.. Rob went to the Ace Hotel in Kyoto and he likes to talk to everybody, that's why I hired him. That's how I find out everything about everybody. He went to the front desk and he's talking to those people, blah, blah, blah. This is a Seattle hotel chain in Kyoto. And then one of the staff members whispered to the other staff member, 'I think he's from home office, I think he's a spy from corporate headquarters, to see if we're nice to the customers'. I said, Rob, that's such a good way to get everything you want. In fact, I don't even know [unclear]

Class 3 - The Song of My Spiritual Life

20 April 2025

Okay, we're going to start back with the new book by Gibson: Song of My Spiritual Life. And we're ready to start the actual text. So that book, that poem, where Tsongkapa describes his own spiritual life, maybe for the only time in his..he wrote like 20,000 pages, this is the only time he talked about himself. And so in that book there's poetry, he wrote in poetry. And we have an explanation by another teacher. His name is Choney Lama Drakpa Shedrup. He lived about 350 years ago. Each major monastery has their own Geshe course, and each major monastery has.. in my time, about 50 advanced Geshe candidates. Out of those, maybe four or six will get their Geshe. And so during that time we studied special textbooks that were written by great Lamas of our monastery. And Choney Lama wrote the important textbooks for my Geshe course, about 300 - 400 years ago. His writing is very, very unusual and it's very, very extremely clear and extremely organized and very, very deep. He wrote the best commentary to the Diamond Cutter Sutra. We have three great commentaries. We have Kamalashila who lived 1200 years ago, and then we have a short one by Vasubandhu, or Asanga, from 2,000 years ago, very short. And then we have Choney Lama's commentary.

When I had to choose which one to use, I chose Choney Lama because it's more clear. And so he's amazing and I checked his life story and I did a biography of him, I forget which book it's in. But there's one part of his life that I remember a lot.

He had a dream that he was flying through the sky to the west to teach the dharma. This is like 400 years ago, something. He had this dream and he himself didn't know why. And he wrote it in his biography, but he said, I don't know what it means.

I think it means that his books would come to the Mixed Nuts and he would become famous. We use his books a lot and they're amazing. They're just amazing. And we found his books. They were lost. They were destroyed during a war and we found them. It took a long time. It took Mr. John..it took us a long time to, I don't know if you remember—Jason went to..we sent a guy in a bus to the mountains in middle of China. He survived and he brought back the copies. So we have them, we input them, and Gibson's book is one of those books. It's one of the books that John saved and it's a great, great commentary to Tsongkapa’s own life.

Prostration to the Teacher

At the beginning of every Buddhist thing you do, important thing you do, you bow down to your teacher. You remember your teacher. So my teacher, mainly Khen Rinpoche here, and you think about your teacher and you bow down to your teacher. I also have a Diamond Way teacher, that's another story.

So Sumati Kirti is whose name? Tsongkapa’s name. So at the beginning of Gibson's book, Choney Lama bows down to Sumati Kirti. He asks for the blessing of Sumati Kirti, but it means Lobsang Drakpa, it means Tsongkapa.He's asking Tsongkapa for help and for inspiration.

If you're going to do Diamond Way, you’ve got to keep your eyes out for a Diamond Way teacher. Okay? And in the monastery, there's an interesting distinction. We have [Pecha gegyen?], we have [kansen gegyen?], we have [tsaway Lama?], okay? We have different teachers. Ney Lama. We have at least four. Okay? One is [Pecha gegyen?]. [Pecha gegyen?] means your book teacher who teaches you the great books. And then [kansen gegyen?] is more like your babysitter.

When you show up at the monastery, you're seven years old or something, you want to go home, you miss your mom and then they have a very sweet, gentle, cool Lama who takes care of you. And then after six months you don't want to go home anymore. And that was Geshe Lotar, that was his job. He was a [kansen gegyen?]. And then you have [tsaway?] Lama, you have your own teacher and then you have your [Dorje Depen?]. [Dorje depen?] means diamond captain and that's your Diamond Way teacher. Okay? So you have different teachers.

I have 12 major teachers in the monastery, but I have one heart teacher. And so anyway, before you start a new project, like Diamond Way teachings, Diamond Way study, you’ve got to think of your teacher. You have to think about your teacher, connect to your teacher in your heart. You’ve got to look for your heart teacher. And what I mean to say is, in the Geshe course, that may not be your main teacher. You see? Your Diamond Way teacher may be somebody else. It may not be the person who teaches you debating, or the person who teaches your philosophy, or something like that. In my life, it has not been a monk. My Diamond Way teacher is not a monk. You will find someone in your life who's your Diamond Way teacher. I'm happy to be your Diamond Way teacher, I don't have to be your Diamond Way teacher. Who you connect with the most is your heart teacher.

I asked my scripture teacher for the definition of a heart teacher and he said, the one that helped you the most in your life. Then I'm like, well, that's another story. The one who really helped me to become a good person, or change me, that's a different story. That might not be the person who taught me Perfection of Wisdom or something like that. So here they bow..the first thing they do is to remember their root Lama, their heart teacher, and it could be anyone in your life and don't rush it. You don't have to say, ‘oh, Geshehla talked about root Lama, I’ve got to find one before tomorrow. So take your time and they might be sitting next to you and you don't know it, or they might be a thousand miles away and you don't know it. Okay? So they will come. So don't worry about it, but there will be someone in your life who changes your life. Okay?

All right. He bows down to.. who's he? Choney Lama. Bows down to Tsongkapa. He felt this connection with Tsongkapa, Sumati Kirti. ‘Sumati’ means good mind, Losang. And ‘kirti’ means famous, but kirti means famous not like Brad Pitt, okay? That's called temporary famous. Famous means the ideas you teach spread through the world. The ideas that you teach spread to the whole world, and you help people throughout the whole world, something like that. That's famous in Buddhism.

What's the normal example of famous in Buddhism? The moon or the sun. That's real famous. That's not newspaper famous for two days or something.

Okay. First picture you guys.

This one is.. there's a tradition when you say your teacher's name, you say, my beloved, sexy, beautiful teacher, Kyeri. Like you don't just say, ‘oh yeah, my teacher's Kyeri’. Traditionally, you don't say their name without thinking of how you feel about them. Traditionally, you never use your teacher's name without pausing and thinking how do you feel about them.

What did they do for you? How did they help you?

My teacher gave me my whole life. So I don't say their name very often and I don't just say, ‘oh..’ So it's tradition to speak it only with great purpose or great reason. Okay, that's a tradition in the Diamond Way.

Then I thought, if the world is all name only, which means what? Hundred dollar question. [Rob raises hand] You're the money-giver, not the money-getter. Okay, Mind Only principle, a knife cannot cut itself. A person cannot ride on their own back. Rob cannot pay himself. What was the question? When I say that something is created by names, what does it mean? It's an easy hundred dollars.

[Student: Mental picture.]

Yeah, good. They say [Mingtsam?] [Mingtsam?] means everything is just names.

Then it used to confuse me for many years. I'm like names only? I don't understand.

Everything is names? I'm supposed to understand that everything is names?

It's not everything is names. [Geshehla raises class of water] Margarita Pizza, it's just a name. Water. I mean, don't tell my wife I had a margarita pizza, I didn't. I had water.

It used to confuse me to say everything is name only. It doesn't mean name only, it means everything is a picture coming out of your mind. Okay? Then it's always funny because I teach these classes, I teach that everything's coming from you, I teach the pen, the pen, the pen.

And then you know the famous story. Where is Jenny Wong? The famous story from Singapore Union Trade Convention Center, UTC. I remember, it's a hundred years ago. Two things happened. Do you remember?

That auditorium is shaped like this, the seats go like this. So I can see in the middle of the audience, I can see the audience right in front of me. And there's one guy sitting there like [constantly amazed]. And I'm like, hmm, he has a seed. So during the break I said, ‘Jenny, come here’. She's like, what?

I said, ‘you see that guy with the big eyes? Go get him, he's going to help you’.

She's like, ‘you sure?’ That was Sugeng. That was the first guy I remember.

The second guy I remember, there's a guy, I took Q & A, and he raised his hand. He says, ‘I have a question. We have to pay to come to this talk’. I'm like, I don't know, I guess. And he said, well, I pay, and I came here several years and you teach the same stupid thing every year.

I said, what did I teach the same stupid thing every year?

He said, you teach the pen thing every year, and I pay the money every year, different money for the same pen story. I said, well, I'm so sorry, next time I'll try to think of something different.

Actually, my teacher told me, you have to hear it 5,000 times before you understand it. So you guys are up to 4,000 or something like that. And I remember this, and then Jenny ran up to me after the talk. She said, he's not from our group. I'm like, [it’s okay]. He's from a.. I am not going to say the country. It was another country. I'll give you a clue. It's in Europe. I'll give you another clue. It's where John Brady takes his group without me and there's lots of, what do you call those things? Crepes with Nutella. Understand? Oui, oui?

All right. So anyway, everything is names. And what I want to say, in Diamond Way language.. if you force me to teach a Diamond Way course, all names have deeper meaning. Okay? The name that you were given as a child has a deeper meaning. And in Diamond Way, you have to think about it.

People want tantric meditation involving chickens or sex. So I have one for you.

Meditate on your name. Meditate on the name that you were given as a child in whatever language it was, and it has a deeper meaning. According to Diamond Way, your parents are very possibly tantric angels. If you're here out of 8 billion people, then your parents were.. whether you like your parents or not, and whether you're still talking or not, something special there. And there was a special decision made when they chose your name. Names are not accidents and in Madhyamaka, names create the world. In Diamond Way, names have a message.

We just finished a program at Dunhuang IR, and we had a wonderful program, and they're learning how to do deep retreat, business retreat. And I said, watch out for messages. And we had actually two classes, we had several hours of instruction, how to receive a message, how to recognize a message. And that's a big part of Diamond Way. If you want to study Diamond Way, we'll start talking about the idea that Diamond Way special beings, our angels, are sending you messages.

They have an expression in English. You ready?

‘Did you talk to the guy?’ ‘Yeah’.

‘Did you tell him what he was supposed to hear?’ ‘Yeah’.

‘What happened?’ [Geshehla swooshes hand over His head]. What's that mean?

He didn't get it all. It went over his head. We say it went over his head. That's what happened to me [referencing hair]. No. It means in the Diamond Way, Diamond Way special beings, they're trying to send you messages all day and it just goes [over our head].

‘I don't know, Sugeng said something strange to me. He said, how's your pizza? I don't know what he's talking about’.

When you don't know what someone's talking about, either the person's crazy or there's a message, you have to decide which one. All right? So be open.

In the Diamond Way, be open from messages.

The first message you ever got was your name. The name that you were given as a child has special meaning. If you're here in this room, out of 8 billion people, you are special. Statistically, you're special. I'm not trying to convince you you're special, okay? Statistically, I don't know, do the percentages. Out of 8 billion people, there's only the ones in this class listening right now. Okay? Then you are special. And the name you got as a child is special. There's some meaning to it, and you have to.. it's like a homework assignment. If you're bored in your cabin and you're tired of meditating about dinner, you could meditate on ‘what does my name mean’. What's it mean really? Why was I given that name? What am I supposed to do with that name? That's a tantric practice. Okay? All right. It's not in the 18 courses.

Next picture.

Buddha has a plan for you

Buddha has a plan for you. Okay? I like it.

My AI is kind of an artificial idiot, I mean intelligence, but sometimes he makes a cool picture. And I said, I want to see the Buddha finalizing some architectural plants, and he did it. This is the first try, and I was really impressed. So anyway, especially in Diamond Way..

By the way, Choney Lama bows down to Lord Buddha at the beginning of the book. And to tell you the truth, in the philosophy classes in the Geshe course, the teacher will often skip these prostrations. ‘Oh, it's just usual prostrations’. They'll go to the philosophy. I think that's a mistake. I think you got to look at the prostrations. Why?

Who is Choney Lama bowing down to at the beginning of his book?

By the way, every Buddhist book is supposed to start with bowing down to your teacher. Every Buddhist book in history is supposed to start with bowing down to your teacher.

Promise to write the book

Then for a hundred dollars, the more experienced students are going to tell me what's the next step in every single book by raising their hand.

[Student: Promise to compose the work.]

Good. A hundred bucks, yay.

Yeah. Then they make a promise that they will write the book. Okay? [Sombar damchawa?]. They make a promise to write the book. First they bow down. For good luck, they bow down to their teacher and they recognize their teacher. So it's a tradition to bow down to Lord Buddha, and I'm going to teach it from a Diamond Way point of view.

Maybe Geshehla's tricking you by saying you have to pass Lam Rim before he starts Diamond Way. Maybe you finish Diamond Way by the time he finished the Lam Rim. Okay? By the way, that's not exactly, I'm going to keep going, don't worry. But from a Diamond Way point of view..

We were in Dunhuang, we were reading the Diamond Cutter. So we talked about the Diamond Cutter Sutra, which was found there, in that cave. And by the way, the finding of the Diamond Cutter Sutra in those caves affected the town. The town is infected. You can't sit there without feeling it. And we went to the shop, we went downtown, we went to a coffee shop. We went and got chased by hotel owners because it's not tourist season yet, and the whole place feels like magic.

The whole town, the whole city feels like magic because of the book, because of the Diamond Cutter Sutra. And they only found one scroll out of the whole thing.

Maybe 50 scrolls and only one scroll survived, I think. It's the one with the date on it, but it also has a beautiful carving of Lord Buddha on it. And so here's a message.

Here's a message from Lord Buddha. Try to understand this from a Diamond Way point of view. When Lord Buddha taught the Diamond Cutter Sutra, he saw you studying Choney Lama at Diamond Mountain in 2025. Okay?

When he taught the Diamond Cutter Sutra to, I don't know, 20 people, 30 people. I went there, I sat there where he taught it. The seat is still there after two-and-a-half thousand years. The stone is still there. You can sit there, it's fun. I sat there.

He taught to 25, 30 people, I don't know, but he was teaching directly to us at that time. You understand? We were not less visible to him than the people sitting in front of him. You understand? That's what the word Buddha means.

Was he Buddha? 'Yes'.

Do you know what Buddha means? 'I don't know'.

It means sees all things. So when he's looking at his students 2,500 years ago and there's some sutra called Diamond Cutter Sutra, he saw you in front of him as much as he saw those people in front of him. You see what I mean? He's watching us right now. In the Diamond Way, you have to remember that. This book was made for you. This Diamond Cutter Sutra, first talk about the Diamond Cutter Sutra was delivered to? Us. You. Okay? That Dunhunag scroll, why the one survive with the picture on it of Buddha teaching? 'I don't know'. Maybe something special.

He was watching this class, Buddha was watching this class when he taught the Diamond Cutter Sutra. You understand? And he was watching you. Okay? That's what the word Buddha means.

You say, 'I don't know if Buddha can do that'. He can, because that's his name. Okay? 'Budh' comes from.. okay, a hundred dollars, ridiculous bet. You ready? I'm in a mood today. What's the Sanskrit, ultimate Sanskrit root for Buddha, and what's the English word that comes from it? The most common English word.

[Student: Video]

Yeah, video. 'Video' comes from 'budh'. VID comes from BUD.

Buddha means the guy who watches videos all day. I'm not kidding, you think I'm kidding. That's what buddha means.

Now Stanley's a genius, I told you, he's a Buddha. No. The video he's watching is us. So in the Diamond Way, you have to remember that.

I'm going to teach you a special secret Diamond Way meditation, only Geshe Michael knows about it. I worked for 19 long, hard years in Manhattan and I built a company from zero to quarter billion dollars; Warren Buffett bought it. And it took hard, hard 19 years, four hours on the bus every day. It was hard. Sometimes it's hard just getting people to work together.

What I realized, I'm vice president, right? My only job is to keep people from fighting with each other. That's all. If I can get the managers to work together, I can go home. Seriously, I realized I got paid extremely high salary just to get people to work together, and that was my job. I mean, I had a title, but it was Vice President of Diamond Operations or something. I have to find the diamonds. That's what I did to find you guys.

So anyway, hard days. Many, many hard days. Many hardheaded executives. Workers are easy, you say, shut up and do your job. You tell it to a vice president, they quit. So I get all these guys and some days it's just so tiring and I'm so tired and I'm so overwhelmed. I need some help. So I built the building.

We went there, 12 stories. I built the inside, I designed most of it because it's high security. There has to be.. there's millions of dollars of diamonds sitting on the table in every room. And all the rooms are separated with special electronic stuff and cameras and all this stuff. So it was hard and I built special bathrooms. Why?

All the men's toilets are in a stall also, just like a lady's bathroom. You understand?

Usually in America, the men have to peepee standing next to each other, which is always kind of weird. So I built all the bathrooms with separate stalls and they're like, 'Geshehla, no, that's a men's bathroom'. And I'm like, I know, I don't care, everyone gets a stall, man or woman. Why?

I have a meditation I do in the stall. When it's a hard day, when I'm having a really hard day and I'm trying to get these managers to work together, I'm like [struggling], I just go sit on the toilet. Without raising the lid, okay? It's a special meditation time. And I'll tell you something cool. We had vice president meetings, like eight hour meetings. Everybody wants to get out of there, no one's listening to anybody. And if you say, I have a client coming, he's a billion dollar client, I've got to leave. They say, stay.

Then I figured out, if you say, I've got to poop really bad, they're like, go. Because something happens if you stay. And so they're like, go. So I go to my toilet that I designed, I lock the door, I don't open the seat. I just sit down on it and I do.. I call it talking to the Buddha. Okay? I call it talking to the Buddha. It's a Diamond Way meditation. I'm teaching you special stuff, okay? You wanted special stuff, you're getting it. I don't teach this to normal people. 'Does that make me abnormal, Geshehla?' No. Okay.

So anyway, then you sit down and you talk to the Buddha. It has to be loud enough to hear. It can't be mental, that doesn't count. Can the Buddha hear you if you talk to them mentally? Of course. But if you say something that you can hear, it's more powerful. It makes seeds in your mind.

'But Geshehla I'm getting seeds, I'm thinking those thoughts'. Doesn't matter. When you say something, it's more powerful [nambarache kisuk?] It becomes a special kind of karma. So you have to talk, they say loud enough that somebody sitting next to you could hear, but not so loud that the next stall can hear you. Okay? So that's how loud.

Then you talk to Buddha and you say, 'Buddha, I'm having a hard day today'. 'What?'

'Oh, I'm supposed to be patient. These guys are coming from me, but they just don't get along with each other. And it's like the 10th time I talk to them and I'm just getting tired. Help me out here.' Okay, you can do that.

That's not a Diamond Way meditation, that's a stall meditation. Got it?

Wait, you're supposed to say, 'but Geshehla, you said it would be a Diamond Way meditation.'. I'm getting there. Now you want a real Diamond Way meditation—same stall, same seat, gets a little hard after 10 minutes. I'm talking you didn't lift up the [seat]. And then you say, 'I'm having a special hard day today, and I have big, big project. I need blessing of a special Buddha. I don't want a regular Buddha. I want a special Buddha. Today's special, I got a special project I'm doing, so I'm going to try to bring all these executives together and work together, and I need big help today'. And Buddha's like, okay.

Then how do you do that meditation? You meditate to Buddha Mike. Buddha Mike. You will be a Buddha. All beings have a tathagatagarbha. All beings have a seed to become a Buddha. Your emptiness is your eligibility to become a Buddha. Your emptiness is your.. if you have emptiness, you can become a Buddha. That's called Buddha nature. You have it, everybody has it. Therefore, you will become a Buddha. Therefore, you can talk to future Buddha. They don't care you existed 10 zillion years ago, which is how long it's going to take some people to get there. Okay? Understand? And it feels weird, right? By the way, Diamond Way, you asked for Diamond Way, I'm giving you Diamond Way, don't look at me like that.

Diamond Way is unusual, Diamond Way is special. By the way, it's, it's incontrovertible, you cannot debate with me that it's not true. It's logical. If it's possible to become a being who sees all things, which is what the word 'Buddha' means, then it's not crazy to talk to your future Buddha if you're not already a Buddha.

I don't know if you are or not. Right? I can't say you are, and I can't say you are not.

But I can say for sure, either now or in the future, you will be a Buddha. And I can say for sure that either now or in the future, you can hear every word you ever said in all your lifetimes. That means you can ask for help sitting on the special stall toilet, as long as you don't talk too loud, from yourself as a Buddha. And that's a Diamond Way meditation.

You want a Diamond Way meditation, now you got one.

Next Saturday, Tim's going to film the meditation in the toilet, and I'm going to sit on the toilet and talk to Michael Buddha. Look, I am a very experienced teacher, if I don't get a warm seat, I don't think I can talk, right? Haha. Okay. No, I'm serious. Okay? I like to joke, but because Buddhahood is fun, okay? You think it's going to be serious?

You believe all those statues [looking serious]?

So anyway, he's watching you all the time and he is you or she is you. That's all. She's watching you all the time. Future Buddha is watching you all the time. And you can ask them for help and they'll give you help. It's not crazy, it's a very, very healthy Diamond Way meditation. Okay?

What was my warning? Don't talk too loud. Sometimes people are actually pooping next door. Somebody said, 'I walked by..' You know how you hear conversations in the office and somebody saying, 'do you know what Geshe Michael does in the bathroom?' I'm like, maybe I talk too loud.

Okay, next one. You ready? Next picture.

Hidden Messages in the Texts

Yeah, I like this picture. I found it online, it's probably illegal, I figured Tsongkapa wouldn't mind. But he has a beautiful.. the next verse, he bows down to his high and holy Lama, and he does not mention Je Tsongkapa. Choney Lama does not mention Je Tsongkapa. Choney Lama lived like 200 years after Je Tsongkapa, or more, actually. So here's the verse:

With the excellent insight

Of your incredible mind,

You offered extraordinary

Commentary upon the profound—

Something that others

Found difficult to fathom.

Your purest deeds

Shone forth, with light

Above all, and known to all.

I bow down then,

In deep respect,

At the precious feet

Of my high & holy Lama.

Yeah, he has hidden Tsongkapa's name in the verse. So Gibson and me, we put italics. When you read it in your book, you can see some of the words are italicized. That's to alert you that Choney Lama is having a joke on you. It looks like he's just bowing down to some nice person, but he's bowing down to Tsongkapa. He has hidden Tsongkapa's name in the poetry, and that's a traditional game that great sutra writers, they play, like that. They hide people's names in the sutra. Sometimes people ruin the game, they take a knife and they carve an X under the letter on the woodblock. So sometimes you'll see a little X under the word in the woodblock and somebody was ruining the surprise. But you'll see it, it's very unusual. Cool.

So there's an idea here that I wanted to talk about. So I'm getting older. I've been spending the last few weeks.. after I leave here, Diamond Mountain, I have to leave on time because I start three-and-a-half days of tests to get a new kidney, maybe, in six years or ten years or something like that. So no, it's not a good thing, it's terrible. It's not yet, but you have to get on the list. To get on the list, they have to make sure you don't have cancer; they don't want to waste a kidney on you. So I have to go for three-and-a-half days of testing, and so I have to leave on time. I just barely will make it. And then I have to sit there for three days, three-and-a-half days. They're going to make sure I won't cheat them out of a good kidney. So I think about..I'm at the age, and I guess me, Elly, John, we're at the age where you seriously consider..

Rob just had a very dangerous, successful operation, and he's promised to live another a hundred years and I'm glad for that. He had triple bypass heart surgery and then he came to the Diamond Mountain board meeting like 10 days later. He's crazy.

But anyway, so I think we're aware of the world blacking out. See what I mean? This world will black out. We'll go somewhere else. This world will just become dark. We'll see our family's faces and then everything will be dark for a while and then we go somewhere else. But during that dark moment, try to imagine this world with no sun and no moon. 'It's okay, we have flashlights, we got cell phones. Everybody's walking around with cell phones. [bumping into someone because busy looking at phone] Oh, hi, I didn't see you'. Just imagine if the world was dark 24 hours a day. We live in a weird world.

This week they found with a spectrometer on a satellite that another planet has two of the chemicals necessary for life. And there was a discussion of whether it's an old fart from somebody else. Funny. I'm not kidding, you think I'm kidding. But this kind of planet is very rare. We haven't found one for sure yet. Out of billion planets, we haven't found one for sure yet. We've certainly never been visited for sure. So imagine a planet which is all black. When you get to our age and you're having these exotic operations, it's no joke, you can imagine the world all black. All blacked out. Imagine that. If this world did not have the books that John Brady is saving, whether there's a sun or a moon or not, it would be in darkness. Okay? Try to think like that. Imagine that. Why is John so crazy? Why are we spending so much work for 37 years to save these books? Why did Gibson spend all night translating, go to India.

Somebody introduced me at a talk in Ecuador or something. They said, this is Geshe Michael, he is a Geshe, and he paid for it with countless diarrhea. And I'm like [mouth open]. I said, that's the first time anyone introduced me correctly. Because when you go to those countries in a refugee camp, you drink one glass of water, you got diarrhea for three days. We drank out of a dirty stream and they gave me the water, it was brown. And they said, drink. And I said, no, no, get me some bottled water. 'We don't have that'. I said, I'll take water out of the tap. 'That is the water out of the tap'. And I said, well, it's going to give me diarrhea. And they said, 'yeah, it'll take about a couple hours'. I said, how long will it last? They said, 'how long you staying?’

Anyway, imagine the world without those books. And you don't believe me, you don't really feel it like I do. But if this little book by Gibson didn't exist, there would be no sun in this world. And I don't care if there's a physical sun or there's not a physical sun, that doesn't matter. The world would be dark. You would be stuck with Brad Pitt movies, Jason Bourne, football games. Don't ask me which kind, British or American. The British is not, European is not football. I don't care about Latin America. Juan's like [grimacing]. Okay, anyway, imagine the whole world dark, and no stars, no moon. Without what we're talking about here, the world would be like that. No sun ever. It's like that. If these books get lost, if you don't teach your own students, the world will be dark. 'Oh, Geshehla, I don't want to go Guangzhou and teach up there in front of all those people'. Nah, come on, I started in the back of a Volkswagen. Okay? You got to teach somebody. Teach your parents, they'll listen to you.

All right. Next picture.

Choney Lama’s Promise to Je Tsongkapa

I asked the AI to put a woman making a.. okay, she's got four fingers. Someone told me that all the artists in the world put a bug in all the AI to always make four fingers, and that way you know it wasn't done by a human artist. So I'm sorry, I tried like a hundred times to put her hand..we say a promise, and my AI doesn't let me make dirty pictures. So they're like, some lady going like [hand on chest], this is not appropriate. And no, she's making a promise. So anyway, that's the best I could do.

This picture refers to Choney Lamas promise to compose this book. He promises to explain the verses of Je Tsongkapa. And the verses are short, the verses are cryptic. They are not obvious, they're kind of secret, so you need an explanation. And Choney Lama, we are using Choney Lama's explanation, but there's a deeper meaning here that's worth $300. There's a deeper meaning to this action in the picture. And you have to think, don't just.. I have friends who raise their hand just before I ask the question, and then they say, 'well, there's a 50 50 chance I know the answer. I can make some money because Geshehla doesn't charge for a wrong answer'. Yet.

[Janice: The answer is, he made a pledge to write the work, and then if you do what he says to do, you're going to get a result if you follow the steps.]

That's not quite, I want more, but you're close.

[Janice: Okay, $50.]

[Ms Wynn: The seeds open to me at this moment that the picture show the four fingers in the heart remind me that using four steps always in the heart.]

[Laughter]

Ms Wynn said, using the four steps all day in your heart will make you successful. Now, listen, Ms Wynn, some things in the world cannot be Diamond Way messages, right? I mean, it's ridiculous to think that an AI could be delivering tantric messages, right?

[Students: No]

Yeah [coming from me]. Nooo. Good. Now, sometimes somebody gives a thousand dollar answer to a $300 question. If someone underperforms, you should underpay. If someone over performs, you should overpay. That's just basic management. Anyway, what I was thinking of when I made the picture is that I think there's a special message here. And by the way, if you're in Diamond Way course, and you go around talking about special messages, you're doing good, that's fine. Usually I get irritated if someone, 'oh,Geshehla, I saw a message'. 'What?' 'That car passed me on the street'. I'm like, [speechless]. I mean, some people seem to go a little far, but anyway, it's not bad in the Diamond Way course. Every message is a message, even if it wasn't supposed to be a message, if they are kind and if they are based in morality. And that's the answer I wanted. The first act in Choney Lama's book, before he gets to the first line, is to make a promise and he keeps it.

I'll tell you a beautiful story. So the only copy of the Kangyur, the 990 sutras and Tantras from India that still survive and that's all that survives. All the books that are in Dunhuang that are sutras are included in the Kangyur / Tengyur. The only copy is in the temple in New Jersey. And somebody wanted to micro film it, microfiche it, because they didn't have computers. Then my Lama agreed.

You have to understand it's a hundred thousand pages. It's a hundred thousand pages. And he said, 'Mike, go get the first volume and count the pages and then send them to the imaging lab. And then when it comes back, count them and make sure they're all there'. You understand?

So I counted them 200,000 times, the pages. This is the kind of thing I had to do. You don't even know, I paid for the Geshe degree. Anyway, what I'm saying is, I was sneaking looks at the content while I was counting, and then I found a book and the line was only half carved, and I was like, that's weird, half the line is empty. And I took the page, I thought my teacher..

I was always trying to prove something to my teacher, and I always was finding out I was wrong. And I ran to him with the sheet, it's a big page, and I said, 'look, there's a half a line missing'. And he says, 'oh my God'. And he read it and he goes, 'Nope, it's not missing'.

And I'm like, 'it's missing, there's no words there'.

He said, 'listen, Mike, the guy died, the author died'.

And that's the only condition under which you don't keep your promise to finish your book is if you die. And if you die halfway through, they carve it anyway.

How much you finish, they carve. It's very unbelievable.

Dharmakirti did something like that.

So, okay, it's a serious promise. When you promise to study Diamond Way course, it's not an easy thing. I mean, you can leave halfway through, but.. I'm not saying you're going to the hell realms. I'm not saying that, okay? And I'm not threatening you. I don't like that kind of stuff. I think you're just going to have to sit and watch TV for 25 lifetimes or something terrible like that.

Anyway, what this author is saying by making a promise just before he starts the Diamond Way explanation of Lam Rim, what he's saying is you have to keep your promises. And keeping your promises.. basic morality is the foundation of the Diamond Way, okay?

Those 10 boring rules: don't kill, don't steal, don't mess around with other people's wives or husbands, like that. Those 10 are the foundation of Diamond Way, and you can't do Diamond Way without that. So he takes a promise at the beginning to show you how to act. Got it? Keep your 10 good deeds, then you can study Diamond Way. Got it? It's a message. That's a message.

Then the AI message is separate from Choney Lama's message. By the way, I don't have that much money, so don't answer any more questions [Ms Wynn]. I'm kidding. I'm kidding. Just kidding.

Okay, next picture.

Tsongkapa‘s Promise to Manjushri

By the way, this carving comes from one of the hundred volumes in the Mongolian temple. They have 101 volumes there. They have one volume of the 8,000 verses that was carved separately. They were going to carve the kangyur and tengyur; they finished the kangyur, and then the printing press was blown up in the Cultural Revolution. They never finished the tengyur, but this one book survived. And this is Manjushri. Who's going to read the caption, Mr. Word? There's a reason why your parents called you 'Word', right?

[Word: Tibetan… Jampel Yang]

Yeah, good, Jampel Yang, so it's Manjushri. Jampe means Jamba means soft, like velvet, very soft like silk. And 'yang' means a song. So 'manju' means soft, and 'ghosha' means song. And so you can call Manjushri, or you can call Manjughosha, same thing. And he bows down.. now we're starting with Je Tsongkapa is making his own promise to write his book because the last promise we saw was by Choney Lama.

So if you're not careful, you'll say, why did Gibson put an extra promise in there? So there's two promises in a row. The second promise is by Tsongkapa, and he bows down to his own teacher, which is Manjushri.

Then I had trouble with Manjushri. I remember when I asked my teacher, what's the story with Manjushri? And he says, he's a Buddha.

Then I'm like, okay, there's more than one Buddha?

And he's like, yeah, there's zillions of Buddhas.

I'm like, well, why they have an extra one? Because I just came from Princeton, I don't know anything.

And he's like, yeah, there's an extra Buddha called Manjushri.

And I'm like, well, why is there an extra Buddha, isn't Shakyamuni enough?

They're like, well, he's the Buddha of wisdom.

I'm like, Shakyamuni doesn't have wisdom?

And he's like, just shut up.

Later I got confused, my name is Mike or 'just shut up'.

The Story of Manjushri

So anyway, Manjushri represents the understanding of emptiness. If you learn what Manjushri can teach, you will touch the diamond world. And some of you know from DCI, you know the story.

There was a sheep herder wandering around the mountains in Tibet, and his name was Umapa, which happens to mean 'middle way', by accident.

He's just taking care of sheep. And then Je Tsongkapa was having trouble understanding emptiness. And he asked people, is there anyone who really understands emptiness, alive?

And by the way, the situation in Tibet at that time was the same as America, or the West, now. There wasn't enough people who understood anything about Buddhism. There was very few people.

So he said, is there anyone who really understands emptiness? And they said, yeah, Lama Umapa. He says, well, which monastery is he in?

And they said, he's not in any monastery, he is a sheep herder.

Well is he a monk? No.

Well, how can he understand about emptiness?

Just go talk to him, he can talk to Manjushri directly, he has a direct cell phone to Buddha Verizon, anyway, he can talk to Manjushri.

So there's a beautiful story.

Tsongkapa climbed around the mountains, found the best sheep herding pastors, found Lama Umapa, who was a very quiet, respectful person just walking around with sheep. And he said, are you Umapa?

And he's like, yes. And he said, can you talk to Majushri? He said, yes.

And Tsongkapa is like, I'll be honest, I don't believe you.

And Umapa is like, do you think I care?

That's how it goes.

And so Tsongkapa says, I'm going to test you. And Umapa is like, yeah, okay, test me. And so Tsongkapa thought about the most difficult ideas of emptiness, deep questions. Like how can a cause make a result if they never touch each other? And if they don't touch each other, why doesn't the cause cause all results because it doesn't touch everything else also? And if you say they do touch, then they have to exist at the same time. And if the cause exists at the same time as the result, it cannot be the cause for the result. He's asking him stuff like that.

Then he really wanted to know. And then Umapa gave him answers and they were perfect. So Tsongkapa was like, 'oh my gosh, I never realized that'.

He gave beautiful answers. The cause is not causing the result, you see the cause causing the result. You see the pen making writing because your seeds, according to Ms. Wynn, create the pen and then they create the writing.

It's not the pen creating the writing, but the pen comes before the writing. Got it?

That's real cause and effect.

And Tsongkapa's like, oh my God, I never understood that. And he was blown away.

So after a while he got irritated, I think climbing up and all through the sheep poop.

And he asked a better question.

This is those three wishes question. There's a good joke about that, but I can only tell the boys. Later.

He said, I should have asked you the best question of all, which is what?

Yeah, how do you talk to Manjushri directly?

And then Umapa was like, you're supposed to be so smart, Tsongkapa, but you didn't ask me that before. And he taught him how to talk to him directly. And so when Tsongkapa bows down to his teacher, he bows down to Manjushri, because he was his teacher. And he could see Manjushri, he could ask Manjushri questions.

Then Diamond Way. In Diamond Way, we would say Tsongkapa was Manjushri. In Sutra way, non-Tantra sutra way, you could say that Tsongkapa made contact with Manjushri, right?

You could say that or something like that. And then Tsongkapa's students said, but he is Manjushri; he's not Manjushri's student, he is Manjushri. So then those students had Diamond Way teachings. They understood the Diamond Way. They understood he wasn't a student of Manjushri, he was Manjushri. Okay, got it?

So throughout history, many people have not recognized who's the real teacher here. You see what I mean? They said Tsongkapa was studying with Manjushri, and then those who understood Diamond Way said that Tsongkapa was Manjushri. And then those who study Diamond Mountain Diamond Way, they say something different for a hundred dollars.

[Kadrin: Geshehla is Manjushri]

I'm not, I swear I'm not. I wish. I'm working on it.

[Student: Tsongkapa is an emanation of Manjushri]

So we can say he had to talk to the sheep herder to talk to Manjushri, first level.

Second level, he was Manjushri.

And then third level in Diamond Mountain? Okay, cancel the bet. Anybody want to try? Kyeri? Okay, come on, I don't want a long sentence. I don't want all the Harry Potter books. I want one short sentence.

[Kyeri: It's not that he is for sure, and it's not that he's not for sure.]

That's a hundred dollar answer anyway. No. You are Manjushri. You are Manjushri, okay? You are Manjushri. It's one thing to pray to Manjushri, it's another thing to realize your teacher is Manjushri, but the goal of this class is to realize who you are. You are Manjushri. That's the goal of Diamond Mountain Diamond Way. That's real Diamond Way, okay? Understand?

You are Manjushri, you didn't know it yet. The whole Diamond Way course is going to clean away the dirt on the mirror. And then you'll say, oh my God, it looks very similar to me. Okay, got it?

Okay, quick peepee break.

Class 4 - The Angel Debating the Devil

20 April 2025

[Fundraising]

The Angel Devil Debate on Dependence

Okay, good. I think we stopped at 332, am I right? Really? Yeah, that's okay. I don't mind to start there. Okay, then the lady says.. who was she talking to for $0?

The devil. Yeah, ignorance, misunderstanding. Misunderstanding. She's talking to Misunderstanding. She calls him arrogant. You think you're a master, you're not a master, you lack.. No, we did cover this. You lack good qualities and you don't have the things that bring you those good qualities, like meditation. All right, now we'll start on 332.

You say that nothing depends on anything else. You say that things are unchanging. You say they are firm and you say they are solid.

Did he say that? Does the bad part of your own mind, does it think nothing's going to change? Not directly.

Good answer, over there, some guy over there. Yeah, of course you understand things change. Like, I don't know, you get hungry after lunch and they make you sit in these long classes and you get more and more hungry. Your hungry changes, right? Nobody can say things don't change.

Ignorance doesn't say things don't change. He never said that. Why is she accusing him of that?

My teacher in the Geshe course, if one person give all the answers, he will say, did you elect him to answer all your questions for you? Yeah, they did. Okay. Anyway.

Listen, if things are not coming from your seeds, if things are not coming from your seeds, they would never change. In your mind, you think things are coming from the outside to the inside, a hundred bucks for the Tibetan word. Not you [, Word].

[Student: We elected Word to answer for us.]

I unelected him. In this country, you can win the most votes and you still don't get to be president.

[Student: Is it 12:47 dongzin?]

No, come on. The person who thinks everything is coming this way [at them].

[Student: Tibetan]

Yeah. [Tsor?] means incoming. Incoming from the object to the eye. Okay?

[Tong?] means that's how you see things.

So what's an Arya? Arya means somebody who's touched the diamond world directly, who saw emptiness directly.

Okay, and then so [tsortong?] is the opposite. [Tsortong?] means not arya. They think the world is coming this way [at them]. They don't understand the world is coming this way [from them]. Okay?

Which leads me to another question. How's my cash doing? It's all right? You ready? This is easy money. If your family says why you took a week off to go to Diamond Mountain, you can say, I made more money than at my job. Okay, here's the question. You ready?

How many times in the Diamond Cutter Sutra does it mention Diamond?

[Ven Gyelse: Zero.]

Okay. Hundred bucks. What I'm trying to say is that.. okay, since you're the ex-12-year director of this place, you can answer two more questions for the money. What's the Sanskrit for Diamond and what's the English related to it?

[Ven Gyelse: Sanskrit word is vajra.]

Yeah, vajra, which means power, instrument of power.

[Ven Gyelse: Veggies]

Yeah, vegetable. Okay, vegetable. Why?

In ancient times they agreed with my wife and they said vegetables make you powerful. Vegetables make you strong. They believed that in ancient times. I mean, not nowadays. So anyway.

Vajra. Anytime you see diamond, anytime you see somebody talking about diamond, you have to ask why is everybody talking about diamonds?

Okay, now you're in a Diamond Way class. Diamond Way person means suspicious person. 'Oh, Buddha's trying to send me a message'. Someone asks you, why they call it Diamond Cutter Sutra, and you say it's a message. Understand? That's Diamond Way answer.

Does the diamond in Diamond Cutter Sutra have anything to do with Diamond Way? If you're not in a Diamond Way class, you're supposed to say no, and if you are in a Diamond Way class, you're supposed to say, of course, it's some kind of message. Got it? Anyway, if someone can give me.. I've lost too much money, but let's just answer a question without money, okay?

She accuses the devil that he believes nothing ever changes, he believes that. She says you believe nothing ever changes. Why would she say that? Say it into the microphone, just for your teacher and not for financial gain.

[Word: May I answer?]

There's certain people have to pay the teacher a hundred dollars to give an answer. No. Okay. Now don't forget the question.

The question is - why does the angel accuse Misunderstanding, why does she tell him 'you think nothing changes'? Of course, he doesn't think that. You and me, we lived for many years without touching the diamond world, maybe. Do we believe nothing changes? Because we can see things changing every moment.

[Word: She's accusing the devil of falling into one of the extremes, the extreme view. If you think things are self-existent, coming from their own side, then the result of that belief must be that things don't change. So therefore, if he's saying things are the way they are, you have to believe on some level things aren't changing.]

Okay, good. If you believe things are coming this way [at you], and I ask you, do you believe they never change? You say, no, of course I know things change. But not really. If the thing exists from its own side, it could not change, it would never change. It could not change. If it's not coming from your seeds..

Why do things change? Your seeds change. When the seed makes the tree, what happens to the seed? It's gone. The seed gives its energy to the tree, and then the tree uses the energy to grow and then the tree dies.

If things come from your seeds, they can be impermanent, they can die, but if they don't come from your seeds, why should they change? Okay, if they're coming this way [at you], what can make them change?

So she's accusing him, 'You're the guy who thinks nothing changes'. And he's like, I never said that. Yeah, but you think it, you believe that. Got it? Cool.

All right. And then he accused her of not having any friends. He accused her of not having any friends. He accused her of being a lonely person. He accused her of never coming home.

Where's home? In the human mind. You never show up. Like once a year when you're at Diamond Mountain, in the middle of class, you think about emptiness. And then the rest of the time you're just worrying about how irritating somebody is. You see what I mean?

So he accused her of being a loner. She doesn't have any friends. She never even comes home to her husband. Like that.

Then what did she say? It's not me who doesn't have friends, it's you that don't have friends. Why? Because all the friends you think you have don't even exist.

Next time you get in a fight with your husband, you can try that. Probably he'll just get confused. If things are not coming from you, they can't exist.

Number one, they cannot change. And then number two, they couldn't exist anyway.

You know the two husbands in the kitchen, right? The husband who is hurting you, even though you didn't do anything, there's no such thing. 'I didn't do anything.' The wife says, my husband just start yelling at me, but I didn't do anything.

In this system, if the pen is coming from you, then the husband is coming from you. The husband saying something to you is coming from you. Okay? Then you're going to get upset.

If you understand where he's coming from, you can change it.

If you don't understand, he will lasts forever, and he doesn't exist. Okay?

He's a thing that lasts forever and doesn't exist. Pretty cool, right? All right.

He told her, you don't have any friends. And she says, 'I'm friends with everybody.

Don't say I don't have any friends, everyone in the world is my friend. I get along with everybody.'

Who's talking? Yeah, an Angel who understands seeds.

'Everybody in the world is my friend. I love everybody and they love me because I'm real, because I'm coming from seeds. I have real relationships that come from seeds.

When I get into a relationship, I take care of it by honoring other people's relationships. I don't yell at my husband, I just honor the relationship. I keep my promises and I force him to keep his'. Got it? Very interesting.

Therefore, I get along with everybody. It means if you understand that things come from seeds, you can be close to everything, because that's real. That's a real world.

That's the only real world. It's not that pens come from seeds, it's that everything comes from seeds. If you don't understand that you are living in an unreal place, you are living in a place that doesn't exist. Then you're kind of crazy, which means 8 billion people are crazy, apparently, or they're Buddhas. I mean, I didn't say they were, but I didn't say they weren't.

Good. Now, next one, she says.. she's on this idea of friendship and she's on this idea that people are naturally friends. 'Everyone's close to me because they depend on me'. They depend on me.

How does the world depend on me? Yeah, my seeds.

The world depends on me, don't tell me I don't have any friends. I have lots of friends. Everything depends on me because my mind is making everything.

Dependence and Interdependence

Now I think here's a hundred dollar question. Everybody's like [waking up].

Okay, here we go. He says, you're a loner, you're a loser, you don't have any friends.

You show up in the mind once a year when you go to Diamond Mountain for five minutes, and mostly you're just out there on your own. You don't have any friends. Okay? He accuses her.

Then she says, no, no, no, I'm friends with everybody. And he says, why? How?

And she says, everybody's friends with me because they come from me; the pen and everybody else comes from me, therefore, they like me. They're friends of mine. Okay, got it? Now, that's called dependence.

But there's a deeper idea. You want to go there? It's interdependence.

I'll make it simple. The pen depends on your seeds. You want it super simple or kind of simple? Kind of simple, okay. The pen depends on your seeds, therefore you're the friend of the pen because without you, the friend can't be there. Got it? But he's also your friend, the pen is also your friend. It's interdependence. It's not dependent origination, it's interdependent origination. Listen, I'll make it simple. A hundred bucks. The tree depends on the seed, and the seed depends on the tree, but how can that be? The tree came after the seed? A hundred dollars.

[Doudou: Your seed created the picture of the tree and the seed, and then your mental picture relates them as a cause and effect.]

Good. I'll refine it a little bit. The seed creates the tree, obviously, but the tree also creates the seed, because you cannot call?

[Doudou: You cannot call a seed the cause of the tree before the tree exists.]

Nice. A hundred dollars.

[Doudou: Thank you.]

Your seeds made the pen, but your pen made the seeds‘ seeds.

Your seeds made the pen, but the pen made the seeds‘ seeds.

That's real dependent origination. Mutual. Mutual. Both ways.

Everybody's going like this [hand going out from them] 'Oh, I made the pen. I made the pen'. But the pen made your seeds because they can't be seeds until they make something. Got it?

Diamond Mountain Diamond Way student says 'the pen is all seeds' [motioning hand both away from them and towards them]. And everybody else knows the secret.

Normal DCI student, everything comes from the seeds, everything comes from the seeds [motioning hand away from them].

Diamond Mountain Diamond Way master, Five House master, the pen come from me [motioning hand both away and towards them]. The pen come from my seeds [motioning hand both away and towards them]. Got it? New mudra.

The pens come from my seeds, and my seeds are seeds because of the pen. When you think about dependent origination, it's both ways. And that's deeper, and they don't usually teach it. People don't usually teach it, but it's true.

$500, even Word. What's the ancient example for that seed thing? Ella's got it.

[Ella: The rod, like triangle, the spears.]

Spears, $500, yeah.

Okay. In ancient language, they call it the spear example. A spear example.

So in the ancient war, they don't have guns, they have spears. And at the tip of the spear, later they put metal. They have a stick, and they have metal on the tip, and they throw the spear at people.

Even in a war, you've got to take a break for breakfast or lunch. Okay? So there's kind of an agreement during these terrible ancient battles, they all say, let's just take off for lunch. Let's take a lunch break. And they all run back to their camp and they start a fire and they start cooking something and they always.. no good fighter puts their spear on the ground because then the metal will get rusty and it will break.

So they always pile their spears like this [balanced upright against each other] and they support each other. It takes two guys to put the spears, they have to support their spears. What's the example?

Yeah, the pen depends on the seeds and the seeds depend on the pen. It's mutual. Mutual dependence. You've got to remember that. Your husband comes from you, but you also come from your husband. Because there's no you without your husband to come from you. Okay?

And by the way, when you have trouble with another person, you're messing around with this relationship, something's wrong. Obviously it's a problem if you think the other person doesn't come from you, but you also have to understand that you come from them. So if you're always accusing somebody, 'you're messed up', then what are you really saying? 'I'm messed up'. Okay. It goes both ways, okay? It's really true.

Because the tree defines the seed, if another person that you have a relationship with is messed up, that's a proof that you are messed up. And that's hard. That's a hard thing to.. if someone tells you all the assholes you ever met were coming from you, you're like [grumpy].

And then they say, 'because it's a reflection of you', and you're like [more grumpy], and then 'they define you' and then you're like, super [unhappy]. All right. Everybody says, 'I want to study Diamond Way. Geshehla, I don't want philosophy. If I wanted philosophy, I would've come to the 12-year Lam Rim. I just want Diamond Way'. I'm giving you just Diamond Way, okay. Understand?

Okay. So what she's arguing, what's happening here? You've got to get in the mood of the argument. The whole book is an argument.

The angel's arguing with the devil and he says, 'you're such a loser, you're always alone, you come home once a year, I see you once a year. You make me think for five minutes that the husband might be coming from me and then I forget it. You're never here. Why should I listen to you? You're so lonely, you're such a lonely person'.

And she's like, I'm not lonely. You are the lonely one. I'm friends with everybody who lives in this planet because they are the tree and I am the seed. They make me who I am'. Got it? It's very deep.

You pen guys, go back to DCI. You seed guys, the pen makes your seed seeds, okay? Thank the pen. 'Thank you, pen'. Pen's like, 'thank you. If it wasn't for you seeds, I wouldn't be here'. Then you have to say, but without you, I wouldn't have seeds because they wouldn't be seeds because they didn't make anything. Understand?

The real dependent origination is back and forth. It's both ways. Which means she is never alone and she knows it. Okay? If you understand dependence, you are deep friends with every other person on this planet. And every other planet, by the way, but I don't want to blow your head up.

I'll say it again. If you really understand the pen, then you are connected to every person on this planet, automatically. If you understand the pen, every person in the world is your friend. You depend on each other.

'Don't tell me I'm lonely. I only show up in the brain once a year, I agree, but all day I'm friends with everybody and you're not'. Okay, got it. He's not.

Who's he? Yeah. Ignorance or whatever. Misunderstanding.

The Angel Devil Debate on Borders

Okay. Then she goes on to a very sexy list. She's bragging now. 'You're the loser'.

Who? Ignorance.

'You are lonely. You're sitting there by yourself. I've got friends. I've got so many friends, you don't even know.

Then he is like, well who, tell me who.

Then she starts, here's a list of my friends, okay, here she goes.

[From the translation:

Here then is a list

Of all of my companions:

The rising of the sun & moon,

The fact of east, and that of west;

The existence of the division

Between the day & night;

The fact that we have

A summer and winter,

An autumn & a spring;

The fact that rain falls down,

And ripens all the fruits.

]

'The rising of the sun and the rising of the moon; the sun and the moon are my buddies. Is that cool?' Okay? Yeah. 'The directions are my buddies, east and west. They depend on me'. Okay, got it?

She's bragging about how many friends she's got. He accused her of being friendless because she's such a loser, and she's like, 'yeah, I'm a loser? I got friends in high places'. Where? 'The sun and the moon, and I got east and west. I got east and west, I got day and night. They're my friends. And summer, winter, autumn, spring, the four seasons, they're my friends. The fact that the rain falls down, the fact that flowers grow and fruits grow on the trees, they all come from me'.

She's bragging about how many friends she has. She's, 'I got everybody'.

Now, Stanley, a hundred dollars, then you could buy another statue, I mean part of another statue, a finger. He's not going to answer anyway, it's okay.

This is a discussion of borders, she's really talking about borders. She's saying, my friends are the border between night and day. My friends are the border between east and west. My friends are the border between winter and summer. In the ancient Sanskrit..

[Stanley [immediately]: Sima]

Oh, did I tell you that's $50?

What's the Tibetan for 'sima'? Tsam.

So there's two words you should learn. The Tibetan is TSAM, and the Sanskrit for TSAM is 'sima', long 'i', siima.

'sima' means a border, and it goes into English as the seam, this stitching here. This seam, where they sew the cloths together, that's called in English as 'seam'. It comes from ancient Sanskrit which is 'sim'a'. [Sieu?] comes from that, sutra comes from that. [Stream?] Okay, sima.

So what does 'sima' mean? Sima came to mean the border. Sima came to mean the border, and it's very, very important for a retreat center. It's a big, big important thing for a retreat center. And every time we do a retreat, a silent retreat, serious retreat, we draw a border, we make a border, we make two borders. David knows the two.

Say, 'Geshehla, how much money?' Two borders, at least.

[David: inaudible]

Yeah. One is somebody runs up that mountain and puts a stick, it's called [tsamto?]. Or you can put a piece of paper on your door, or you should do both. That's kind of an inner circle. There are more circles, we're not going to talk about them, but this is sima.

Sima, it's a long i, it means the border. And I was telling the people in Dunhunag, when I did three-year retreat, Elly remembers, I was in the car, I was finishing the Diamond Cutter business book in the car, the last page. And we get to the gate of the three-year retreat. I say, stop. Then I gave her the manuscript to give to the publisher, and we park the car, walk through, and I turn around. And it's a cow gate, it's a wooden cow gate. And I take the cow gate and I close it and I say, I won't leave this gate for three years.

It's a weird feeling, right? You guys who did three years, you know the feeling, you're like, 'three years?' You've got this doubt - you should let go or not. Then I let go and I say, okay, I will not go out of this gate for three years. And we didn't. And weird things happened.

I told a funny story in Dunhuang - I broke one tooth really bad and one of the other retreatants..I'm like, I've got to go to town, I got to get a dentist. And they said, Geshehla, you never heard of super glue? And I'm like, what? And they're like, we'll just super glue it. And I'm like, but the tooth is gone, I don't know where it is, they're half there. They said, no, no, we'll fill it in with super glue. And I'm like, okay, let's try. So I didn't break the sima. I didn't go across the sima for three years, three months, three days. Okay?

So there's this idea in the angel and the devil talk, right here, of sima.

But here the sima is, what's the line between sun and moon? What's the line between pen and seeds? What's the line between east and west?

We used to have a project in Mexico across the border in Douglas. We tried to type Tibetan there. All the computers got stolen. We did, we really did. And I said, I got to go down, I'm going to do something. I was going over across the border to talk to the workers and I said, wait a minute. I told the policeman, can I just do one thing? And he's like, what? They don't trust you for anything.

And I'm like, just for fun, I want to put one foot in the United States and one foot in Mexico, and I want to see how it feels. I'm like [straddling the line]. Then I'm standing there, and I'm looking down the border, and I said, you know what, it feels just the same. I don't feel anything. I don't feel any border, I don't see any border, it's just dirt.

It's desert, actually. It's just dirt. I don't see. But it's a karmic line, right?

People on this side, many people are hungry. And then six feet away, two meters away, the people have too much food. They're all dying of overweight. Really.

So these people are hungry, these people are dying of overweight.

Who made the border? Is it like some politician make a border?

Your seeds make the border. Your seeds make the border.

So what she's saying is, 'borders are my friend'. Border between you and other people, the border between your eye and the pen, the border between me and you, this all coming from seeds.

The borders are coming from seeds. The sima are coming from seeds. Got it?

She's not just saying, oh, you know, sun and moon come from me, east and west come from me, day and night come from me, winter / summer come from me. She's not saying that. She says, you make the lines. You make the lines.

By the way, if everybody understood that, there would be..a very strange language would develop. Me / David went to Dunhuang so that David / me could have a conference so that David / me could translate for the Chinese / English, English / Chinese. Like that.

You'd have to change all human languages. All human languages are based on misperception. The word 'you' and the word 'me' is a mistake.

It's not that if you're a nice person, you should think of me as you. That's not true. That's wrong. There shouldn't be any you, and there shouldn't be any me.

We should have lunch, or we shouldn't have lunch, no matter where is the border. Got it? I am you and you are me.

Therefore, if you understand that, can the partner in your head say, 'you don't have any friends?' Then you're like, 'you don't understand, man. I'm the only one who's a friend to everybody'. Got it?

The angel says, 'you're the loser. You're the lonely one. You're the one with no friends. You don't realize you can't exist without other people. You are other people'. Okay, got it? It's very powerful. It's very powerful. That's why it took us like 10 years to get this far. We did like one verse.

Okay. Now Wisdom says, Understanding-Seeds, Understanding-The-Pen says, I got real friends, and you don't even know what friends are. I got such good friends, they're me. Don't say I don't have any friends. It is true I don't have friends, I am my friends and they are me. And that's how close we are.

And then if you understand that, your life is awesome, every day is really fun. Recognizing that you are other people is fun all day long that never stops. You can be goofy all day. Okay? Really. And that's fun. I mean, even if all this stuff is philosophy, I don't care. If you want to have fun all day, every day, that's fun. That's real fun.

You just have fun on a birthday or something. That's just once a year.

What's a deep Geshehla wisdom? Yeah. Somebody asked me how many students you want? I said 365 with different birthdays. My wife says, don't eat dessert. I said, somebody had a birthday, I got to eat.

Okay, so the borders come from you. All the borders come from you. Maybe they're not so useful. And they relate directly to retreat because the word for retreat in the ancient language, Sima in Sanskrit, or tsam in Tibetan, is border. And it means to stay inside the border.

That's a different kind of border. That means sometimes you can think clearer if you're not around a hundred people. If you have a family, if you work, you have a normal life, that's good. Other people are sweet. To be with other people is sweet. But sometimes to be alone in your retreat cabin is really cool. And then when you get out..

You know what..I had this thing in retreat. I remember looking out the window. I distinctly remember looking at the window and saying, this is not fun to sit here for a thousand days. I didn't have a toilet. I didn't have running water, I didn't have electricity. I was in a desert. And I was like, this is not fun. And I'm thinking why?

There's nobody else to help. And I can't have that fun of helping somebody. And I felt lonely. I was like, this is cool, I mean, retreat is cool, but I don't get a chance to make dinner for anybody. I don't get a chance to say hi to anybody. I don't get a chance to talk to anybody. I don't get a chance to serve people. So I think one reason to go into retreat.. and you guys are going to do a deep retreat for four days.

You will start to miss other people. The first day is cool, 'ah, I finally got rid of that guy who talks all day'. Then like the third day you're like, I kind of miss him. And you'll feel a little bit lonely. And during those times, that's the time to think about being a bodhisattva.

And when you're in deep retreat for a long time by yourself, you will understand how much you need other people and how much fun and how sweet it is to have other people to serve. And it doesn't matter whether they're nice people or bad people. Serving bad people is more fun than serving nice people. It's an art form, advanced art.

All right. Then she goes dark.Then she goes dark, okay? And it's a little dark.

She suddenly flips, she suddenly goes somewhere else. I'm still on verse 337.

She says there's a border between spring, summer, winter, fall. Okay, that's okay.

And then she says there's a border called alive and dead. And then she starts to get dark. And you're like, what?

She's like, there's another border and it's called life and death. And then she said, there's other divisions. You can be sick or you can be in active agony. You can be suffering at Diamond Mountain in the same week from excessive heat and excessive cold. As far as toilet seats, I'll go for the heat. I mean not..okay.

Hunger on one hand, thirst on the other hand, and everything else.

So she suddenly transitions to other borders, between pain, between aging, death. She's going to the four arya truths, she's going to the truth of suffering. She's saying, I also created the lines between the four truths. I created the line between pain and the cause of pain. I created the line between nirvana and the path. I created those lines. I created the Lam Rim, I created those lines.

Okay, you did. Between life and death. So if you understand those lines are coming from you, you can change them. If you don't understand they're coming from you, you cannot change them. Okay, cool. If you understand where the 'sima', borders, come from, you can change the border between life and death. Okay? It's tantric class, I get to say what I want.

Me and Seiji, we're working on a special project about helping people do the second half of their life. What are you going to do during the second half of your life? Like his kind of thing, we're developing an idea.

And then I was teaching something like that for the DSEU and somebody said to me, oh, so you're teaching a second half of life? And I said, no, I'm teaching the first half of what comes next. And they're like, huh? And I said, I'm not interested in teaching you how to get old and get your kidney disease and then die. I'm not. To me that's not very interesting. I'm teaching you the next two halves of your life, which is what happens after that. How do you transition? It's not like how do you grow old gracefully? Don't forget to, I don't know, do your stretches or else you won't be able to walk or something like that. That's just the first half.

The second half is what happens after that. If you start a new project when you're 40, that's the first half of your new life. And then we have to master the art of the second half, which is after your death. Okay? So don't think of life as first half and second half of my life. Don't think like that. The second half of your life is the first half.

Okay, then what happens? You die and then you have another half. And if you study well, if you learn to do retreat well, if you study Diamond Way well, it's amazing fun. It's awesome. It's super cool.

Do you know what color the sky is going to be in my next life? Peach color. It's the only one better than blue. Okay?

Imagine you could be planning your next childhood, your next teenage years. Like that. Imagine you could be planning them now. That's what we're talking about. And you can say either Geshehla's crazy or he knows something. And I don't, to me it doesn't care if you think I'm crazy, I don't mind. If you want to give away the hundred dollars, I'm okay. Maybe I'm crazy or maybe I know something. I mean it's possible. We have to say what? Either he knows something or.. maybe he does, maybe he doesn't. All right, cool. Anyway, I'm looking forward,II'll see you in the next world, don't be late.

Class 5 - The Song of My Spiritual Life

22 April 2025

Okay, I'm going to start with Arya Nagarjuna's image.

So at this point in the Song of My Spiritual life, Je Tsongkapa starts bowing down to the great teachers of the lineage, and he bows down to Arya Nagarjuna. And if the Buddha could see us, that's the..what's the name of that meditation?

Come on, Kelly knows because she got that Cheshire cat smile. The international bathroom meditation, right? If the Buddha can see us now and is watching us in class and then Arya Nagarjuna also..

There are two great streams of wisdom that come to us. Two great streams of wisdom that you need to practice Diamond Way. And I guess that's the most important idea this time, is that there's two streams of Lam Rim / staircase people, coming to us. And is Arya Nagarjuna and he's the great master of emptiness. He wrote a book called Wisdom. He likes to write poetry, he likes to make it very short, but still it's very clear, but it has like a thousand meanings. It's extremely difficult to translate. Tsongkapa wrote about 4,000 pages to explain a few verses and we're working through those explanations. We finished about two-and-a-half thousand pages, so that's the main thing I'm working on. And I waited 50 years to do it because I wanted to be ready.

So we'll be going through that, we'll be teaching that. I think we're going to teach some of that at DSEU. And those are great seed planters in your mind, to study those books.

The Good Night Book Club

I wanted to talk at this point about the Good Night Book Club. So in the last, I don't know, in the last two or three years, I don't know how it started. Oh, a friend of mine, Will Duncan, who was one of the first students here, he has a small retreat center. He has a farm. He has a farm that makes the same amount of money as my cafe and I'm not sure who's ahead. He makes lavender, he plants big farm for lavender about two hours from Rim Rock. And so anyway, I heard that on the weekend he does special small retreats like for three people, four people. And then I heard this a long time ago, he takes away their cell phone, he takes away their computer, and then just to be safe, he turns off the internet in the house. And you can't get online even you want to get online. So I thought it was a little bit too extreme. I thought I can't do that. I thought it was sweet and Will is sweet. He's like that. I thought that's sweet and that's nice. Not something I could ever do.

And then I tried it. My doctor said, you should try sleeping more hours. Our parents always told us, I dunno about you, my school teachers, when I was 12 years old, when I was eight years old, they used to say, you should sleep for eight hours every night. So I grew up, I don't know in your country, do they tell people that in Singapore? I dunno. It's the same useless advice. They say you should sleep for eight hours, then when you get to high school, you're like, that's impossible. And then we were talking about it in Dunhuang. In my experience in New York corporate life, if you're serious, if you really want to climb the corporate ladder, and I did, I spent 19 years at the top of the corporate ladder, you have to show you're serious. Okay, you two Singaporeans? You have to overwork, you have to not sleep. Otherwise, no one takes you seriously. And then when you get there in the morning, you have to brag about it. Somebody will say, I only slept six hours. You say, ha I only slept five hours. And then somebody else says, I didn't sleep at all. And you're like [whoa]. Then you think they're serious, you think they're really serious.

I remember in Tokyo, I was in Tokyo, and I hate to say it, but me and all my friends went to a nightclub, not to drink, just to dance. And we danced all night and then they stopped the music. We said, what's going on? And the dawn was coming up. And so we went outside and we saw this zombie, this businessman, with his briefcase and a suit, and he's like [walking like a zombie]. And they're getting on the subway. I'm like, what's going on, they're supposed to get off the subway. 'No, no, no, they're going home. The sun came up. They can go home now'. So it means you're a tough guy or you're a serious worker.

So anyway, I decided I would try to sleep. I don't know why, but I decided to try to sleep eight hours. Oh, it was because of Covid. So I never had a television. I never watched movies, never ever in my whole life. Since I went to university, since I was 16, I never had a television and I never looked at movies online and stuff like that.

Then during Covid, I couldn't travel and I got bored and I started watching. First I watched, what do you call, football games. Then I start to watch movies, then I sign up for Amazon, Netflix, then Disney, and then I start watching war movies. Then I start watching dirty movies and then 2:00 in the morning I'm waking up to watch another movie.

And then I was like, this is not good for the teacher. I shouldn't be doing this. And I tried to stop. It was difficult. It was really difficult to stop and I was really addicted.

What was the final problem? Korean soap operas. They're really cool. The Emperor's Affection. Did you see that? Come on. She and her brother are the crown prince and crown princess in Korea, in ancient times. He gets killed as a child. Then the auntie raises up the girl as the prince. Tells everybody the prince didn't die. Then up until she's like 30, she has to pretend to be the prince, which gets into some interesting things with her boyfriend. Anyway, you're not going to watch it.

So I just couldn't control myself. And then me and Lindsay, other people, we made the Good Night Book Club, and this is how it works.

You agree to.. and I'm not trying to sell anything. Okay, if you want, I'll give it to you. I gave away about a couple hundred already, I lost a lot of money. This is a carry bag that Rosa designed, it's part of the luxury business. She produces it in China. Inside there's a valise, we call valise, a small zipper for your computer and your phone. And then at night, I have a rule at 10:00, I put the computer in here, I zip it, and I put my phone with it. And if I'm traveling, I put the hotel TV controller in it.

And if my wife's with me, I put it next to her, on the floor near her side of the bed. It's very hard to get it away from her even when she's asleep. She goes [wakes up to see what Geshehla is doing]. I tried, you're laughing. I did it a few times successfully, but then she caught me. And then I just realized I can't control myself.

So Rosa designed a lock. There's a time lock, there's a time lock on the zipper, and it's awesome. You can't get it open. I mean, I actually took a knife and I was like, okay, I'm going to cut it open. Then I'm like, what are you doing? You're supposed to be the teacher. So anyway, you set it for 10:00 PM and then you set it for 6:00 AM.

I never got up early, John Brady gets up early, I can't do it. He gets up at four or something, meditates. And everyone says to me, 'oh Geshe Michael, you probably get up at three. If John gets up at four, you probably get up at three'. And I don't want to tell them I get up at 8:30 or something. But I tried. I got up at six and it worked because I didn't have my computer, I didn't have my phone. It's actually nothing else to do except sleep. So 10:00 I go to bed. Then I started reading.. in the monastery, in the Geshe course, when I have trouble sleeping, I will read Madhyamaka, Middle Way School, and then I'll fall asleep within 10 minutes or I'll fall asleep on the book.

And so my whole life I've realized, if you go to sleep with a scripture in your mind, strange things happen. And I think DCI, we're going to teach, there's called advanced level five. It will come out in Xiamen. In Xiamen. We'll do the first release in Xiamen in June, and it will include lucid dreaming. Lucid dreaming means, in my case, I designed programs in my sleep. AL 5, that program was designed in my sleep.

And then people tell me, that's weird Geshehla, I'm tired enough when I go to bed, I don't need to be working during my sleep. But you can work during your sleep and when you wake up, you feel super fresh. You feel totally relaxed and it's like super sleep. You get work done and you super sleep. It's called Lucid Dreaming and it's part of the Diamond Way, actually. [nilam kyi nganjor?] Swapna yoga. So anyway, we'll teach it in Xiamen, we'll release it in Xiamen.

So the idea is you get a paper book. At 10:00, you lock up your phone, you lock up your computer. By the way, don't try to put it in a drawer, you won't be able to do it. I'm telling you. And I'm not an addicted type of personality, I never was addicted to movies or stuff, but it's not enough to put it in a drawer, I can tell you that. At 2:00 AM you're trying not to make noise because your wife's over there. Then there's this blue glow on your face and she comes out and she sees a ghost or something.

So anyway, I found out for myself, and I'm not an addicted type of person, I don't drink alcohol, I never smoked, but I can't stop myself, I will use the phone.

I remember the night I tried to start this new system and I woke up like 11:00 and I said, oh my God, I got to, where's my phone? And I couldn't find my phone.. by the way, you have to buy a cheap alarm clock, battery alarm clock. I have one I carry with me, so that's how I wake up. Then I wake up and I'm looking for my phone and I'm having a panic attack. And then I am like, what did you need to check? And I was like, I was going to check, I had something important - does your fingernails grow faster or your toenails grow faster? And I was going to look it up online. And then I'm like, maybe you don't have to know that at 12:00 [midnight]. If you want to, maybe you could wait until tomorrow to check about that.

But then I realized how addicted I am to stupid information, useless information. It doesn't help anybody. They're still going to grow the same speed and it doesn't matter if I look it up. So anyway, if you just put it in a drawer, you won't be able to control yourself. You'll be opening the drawer and checking the toenail thing. And so I lock it up, especially when I travel.

When I travel, Rob, we have an agreement. He takes it at 10:00. He comes to my hotel room, he takes it at 10:00 and then he brings it back at 6:00. I haven't snuck into his room yet. I mean it's an option, but you'll probably wake up. But we'll talk more about it.

I've been teaching it everywhere I go because what happened to me was my productivity tripled. I can do three times more work and I send it out every morning so people know. People know it's real. And I'm translating Nagarjuna now, it's a 4,000 page project. And because I get good sleep, my work is unbelievable. The work is unbelievable. Much, much, more productive. So you feel like if I go to bed early and I wake up early, if I sleep so long, eight hours, I can't get any work done. Like I'm going to lose a lot of work. But it doesn't work like that done.

If you sleep eight hours a night, which I've never done in my whole life, except for the last two years since I'm doing this. You sleep eight hours, you wake up, and then you work.. the work is high quality, very high quality and very fast.

And so I really encourage you to try it.

Why I am talking about that, because of Arya Nagarjuna. To me, that's the best one to read. See 10:00, you get a paper book and you just read for five minutes, ten minutes. Okay? Read something deep, read something complex, read something you don't understand, and then it puts seeds in your mind. And so I always read Nagarjuna at 10:00.

At 10:00 I get my Nagarjuna books, I get my mixed nuts translations because you can't understand anything. And then I read a couple pages and it puts me into a deep sleep, sometimes the book even falls down. But something happens to your mind.

The seeds are planted in your mind. The great books of the Diamond Way, especially the two flows, the two rivers into the Diamond Way, which, one is emptiness, one is bodhisattva activity. They are not something you read and you put it away.

I read a lot of science fiction for fun and I read it once and then I put it away. And my wife, she always, for my birthday, she goes to the bookstore and she says, what's a good science fiction book? And they give her a science fiction book and then she gives it to me. She wraps it up, I open it up, then I look at it, I say, yeah, I read that, I read that when I was 12.

My mom made a mistake. She said, I'll sign you up for the science fiction book club, you can have as many books as you want. And I finish one every two days or something and the whole garage was full of science fiction books.

And what I mean is modern books, they're not worth reading again. You see what I mean? You read them once, the same guy got killed, the same person, you know. Then these ancient books, you can't understand them, they are not entertaining. They're not like a TV show and they're hard and you're like, this is not the way I want to go to sleep. I want to go to sleep.. I want the hero to kiss the girl and then I'll fall asleep. But if you read a little bit of ancient book, start at 10:00. So 10:00 you put your computer away and then you get your ancient book.

Now everybody has one, you can't tell me you don't have one. I know you got Gibson's book. Then read it for a few minutes and you'll get tired and you sleep.

Sleep for eight hours. And what happens during the eight hours is those great ideas cook in your mind. Those books you can read a hundred times and you won't understand. You won't go to the bottom. It takes several hundred times to read it. So as you fall asleep.. you don't even have to do it in order, just open it. According to Diamond Way, it's a message.

It's a message and it's fun. You're like, what's the message today? And you go like this [open the book to a random page] and it says, 'copyright Geshe Michael'.

No, I'm kidding. But you see if there's some message, see if there's some message for you. And it's a wonderful practice.

The 2 Streams of Diamond Way: Wisdom & Bodhichitta

And so what I mean is your relationship to Nagarjuna, it's not a normal relationship. You don't read his book, put it away, get a degree and you're done with it. It's something you have to keep reading your whole life and it will affect you after you die. It's a book that will affect you after you die.

So anyway, there's two streams of books like that. One is Nagarjuna. And by the way, he saved, he had a book saving project. I think John Brady might be Nagarjuna's reincarnation. Xuanzang around 645, something like that, he walked to India for 17 years. He visited Nagarjuna's database. Nagarjuna had a special library, he collected all the books. And Xuanzang went there and saw it, just like John Brady.

Nagarjuna saved a lot of books. Nagarjuna talked the dragons out of a lot of books. That's why they show him.. those are supposed to be dragons over his head. That's why his name is Nagarjuna. Naga-Arjuna, the Lord of the Dragons.

There's another dragon, but I'm not supposed to talk about it yet, right? [students request to talk about it] There's a group of people who..

There's an old story that Tsongkapa was teaching Diamond Way. He was at Ganden. He was at one of the great early monasteries that he founded. And then he was teaching Diamond Way and people were listening through the windows and stuff. And then he told his students, that's not really correct; people who don't have the Lam Rim, they shouldn't be listening to the Diamond Way teachings.

And then they said, well, what are you going to do? And he said, the best thing is if we had kind of a separate place to do those teachings and we could close the doors and stuff like that. Then all of the students are like, oh God, he has another project. You think I'm bad..

Then he said, who's going to build a tantric monastery and teaching hall?

And then all the old students are like, oh my God, we already went through this. And they just kind of look away. And then there was a quiet student and he's like, none of these great students is answering the teacher, I better promise. And he did it. He did it. He built Gyume Tantric College. My teacher went there. My teacher was the assistant abbot of Gyume.

So anyway, somebody was offering to create a similar place near my house in case I can't travel much. So there's a large property near my house and it has a river going through it, and it's quite beautiful. And it's a secret valley. And so somebody has an idea to.. there's a building there, which might be nice. So if I need it later, they're making that. So I don't know, Xiaoping / Stanley, they put an offer on the land yesterday. No, it was accepted. Sorry, they put it two days ago, it was accepted yesterday. And the river, which is very rare in Arizona..

By the way, that's why this land is here, because there's a river, there's a spring, Bear springs. If you find water in Arizona, you buy it. And there's very, very few. And that's why there was a lot of fighting here, about the water here.

So anyway, the water there in Rim Rock, it's a hidden valley and it goes in a strange, it flows in a strange shape, and it's called Dragon Head. The valley is called Dragon Head, secret valley called Dragonhead. And you can go in and out of Rim Rock and you won't see it. So anyway, I don't know why I'm talking about that. Nagarjuna is connected with [long?], with Dragon. Okay, there's something about dragons.

All right, the second stream comes down through Arya Asanga. Okay, next picture.

I like this, I think it's an old Chinese statue. I don't dunno. Yeah, Stanley? Yeah. And you know him from whose class yesterday? Yeah, Tim's class.

Tim's class was Arya Asanga's class. And generally we say that the great teachings on bodhichitta come down through him. So when you study Lam Rim, you're getting these two great streams are coming into your heart.

And what's the most bodhichitta thing he's famous for? A hundred dollars. Rob, wake them up. See how money circulates here? People give me red envelopes, I give it away. My wife says, do we have any money for the cafe? I'm like, no,

[Doudou: Oh, it's me again, nice. So Master Asanga went to a retreat for 12 years and he wanted to meet Lord Maitreya, but he was annoyed at least three times. He left three times and he went back. The last time he went out, he saw a female dog and the lower body was being eaten by maggots. And so he had this moment of great compassion and he carried the dog into his cave. I think he traded his staff for a golden razor. And he cut off a piece of his flesh and he decided to move the maggots to the flesh so that both the maggots and the dog would live. But I think when he saw that if he uses his fingers, the maggots would die, so he decided to use his tongue. He closed his eyes and he was reaching for the maggots, but he opened his eyes, there's no maggots, there's no dog, there's Lord Maitreya. That's why he saw Maitreya.]

Yay. Good story. It's almost a $200 answer, but nah. All right. But it's a great answer. Okay. Yeah.

So anyway, when you think about it in Diamond Way, he's famous. He's just as busy as we are, and he has lots of important things to do, and he stops to help a dog that got hurt on the road. And I used to do that when I was younger. Every time I saw an animal got hurt on the road, I'll stop and try to take care of it. And usually you don't get where you're going. And I think when you get older, you decide it's not worth the time, but it is worth; he decided it's worth the time.

Okay, next picture you guys.

This is Lord Atisha. He lived about almost a thousand years after Arya Nagarjuna and Arya Asanga, and he helped bring the teachings to the Himalayas, to Tibet, and he brought both streams.

He designed a flow of both streams of Nagarjuna and Asanga. So designed the Lam Rim, or he helped start the Lam Rim tradition. And as I mentioned at the stupa the other day, he studied in Malaysia and he studied in Indonesia. And at that time, those two countries were the..

Buddhism was stronger in Malaysia and Indonesia than it was in India, and than it was in China. So great Chinese monks, great Indian monks, used to go to Malaysia or Indonesia to study. And Sugeng and Xintian have a lot of programs at those places where the great..what's it called? Jambi. They have a lot of programs at that actual place. So I think it's cool to study there where Atisha studied.

So Atisha went, especially the bodhisattva teachings, he got them from Malaysia, from Indonesia. He went on a ship, very, very dangerous at that time in the south China Sea with lots of hurricanes in a small wooden boat. So he was very, very brave. When I think about Atisha, I think about traveling to learn the dharma.

When I was in university, I studied overseas, I got a grant to study overseas. And then my plan was to come back to Del Mar and surf for the rest of my life. No, I had a place chosen and I had a surfboard, it was called Blue Fire or something. And I had a good surfboard that I used in Hawaii for a long time. And so I was all set up. I had an apartment chosen, I had a beach chosen. And then I got interested in Lam Rim, hmm.

And then I asked, who's the greatest teacher in the world? I asked all these high teachers, high, high teachers, and they said, his name is Khen Rinpoche.

And I'm like, where does he live? And they're like, you're so lucky, he's in America.

And I'm like, wow. And I said, where? And they said, New Jersey.

And I'm like.. so if you know about New Jersey, this is south of New York, and this is where they make all the gasoline in the United States. The ships come in from Arab countries, et cetera. They deliver the raw oil to New Jersey, and then they cook it and they make gasoline for the whole United States. And then people waste it. Americans won't walk across the street to the store, they will get in their car and they'll drive across the street to go to the store. And so that part of the United States, it smells so bad from the cooking the gasoline, there's two names. One is Cancer Alley. And I used to travel through there every day for 19 years. And the other name is Armpit of the Country because it smells so bad. So we call New Jersey the Armpit of America.

And then they said, New Jersey. And I'm like, I don't think I could go there. I don't think I could..

When I was a kid in Phoenix and people drive from New Jersey, black car.. nobody drives a black car in Arizona except people from New Jersey. And then they're like these white, white faces and they're looking out, staring out the.. they're afraid to get out of their car. And we used to throw fruits at them. We used to throw things at them because we didn't like them.

And then they're like, you have to go to New Jersey. I'm like, no, no, no, no, no. And then I thought, I'll just go for a little while and then I'll go surf, then I'll continue my surfing career.

So I went and I got stuck for 25 years. And when I think about my life, that was the smartest thing I ever did. I went to stay with the teacher and I went where the teaching was. You know what I mean? Even though it was the armpit. And I'm very happy, I'm so happy I did that.

So what I'm saying is these examples of people like Xianzang or Atisha, they risk their life to travel. You just get on a plane for two, three hours; they risk their life, they walked for 17 years to get the teaching. So I think if you're serious about Diamond Way, you have to be flexible about where you live and what's your occupation and things like that. If you're going to be serious..

I don't think it's good to be unemployed, I think that's not good.

My experience, many years of teaching Diamond Way, my experience is if you don't have some work, which is honest work and you can make enough money to support yourself, if you're asking other people for money all the time and you can't pay your rent and you're trying to..

We always say if a person shows up, if an American shows up, sorry, who is studying Diamond Way, watch your couch and watch your refrigerator. And that's not good. It shouldn't be like that.

A Diamond Way person should have a good job, they should enjoy their work.

It's not wrong to be a vice president of the largest jewelry company in the world and be Diamond Way person. That's okay. If you can't handle those two together, you're not practicing Diamond Way. Okay? It is Diamond Way.

Diamond Way means you can sit in a corporate office and be practicing all day long. It doesn't mean you give up your job and go sit at Diamond Mountain. But you should be willing and able to travel to where you need to to study Diamond Way with the money that you made in your good job. Okay? Got it?

And you support your family and you don't keep asking other people for money or help. You should stand on your own. Your religious practice shouldn't bother other people, that's kind of contradiction.

'Oh, I'm Diamond Way, I don't have to work, can you loan me 200 bucks?'

And they're like, if you're Diamond Way, why don't you go make some money?

So you should have a good job. And I think having a good job is a good place to practice Diamond Way, I think so.

Running a company or something like that, it's a wonderful place to practice Diamond Way. There were people in my company who didn't know I was a monk for 15 years. They didn't know I was a Buddhist. I just quietly do my thing. I just do my work. Nobody knew.

Finally they found out. And I had a lot of Chinese employees because we had a refugee program for Chinese from Cambodia, and we hired a lot of refugees, Vietnam. And so finally all these Asian people found out I was a Buddhist.And I'm like [groaning].

And then they said, can we meet your teacher? And I'm like, no. And they said, why? And I said, because he doesn't like me and he will tell you bad things about me. And they insist, insist.

He always criticized me all the time. He called me all kinds of bad names - [bhangu?] or [pungu?]. [Bhangu?] means horsefly, and then [pungu?] means jackass. And if he's in a good mood, he'd call me [bhangu?]. If he's in a bad mood, he'd call me [pungu?].

I said, you don't want to meet my teacher, he'll just tell you I'm a [bhangu?] or a [pungu?]. And they're like, come on, please let us meet your teacher.

So finally they came down, like 10 Chinese people and Vietnamese. And I said, okay, go ahead. And he came down and I used to translate for him. I used to translate his English into English, so I would always sit with him when he was meeting people.

And we went up and then he said, Mike, you can leave, [Pungu?], you can leave.

And I'm like, no, I've got to translate for you. And he's like, no, you can leave. And then I left.

And then they spent a long time, like an hour, and then they all came down and they're like, oh, Geshe Michael, you are so great, so holy. And I'm like, what did he say? And then, I dunno.

The point of it is, for Diamond Way, you don't have a place. Your place is where your teacher is. If it's possible. So I stayed in New Jersey for 25 years. Finally I escaped to Arizona.

What I'm saying is, the most important thing is to learn and to go where you can learn. And I'm preaching to the choir. That's a new idiom, Stanley. In the church, the people who come every Sunday, the only people who come every Sunday is the singers, the choir. Then every Sunday the priest has to give a talk. Then the only people in the whole town who learn all of the priest’s talk is the choir because they have to be there to do the music. So we call it 'preaching to the choir'. It means you guys traveled here to learn Diamond Way so you don't need to hear this talk, you're already here, right? So anyway, I'm just preaching to the choir.

All right. By the way, Seiji Arao, the VP of DCI and SCIM, he translated a book based on Lord Aisha's teachings and it is amazing. It is incredible. Is it out yet? Not yet, we're just about to put it out. But it's a lojong book, it's based on a lojong.

It's called the Crown of Knives or something like that. And it's a very, very powerful book. In there there's a history of where those teachings come from. And it took us many years, it took us about eight years to finish the book. And we wrote a very beautiful history of the Lam Rim. If you're in Staircase house, you should get that book. And we put together a nice history of the Lam Rim and the lojong teachings.

And we used John Brady's work from Mongolia. So he has a team in Mongolia for 17 years and they are saving the books there. There's 300,000, I would estimate, 300,000 books there, different books. And he's been working on that. So we used his work. So we should give John a hand. By the way, John, Connie, Elly, other people, they are continuing the retreat here and they're teaching Diamond Way, the whole 18 courses. And if you have any time or any chance, you should learn from them also. It's very, very cool. And they're doing a good job all over the world. They're teaching people all over the world.

Okay, next picture.

Our Diamond Way Lineage

If we're talking about the lineage, which is very important, who passed on these teachings. I received a Lam Rim together with Diamond Way so I got them from the same teacher. That's the teacher on the right side, Khen Rinpoche, Geshe Lobsang Tharchin. I lived with him for 25 years. He taught Lam Rim every day for 25 years. And then he taught Diamond Way for over 20 years. And we had to memorize the book. [Tibetan] We had to memorize it, not like you guys. It's like an hour-and-a-half.

And as I mentioned, he was a very high Geshe. He was in a debate with 15,000 monks and he was number one. He beat the other 15,000 monks. Then the government of Tibet gave him..

You know what's the highest prize in Tibet? It's one brick of Chinese tea and a sheep stomach full of butter. Because they don't have plastic and it's the only way to carry food. It's the only way to keep food from spoiling. So they take the stomach out of a sheep and they store the butter in the stomach. It's kind of gross. But that's the award if you beat 15,000 monks, you get tea and butter.

So anyway, he's an extraordinary scholar. He finished his Geshe..

In the Geshe tradition, you cannot study Diamond Way until you finish Geshe. Only a Geshe can go to the Diamond Way College. So only a Geshe can study Diamond Way. You can get an initiation from your teacher and you can learn basic Diamond Way from your teacher, but if you don't finish a Geshe course, you can't go to the secret monasteries.

So he finished number one. I'm a Lingse Geshe. Lingse Geshe means kind of local Geshe, in my monastery. So I studied 25 years, I got Lingse Geshe. But Lharampa, he's Lharmapa. Lharampa means after you finish Lingse, you study for like another 12 years, over 30 years. And you debate all the monks in all the monasteries. And then you get a super Geshe degree. So he got that degree and then he went to Tantra college and he studied there. And he studied it very, very well and then he taught it to us. He taught to, I don't know how many, Jigme, 30 people? I dunno, maybe 30. Who he taught Vajrayogini, I dunno, maybe 30 people, but for like 20 years.

He was taught by Trijang Rinpoche. You should know your lineage, okay? You should know. Now you're part of.. I know you're all separate houses, but you're all part of Diamond House, in a way. You graduate from the four houses to the Diamond House, or you live in both two houses. So anyway, he was taught Diamond Way by Trijang Rinpoche, who's in the middle [of the image above]. He was the teacher of the current Dalai Lama.

In Tibet, when the Dalai Lama is a kid, they choose the two greatest Geshes in the country. They're called senior tutor and junior tutor. So he was the tutor for the Dalai Lama. He raised him philosophically. He taught him philosophically for many, many years, 20, 25 years. And he was my teacher's teacher. So you're of the same..

That's your great-grandfather. Khen Rinpoche is your grandfather. I'm always your yeye [grandfather].

Then Trijang Rinpoche is his teacher.

Then you should know who Trijang Ripoche's teacher is, he's called Pabongka Rinpoche and he's on the left side. And he wrote the Liberation in the Palm of Your Hands, which is the greatest Lam Rim of all the Lam Rims.

There's many Lam Rims, he wrote the greatest one. And that we studied for 12 years. And my teacher taught it to me for almost 30 years. And so you studied it for 12 years.

Pabongka Rinpoche, so obviously he's a great Lam Rim teacher, but also he is the main holder of Diamond Way in Tibet at that time.

[squeal from student in class who had a scorpion on them]

You okay? You okay? Did he bite? Did he bite? Can you catch him?

Let's catch him. She didn't get bitten. We'll take a 15 minute break now. We'll find the creature who interrupted at the most important moment, which I'm sure it's just a coincidence. And I'll see you in 15 minutes.

Class 6

22 April 2025

Okay, thank you. The reason we had an early class is I have to rush to Phoenix and do some normal medical tests, nothing strange. Just every few months I have to do them and they're very tough to get the time. Arizona has a shortage of doctors and the world has a shortage of Dharma doctors, right? Understand? Similar.

[Announcements:

Mexico City, July 18th to 21st

Those posters, Rob Rusinger and myself, we made those posters about 20 years ago to teach Tsongkapa's life. And that Tsongkapa book, King of the Dharma, it gives you all of the parts of Je Tsongkapa's Life as a diamond way practitioner, that made him successful as a diamond way practitioner. And there's 12 different careers. He had 12 different things he did.

Finished Kadrin in Chinese language and it will be available in June.

Venerable Kading brought peacock feathers [no peacocks harmed] for people to take. It reflects Seiji's new translation, which is all about peacock warriors.

Peacocks, in the Lam Rim tradition, it means most people avoid problems, and most people avoid problem people. Most people, if they see an animal on the ground, they just keep going. But Asanga and us, Lam Rim / Staircase and other people, we stop and we help the person. So that's a tradition. It's called a peacock warrior.

The tradition is that the color of the feathers comes from poison, they eat poisonous plants. And only a peacock has the power to eat poison and make something beautiful. Most people avoid trouble, most people avoid problems, most people walk the other way when somebody's really having a problem.

And then peacock warriors, which is the theme of Seiji's book.. And by the way, Seiji's book is like fat, it's a lojong book. So that book talks about peacocks and people who stop to help people in trouble are more beautiful. Stopping to help makes you more beautiful. Eating the poison makes you more beautiful. You see trouble and you don't go away, you go towards it and you help the people. Cool. And that's coming out any day.

]

I didn't put that fourth picture there and it looks a little disrespectful.

I don't know, but I don't know where the sunglasses.. you put the sunglasses on me. Anyway. Pabongka Rinpoche on the left.

Yeah, that's better. So the thing is, those of you in Staircase house, you can say Pabongka Rinpoche, he was the great master of Lam Rim. He wrote the greatest Lam Rim and his disciple Trijang Rinpoche, in the middle, did all the work. He's the Rosa and the Analtole for Pabongka Rinpoche. And you need that. You need people like that.

So he spent many years of his life helping to print and prepare his teachers' teachings. And Pabongka Rinpoche is famous for Vajrayogini. He wrote the best commentary about Vajrayogini. I translated it. I've never published those translations. I have three or four.. I have about, I think it's about 20,000 or 30,000 pages of Diamond Way translations, but you shouldn't normally publish them, you should give them to your student. So it's waiting for you. There's about 20,000 pages, something like that. And I worked hard on it. I worked for 10 years on it and his book is the greatest. His diamond way book is the greatest. We will study his book. So you should know the lineage that you are if people ask you what's your lineage.

Now the coolest thing, and then we'll switch over to the Angel for today. In my monastery ceremony, Sera Mey, there's 12 great houses. Okay, you got 5, they got 12. And there are 12 great houses for over 500 years. And my teacher is from Gyalrong house.

So at Princeton, there used to be sort of a house custom from your home state. So I'm from Arizona, when I went to Princeton, we meet with all the other kids from Arizona and we do naughty things together. And it was really fun and it was really dear and we got very close to each other. Because we're in a foreign part of another state, we don't know all these people, they live, they're from the armpit, we're from Arizona, we don't have any.. It's very difficult to be friends with them. They're New York people. They want to know about coffee and we're like, it's difficult to be their friend.

So you have a house from your own state and the same thing in the monastery. So people travel, sometimes thousands of miles, to come to study at the great three monasteries. And there's a house for Gyalrong. Gyalrong means East Tibet, near like Chengdu area. They have their own dialect, they have their own language. But other people can go there.

If you're from Arizona and you're the first white guy in how many years? 600 years. Then there's no Arizona house. So they say you can join Gyalrong house because my teacher was from Gyalrong house. And what I want to say is why Gyalrong house is the best house is that Pabongka Rinpoche came from our house.

The greatest teacher is Pabonga Rinpoche. So my teacher and Pabongka Rinpoche came from Gyalrong House. When your teacher comes from Gyalrong house, you are part of Gyalrong, okay? So you are Gyalrong house. You're also whatever house you are, Staircase, whatever. But you should be happy that you are part of Gyalrong house and you can brag about it.

People say what house you connected to? You can say Gyalrong. And they say, what's Gyalrong? You say, Oh, it's just the greatest writer in history, Pabongka Rinpoche. He was reborn. He passed away in 1941, I think. And he was reborn and that reborn Lama finished his Geshe and then suddenly he died. And then he was reborn again. And so the young Pabongka was my classmate and we had many good.. I examined him for his Geshe. I was the number one examiner and it was cool. And he's a great teacher now. He teaches all over the world. He's a good teacher.

These are.. in the beginning of the Steps of the Path, in the beginning of Diamond Way, to prepare for Diamond Way, we have to learn our teachers. And these are your teachers. And I'll tell you something, I don't care what country they came from. I am not loyal to a particular country. To be honest, I'm not attracted to a lot of Tibetan culture. It's not something I'm interested in. If I give you.. the shall I sing Tibetan? It's very similar to Beijing opera. [Geshehla hilariously singing opera].

Okay then I'm like [covering ears]. There's many things about.. I'm not attached to American culture. I'm probably the least American American you ever met. And I'm not attached to a particular country or a particular culture. I am not trying to sell Tibet or China or Japan. I just feel like we're all one country. Russia. I feel.. that's how I feel about it. So I'm not trying to make you Tibetan or I'm not trying to sell you Chinese things. It's a way of thinking. It's a way of living your life. And there's people in every country who follow it. And there's people in every country who don't follow it. All the ones who follow it are in the same country. You see what I mean? They're in Lam Rim country, okay? And that's how I see it. That's just the way I see it.

So I'm not trying to make you Tibetan, I'm not trying to get you to wear this strange hat. Ask me how many times I wore my hat in Rim Rock. Zero times. I never wore it once because it's not appropriate. It's not appropriate to wear it around Phoenix, Arizona or something. I wore my robes once in New York and this guy stopped me and he said, what are you, goddamn Moses? I'm like, peace man, peace. So I don't think it's so important that what you wear, or if you have a bell, or.. I don't think it's..

Personally, I don't think it's so important. I think you dress to fit the people you're teaching. If you teach business people.. you got that picture? If you're going to a business talk.. the one with the four teachers.

If you're going to a business talk, you go in a nice car and you are wearing a nice suit, okay? Really. Seriously. And then when you're in Diamond Mountain, you just wear your normal clothes. And that's Lam Rim. That's Lam Rim. So I'm not trying to sell something cultural to you. Buddhism is not a culture, Buddhism is a way of thinking. Diamond Way is a way of thinking.

So in this text so far, we are bowing down to the teachers. And I wanted to show a person bowing down successfully. Next picture.

True Prostrations to the Lama

So our company exploded. Our company doubled every 18 months and we're the fastest growing company in the history of New York. Why? Just by accident. And so I was desperate for workers and I put out the word - if anyone knows anyone who knows jewelry, if they know some jewelry skills, please let me know. And we were working like crazy hours. I was working till 2:00 every night.

And then I had hired a lady from Barbados and then she's like seven feet tall. And she said, I know somebody. And I'm like, okay, tell them to come in.

Two people came in. One was Uma Thurman. She came in, she needed a job. She didn't get famous.. She didn't get into the movies yet. And then I interviewed her and I said, do you really want to be a secretary in a diamond company? And she said No.

And I said, well, what do you really want to do? And she says, I want to be an actress. And I said, I'll tell you what, I'm not going to hire you and you go be an actress.

And then I think two months later she got the role in Dangerous Liasons, something like that. And then she became.. She's been on Vogue cover more than any other woman. Her father always thanks me for not hiring her.

And at the same time, this short black Barbados lady came in and I interviewed her and she had some jewelry skills. And then I said, 'one thing, our company is tough, we've got to work till 1:00 / 2:00, I mean, we're a crazy company. And so if I hire you, you're going to have to work when I tell you to work'.

And she says, I don't do that.

And I'm like, I'm very, very busy. I'm in a huge company and here's this lady coming in and saying, 'I don't do that'. So I'm like, well why did you come here?

And she said, I need a job, but I don't do that.

And I said, what do you do? And she says, I work when I want to work.

And I'm like [surprised], I just looked at her and I looked at her friend who brought her, and I'm like [don't know what to do], and then this word 'yes' came out of my mouth. And I was like, what?

And so I hired her and she was trouble, but she grew up in the company.

Then she became a great diamond jewelry master. She handled the largest account, which was $20 million account something. And she became really good at it. And then, I don't know, I was sleeping in New York once a week because I have to open the vault, somebody has to open the vaults. Only three people are allowed to know the secret numbers. So I come in once a week, I sleep in New York, and then I started teaching people in my hotel room on the bed because there's no place else.

I sit on the desk and they sit on the bed. And then it got more and more people, and they're all trying to sit on the bed.

And she heard about it and she said, can I come to your class someday? I'm like, you won't like it. And she's like, no, let me try it. And then she came and then she really liked it. And then she studied, studied, studied. And then she became a nun, my teacher made her a nun. And she and I started ACI together. And that was how long ago? 30 years ago.

And then she came out to Diamond Mountain. She did a three-year retreat and she helped build this place. We built this temple by our hands. All the students carry the bricks and build the place. It was hard. She changed. I never saw anyone change so much. She was a very difficult person. 'No'. And then she'd become this extremely happy person.

And then we had a chance to do a second three-year retreat, and she's like, I'm up for it. She's the only person here, right, who did two. She did six years of deep retreat. So pretty amazing.

People don't know she had cancer the whole time. She had cancer when I met her. And people didn't know and we didn't tell anybody, but she had bad cancer and she just keep going. And so finally she passed away.

But people always doing all these nice prostrations, blah, blah. And I think if you want to prostrate to the Lamas, pick up a shovel and build a temple, do something to help. That's all nice, all these people hand me red envelope and they're like, oh, we love you. And I'm like, yeah, I got a shovel. 'Yeah, I don't do that'.

So I think when you prostrate and when you bow to the lineage, think about this kind of prostration. And it is just hard work. To build this place, just hard work, 20 years of hard work. Those stupid Chinese young people [working hard to build a teaching place near Geshehla's home], they're like, oh, we're doing the same thing. I'm like, yeah. I asked my wife, should I let them try? And she's like, yeah, let them try. Because it's hard, it's really hard, it makes you strong. Okay?

If you want to prostrate to the Lamas, if you want to honor the Lamas, then clean the toilet or do something like that. That's the real prostration, it's not this [bowing down]. Those are easy, those things are easy. Okay? Hard work. If you want to honor the lineage, then hard work.

[Fundraising for 30 30 30 and ACI]

Okay. Last thing. There's an unusual part of Gibson's book where they talk about if you study Lam Rim, you get eyes. And that's the next picture.

Yeah, this is a famous stupa. I think it's Boudhanath, in Nepal, in Kathmandu. And I think this is.. some people say it's where Lord Buddha was born, but it's an unusual stupa. It's famous because it has these strange eyes on it, and then it's Buddha's eyes. It's part of a huge, huge stupa.

And when we finished this [at Diamond Mountain] stupa, Dr. Wu told me, those are kind of mini stupas, aren't they? And I'm like, 'what do you mean, these are pure marble. It's like pure diamond. You can't..'

He's like, 'well, I was kind of thinking of Boudhanath', which is like five stories high.

I'm like.. we also, by the way, we have to respect the view. We can't ruin the desert. We don't feel like we can put big Buddha statues and stuff like that, they have to fit into the mountain. We don't want to hurt the mountain and we want to make the stupas quiet and elegant.

So anyway, eyes are very important. And somebody said to Tsongkapa, if you study Lam Rim, you get the eyes to see the world, to really see the world. And he got upset. And he said, that's not what the book says. That's not what it says.

And then they said, what do you mean? And he said, the Lam Rim is the eyes. Okay?

Not that you study Lam Rim and you get eyes. Not like that. He said, Lam Rim is the eyes. If you learn Lam Rim, you have the eyes. Okay, got it? What?

For seeing messages. Okay, in Diamond Way..and by the way, the author Choney Lama, he said Tsongkapa said.. he told the story about Tsongkapa and Tsongkapa's eyes. And then I checked it in John Brady's database. I checked it and I found it.

It's on the last page of the Lam Rim Chen Mo. It's 1,000 pages into the Lam Rim Chen Mo. And it talks about the eyes. Lam Rim is eyes. And if you have Lam Rim, you have eyes. And if you don't have Lam Rim, you don't have eyes. Okay?

What's it mean for us? There's a very, very famous quotation from Lord Buddha and somebody asked him which meditation posture is better?

And he's like, what do you mean? And there's this big fight for 2,000 years.

Do you put your left hand down first or do you put your right hand down first? And do you cross your right leg first or do you cross your left leg first? Big fight. Okay, there's a big fight.

So somebody asked him what position, what's your favorite meditation position?

And he said, I have three. Lord Budda said, I have three. And they said, what?

And he said, I meditate when I'm flat on my bed, I meditate when I sit in a chair, and I meditate when I stand up, that's all.

And so I wanted to give you a proposal.

So classically, Lord Buddha said, there's three times you can focus on your meditation, when you're a Buddha, is whether you're laying down, sitting, or standing up. Which is all the time. Don't think there's any other choice.

Flying? No, I would count that as standing up, personally.

But anyway, I propose that until we meet again in Mexico City, whether you're online in Mexico City or whether you come to Mexico City, I propose that we have a sort of a.. that we all try to, when we're walking, when we're traveling somewhere, when we're going somewhere in a car or walking, when you're going somewhere, especially walking in a street in Shenzhen with your son, or flying somewhere, or in a car. When you are moving to go somewhere, walking, traveling in a car, flying in an airplane, I would like to make a deal among all of our.. we're now a small Diamond Way group, including the online guys.

Until Mexico City, which is July 18th for four days, until then, when you travel, let's make a deal that you look for messages.

And you can sleep on your bed, you don't have to look for messages.

And you can sit at your breakfast table, you don't have to look for messages.

But I propose that we all agree to look for messages when we're traveling in a car or on a plane or walking to a city. Okay? Agree? [some students vocally agree]

That was three people, I think. [all students agree] All right, cool.

So remember, what's your homework? Somebody ask you, what's your Diamond Way homework? It's - when I'm traveling, I'm supposed to see if there's any messages that were sent to me. And I get a lot of messages on airplanes. I'm on airplanes a lot. I keep my ears open. Somebody gives me a message.

I remember one lady was looking at her cell phone the whole way. How many hours to Japan? 11 hours. And I think about 10 hours, she was like this [on her phone]. And I'm kind of irritated. I don't know why, I'm just irritated somebody would look at their phone the whole way to Japan. And then I kind of was curious what someone could look at for 11 hours. And I looked.. when you go to the toilet, you spy on people.

And I went to the toilet and I'm like [peeking at her phone]. I just want to see what website she's looking at.

That's when I found out you can turn the camera around and look at yourself. 'Hi Geshe Michael' [to phone].

And she was checking her makeup for 11 hours. And I was like, 'wow, she's checking her makeup for 11 hours. I'm such a better person. I don't even know how to do that.

And that makes me a better person. I would never just think about myself for 11 hours'.

And then suddenly I'm like, it's a message. She's telling me I think about myself 11 hours out of 11 hours. And maybe she's Vajrayogini, maybe she's an angel, maybe she's a Buddha, maybe she's a lady Buddha. Maybe she's trying to get me to get this. Maybe if I would just figure it out, she could go to sleep, but she has to sit there for 11 hours. 'That guy's so stupid. He didn't get it'. 'Keep trying, okay?'

So watch. That's our homework. Okay? That's what I'd like to do together as a group, as a team.

When you're traveling, then look for messages. And they can be unusual. They can be really strange. What's the message when a scorpion crawls on your foot during Trijang Rinpoche? You'll never forget Trijang Rinpoche. Okay? What's the message? We're looking for messages.

If I have to tell you what's the greatest Diamond Way practice, it's looking for messages. I think it's one of the greatest. Okay.

And is it a message? Was she sending me a message? Was she a Buddha sending me a message?

I can't say she was, but I can't say she wasn't.

I can't say I know she was, but I can say I know she wasn't.

And that state of doubt between, 'I can't say I know she was' and 'I can't say I know she wasn't', that middle place of doubt is extremely powerful karma. It's one of the most powerful karmas there is.

If you want financial freedom, if you want to throw a hundred dollars bills at people all day, or you want to be happy, or you want to have the greatest wife in the world, or husband, this is the karma. It's an extremely powerful karma. Everything you ever dreamed of will come. It's very unusual. It's very strange. Okay? Got it?

That doubt is one of the most powerful karmas there is. And it will produce weird things, like very, very successful life. Very happy life. And it's so cheap. It doesn't cost anything to be paranoid about the lady. It doesn't cost you anything. It's no effort at all. It takes like 10 seconds on the way to the toilet. Another message, hi, bye, do your toilet.

I could tell you about, no, no. We had an interesting flight from China, speaking at toilets. But I'm not going to make fun of my friend who was throwing up and diarrhea at the same time, and the airplane company closed the toilet. Anyway, but it's a good way to lose weight. Okay, let's do Q & A. Okay, you got your homework right? I have my homework. And we'll finish Angel / Devil sometime soon, Tim [wink wink]. Tim, you choose, somebody choose. By the way, after class, I've got to go quick, there's a lab waiting for me.

Q & A

[Anastasiia: So Geshehla, thank you so much for the class. So I'm just wondering what is the message for us that we're here in the class and we see the scorpion?]

And I'll say something about that. I think messages are tailor-made. It means I think messages are sent to you personally. So I think part of this practice is, it's not that Geshehla decides the message. You decide the message because I don't know your life, I don't know what's going on in your life.

I have many, many students, I don't know what's happening in their lives. You know what's happening in your life. So one thing about messages is they are created by the Buddhas to fit you personally. And two people can get different messages from the same event.

Two people can get different messages from the scorpion and they're both true. Even if they're opposite, they're both true. Okay? And that's the cool thing about messages.

So one thing about Diamond Way is that all this stuff is happening was designed for you personally. It's a personal message for you from the Buddha. And you can take it and you can use it. And that's Diamond Way. That is Diamond Way. You asked me to teach Diamond Way, I'm teaching you Diamond Way.

All right, next question. Okay, online. Malaysians. Congratulations on your new stupa, you Malaysia people.

[Student: Is it okay that I ask this question in Chinese?]

Sure.

[Student: So thank you Geshehla for the teaching in the past two days. It seems like in the Diamond Way teaching, a lot of what we have to do is to visualize. For example, we have to visualize ourselves as Manjushri. But logically, for me, that's not possible because I have trouble seeing myself as Manjushri. So what can we do in a Diamond Way practice if this visualization doesn't work for me? What are the practices that I can do to bring Diamond Way into my life? Thank you.]

Nice. Okay, cool. One thing that John Brady did in his database.. so I don't know, we are planning to input 300,000 books. He is about 3% or 4% finished, it will take another a hundred to 300 years to finish, that's how long he has to stay. It's huge, it's unbelievable, it's 300,000 books.

The Western classics on which all Western universities are based, there's 500 books.

Harvard University classics library has 500 books, that's all.

Asia has 300,000 and they are high quality. They're not silly books. They're not Abyssinian..I said Babylonian, somebody corrected me.. Sumerian. To be honest, I don't know the difference.

But they're not some complaint about a guy's horse. They are extraordinary books, every one of them can get you enlightened. 300,000 books. From all the ancient books..

You heard about sutra and shastra yesterday, right? There's 990 sutras and tantras left from many thousands, and there's 3,700 shastras left, and there's about 285,000 commentaries, lay commentaires. And then the ancient people, they divided all of those books into 12 categories in the kangyur, something like that.

The whole kangyur has only 12 sections, 990 books.

The tengyur has something like 14 sections. Okay?

John Brady's database has probably a thousand. It's a thousand different divisions.

It's cataloged correctly, and it took many years, it took 30 years to do it. So there's about a thousand categories.

Why do I mention that? There's 160 tantras in the database. Vajrayogini is one, Manjushri is one, Amitabha is one. There's 160. John Brady's project has identified 160 tantric systems with thousands of books in them. So it's unbelievable. Then each one.. Vajrayogini is divided into many, many categories: How to do retreat, how to do the fire puja, how to do the mantra, how to do the meditation, how to die, how to teach it, how to do the initiation. Many, many.

Then I asked my teacher, I said, you're teaching us two or three tantric traditions. We get Yamanaka and we get Vajrayogini. We get two, basically, but there's 160. And then all my friends who were studying with other teachers, they're getting like 10, 12, 50. I'm like, we only got two. I was kind of irritated.

And he said, that's all that I practice, that's all that we practice in the tantric monastery, the highest monastery. There's only two in Tibet. There's thousands of monasteries, there's only two tantric monastery. And he's like, that's all I studied, that's all we studied, we studied two.

I'm like, wow, why is that? I said, why are all those tantras, why do they exist?

And he said, everybody's different. Everybody needs a different teaching. That's why there's five houses. Everybody's attracted to a different thing.

It's the Veronica at the cowboy shop story. My wife tried on 42 pairs of jeans. I counted, I had to stand up the whole time, there's no chair. I was irritated, I wanted to go home. And then she didn't buy any of them. Don't ever tell her this story.

It means different people need different tantras.

There's 160 pairs of pants there, there's 160 holy beings. And probably there's thousands. That survive in John's database, there's 160. And so you came to this one.

And then if you tell me, if you tell your teacher, you know what, I don't really connect with Yamantaka. And I'll be honest, I don't connect with him either, okay? I'm like, it's scary. And I'm like, have I got any other choices here?

And my teacher's like, I think you're a Vajrayogini person, I think you're a Vajrayogini type, which is like [amazing goddess].

So my teacher's approach, my teacher's tradition, in the ancient tradition, which is 2,000 years old, we give you basically several choices. You can have the tough one if you want, or you can have the sweet Angel one. And personally, I like the sweet Angel one, I connect with that. So when you study Diamond Way, your teacher should give you a couple options. And basically we give you Yamantaka option or we give you Vajrayogini option.

And you don't need to know about it now, you don't have to worry about it now, you don't have to choose that house now. Just sit, enjoy the Diamond Way classes, but the options are waiting for you. We have them. So if it doesn't feel like it fits very well right away, don't stress about it, you will change. Or we'll offer you a different tantra, a different tradition. They're all the same in the end. It's all Lord Buddha just looking like different pairs of pants. It's one person who looks like 42 pairs of pants, 160 pairs of pants. In the end, it's the same person.

But I also believe that, as I mentioned before, you can go with Vajrayogini who's more comfortable for you. You feel more attracted to a feminine Buddha, a female Buddha, that's fine. And then some people want a real authority figure President, we know who, whose name cannot be named. It depends on what you feel comfortable with.

And so what's cool about Diamond Way practice, basically there's many, many options waiting for you.

So if it doesn't feel like it fits right away, there's two choices. Go for the other one, which fits more in this tradition. We have other ones, if you like. But I'll tell you another option, I think I mentioned it the other day. Out of the Geshe course, there's five great topics. There's Abhidharma, Vinaya, Logic, Lower Middle Way, Higher Middle Way. And then Mind Only is in there somewhere. And when I studied the Geshe course, when I got to the logic, I hated it. I really hated it. And I was like, I can't do this, I'm quitting. I'm going to quit now. I was like, I could care less about major premise, minor premise, it's all BS to me, I don't care. I had real trouble with it.

And my teacher at that time couldn't speak English. So he's like [Tibetan], like I don't understand anything. And then he tried to explain logic terms in elementary English and I'm like [confused], it's worse. And I'll tell you something. And I told this story many times.

I was walking back to my room from his room and he had just given me a logic class and I was like [dazed]. And I was sleeping on the floor of a garage. I was sleeping on a concrete floor in a sleeping bag. That was my room. I didn't have enough money or I didn't have any place in the.. There was no place. I'm sleeping on a floor of a garage with an old drunk who hid in the garage, and I'm always afraid he's going to kill me.

So anyway, I'm on my way to my room and I remember I stopped under a tree and I was upset. I said, I don't know if I can do this, I don't know if I can learn this.

And then this voice came to me and it said, 'you kick ass on the logic. You do the logic. It's something important, something you're supposed to do. Shut up and learn it and master it.' And I'm like, wow, I got a message.

And in that moment under the tree, I think you can still see the tree. I said, I'm going to do this. I'm going to.. it's the thing I don't like the most. It's the one subject I don't like the most. And somehow I got a message, it said, you're supposed to do the thing you don't like the most because that's what you don't have yet. You understand? That's the practice you don't have yet, and so that's the one you need. The one that you don't like the most is the one that's missing inside of you. And that's a very interesting idea.

So you can wait and we'll give you other traditions. John Brady, Connie, those guys, they can give you, they will give you other lineages, other traditions. There's a lot of choices. You can wait until something comes which fits your unusual bottom. You can wait. But you have this other option that may be one you're not attracted to is a message. Maybe it's what you are lacking that you need.

And so I became good at logic. I'm the best. Okay? It's extremely difficult. And I killed myself for many years and now I know it and it's wonderful. It's like the most valuable thing. So don't always think that the thing that's comfortable for you is the right thing for you. Maybe the one that you're not attracted to is the one that you don't have, that's what you need. So sometimes in Buddhism, force yourself to do what you're not attracted to. If you just keep doing what you're attracted to, you don't learn anything new. Understand? Don't forget that one.

Okay. Alright. How much time we got Tim? Okay. Who's choosing the, oh, go ahead. Go ahead.

[Jen: Thank you so much, Geshehla, for teaching. Yesterday while I was reading book by Lord Je Tsongkapa, I saw a hummingbird. It came to me while I was reading his book.]

Oh nice.

[Jen: And I was so happy and I shared this news with my karmic partner and my roommate Olga. And next day, can you imagine she saw hummingbird as well. And I've checked with [IE?] and [IE?] told me that this is a sign of easy enlightenment. I thought that it's huge for me.]

Easy enlightenment?

[Jen: Easy. Easy way to enlightenment without suffering. So I love it. And my question is, so yesterday I saw good sign. And if we see, let's say everything comes from our karma and if for example, I see bad sign. What should they do? four powers?

Yeah, okay, good question. My Lama said something about that. I'm trying to remember. Oh yeah. Okay, here's the answer.

So I lived with my Lama because I was his driver, his toilet cleaner, his cook, his lawnmower. And when you serve a Lama, then you get to hear everything they say.

So it's a dirty job for 25 years. But you learn a lot because you're always with them. So whatever they tell people, you hear it. So here's what he said one day to somebody.

They said, 'oh, Rinpoche, sometimes I have these beautiful signs in dreams, I have these wonderful dreams and I see the sky opening up and I see Tsongkapa coming out of the sky, and I have these extraordinary dreams. And so I want to ask you first of all, what do those mean? How do I interpret those dreams?'

And then they said, 'and sometimes I have a nightmare and sometimes terrible things come to me in the dream and seems like bad signs, but I don't know how to read them. And I want to ask your advice'. And here's his answer.

In the Diamond Way, when you have a beautiful dream and something amazing happens, and you like meet a Buddha in the dream, or you're flying in the dream, or you become a female Buddha, or something like that, that's a true sign that you are making progress. When the hummingbird comes to you and you feel like this is guiding you to enlightenment, it's a good sign and your practice is really going well.

And he said, 'congratulations'. I thought it was weird to congratulate the person for a dream. He's like, 'congratulations', and I'm like, yeah.

And then the person said, 'the bad dreams, and what about the bad dreams, bad signs?'

And he said, you ate something bad in the afternoon.

Like you ate an old piece of pizza. Or what did you eat, Rob? I don't remember. You ate a bad egg or something. And he said, that's how valid the bad messages are.

And basically he's saying, excuse me, but he's saying, fucker. If you have a bad message, you have a bad sign, a cloud goes over the sun and everything turns dark, you can say, I had a bad lunch. That's all.

He said, don't give it any attention, don't pay attention to it.

He's like, just think 'I ate something bad' or something like that. It's just like having boops, you know boops? You ate something bad and you have boops. It's like a bad vision is a boop. And he said, just ignore it.

His advice was, attach to the great visions and spend a lot of time thinking about them, and then when some bad sign comes or something, don't give them the honor. Don't give them respect. Just say, go away, I'm not even going to think about you.

Some scorpion comes in, you're like [go away]. Okay? Seriously. I like that. I like the pizza thing. I think we got time for one more, Tim? I don't know.

[Pachi: So we have an online question and it says, Hi Grandpa]

I'm not answering.

[Pachi: You've mentioned in the past, one has to finish Geshe course before learning the Diamond Way. What is the seed that allows us now to be able to learn Diamond Way without needing to complete the Geshe course? How should we continue to reinvest these seeds?]

Okay. My opinion is, if you finish the 18 courses and then you do Diamond Way, and you do the 18 Diamond Way courses, your practice will be more firm. And teachers in the world right now of this thing, teachers of this kind of thing that we are talking about today, are extremely rare. There's not enough. There's a very bad shortage of teachers.

I like to say imagine New York City or Singapore with two doctors or something. Because that's the way it is, there's only a few people for every thousand people, who understand these things. There's only a few people who can teach. So all those people are suffering and there's no doctors. There's a shortage of doctors.

And so in my opinion, we have to do what we have to do to create more doctors as fast as we can, safely. I mean, you don't give a person two weeks of training and give them a scalpel and say, do heart surgery. No, you're going to kill somebody. You're going to hurt somebody.

We don't have much time. I don't know how long you're going to live, I dunno how long I'm going to live. We don't know who will die first. We have to get it done now, we have to take care of it now. So I would say, start, there will be requirements. Tim can tell you for ACI people to learn Diamond Way, to teach Diamond Way.

There are requirements. It's better if you can do the 18 courses, it's better if you can do the 18 Diamond Way courses, it's better. You'll be a better doctor.

There's an old kind of doctor called general practitioner, GP. I have one, they're very rare. She's a female GP. She's about my age. And they stopped making them. They don't make them anymore.

You go to a doctor and they say, what's wrong? You say, I got a headache.

'Oh, you've got to go to a headache specialist'. And they send you to another doctor.

And then you say, I've got something with my toe. And they say, oh, you've got to go to a toe specialist. And it's a lot of money also, by the way.

And they keep sending you to a specialist. It's very rare to find someone who's an old fashioned GP, general practitioner. General doctor who knows all the different problems pretty well.

And so I would like to create GPs. I would like ACI to create GPs. I would like you to master many things, many subjects. Then when someone asks you a question about bad dreams or bad hummingbirds, you have an answer ready for them. You don't have to say, 'oh, go talk to Sophie in Tokyo. I don't know the answer'. You see what I mean? It's better if you can learn a lot. So I think as a doctor..

The best doctors I know, they never stop studying. Even they're 60 years old, 70 years old. You say, can I see you next week? They say, no. And you say, why? And they say, I'm taking a class. And I'm like, you're 60, 70 years old, why are you taking a class? 'I want to learn more. I want to be able to help more people'.

I respect that kind of doctor. Then that kind of doctor, they're always learning the new techniques.

My wife had a knee surgery, knee replacement. And this guy has a new, what do you call it? He does the operation with a robot. So there's 20 doctors who can do it with their hands, and there's one who can do it with a robot. And the robot is much more precise and you heal faster. And now she's fine, you can't tell which knee had the operation. Both knees are wonderful.

So this person, he's already a great surgeon, he's already very famous. He can cut you up very well. But he went on to learn the robot, he wanted to learn the robot also.

And now he has the choice. Some difficult operation needs hands. And most of them are fine with the robot and the robot is more precise and it doesn't make mistakes like human beings make.

I like to go to the surgeon who knows both and then I can get which one is better for me. You see what I mean? So I think as a teacher, I don't want you to come to me and say, 'should I take 14 courses or 15 courses?' I say take all of them and then take them again and then take 'em a third time. Don't ask me this irritating question.

'If I do 13 and a half, can I teach?' Don't ask me to make those decisions.

Learn the robot and learn to do it by hand. And as soon as you can help somebody, start helping them. You don't have to wait until you've mastered the robot. You can help people. Don't hurt people. If you hand a steak knife to a kid and say, do a heart operation, I'm like, I think I'll wait a while.

So it's a delicate question. We want people who don't hurt other people, who don't make mistakes teaching people, but we don't want to wait until you've had 50 years of experience, because then you can only help a few people. So it's kind of your..the answer.. I stick with whatever Tim says, first of all. And then secondly, you can't stop learning. I mean, you should never stop learning. You can study Diamond Way for a hundred lifetimes, you will not master it. It's endless. But you have to, as soon as you can, do the hard work to learn as much as you can, and then you can help more people. And if you want to know how many courses, blah, blah, talk to Tim. Okay, thank you.

And if it's me, and if John Brady, Connie, Elly, all those guys are giving courses, I know Peter and Maria teaching Diamond Way. If it's me, I'll try to go to all of them.

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