A Diamond in Kyoto

All right, thank you all for coming, I know it's a long way to come. And thank you for the nice greeting, and thank you for practicing, and coming. Thank you Jasmine for hard work to make this happen.

Who escorts Dante through Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven?

Okay, there's two classes today, the first one is called Angel Debates the Devil, and it's a book that was written 400 years ago. It's a debate inside of one person's head and the good side of them is fighting with the bad side of them, inside of one person's head. And I've been working on it recently. Every day I do about six hours on some transmissions, and I decided to work on that one and finish it. We started it in 2011 and it was at a cactus museum in Phoenix, if you ever go there, Botanical Museum, and my wife really likes that place. We rented a small room there and we started 14 years ago. So I finished this book two days ago, something like that, and I wanted to talk about it. So my teacher taught it to us, and I was trying to write the introduction.. I was trying to decide what year it was, and I don't really remember those things very well, but I think it was around 1990, or something like that. My teacher in the Mongolian Temple in New Jersey started teaching it, and he never finished it. He started it, but he never finished it. And so I always thought that I would like to finish it and publish it, so I worked really hard on it. It's 591 verses. First of all it's not divided into verses, it's just a long string of 2,000 lines. And it's very difficult to know who's talking, and where does each verse start, where does it end, and I had to design all that. And then I was counting the verses, I was trying to make more sense out of the book, and then I thought... I don't know about you, but when I was in high school, we were required to study two authors. One was Shakespeare, and the other was Dante, Alighieri Dante from Italy, and he wrote a book called The Divine Comedy. And it's very famous, I think it's 14,000 lines, or something like that, and it has three parts. One is called Inferno, meaning the hells, and one is called Purgatorio, which means the purification, and then one is called Paradise. His famous book, which I think is considered one of the, maybe one of the five greatest books in Western literature, it was written in Italian. And he divided that trip, that journey, into three parts. One was called the Inferno, or the trip to hell, and Purgatorio is how to clean that karma, and then Paradise, after you clean the karma, where do you go.

And here's a picture, you got that first picture you guys? I hope so, black and white, gray color. Yeah, okay, it is not in front of me, but okay.

Yeah, that's a traditional rendering of that story. And Dante takes a trip to hell and he is accompanied by Virgil, who's a famous Roman poet. And Virgil is traditionally considered the greatest figure in logic, in reason and logic in the Western world. So he takes, Logic takes a normal human being to hell, and shows them what hell looks like. And then Purgatorio, where you clean that karma, he's also taken there by Logic, by Virgil. And in this lithograph, you can see Virgil has taken Dante to the hell realms and he's showing him how people are cooked in the hell realms. And there's a set of beautiful renderings like that about this story. And then the Italian was translated into English by Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, about the time of the American Civil War. And he divided it into, I have here 4,000 lines, but we also call it canto, and canto means like a song, a chant, and in Italian, they're called cantos. So I thought, when I was finishing The Devil Debates the Angel, I thought I would see if it could be broken into cantos, or into separate songs. And it fits, it works really well, so I took the whole thing and divided it into 25 songs, or 25 cantos. And this whole debate between the Devil and the Angel, we divided it into 25 cantos, and then we split out the Devil against the Angel and what they're doing. An interesting thing about the Divine Comedy, this book by Dante, which was written 800, 700 years ago, an interesting thing is that Virgil is not allowed to take Dante to heaven. He cannot accompany him to paradise because he's not Christian. He was a Roman poet, but he was not Christian. So in Dante's poetry, I give, you got yī bǎi, do you guys know what yī bǎi means in Chinese? Yī bǎi means 100, yeah, this [Rob Haggerty] is Mr. yī bǎi, we changed his name at the DCEU event. Mr. yī bǎi, he keeps my $100 bills. So Virgil, reasoning, logic, cannot take Dante as far as paradise. He can show him hell, and he can show him purification, but he cannot take him to paradise. I'll give $100 if you can tell me who had to take Dante to paradise, who had to be the guide for Dante as traveling through paradise. Mr. yī bǎi, you decide.

[Student: Maybe Je Tsongkapa?]

Of course, but, I mean, what was his Italian name at the time?

[Student: Dante himself?]

No, you know, right? Last chance, I only give three chances.

[Student: Beatrice.]

Nice, $100, yeah. Yeah, Beatrice is his divine muse, and she is, in my idea, she's kind of the Vajrayogini of the Inferno. He finds a spiritual partner who's able to take him to the third level of reality, which is paradise, okay? And I think it's very beautiful. So anyway, when I was finishing the book, I designed it after Dante's structure, and it works very, very well. By the way, we are on [unclear], so after 14 years, we are just over halfway through in the classes. So we'll see how we go with that. Today I'm going to start on verse 373. And I'll read the Tibetan just for good luck, okay?

The Tibetan for things exist only in names, labels, signs, terms

[11:49]

,CHOS RNAMS RANG RANG NGO BOS NI,

,STONG PAR NYAMS ‘OG CHUD PA NA,

,STONG GZHI CHOS RNAMS MING RKYANG TZAM,

,BTAGS TZAM BRDA TZAM THA SNYAD TZAM,

He repeats a special expression here. He's saying all the things in the universe. Who's he? It's probably the Angel talking by now, okay? Things are MING RKYANG TZAM. Things are BTAGS TZAM, things are BRDA TZAM, and things are THA SNYAD TZAM. So four TZAMs, okay? Say TZAM. How do you say Mind Only? SEM TZAM. Say SEM TZAM. So TZAM means only. TZAM means only, okay? TZAAM means retreat. TZAM means only, okay? So he repeats here, First Panchen Lama, he says things are MING RKYANG TZAM, BTAGS TZAM, BRDA TZAM, THA SNYAD TZAM. He repeats four times, TZAM. And I thought we could talk about that today, okay? And it's very, very important to really understand the structure of two thousand lines of poetry by the First Panchen Lama because he doesn't give you any subject headers, he doesn't even break the verses out. It's two thousand connected lines with no spaces between them. Okay? And to really understand the structure after fourteen years, the problem is that we only meet each other every, I don't know, couple of months, right? And it's hard to keep the flow in mind. But what he says here is you should understand that things are MING TZAM BTAGS TZAM BRDA TZAM THA SNYAD TZAM.

MING means name. MING TZAM means things exist only in name, okay? You have to try to understand that things exist only in name, MING TZAM, okay? Say MING TZAM.

Okay, then he says BTAGS TZAM. BTAGS means, the verb is [NDOG 14:04?], which means to label something. Things are only names, things are only labels, okay? Things are only names, things are only labels.

Say BRDA TZAM. BRDA means like a sign, like somebody put a sign on something, okay? BRDA. BRDA TZAM means things exist only in signs.

[1] Things exist only in names, [2] things exist only in labels, [3] things exist only in signs.

THA SNYAD TZAM. Things exist... Say THA SNYAD TZAM. Things exist only in terms, okay?

So here's the angel trying to explain to us how to go to paradise, okay? And she's saying things are name only, things are labels only, things are signs only, and things are only terms, okay? She says that. And that's supposed to help us get liberated from all our suffering. And it's very confusing, to me, I remember when I was first studying about emptiness, all of these things were very confusing. And I thought I would talk about that today.

Accumulating the karma to see emptiness directly

All right, first picture.

I don't know, a few years ago I decided that when I reached 30 years old? Oh, 70, that I was willing to talk about seeing emptiness directly in public. And so there's this experience that he's talking about here that we have to understand and we have to try to reach it, okay? And that's called CHU CHOK. Say CHU CHOK. CHU CHOK means the highest experience you will ever have in your normal life, okay? It's the last few hours of your normal life before you see emptiness directly, okay? So there's a level, a very high level in the path of preparation called CHU CHOK. The end of the JOR LAM, the path of preparation, is called CHU CHOK. CHU CHOK means the best thing that can happen to you in your suffering life, before you see emptiness directly. CHOS MCHOG means the very best thing that can happen, okay? And in my case, it was an experience in the kitchen. I like to call it in the kitchen. And certain things were piling up in my life, you know? Certain experiences were piling up in my life. I think the main one was that I was serving my teacher directly and full time. So I was a cook, I was a terrible cook for eight years. I washed all the dishes, I did all the grocery shopping, I cooked all the food, and I was the maintenance guy. And I had a huge toolkit and I could fix anything in this big Mongolian temple and his house. And then I was the chauffeur, I was the driver, which was a lot of time because he often went on trips to teach groups in other cities. So like when we went to Washington D.C., it would be like eight, ten hours driving. So I was around him all the time and I was taking care of him all the time. I did all his laundry. Why? The only place I could hear rock and roll was in the laundromat. And I used to wash it every weekend. I purposely washed it once a week so I could listen to rock and roll in the laundromat because he was very strict about rock and roll in the temple. So anyway, I had this intense karma of serving my teacher directly, being with my teacher all the time. And I think that was one intense karma.

We also lived in a community of about two thousand Mongolians. They were old, they all were refugees. They were locked up in the concentration camps in Germany with the Jewish people and they escaped. The ones who lived in our community had escaped over the fences in the concentration camps. They lived in the forest and survived the war. They gathered in Berlin at the end of the war. A friend of mine, Carmen Kitchikoff, you know her, her older brother was born on the railway platform in Berlin. That's how crazy things were at that time. They also were allowed to come to the United States. It was really hard. They were all around 70, 75 years old by the time I got there. I was the [chibita 19:37 ?]. Say chibita. Chibita means a public horse. I was the only one who was young enough to drive a car. Everybody else was too old. So I took everyone to get their retirement pensions, I took everybody to the hospital, I took everybody to doctor appointments. Luckily, I learned Russian in college. They all spoke Russian so I translated for everybody. It was a couple thousand elderly people. It was very, very difficult. I had to fix their houses a lot, I did a lot of remodeling for people. Like that.

And I meditated a lot. I was alone. I was the only student of my teacher who survived his house. Many students came, many students left. He was a very, very tough person. Frankly, he kicked out everybody except me, I think he needed a driver so bad. I don't think he liked my cooking, but the dish washing, he really liked it.

I’ve got to tell you a story about momos. He would say, every like Thursday, ‘we’ve got to have momos.’ Momos is like handmade dim sum, very difficult to make. He wants me to chop the meat by hand, I have to chop it with this big Seto, big knife. I cut it up. Then one day I asked him… by the way, I was vegetarian. I made meat for everyone else there. I said, ‘why don't we just buy some hamburger? You know they sell this in the store and you don't have to chop it for two hours.’ He's like, ‘nah, nah, it doesn't taste the same. The machine puts oil in it, something.’ He refused to do it. Then after that I went to the diamond business, I was working in the diamond business. I used to get home late at night. One day I came home early and he was cooking for himself and he had a big package of hamburger. I said, ‘wait a minute. You don't like that, you can't eat that.’ He says, who would waste their time chopping this for two hours? I'm like, okay. Anyway, I had this intense karma of serving your teacher. It was really hard work and it was endless. I went home once in 25 years, when my brother died. I went home once. It was very difficult but I was making intense karma. I think under the influence of intense karma helping my teacher, then one day I had this CHU CHOK experience. I was boiling some tea on the stove and he insisted on having Tibetan tea. Tibetan tea is, you put tea leaves, then you put salt, then you put milk, then you put cream, then you put butter, then you put, what's that spice? Like baking powders and cloves, like that. Then you go like this in a big churn. Whoosh, whoosh. It takes like half an hour to make it.

So I'm boiling the water for his tea and then I reached at that moment CHU CHOK and I'm just standing by the stove. It is not the direct perception of emptiness. It is not the direct perception of emptiness. But it's something that happens to you just before you see emptiness directly. If you can reach CHU CHOK, if you can reach this place, then you will see emptiness within a few hours. It's interesting karmically. If you can reach the place where you understand how the pot is there, then you can understand directly how the pot is not there. You see what I mean? What you call dependent origination, things happening in dependence, [RTEN CING BRAL BAR BYUNG BA 24:30?], that's the sister of emptiness. That's the other side of emptiness. Positively stated, everything around you is happening through cause and effect relationships. Then negatively stated, it is empty of anything else. You see what I mean? So on a direct level, in a direct experience, you see dependent origination first on the same day that you see emptiness. You never really understand dependent origination until that day. I can teach it to you, the book is teaching it to you for many years now. I can explain to you what happens and many, many thousands of pages have been written about it. But to really experience it in person is very, very powerful. I believe that if you have a chance to hear it from a person who saw it, then it will bless you. It will cause you to see it yourself. It's very, very rare to meet a person who has seen it. It's a very powerful karma or seed to hear it once from a person like that.

So today my goal is that you just hear it in your mind from a person who saw it, and it's extremely rare in this world that anyone can see that directly. So just relax and open your brain and listen to grandpa tell a story and then I think it will affect you. I have a theory. I was a negotiator in the diamond business. My job was to negotiate purchases of diamonds. I would do maybe 10 or 15 negotiations every day. Sometimes I had two or three phones at the same time and I'm negotiating purchases of diamonds. On a good day we would process 300,000 diamonds. We would be negotiating for many thousands of diamonds. Diamond dealers are from all over the world. Every country has some number of diamond dealers. They are... Like in India there are several thousand diamond dealers in the diamond dealer zone, which is called [SIP zone 27:20?]. I met somebody two weeks ago who grew up there, which is very rare. I was having Thanksgiving dinner with my stepson and one of his business partners grew up there. It's a very, very rare place to go and get diamonds, buy diamonds like that. When I negotiated for so many years, thousands and thousands of deals with the cream of the liars in the world. These are people... I remember the first deal, my boss, he said, after two years or something, he would approve everything I said. He would make me come to his office every time I said something. Every time I made an offer, he had to approve it. Every time I changed an offer, he had to approve it. Then I remember... By the way, there came a day after two, three years, I went to his office to ask him if I could increase the price on something. He said, you can do it this time, but don't do it again. If he asks you to increase the price, please come to my office and stand here for 10 minutes and then go back. I said, why do I have to do that? He said, I'm leaving for the day, I won't be here, but I want the guy to think that I'm guiding the negotiation. Every time he makes an offer, you come into my office, close the door, stand there for 10 minutes, and then go back and say, the boss says ‘no way.’ Anyway, I got to be able to... I remember I went back, the guy said, I said, no way, the boss says no way, he will not increase the price. Then the guy said, ‘oh, my son is going to have to drop out of college today.’ I'm like, what? ‘I was trying to pay for my son's college bill and you're not raising the price. He's going to have to drop out of college. I don't know what I'm going to do.’ Then I'm like, the boss's office is empty, I can't raise the price on my own. I'm like, don't worry, I'll cover it, we'll do it, we'll raise the price. He said, ‘oh great, thanks.’ I said, what about your son? ‘What about my son?’ You understand? Anyway, I got very good at telling when people are... When people are telling the truth, after thousands of negotiations, I can tell. I can sit next to a person and tell. I can tell if they're telling the truth or if they're hiding something or something like that. I can, immediately I can tell, okay? So I think that every human being has this ability, to some extent, we all can tell if someone else is not telling the truth. I think you can sense that I am telling the truth, that's the point. I think on some level, you can sense that this did happen to me. So try to be open to the ideas that I talk about today. We've reached a very valuable place in the debate of the Angel and the Devil. The subconscious part of your mind is deciding whether or not Geshela really saw emptiness directly or not. Let your subconscious decide. Your subconscious is very good at telling when people are saying the truth or not. Okay? Trust your subconscious.

What the direct experience of dependent origination feels like

Okay, so anyway, I'm standing looking at the stove. Picture you guys.

Listen to this part especially, okay? It's the most important thing you ever heard in your life, okay? Then go back to your normal life and it will stay in your mind and someday it will open. Especially if you're doing all this dirty work for your teacher. Which by the way, the whole staff here has done, Pachi and everybody else, and I'm very grateful. And I know that's hard work. Fernando, Gina. Thank you, Fernando.

So I used to recite text when I was cooking. My nickname was [Hayang Tsiknyen 32:34?]. Say [Hayang Tsiknyen. Hayang?] is the Tibetan word for aluminum. And it means, ‘wow, this is light’. Okay? And a very high lama was presented the first aluminum pot in Tibet in a certain palace and he took it and he said, ‘[ha, yang, hayang?] This is really light.’ Then the word for aluminum became, ‘wow, this is really light’. Then [Tsiknyen?] means the dude who burns the aluminum. And that was my nickname. Actually my teacher didn't say Michael almost ever. He called me many different names. [Kungo?] means jackass. [Bungo?] means horsefly. And [Hayang Tsiknyen?] means pot burner. He called me pot burner. I don't think he, towards the last half of his life… by the way, it's 21 years this week since he passed away and it's good to think about it.

Okay. So I was always spacing out while I was cooking and I was trying to recite text while I was cooking. I always used to burn everything. Then I was standing there staring at the pot and I was thinking about a text to recite. And then something, due to helping my teacher, due to serving my teacher, due to helping the old people at the hospital and all that, I think due to those karmas… And he was teaching me heavily and I was meditating very heavily. He was teaching me two, three hours a day Abhidharma privately in this empty temple because everyone's too old to come to the temple. This beautiful empty temple. So I'm watching the pot and suddenly… okay, here's the part you’ve got to learn today. I saw these pictures coming out of my mind. First of all, when I look at the pot there's no pot there anymore. It's only two things. There's a silver circle and there's a black straight line. There's a silver circle and a black straight line. I was looking there, I was making the tea and I was waiting for the water to boil. And then suddenly all I can see on the stove is a circle of silver and a black straight shape. Silver circle, straight black, that's all there was on the stove. There wasn't anything else on the stove. Then I saw these pictures coming out of my mind and it felt like they were coming from the back of my head. Which is why me and John Brady and Earl have air conditioning. It felt like the pictures were starting at the back of my head. They are not. Mental pictures don't have a location, thoughts don't have a location. In Buddhism, non-physical things don't have a location. But it feels like... What do they call that? Sensory misapprehension. In ballet, they teach you sensory misapprehension. It feels like your leg is out straight but it's really crooked. Like what feels like to you inside and what's really true on the outside is sometimes completely different. But it feels like your leg is straight and the teacher is yelling at you, that's called sensory misapprehension. So you're having a mistake in your mind that it feels like there's pictures coming out of places in the back of your mind. I don't want to say seed because you are not aware of a seed at that time. It's not like you see a small brown thing in the back of your mind or something like that. It doesn't feel like a seed. It is a mental seed, but it doesn't feel like a seed. There's no physical location that feels like a seed. You just see and you sense pictures coming out of the back of your head. They are coming out of your head and they are coming down on the silver circle and the black stick and they turn it into a pot. They turn it into a pot. You are not watching a pot. You are not looking at a pot and there's no pot out there. There is nothing there except a silver circle and a black straight.

Listen. Logically, your eye cannot see a pot. Your eye can see colors and shapes. Your eyes are limited to colors and shapes. The decision of what it is that you are seeing cannot be made by your eye. You say all day, you say, I saw him or I saw the car or I saw Kyoto, I saw Takashimaya. I went on my pilgrimage today, Christmas pilgrimage, you guys know from my wife. I went shopping today, she is so tired of stuff from Takashimaya. That's the big department store downtown. So anyway, pictures are coming out and I wanted to talk about the pictures today. Then at least once in my life you have heard me talk about it. So I wanted to talk about those pictures. In the text, she says MING TZAM THA SNYAD TZAM. Only labels. Only names.

Here is the next picture.

She is talking about dependent origination. She is talking about how things really exist. Emptiness is the opposite. For things to exist from their own side, for that pot to come from the stove to your eye is self-existence. That's what's impossible. There is no such thing. The pot is coming from here [from you]. The pictures are coming from here [from you]. There is no pot coming this way [from the pot]. In fact, there is a word for… a hundred dollars, Yī bǎi. There is a word in the ancient language for someone who thinks that things are coming this way [from themselves] and it means a non-Arya, a person who is not an Arya, in the ancient language. He [Rob / Mr. Yī bǎi] is getting some exercise, he was accused of just choosing the close by people.

[Student: Sosokhewa. 40:30?]

Sosokhewa is a great guess but no cigar. But it's a good guess.

[Student: TSUR MTHONG]

Who said?

[Student: TSUR MTHONG]

You're stumbling there. Say TSUR MTHONG.

[Student: TSUR MTHONG]

TSUR MTHONG.

[Student: TSUR MTHONG]

Okay, a hundred dollars, she got that right. TSUR MTHONG. TSUR means things are coming this way, things are coming this way [from others towards you]. What's the opposite of TSUR? What's the opposite of [TSURO?] PAH ROL. [Paroto chimpa?] Pāram Pāramitā. Pāram means going that way [from you towards others]. Pāramitā. Pāramitā means going that way [from you]. TSUR MTHONG means this way [from other things towards you]. If you think the world is coming this way [from others towards you], you have not seen emptiness directly. A sign is that you... That means you haven't had this experience of understanding that things are being created by your own pictures. Things are coming this way [from you]. Things are not coming this way [from others towards you].

The meaning of things exist only in names, labels, signs, terms

Now the text says something confusing and that's kind of why I wanted to talk about it today. He's insisting on this word BTAGS TZAM MING TZAM THA SNYAD TZAM. It's only labels, it's only names, it's only terms. And that's very confusing. It's very confusing. If you go around saying, ‘oh, Mike is just a name, therefore, Geshela is empty.’ That's not the point. You’ve got to understand something. In the emptiness books, in Mādhyamika, in Middle Way, when they say things are name only, the word ‘name’ doesn't mean ‘name’. It means the pictures coming out of your mind. It does not mean ‘name’. You can call it ‘pot’, you can call it [katushka?], or whatever. You can call it any different name. [Hayang?] You can call it many names, that's not the point. When they say in Mādhyamika things are name only, things are terms only, things are only labels, the word ‘name’ is a shorthand for ‘the pictures’. Understand? Name is not important here. Names differ, every language has a different name. It's not the verbalization. It's not the syllables you use to say ‘pot’. That's not what they mean when they say things are name only. When they say label, they don't mean somebody put a name on it with a little name and some store clerk put a label on it. This is not the meaning of ‘name only’ in the study of emptiness. If you want to see emptiness directly, don't get distracted by the word ‘name only’, or ‘only terms’, or ‘only labels’. ‘Label’, ‘name’, ‘term’ means ‘mental picture’. Now listen. Coming out of a karmic seed in your mind, coming out of a karmic seed in your mind, lately I've been calling them ‘seed pictures’. There's a seed in your mind that was planted by... There's a seed in your mind that was planted by... There's a seed in your mind that was planted by, always planted by, hurting someone, or helping someone. Always. All the seeds in your mind are coming from hurting someone or helping someone. Those seeds from hurting someone or helping someone yesterday or 10,000 years ago, doesn't matter, that seed is in your mind. When the seed opens, it's not that a label comes out. It's not that a name comes out. A picture comes out. A picture of a pot comes out. And… I'll tell you that later. So one very important thing, so you don't get confused for the rest of your life. Emptiness doesn't mean that things are name only. She says, MING TZAM. No, it's not that they're just labels, BTAGS TZAM. It's not that they are just terms, THA SNYAD TZAM. The point is, they are all just pictures. The word ‘word’, the word ‘name’, the word ‘label’, the word ‘expression’, just means picture coming out of your karmic seeds. Okay, got it?

And those pictures always have an ethical content. Those pictures always have an ethical content. Those pictures always have an ethical content. All the pictures of all the things that you meet in your life are coming from were you good to other people or not. Okay, got it? All pictures are planted by morality, by ethics. They don't just stick in your head. When you're good to other people, you plant a seed and the seed creates a picture. When you're bad towards others, lie towards others, hurt others, then you plant a picture, you plant a seed, which will open into a bad picture. It's very beautiful. All Buddhism, all Buddhist epistemology (where does the universe come from?), all Buddhist epistemology is based on ethics. Are you compassionate or not? The world was created by compassion. It's very important. There's nothing meaningful you ever do which is not connected with helping other people. Okay, got it? That's creating your world, literally. So anyway, the word ‘name’, the word ‘name’... the Christians say in the opening book of Genesis, first line, “in the beginning was the word”. That's extremely beautiful. We should borrow that for Buddhism. Understand? The very first sentence of the Bible says, in the Old Testament, “in the beginning was the word. All things came from the word.” Listen, the word ‘name’ is shorthand for picture. When you hear some Buddhist philosopher, First Panchen Lama, say everything is ‘name only’, you should think ‘pot, picture only, Geshela told me. Everything's just pot pictures.’ When they say name only, terms only, nominally existing, get over it, just think pot. Not that kind of pot, John. Just kidding. Okay, a pot on the stove. Okay, all right, don't forget. When you say ‘name’ in Buddhism, think, for the rest of your life, think Geshe Michael's silver pot, okay?

By the way, how I feel about marijuana pot is not part of this talk, but I think it's a tremendous waste of time and money, which can only make you more stupid, and we're already stupid enough. We don't need, we don't need extra stupid. All the people that I know from my hippie days who smoked the whole time, they're all like, [spaced out] ‘ah, hi Geshe Michael’. If you want to be senile 20 years early, smoke marijuana.

What’s on the stove?

Okay, next picture, you guys. Next name.

I like this one. I don't know why, maybe Rob can help us understand that so many of Geshe Michael's examples are ice cream or donuts or… all the things my wife won't let me have. Tries to not let me have, that's why I travel. You’ve got to think about this, okay? And don't forget this picture, okay? And it's not easy to forget. I mean, it's easy to not forget, let's say. When you think of emptiness, think of this picture. And it's extremely important. I try to have fun when I teach, I joke around when I teach, but I'm talking life or death. Everything I say is life or death. If you understand it, you will live. If you don't understand it, you will die. It's very serious, okay? So anyway… but I like to have fun. I think with life and death, you should have fun. All right? If you're going to have a serious surgery, you should have fun. I was in the... the guy gave me the, what do you call it, anesthesia. I was joking around with him, he's like, are you all right? I'm like, yeah, I'm having fun.

Okay, ice cream means, the ice cream means the silver circle and the black line. I don't even want to call it a stick, got it? It's not a stick, it's a line. Silver circle and black line, okay? What's out there on the stove? It's just a silver circle and a black line. Then something comes out of the back of your head, for no reason at all, comes out here [in front of eyes] and coats the pieces. Unifies the pieces. It forces the pieces together, okay? That's the chocolate sauce. The chocolate sauce in this picture is the names coming out of your seeds of how did you treat people, Ezra, yesterday, okay? Were you a nice young man? By the way, welcome to Kyoto. It's good to have the whole family here for the first time. There's lots of husband and wife teams that debate, but there's only one that debates philosophy. Yeah, for a long time, and they're good at it, and you should learn from them.

The pictures come out of your mind like chocolate sauce, and they hit the, what? The silver circle and the black line. They hit it and they coat it, okay? They create a nice little pot. What did you say? Sundae? Don't get me hungry. If I had a real green room, I'd have an ice cream sundae in there when I get there. I'm just hinting, no, kidding. Okay, the chocolate sauce covers the pieces. The pictures come out of, what? Karmic seeds, and it feels, it feels like the back of your head. It's not really because those pictures, mental seeds have no location, okay? Mental seeds have no location. Mental seeds have no physical location. They are a possibility. They are a potential. They are not… they don't have a color, they don't have a shape, they don't have an east-west, north-south orientation. They just exist where they exist, okay? They open and the pictures come out, and the pictures cover the pieces and make the black line and the silver circle into a pot, okay?

So, I propose nowadays, and in this translation… by the way, the text was so difficult. Two thousand unconnected lines of poetry. You don't even know who's talking sometimes. You don't know if it's the Devil or the Angel, you know? It was so, so difficult that I wrote a commentary. In the last couple months, I wrote a commentary. So, I wrote… I put the commentary into the book. That's the first time I ever did that. So there's a commentary inside the book and you can easily read it now. And I'm sure Rosa, every time I finish a book, Rosa and Anatole get it done in 24 hours. Right, Ben? I get excited about a book, I tell them, get this one out immediately, and they're like, yeah, yeah. So anyway, it's ready, it's done. I have to polish it. But I put in the new word ‘seed pictures’, okay? And that's the chocolate sauce, got it? Okay? Seed pictures come out of the back of your mind. They come out of your head and they cover the pieces and they turn the pieces into a pot, okay, got it? There are no pots out there. If there was a pot out there, an ant would make a cup of tea. To an ant, it's the hell realm, it's Dante's Inferno trying to climb up the edge of a steel, of an aluminum pot that's red hot, okay? The same pot, the same thing you see as a pot is a hell realm mountain to an insect, to a roach. Of course, my teacher didn't have any roaches in the kitchen except one. But to the insect, this thing looks like a mountain of red hot steel, you see? It's very frightening, it's a terrible, terrible thing. If the pot was coming from the pot, the roach in the kitchen would make a cup of tea. Understand? The fact that a roach sees it as a mountain of pain proves that it's empty. That's a proof of emptiness, okay? That proves that it's coming from my seeds and not from its own side, okay? Got it?

All right, I wanted to... how many... what's my time, you guys? 15 more minutes? Okay, all right, I got it. I usually pretend I don't see those signs. By the way, I will do Q&A. I always promise, I rarely deliver, but I'll do Q&A, okay? By the way, my Q&A, you can ask any question at all, I don't care. Any subject, anything you want to talk about, I don't care, okay? I'm so old, I've taught for 50 years, and I heard every terrible thing, and I've been called, I think, every possible name, so nothing bothers me anymore. So you're very welcome. In Q&A, you're welcome to ask any question. Twenty-five years on the debate ground is a lot tougher than any question you can give me so I'm like relaxed, I'm fine, okay?

Luminous pictures

All right, next picture, you guys.

I told the AI… you maybe have artificial intelligence, I have an artificial idiot, and we're working together, we're working things out, but it's taking time and he's getting better, but he's still pretty artificial stupid. So I told the AI, I want a silver ring. He thought it was a finger ring, I guess. Then I said circle, then I said round object, and he just didn't get it. There's a certain point, you know, midnight, I'm working on some stupid reading, and I just give up, ‘Okay, I'll take your silver ring.’

Something I want you to know about, and I want you to hear it from the horse's mouth. Those pictures, when they come out of your mind, the first time you notice them, the first time you observe them, the first time you see them, they look like they have a halo around them, okay? They are luminous, they are shining, they have some kind of a lucid quality about them, okay? They are not… they don't look like metal or something like that. They look like halos or something like that. They look like fuzzy lights or something like that. And I just want you to, I'm trying to put a seed in your mind that you will have this experience sooner than if you didn't come to the class, okay? And I think the more detail I can give you, the better. One of the things that you will notice on the day that it happens to you is that the pictures coming out of your mind, the chocolate sauce coming out to cover the pieces, is luminous, okay? It's somehow, it's giving off a soft white light. And, you know, it's not like meeting Jesus or something. It's only about this far [an inch], okay? I mean, it's only a short halo, it's not like, you know, an atom bomb or something like that. It's just a soft white light that comes off of the pieces as they come out of your mind, okay? Actually what's coming out of your mind is a unified picture of a pot because what it feels like is that the silver ring and the black line are out on the stove, got it? It feels like the pieces are out on the stove and there's a unifying picture coming out of your mind of a pot. Because there is no pot on the stove, there is no picture of a pot on the stove, there's only clues, there's only indicators. BTAGS TZAM THA SNYAD TZAM MING TZAM Okay? And then your mind is sending out chocolate sauce. Your mind is sending out complete, nice, impossibly nice pictures of a pot, okay? There's a very famous emptiness teaching trick in the monastery where you get an apple and you eat half of it and you let it sit there for a couple days and the place where you ate it rots. And then you show the good side to the student and you say, you want to take a bite? And they're like, yeah. And then you let them take a bite and then suddenly the whole thing's rotten. You see, you never see the back of the pot. Your mind is filling out the back of the pot. It could be pizza on the back of that. You don't know. The front is aluminum, you can see that. But you don't really know what's in the back because you can't see it, okay? That's another sign. Pizza is another proof of emptiness, that's what I'm trying to say. Okay, so what did grandpa just say? My wife hates it when I say that because she said, that means I'm grandma. I said, okay. What else did Mike say? I said whole pot images are coming out of your mind, impossibly perfect. And they are luminous, okay? Got it? Okay, I think I said the silver and the stick are coming out of your mind, that's not what I meant to say. The silver and the stick are out there on the stove. Then there's a picture of a pot that comes out of your mind and covers the pieces like chocolate sauce. And then it becomes a pot on the stove. Unless you're a real roach, in which case it becomes a hot metal mountain. Got it? Then in the ant's mind, or the roach's mind, the karma seed is bad and a picture of a mountain of steel, red hot steel is coming out of their mind and unifying the same straight black and round silver. Got it? Okay, all right. So pay attention to the luminous part. And the day you see it, you'll know. I'm just helping you, I'm putting a seed in your mind to see it, okay?

Where does it feel like the pictures are coming from?

All right, my last picture today then I'll do Q&A.

We call [third eye] Ajna Chakra, right? It's the [BRUL BOR MA RGYAS 1:03:45 ?]. At the middle, [A?] is locative. [MA RGYAS?] means middle. [BRUL BA?] means eyebrows. [BRUL BOR?] is dual genitive. In the middle of the two eyebrows, which it’s not really, it's a little bit higher than that, here [at location of bindi in idim]. There's a chakra, Ajna Chakra. It's the one that goes like this [where the two channels meet at forehead] and there's a knot here. The two side channels cross here and continue back. They say between the eyebrows, but it's not really. It's a little higher. And if you ever want to contact it in meditation, if you feel sleepy in meditation, go here and then go a centimeter in. Go in a centimeter and you can feel it. When you meditate, you can try to feel it. You'll know when you hit it. It's like when the dentist hits the nerve and they go, do you feel anything? You're like, that's it, that's the one I was talking about. By the way, it doesn't hurt, but you're aware if you hit it. Take your mind here, [BRUL BOR MA RGYAS?] [to between eyebrows], go up a little bit, then drill down [into the head a centimeter] and it's a beautiful place to focus your mind and you will touch the Ajna Chakra. I think that there's some ancient Indian reason why women in India wear their, what do you call it? Bindi? They wear it there. They wear the spot there. They put it right there. Why is grandpa talking about Indian ladies? On the day that you have the stove on the pot experience, on that day, the pictures feel sensorially that they are coming out of seeds in the back of your mind and they feel like they're coming through this spot. They feel like they're coming out through this spot and then they expand. Then they cover the pieces. You will have a feeling that the pictures are coming out of a seed in the back of your mind. You do not see a seed, you're just aware that they are coming out of somewhere. They're coming out of nothingness really, they're coming out of potential. And then the picture travels to the front of your forehead and then from there it creates the reality in front of you.

I'm just giving you some things to think about. If you wanted this to happen to you… and by the way, if you get this far, you will see emptiness the same day, directly. It's a very interesting couple of hours after you take the tea out to your teacher and you clean the dishes and then you go to the temple to do your meditation. Those few hours are very intriguing. You cannot die during those two hours. No being in history ever died during those two hours. A nuclear bomb could go off, you would survive. Nothing in the universe can stop you from seeing emptiness directly if you get this far, on the same day. Nothing can stop it. It takes thousands of years to reach the fourth step of the path of preparation. It always takes two to four hours to see emptiness directly after that. It's amazing. You should be jumping up and down right now. Anyway, don't. No, it's okay. You should be though. Anyway, so I believe that's why the Ajna Chakra is so honored in India and in the yoga tradition.

All right. I just tried to plan a seed in your mind. I think those of you that fell asleep, it's a deeper seed, so don't worry about it. It will have its effect. It will have its effect. Be happy. Very few people in this world hear this madman's talk. Very few people have enough karma to hear this. Okay? Very, very, very few. All right. All right. Q&A. By the way, now you know what they mean. Next time they say name only, labeled, expressions only, you know what… they're saying, what? Pictures only. Pictures only. They're not talking about words. When they say ‘name only’, ‘only labels’, ‘only terms’, they're always talking about pictures, not verbalizations, that's not a big deal. The words represent the pictures, and the words change in every language. Okay. Madame, go ahead.

Q&A

[Student: Hi Geshehla. Thank you for teaching us. A couple of years ago during a Mixed Nuts Q&A, you mentioned that there are also dance texts in the database, ALL database. And I quote, you said that we could one day, we could someday translate one. Could we please translate a dance text?]

You know what they say in politics? They say, I will take it under consideration. No, I mean, which means I'll give it serious thought and I'll give it intention. But, you know, that depends on my health and other things. Whether I have time to do extra things depends on... But I'm happy to do it. I'm happy to try. Okay, maybe it's part of the Diamond Way course. Okay, there's a, it's a book called [jang chok. Say jang chok. Jang?] means to purify. [Chok?] is the short term for [choga 1:10:32 ?]. And this is a genre of literature. It's not a particular text. [Jang chok?] means, I mean a book may be called blah blah [Jang chok?] , but it's a kind of book which helps you to help another person through the bardo. Okay, it helps you… it's a guide book for you to guide another person after they die. And so it's very, very important, very useful to have. It's a wonderful thing if you can help a person who just died, if you have the tools to help a person. Bardo [dang dro?]. Say bardo. [Dang dro?]. [Dang?] is, [dang?] means a narrow path on the side of a treacherous mountain. A guy died in Sedona recently, like in the last week. He's an accomplished mountain climber, and he was on an easy rock. He was on Bell Rock. Which, you know, 10,000 tourists go there every year. And there's a narrow path going up the rock in Sedona and he just slipped. He's a master climber and he just slipped and he died. He fell. And it's very sad. And that's [dang?]. [dang?] means a slippery narrow path on a rocky surface. So the death books, books about guiding people through that experience are called [dang dro?], helping. That Tibetan Book of the Dead, Book of Liberation, something like that, that's part of its name. By the way, that particular book is fake. And you shouldn't follow it and you shouldn't read it, okay? There's a translation called the Tibetan Book of the Dead or something. It's just a fake, so don't, don't study that one. She's going to say, well then Geshehla, let's do the real translation. Okay, soon, soon. Okay, no problem. One more quick question. ‘Geshehla, if you want a quick question, why don't you give a quick answer?’

[Student: Thank you Geshehla for teaching us. I have a question on alcohol actually. I was doing a reflection yesterday on how alcohol affects our mind and practices. And I remember vaguely sometime, long time ago, I heard a story about how Buddha talked about alcohol, about how we should not consume more than a drop of alcohol from the wheat. But I couldn't find a verse that explicitly states it. Because if I were to convince someone else on the negative effects of alcohol, how would I do that? With a verse preferably. Thank you.]

Okay, good question. I'll tell a story because I like the story. I was translating the first Dalai Lama's commentary of the Abhidharmakosha of Vasubandhu called Tarlam Selje. There's two Tarlam Seljes. And the story was in there about the Buddha, somebody asked the Buddha, can I drink alcohol? And he was sitting on the grass as usual. By the way, those grassy areas are often called Rajavan, Garden of the King. There's a famous one called Jetavan, the Garden of Jeta, which was where the Buddha taught the Diamond Cutter Sutra. And I was there, I sat there. Xuansang wrote the instructions how to get there. And so those are beautiful grassy areas with a special, a certain look to them. And we're going to try to recreate one at Dragon's Head in Rim Rock, Arizona. We're going to try to recreate the Jetavan and make it look like that garden. But Buddha often taught… I sat where he taught the Diamond Cutter and there's a grassy place in front of it. And he picked a piece of grass. Someone said, can I drink alcohol? And he said, anyone who drinks the amount of alcohol that you could fit on the tip of this piece of grass, don't call yourself my student. Which is a terrible thing to say. It's one thing to say, ‘don't call yourself a Buddhist.’ But ‘don't call yourself my student’, it hurts to think about it. ‘Don't call yourself my student, if that's what you're going to do, don't call yourself my student.’ So, that's the famous one. The reason I think about it, I was on a plane to Bloomington, you remember this? No, Madison, Wisconsin. And there were a lot of Tibetans on the plane and one of them was sitting next to me. I don't know him. And he ordered a big martini or something from the stewardess. And I was like [shaking my head], you know. And then I thought, how can I tell him without criticizing him? And I had this cool idea. I had that book with me in Tibetan. And I found that line. And I said, are you Tibetan? He said, yeah. I said, man, I'm just learning the language, I was curious, what's this line about? And he got this funny look on his face like, are you sure you can't read Tibetan? And so anyway, it's in there. I can get it for you. Okay, it's in there. But there's also a beautiful essay about the 62 or 63 problems of drinking alcohol. And I think it's in Ben's book? Did we put it in there? Whose book? All the Kinds of Karma. We put it in All the Kinds of Karma. So that's a separate sutra and it's by Lord Buddha. And it gives, I think 62 or 63 problems of drinking alcohol. And you can find it in there, okay? I'll try to find the Abhidharma one for you. What you would do is get John Brady's database and you would look up the word. This is how you search John's database - you think of a word that's spelled unusually. Like RTZVA for grass is R-T-Z-V-A. It's a very unusual spelling. So you could look up RTZVA. And then you could look up CHANG, which means alcohol. And then you do a Boolean proximity search. You say, give me any book in which ‘tip of grass’ is found near ‘alcohol’. And it will take you to that in 10 seconds. And it's a very powerful tool that we use in our translation team, okay? So we can do that. If we had time, we could do it right now, but we don't have time. Okay, we're going to take a break. How long now? Twenty-five minutes. Take a 25 minute break and I'll see you when we start again. Thank you.

Class 2

12 December 2025

[6:48]

Okay, hi you guys. So this is Lam Rim class and it's to prepare for Diamond Way. And it's hopeless, okay. I taught Lam Rim for 14 years. I taught the greatest Lam Rim in the world for 14 years, but some people asked me to teach Diamond Way. And I thought today.. I have an idea. I've been worrying about it for months and I have an idea and I want to tell you the idea, and then I'll start teaching you Diamond Way, okay? But this is my idea. So my teacher taught me Diamond Way. He started, I think, 1977 or 1978. He started to prepare us for Diamond Way. He said, I'm preparing you for Diamond Way, I want you to learn Jorchu and Lam Rim. So he taught Liberation in the Palm of My Hands. He taught that twice, well, two-and-a-half times. He taught it once in New Jersey, he taught it once in Washington, D.C, and then he started it again. And he finished the whole book. I was lucky because I was his driver. So only one student heard it twice and that was me because I'm the driver and I have to wait for him when he goes to teach it. So he taught that to prepare for Diamond Way and then he gave us Diamond Way empowerment. So to study Diamond Way, to practice Diamond Way, you need empowerment, which is permission. That's permission from the teacher to study Diamond Way.

What is Diamond Way? In general, supposedly, it takes billions and billions of years to become Buddha. It takes billions and billions of years even after you decide. Even after you get bodhichitta, it can take hundreds of thousands of years. So traditionally, there's a quick path. There's a way to reach it in one lifetime, and that's Diamond Way. It's very beautiful, very fun, very happy, and very cool, obviously. And there's rules, but there's rules about teaching it. I have to follow the rules about how to teach it, where to teach it, who to teach it to. And I'm happy to teach it.So I, in New York, 1993, I started the ACI courses. I was doing my Geshe degree in 1995, my final exam. So a couple of years before that, I had to do my pre-Geshe degree. I had to debate for that degree. Then I thought it would be exciting if we could teach the Geshe degree to people who are not monks and not nuns. By the way, in those days, nuns were not allowed to study Geshe degree. So my teacher started to teach men and women equally the Geshe degree topics, including Lam Rim. And we both got criticism. We got criticism from people for teaching women the Geshe course. And we said, oh, that's okay. And we taught it anyway. So I started teaching in New York and I took the Geshe course. I divided it into 18 parts and I taught it for six years. I don't know if you know, but I taught it twice every week. I taught it for four days a week because you could choose to learn it in Tibetan language or you could learn it in English language. So I taught it four days a week for two different groups. So I taught the preparation for Diamond Way in New York. I taught, that's the 18 ACI courses. And that's the coolest part of the Geshe course. If you learned those 18 courses, I would say you understood the essence of the Geshe course. The Geshe course has a lot more detail, but also the Geshe course has a lot of breaks and you have no idea. It used to drive me crazy. You go to class and they say, we canceled the class. They say, why did you cancel class? Oh, the teacher decided to go to North India or something. When is he coming back? Nobody knows. What topic are we studying? Oh, every Geshe class has six or seven teachers. You learn the Geshe degree from your house teacher. There's 12 houses, 12 colleges. It's like Oxford. Then each of those teachers will teach at his own speed. So maybe you're studying page 100. I'm studying page 200. Somebody else is studying page, it's very disorganized. Do we have debate today? Nobody knows. If they ring the bell, come. If they don't ring the bell, maybe come. When I did my Geshe qualification degree in 1993, someone came to my room. They said, now. I'm like, what? They said, now. Now's your exam. I said, nobody told me. No, we don't tell anybody. Just come. I'm like, what if I was in the toilet? Would I miss my Geshe degree? They said, yep. I'm like, so everything is really disorganized in my time. I think it has always been that way. What I mean to say is if you study the 18 ACI courses, the foundation courses, you basically got the information in a Geshe degree. They spend a lot more hours, but it's not very well organized. You get a good foundation. Then I told my students, if you finish the 18 courses, I will teach you Diamond Way. Then at the end of the foundation courses, it was 1999, I decided to do a three-year retreat partly to prepare for Diamond Way. Then I said, okay, I'm going to go and retreat and I will think about it for three years, 1,000 days, how to teach Diamond Way. Then when I finished the retreat, am I being translated? Should I be pausing? Yes. Okay. Then when I finished retreat, I had a plan in my mind of Diamond Way courses, 18 courses. What's cool, I think, is that I did exactly the plan. I taught everything in the plan. I started 2003, something like that, 2004. Then I taught that for six years, I think. I wrote a Diamond Way course, 18 different parts. That's another, one of the reasons I wrote the course was Diamond Way study in a monastery, in the Geshe monastery, is very disorganized. Either you, maybe your teacher will, maybe your private teacher will teach you some Diamond Way. Then teachers will come, big, big teachers will come once a year, twice a year. They will give Diamond Way teachings for three days, four days. Then everybody goes. Then you don't know what they're going to teach. You don't know what subject it's going to be. If you learn Diamond Way, it's because your teacher, your personal teacher decides to teach it to you. Privately, we don't have Diamond Way courses in the Geshe monastery.We don't have a course. There's no course for Diamond Way study. There's two Diamond Way monasteries, Gyu Me and Gyu Tut. My teacher was a very high, he was a vice president of Gyu Me, Tantric college, which is very famous, and was outside of Lhasa. He was the vice president of that. He got a good training, but in general, in my time, it was very disorganized. There's no starting date. There's no ending date. There's no curriculum. There's no order of the courses. You just go. You just show up at the Tantric college and somebody will teach you something, whatever they like. There was no exact course. Then people would go there. They would go there, some of them, because if you finish two years at the Tantric college, you can reach a higher position in the organization. You can be the head of the organization, like that Ganden Thipa, the throne of Tsongkhapa. You cannot go politically higher in the monastic system if you don't go to the Tantric college. The minimum was two years. People would go for two years. Then the main study was to memorize the Guhyasamajita Tantra and be able to recite the ritual. That's all. They examine you for can you recite the ritual and do you generally go to some classes about it. There's no order. There's no structure. There's no organization of it. There's no required topics. People would just show up. Then they would float in and out. They wouldn't stay there. They would come for two months, go home for two months, come back. It's very disorganized. I was there the day they opened their debate ground and I debated there with the students. I was like, it just felt disorganized to me. I was kind of disappointed. Then when I was going to start my own Diamond Way series, I thought I would like to, I have a dream, I have a vision that I would like to do it very, very organized like Princeton. You go to class number one then you go to class number two. You do homeworks. You prove that you understand the material. You go through each of the steps. I designed, I took all the Diamond Way teachings and I organized them into one course, 18 courses. I think that's the first time anyone's done that in history. It's a great course. It's a really, really good course. Yeah. It's really high class. I took the greatest Diamond Way books and I translated them. I made them into a course. Then I made it very tough. I said, you have to finish the 18 courses before you can study Diamond Way course. I think we started with 80 people who survived from New York or something. The first 2003 came to Diamond Mountain in 80, I think it was 80 to start with. I think it reached 100 and something later. Then we went through six years. We followed the course exactly and we went through the six course, the six years of study and we did, I translated many thousands of pages of the Diamond Way texts and the greatest. The fun thing for my life, because I'm a foreigner and because I'm from a foreign country, I get to take the best of the best. No one has done it before so I can choose the greatest books in each category. The Diamond Way course is the best of the best. It's the cream of the cream. I translated all of them. Then I created courses. At the same time we were building Diamond Mountain Retreat Center and it was a lot of stress. I think it cost a million dollars or something. We all had like $20. We have to build this million dollar place and we have to build houses and we have to build toilets. We didn't have a water system and it was very, very stressful and it was very difficult. To do the courses at the same time, it was very difficult and it was thousands of hours of work. Towards the end, I think three quarters through, I just couldn't do it. I just couldn't keep up. Some of the courses were never finished. I think there's some of the courses there. I taught the classes from the Tibetan books but I didn't have time to translate it. I didn't have time to write the homeworks properly, examinations, things like that. It was too much stress on me and too difficult because I was also doing much of the fundraising and things like that. I never really finished the course but we got to the 18th course. Many people finished then they did a three year retreat, like that. Then I made it, in my heart, I said, you guys teach it to the next generation. I need to take a break. I was pretty tired and I just said, I'm going to go to Rimrock, New Jersey, Arizona. I did a long retreat. I rented a house on a mountain and I did like a one year, I did like a silence by myself and I just stayed there. Then I finished the Diamond Way courses. I finished all the translations and I found some more text. I found some more materials. I cleaned up the courses. I translated a huge amount of extra material and then I just decided I'd rather my students teach it. I thought if I teach it, they won't teach it. You see what I mean? I have this problem in my life. If I teach it, my students won't teach. I told them, I'm not going to teach it again. You guys have to teach it. I waited for how many years? That was what year I left Diamond Mountain? 2010? 2011? Something like that. I waited 15 years to see if they would teach it. Some of them did and they did some of it. Then I just thought, so for 15 years I didn't teach it, although I kept translating and studying. Then I was in Kyoto three years ago, something. I never go out with my students. I never take the class out. I don't do things like that. I don't have time. I'm too tired. Then I was walking near Takeshimaya and some student met me and they said, we're having dinner. Your students are having dinner upstairs. Do you want to have dinner with us? I'm like, you know, it's not relaxing. Someone's going to try to sell me something. I'm like, please, please, come have, the food's already ready. I'm like, okay. Then I went up there and I remember I was sitting and there's, this is called CSP. This is a special group of business people and I taught them for eight years or something. Yeah, it's a bunch of people that I taught for many years in China and they're sitting across from me and I think two of them, they're like, Geshe-la, will you teach us Diamond Way? I'm like, yeah, sure. Then I'm like, whoa, wait a minute. Then they said, you promise. It was exactly like that. I didn't plan it. I didn't have any idea to teach Diamond Way. I didn't want to teach Diamond Way. They asked me so sincerely. They were very, very sincere and I could feel it. I couldn't say no. I said, okay, yeah, all right. When? Sometime. Then I thought 200 lifetimes from now. Then, but I felt at that moment like I gave a promise. I felt like I promised. All this time I've been getting ready for that and preparing Diamond Way course for them. Then what happens in this situation is other people hear about it and they say, can I join? Can I join? I'm like, I don't know. I don't have a place. I don't have a time. I don't have a student. Everything else is okay. Then I said, okay, I'll do it and people can join. Then almost three years ago that small group, CSP, I started to teach them the preparation for Diamond Way. I like to do it in a relaxed way. I don't like to be on a train schedule or something like that. I just taught them in a relaxed way and they finished a few weeks ago. They finished three years of preparation. People have joined them from other groups. We will start. I will start the empowerment for them this year, maybe in the next few months. But, okay, big but, I have a kidney problem. I didn't know I have a kidney problem. I took a blood test eight years ago and the doctor said, you need to visit a kidney doctor. I'm like, why? They said, just do it. I visit the kidney doctor and they say, you have kidney disease. I said, what's that? They said, your kidney is going to get worse and worse and then you're going to die. I'm like, oh, okay. What do I do? They said, you can't do much about it. Don't eat so bad food. Drink lots of water. I'm like, okay. Then they said, you have to come to the doctor every six months. We will check how far does it, it gets worse and worse. There's no cure. They said, we'll just check you every six months. We'll let you know when you're going to die. I'm like, okay, thanks. Now the number has reached a place, I don't feel bad, I feel normal. I can work, I can teach. I feel really happy and relaxed. But it will, if I have a kidney transplant now, maybe I can go another 10 or 15 years. If I don't, then it's going to get messy, maybe three years, four years, something. I'm like, okay, I'll do a transplant. That requires a year of preparation. It requires a lot of technical stuff. It requires a kidney. I got everything ready. Then there's 200,000 people waiting for a kidney. There's 6,000 people waiting for the operation. Luckily the operation, the best one in the world is probably in Phoenix, Arizona. It's two hours from my house. It looks like we can do it. The success rate is 99.9%. It's not a bad thing. But they have to hurt your immune system. They have to kill your immune system. I will get sick from everything. Every time someone catches a cold, I will catch it. Every time I'm on an airplane, I'll get sick. It's similar to AIDS or something like that. It's similar to that. Anyway, but it's better than dying, right? Anyway, I can't guarantee when I can teach Diamond Way, how I can teach Diamond Way. But it looks okay. I passed all of the, there's 27 exams. Very complex exams, including MRIs. I passed all of them.They said, okay, you can do it. You can do a kidney. But don't travel for six months or a year or something like that. Don't try to go to Kyoto, for example. So I'm like, okay. I think they'll do it in the next six months, but we don't know for sure. We have to wait for everybody to agree. Anyway, before I promise you Diamond Way, I have to warn you that maybe you have to come to the hospital and sit with me or something. But it should be okay. I don't want you to get serious. Now you all got serious. Relax. Don't worry. It's okay. But I can't promise the date that I can do your empowerment. I can't promise all the details like that. We have to just do month by month. We have to see how it goes. Understand? Go like that. All right? Okay. Then I have a problem. Do I put all your groups together? Do I try to teach 10 different groups Diamond Way? That's a lot of time. My time is extremely tight. My day is extremely tight. I work 18 hours a day. All the time. I don't know how many days I have. I don't know how long my life will be. It's very difficult for me to teach it 10 times or something like that. It would be much better if I could just show everybody in one group. Each group has a very different personality. The CSP people, I've been teaching them almost 10 years. Then some people in this class, I never met you. It's very difficult for me to just mix everybody together. Where do we do it? I think we should go to Brazil or something. I mean, not everybody can travel and it's very complicated. I've been praying for guidance about it. I have a proposal, which I want to tell you today. Don't be so serious, Silvia. It's a good proposal. It's a happy proposal. One of the groups, mainly the CSP group and other related groups, they bought a large piece of land near my house. It's 1 million square meters. 1.3? Any 1 point something. It's a huge place. It's 200 acres? 300? 300 acres. My house is on one sixth of one acre. It's 2,000 times bigger than my house. It's a big place and it's beautiful. It's super beautiful. By accident, it has a wonderful classroom that can fit 150 people. The owner was going to tear it down and they said, do you want it before I tear it down? We're like, yeah, okay. But it's a beautiful, beautiful place, beautiful classroom. Many years ago, one CSP group asked me, will you teach Diamond Way? Will you make a special place to teach Diamond Way? They offered to build a special building just to teach Diamond Way. We were at Princeton University. I took the class there. How many people? 100? Went to Princeton? Yeah, we went to Princeton. Outside of Princeton, there's a small private institute. It's called Institute for Advanced Study, IAS. It was built for Einstein and for Oppenheimer. It was a place near the university. You can walk there, but it takes a while. It was kind of an advanced research building. Einstein had a house near there. I lived there. I lived near there for a couple years. It's a beautiful, beautiful institute in a beautiful forest, very close to Princeton. We asked the university, could we do a program there? They said no, because they still do secret research there. Then we met the director and we said, could we rent the classroom? She said, you know what? You can do a class outside on the grass. You can bring your students. You can have a microphone. You can sit under a tree. You can have a class. Then you can tell everybody you taught at the Institute for Advanced Study. Actually, it's outside, but it's the same thing. Then I said, okay, that's cool. We had the class. We did a good class. Two things happened. One red fox ran into the circle and went like this and ran away. We were like, that's weird. Then there came a, we call plainclothes policeman. It's a big bump here. You know what I mean? They carry a gun all the time. He said, I'm a guard here. I'm security. We're like, hi, we have permission. He said, I just canceled it. You can go home. You have five minutes to get off the property. They still do nuclear research there. Anyway, we were looking at the building. I should show a picture, but I don't have it. It's extremely beautiful. That group said to me, if you teach Diamond Way, we will build a building like that. We will make an institute like that. You can teach it there. Now the property has been bought. It's near my house. If I have a kidney transplant or something, I can almost walk there. It's a very, very beautiful place. Part of the idea is that we could teach it there, if necessary. I'm happy to travel to Kyoto. I'm happy to travel to Munchen. Where are you now? Close. Yeah, see? Wherever people decide, I'm happy to go there. What's best for most people? Probably Kyoto is easier. Now I still have another problem. Each group that I have, or each group that I share my teaching with, they are different. Each one has different... I have a YSI yoga group, right? We have a YSI yoga group. We have ACI classical Geshe course group. We have CSP business group. We have DCI, thousands of people studying business or success system, non-religious. Then we have PEP, YLP, SLP, DSEU. We had a big meeting a few days ago. They said, when are you going to stop making new organizations? I said, when we run out of letters. Somebody did the math. How many? 6,500 combinations of three letters. We still have a few more we can do. But each group has its own personality. I don't think a one-diamond weight course is going to fit everybody. I like to say, my wife Veronica, beautiful angel of my life, we saw a cowboy store in Cottonwood and she said, I'm going to pick up some jeans. I'm like, okay. We went in there. Of course, there's no chair for the man. You have to stand. She tried on 42 pairs of jeans. I stood there, I counted them. Don't tell her, I'll kill you. She tried 42. How many did she buy? Zero. I always remember that. Teachers are like jeans. Teachers are like jeans. Every person has the teacher that will fit them. I'm a tight pair of jeans. Not everyone can put on me. Everyone needs the teacher who will fit them. You see what I mean? You try to get into tight jeans, you're going to be uncomfortable for a long time. You get in jeans that are too big, they're going to fall down. Then you have another problem. You understand? Everyone has their own teacher that they're attracted to. I'm happy to share Diamond Way. I'm not selling Diamond Way. The classes are free. I'm not selling Diamond Way. I'm not asking you, please come to my Diamond Way course. If you want, if you're serious, I'm happy to teach. If you're not serious, I'll still teach you. But you know, I'm busy. I've got lots of things to do. I don't have to teach. But I'm very happy to teach. I've been struggling in my heart. How do I teach 10 different groups, 10 different Diamond Ways? That's extremely difficult. The CSP people and the YSI people and the ACI people, they're all different. They're completely different groups, different personalities, different interests. What I came up with, here's my proposal. I have those 18 courses from the old days. I never finished them. The readings were never finished. Even the readings I finished, I didn't clean up. Then I went to the next course. I didn't have time to finish. I would like to finish those courses in a beautiful way. They come from many Diamond Way classics. Due to John Brady's kindness, we have many Diamond Way books. We have thousands of Diamond Way books. They are unbelievable. They are very, very beautiful. What I would like to do is, and I started this morning, okay? So I decided, the Angel-Devil book that I taught you earlier today, I finished that two days ago. Yesterday. I finished the introduction yesterday. Then now I have a space in my life. I've been doing that for 14 years. Now I have space. I have two, three hours space every morning. So I would like to re-clean up all those courses, translate those books. I have other Diamond Way books that I finished in the last 10 years, 15 years, okay? Many. I would like to consolidate all of them. Then I would like to design Diamond Way courses for each group. Different groups, okay? So YSI, if YSI is interested, the new director, I would be happy to design a special Diamond Way course just for YSI people. Then I would like to design a course for Five Houses people, separate Diamond Way course. Then a Diamond Way course for DSEU or CSP. I would like to create an institute at that property, at that building, where I can do that work. So it's kind of like Dharma Einstein place, where I can create Diamond Way courses for each different group, who's interested. Because I don't think one pair of pants is going to fit everybody. I don't think I can teach everybody the exact same Diamond Way course. I think the YSI Diamond Way course should be heavily Mahamudra and the Mahasiddhas. It should be taken from those sources. Although there should be core books that are the foundation of all the Diamond Way courses. But then each Diamond Way course, and I propose, you ready? Hold on to your chair. I propose a Diamond Way course for DCI. Which is non-religious. You see what I mean? DCI, a principle of DCI is we don't teach religion. We teach DCI, I taught DCI in Uzbekistan to Muslims. I taught DCI in Israel to Jewish people. I taught DCI in America to Christian people.I taught Communist Party members DCI. I think DCI needs a different Diamond Way. DCI needs its own Diamond Way. It should be appropriate for people who are not religious and people who don't want to be religious. I think there should be a... Diamond Way doesn't have to be religious. Diamond Way is a way of life. Diamond Way is a way of seeing things. I think it would be cool to have an institute where Grandpa can relax with his three kidneys. So later on you're going to be jealous of me. They don't take out your kidney, they give you an extra one. Because your old kidney still does 3%, 4%. They say, leave it. Let's just put another one in. I'll sit there with my three kidneys. Probably make me more smart. I would like to tailor Diamond Way courses for different groups. But with the core teaching and translate the books. I would like to invite other teachers to help. We do that. We do the Diamond Way that way. I'm very happy if you choose to study Diamond Way with anybody else. It's fine with me. I'm too old to be jealous. Okay? Luckily. Like two years ago, probably, I'd be jealous. But you go to any teacher in the world that you want to. It's fine. I don't mind. I don't care. You want to study any, I don't know, ESP from Mars applied to good diet or something. I don't mind. Whatever you want to do is fine with me. My course will be pure ancient classics. It will not have any weird added stuff. That's what I teach. I don't teach weird stuff. I just teach the classics. That's why it was called Asian Classics. But anything else you want to do, I'm too old to worry about it. But that course will be very pure and it will be tailored to the needs of different groups. It will include spiritual groups and non-spiritual groups. Okay? Cool? Yeah. Okay. Thank you. And that's all. So I started this morning. I said I'm not going to wait for the students. I'm just going to start it. So, you know, I have to... I would like to translate many of the classics and I would like to clean up those 18 courses. I'd like to finish the 18 courses. They still need a lot of work. They need a lot of cleaning. It occurred to me that I've been teaching for 50 years. I wrote those courses when I had been teaching for 25 years. So in theory, I'm twice as wise. Okay? I didn't say it's correct. I just said in theory, I have learned much more about that tradition than when I taught it the first time. And I'm excited to work on that. I can do it. Okay? Mazal? Good? All right. The exact timing is up to my kidney doctor. We don't know. And I'll tell you as soon as I know anything. We're kind of doing it a little earlier than I have to do it because I'll be stronger. I'd like to take any questions about this idea or any suggestions. Or if you want to just take a nap. Yes, Mr. Kramer. Wait, we need a microphone. Microphone sign on me. Okay. All right. Here we go. Congratulations on being here. Congratulations on your book. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you. Yeah, Ezra. Very grateful to be here. Spelunker. It's an incredible honor to be here. And dramatist. I just thought I would put out there DCC. Just to translate something. Any one of us would do it. We all have books. We're all busy. But I know that I speak for everyone in the group that would be so happy if we can learn alongside with any of the work that you're doing to take one of those slots, to take any amount of slots, to devote to learning to translate that vernacular, that language, would be an incredible honor for our organization, whichever of us you would be interested, or adding a 73rd mix nut at any time. I would just love to make that request if it's appropriate. We'd love that. I wasn't thinking to do that because I'm already overbooked. But the request is so beautiful that I cannot deny it. But I propose we do it as a group and not one by one because I can't do that. I propose we take one book as a group and do it. Okay? Mazaw. Mazaw. Mazaw. Mazaw. In the business, you have to hear it. Mazaw. All right. Okay, Mazaw. It means... Yeah, I can't see doing 12 different Diamond Wave books, translating. We don't have time, but I'm happy to devote one class every 12 classes, something like that? Okay, Mazaw. Okay. All right. We'll figure it out. Anything else, kids? No? I go home early? Wang Xia. Why? Thank you, Geshe-la. I don't have any questions. I just want to share my thoughts. Because just now you said you will have Diamond Wave for ACI, for CSP, for DSCO, for everybody, but not for DCI. So I'm thinking, where is DCI? And you finally said Diamond Wave for DCI. I'm so happy. I said Diamond Wave for DCI. Yeah, that's why I said, when I heard you said Diamond Wave for DCI, I'm so happy. So thank you very much. Thank you. Let me clarify. Let me clarify my idea. And I'm glad you asked, okay? I'm glad you said that. And thank you for saying that. And by the way, Wang Xia is going to help us run this year. So I think I did 12 DCI courses, foundation courses, like how to get rich, how to find a girlfriend, how to stay healthy, like that. I finished that 12 courses. Then I promised them advanced courses. And I did, I said, I'll give you 12 advanced courses. I finished five of them. And they are getting so advanced that I get many students like this. And I'm a little scared to keep going like that. By the way, they are very correct. They are very deep. But DCI is meant for non-religious people. DCI is meant for, you don't have to be a Buddhist. You don't have to be spiritual. You don't have to be religious. We don't teach that. We just teach the ideas for any person in the world. And to be honest, Wang Xia, so now I'm on course number 18. I did for 18 years. And those manuals are hard. Those manuals take me six weeks of all day work. They are three, four, five hundred pages. They are a lot of pressure and they are a lot of hard work. I think, now that we have five advanced DCI levels, I think the DCI Diamond Way would fit very nicely into the next seven slots. The next seven DCI courses. You see what I mean? So, yeah. And they will not be religious. The government of China just approved my book, the Diamond Cutter Business Book. It's been published now. I got my first royalties. No, but we have a good relationship with the government and we're very careful and we obey the law. We follow the law very carefully. So I will teach Diamond Way in a non-religious way that every business person and every family person can use. Okay? Like that. Cool? By the way, the very first Diamond Way teachings were designed for business people. People don't understand that. They were designed for, the first kings of Kalachakra were politicians and business owners. Diamond Way was originally designed for busy people and business owners and politicians. They were the first. Diamond Way was invented for them. Okay? Cool? So I think the DCI course is going to be the coolest. Geshe-la, I have a question too. Okay, hi sleepy. This sounds like a very five houses approach to teaching Diamond Way. And I'm wondering if you can say a little bit more about the original 18 courses you designed. Who are they for? And how should we think about it if people are interested in those courses or these courses? Should they do one? Should they do both? Things like that. How should we think about the original ones? Yeah, good question. The 18 original Diamond Way courses, a couple things. Number one, they need to be cleaned up. I need to finish them. Like there are some of them that were never finished because there was just too much pressure, too much time. It's thousands of pages of translation. So I commit to finish them. I commit to cleaning them up. So that will be, you know, the five houses Diamond Way course will be, you know, I can clean up those 18 nicely. If I would like to retranslate a lot of the sections, you know, I have, I'm twice as old Dharma-wise as I was then. And I learned, by the time you finish 18 courses, you understand the first one. Okay. So this is, that's the nature of things.When I redo things, I learn a lot and I do them much better the second time. So I commit to finish those. But my concept, my general strategy, given my age and my health, is that I would, I used about 10 major Diamond Way texts for those 18 courses. I used, those courses come from 10 major Diamond Way classics. I would like to clean them up and publish them as the 10 classics. You see what I mean? I would like to give you the book of Naropa's Six Practices as a separate book. And I would like to give you, you know, Vajrayogini practice according to four or five different authors. You like that? I would like to, what I'd like, my strategy that I would like to do is finish the original books and then modify them for courses. You see what I mean? Because I never finished all of the books, but it's easy for me to do now. I have a lot more ability to do it now. I can do it very, very fast. So I started one of them this morning and then I would like to add maybe five or six new books to that set. So I think the Five Houses version of the Diamond Way courses will be the most technical or the most detailed. The DCI version will be the most usable. Okay? And I would like to have both. I would like to have something everyone can use and I would like to have something that has a strong tradition behind it, that has the originals. You see what I mean? I would like both. So I think, I see Five Houses as the holder of the original courses and the information, the correct information, for a Buddhist. That's ACI, Five Houses, mostly Buddhists. There's a non-Buddhist track, right? That's up to you. But I think there's a place, there's a unique place for Five Houses practice of Diamond Way and there's a unique place for even the secular Five Houses Diamond Way, but it's a lot of work and you need, Five Houses needs five heads and five assistant heads. Five Houses needs ten good people to manage it. And that has to come. That has to be or else it won't be possible. It won't be possible to have those Five Houses Diamond Way courses if you don't have a strong group of people. Cool. So around the original courses, for those who are teaching them, how should we think about that? I need to clean them up and I need to make them more accurate. I'll tell you one more thing about the original courses. I remember distinctly I was driving in a car from, what's that little town near, near my three-year retreat place? St. David. Tombstone. I was driving from St. David to Tombstone. I was a passenger in the car. The driver was a friend of ours. She got a ticket that night. It was midnight. I was doing the homeworks on my laptop. We were driving to, Bisbee is it? Near Tombstone? Yeah. We got stopped. We got pulled over.These are the conditions under which I wrote the homeworks. All the time. It was always like that. I was totally exhausted. It was midnight. The class is the next day. I'll tell you something that happened. Under those circumstances, the homeworks got too long. No, they're way too long. It doesn't help anybody. It's not like people spend more time. They spend the same time and they just copy the answer. Somebody finished the whole Dime Away course in one weekend. They copied the answers for three days straight. No, I'm just saying, they're too, to be honest, as a course, they're too complicated to put into practice easily. They need to be cut down. They need to be cleaned up. They need to be organized. It was a great thing. It never existed in the world, but it needs to be tightened up. The information has to be reduced to something you can practice in 20 lifetimes. Like that. In my opinion. That's my opinion. That's going to take some work, but I feel up for it right now. I feel like it's time in my life. Cool. Thank you. Dear Geshe-la, please stay and teach us for a long, long time. I would like to know how we, as your students, can support you in your process. Perhaps you could comment. We know that scientists tell us that group work, group meditations, and group prayers are very powerful. Could we perhaps do like every Friday or every Sunday where we unite and pray for your health and meditate together to create a supportive field for your process? Could you just comment on that and maybe suggest for us to do something for you? Okay. Thank you. Thank you. We're always fundraising. All our groups are fundraising all the time. But sometimes I think our group is for fundraising and not for anything else. But me personally, I think because I practice DCI, my finances are very, very good. I have more than enough. I don't need anything. I'm happy to take more money and spread it around. But I personally don't need anything for finance. In my time, I complain a lot and then I felt guilty that I complained too much. Then people are afraid to, they're afraid to say hi to me. They're like, do you have time Geshe-la? Can I say hi? And I'm like, oh, I'm sorry. So I want to say in public, I complain almost every day about how people are wasting my time. But I don't mean it. I just mean I love you and you're welcome to talk to me. I don't hate everybody. I will still complain. By the way, one thing I really need is my wife. I need my marriage. I can't do five houses 24 hours a day. I need a private life. That's my diamond way of practice. I need time with my wife. So I think, and I need people to respect her time. Because what happens is if people can't get my attention, they go to her. And then she, she's not, that's not her job and it's not her, it's not what she does. It's not, she has other things to do. So people, it's very common that someone will, will call her for three hours or something like that. And it's, I think please be careful with that.She's, she's, she didn't sign up for that. She, she signed up to be Vajrayogini. So, you know, respect my time, but don't get crazy. Okay, like don't, don't refuse to say hi if I see you because you're afraid. And if you have an emergency, I'm happy to help, you know. So I do complain a lot about it, but in general, you know, I'm here to spend time for you. That's my job. So, and I know that. So, but we have to be efficient with how I help you. We have to think about that. As far as prayers and things like that, but I need a little bit of logistical help. You know, I need people who I can say drive me to Phoenix to get my stitches on or something. You know, that kind of thing I need pretty constantly. But I would say, in this tradition, the best way to keep your teacher healthy is to have harmony in the group. You know, that's the famous karma to keep your teacher alive. It's not donating to the Kidney Foundation or something like that. It's harmony. It's loving each other. When the whole group, everyone is really, really having fun together. I say harmony and fun is synonym. You know, if you're really having fun together, that's what will keep me alive. Okay? That's what will help. So, like, hey. Thank you. And if you don't have fun and you fight with each other and you give me a lot of extra hassle, I'll still take care of you. And I'll still teach you. But it's a lot easier if everyone's having fun. Okay? And not too serious. You're all too serious. Okay? Like, I mean, if you really practice well, even going to surgery is fun. And I'm serious. I mean, I'm fun serious. Okay? No, I am. And the surgeons all think I'm crazy. One surgeon said to me, we were laughing, right? You were there. And the lady said, you're just laughing at all this. You're having fun here. I said, yeah. She said, can I ask you a question? I said, what? She said, do you meditate? Anyway. Okay. Can we take a break? Yeah. I'll see you. So that's my idea. If you have more questions, I'll answer in the coming days. Okay? Tomorrow we have, what two things? We have a translation class first with Ben Kramer. By the way, I know those are boring. I know you don't understand anything. Ezra's like, that's my dad. Now, those translation classes are extremely powerful for your subconscious. And stuff will happen to you 20 years from now. And you'll say, I'm so glad I went to Ben's class. So trust grandpa. Okay? Grandpa knows some things that you don't know. Come to those classes and listen to them. Especially fall asleep in them. The information goes into your brain subconsciously. Okay, that's the class. And then after that we'll have, you want to introduce Jasmine? We'll have Bodhisattva Bodhisattva Vows Ceremony. Okay? You don't have to do anything, just show up. If you already took Bodhisattva Vows, you're welcome to take them again. When you take monk's vows, nun's vows, you cannot take them twice. You have to take them once until you die. GC SO'I PHAR DU But Bodhisattva Vows, you can take over and over again. And it's nice. It's a fresh hit of, what do you call it? Vitamins. Okay? It never hurts to take them again. Okay? And so you're very welcome to take them as many times as you can. If you're not sure whether to take them, just take them. You want to hear a cute story? Yes. My teacher was going to give us empowerment in Fairfax, Virginia. Some professor from George Washington University. And we were cooking dinner in the kitchen. I think 20 students were taking the initiation and this lady who owned the house was a wealthy, spoiled professor from a university. then suddenly in the middle of, we're all cooking, we're all cutting vegetables and stuff and she asked my teacher, Rinpoche, can I ask you a question? And he said, what? And she said, we're going to take an empowerment, right? Today. He said, that's why I'm here. And she said, do we take vows at that time? Yes, you get permission to take your vows. You learn the, permission to learn the vows. Then she said, I heard that if you don't keep those vows, you go straight to hell. And it seems a little dangerous to me. And Danny, he said, no problem. And she said, why? And he said, you're going to hell anyway. You know? And she said, what? And he said, you're going to hell anyway. But when you get there, you know, the hell people talk to each other. He said, why are you here? I killed my mother. Why are you here? I stole money from my grandpa. Why are you here? I broke my Diamond Way vows. I'm not like you guys. Understand? Anyway, take him again. Okay. There's a chance he won't go there. Okay. Okay, done. I'll see you tomorrow.

Class 3

14 December 2025

Okay, thank you for the welcome. And we are going to do the angel-devil text, right? First, the devil debates with the angel, and we will continue with that. And then we will take a break and a photo I think, right? Group photo? Judgment? Group photo? After this class, yeah. And then we will start Song of My Spiritual Life, Gibson Chung's book, okay? So ... you guys ... Yeah, I'm gonna read something. I'm on verse 374 you guys, but you can just show the picture of the person writing. I think so. You ready? Yeah. Maybe. Maybe. Purple haze. Yeah. It's already too much light on the top of my head. Now extra. Is that okay? Not really. It's okay. I guess I'll hide. I mean ... It doesn't work. Okay, now I can ... that thing's shining in my eyes. Actually, it should go closer. Yeah. Angle-wise. Okay, let's try there. Go back? Middle way? Middle way? So I'm back in the first place. All right. It just feels far away. All right, here we go. In the book, the author says, cause and effect, the way things work, the way things start and stop, and everything of the like, is perfectly unmistaken and never deceptive. And I wanted to connect this verse to what we talked about the first day, about seed pictures. And I like this kind of new word for me. Just before you touch the diamond world, just before you see emptiness directly, probably I'd say always two to four hours before that, you see dependent origination, or you can say dependent events, okay? You always see it directly. And that's very, very rare. And if you ever see how your mind is making pictures, what kind of picture? Chocolate sauce pictures. If you ever see it, then you're going to touch emptiness on the same day, okay? It's really cool. So, he's talking about that. And by the way, this devil debates an angel text, just to remind you from 14 years ago, it started, the book is about Mahamudra, okay? Mahamudra. Mahamudra has many, many meanings. And in this case, it means a meditation on your own mind, okay? The object that you take for ... By the way, I'm going to try to talk with gaps, okay? The object that you take for your meditation is your own mind, okay? And here, he's finally talking about how we make pictures. And those pictures come out of seeds in your mind, okay? Those seeds are always planted by being good or being bad to other people, okay? And there's also neutral seeds, if you want to be technical, okay? So, it's very interesting. We were talking about AI in the CSP classes. We had a whole four days, I think, about AI and its potential. Jamie Plant showed me a very beautiful AI, which I hope we can talk about you showing to everybody. He's been working really hard on it. He has designed a very effective AI for the knowledge base, but it's not public yet, but I got to see the preview, okay? And we'll talk about that. So, seeds are coming, seeds are open. And that means that the whole universe is coming from how you treat other people, okay? And a normal AI, no matter how sophisticated it is, no matter how much money you spend on it, if the data is incomplete, if the data set is incomplete, then the AI cannot make a valid decision. You see what I mean? If the AI doesn't know about colors, then it can't design a book cover or something like that. It doesn't know enough. It doesn't have enough information to synthesize an answer. You see what I mean? All existing AI programs, except maybe Jamie's, they don't use the fact that you are creating the world in front of you, that that world is coming out of seeds in your mind, okay? That fact is missing in all AI models so far. I think so. So, if the AI is incomplete, then whatever solution it comes up with is going to be incomplete. AI doesn't say nowadays, if you say, should I do a kidney operation in the winter or the summer, which is better for me, you know, and then the AI will say, summer, right? I think it said summer. But it didn't ask me, have I killed animals lately? You see what I mean? It didn't ask me the most important question, because that surgery will come from seeds in my mind, you see? Every detail of that surgery will come from seeds in my mind. So, we were talking about Ming Tsang, Tan Ye Tsang, Tak Tsang, meaning in name only. And then you hear that over and over, you know? You study Middle Way, you study emptiness, people say in name only, only names, only, you know, and it's very, very, I think, misleading. The word imputation or label, it's very, very easy to misunderstand. The names is not the big thing, okay? Names differ from language to language, different languages use different words, that's not the main idea. The main idea is name, the word name, when we say things exist in name only, that name means pictures, that name means pictures coming out of your mind, okay? Don't think of it as words coming out of your mind, okay? Got it? It's just a nickname for a picture, okay? A picture coming out of your mind. Now he's on to a very interesting thing. He says, okay, do you understand how, I don't know, someone you don't like, you know, someone's in front of you, you don't like them. Do you understand that they are pictures coming out of your own seeds? Do you understand that? Yes, I understand that. Do you understand that those pictures, seed pictures, are coming out of seeds in your mind? Do you understand that those seeds were planted by you being nice to other people or not being nice to other people? Do you understand that? Yes, I understand that. So you understand that your whole reality is coming from how you treat other people. Got it? And that means if you wanted to be successful in your life, if you wanted to have a nice life, then you just have to focus on one thing. It's taking care of other people. Everything else doesn't matter. Everything is based on treating other people nice. And then you plant seeds, and then those seeds open, they become luminous pictures in the back of your head. Again, it's just a tactile misapprehension. It feels like it's the back of your head. It's not really, okay? A seed doesn't have any location. A seed doesn't have any width or length. A seed is a possibility. It doesn't have any physical existence. You see what I mean? And so it doesn't have a location.When I say seed in your mind, the seed could be in the bathroom, underwater. Understand? It doesn't matter where it is. It doesn't have a place, okay? Seeds open. Pictures come out of those seeds. They are luminous. They are shining, okay? They have some quality where they are shining. When you see them for the first time, you will say, oh Geshe Michael was right. Geshe Michael knew what he was talking about. Then those luminous pictures feel like they're coming out of here. Ajna chakra location for you YSI guys. Okay? It feels like the pictures are coming out from here. And then they go to the silver circle and the black straight. I'm not even going to call it stick because stick is not a shape. The straight black and the round silver. Out there is only straight black and round circle. And then a picture of a pot comes out of your mind and it lands like chocolate sauce on the pieces. The pieces are like ... They told me, Geshe-la, don't raise your hands like that. I said, why? They said, your belly button sticks out. Then I said, how do they can see that? Anyway, okay, sarcasm. Now, today we have a new challenge, okay? Today we have a new question. Now I know why you're laughing.Okay. Now, today we have a new interesting challenge and we're going to talk about cause and effect, okay? Look, Geshe-la, I understand how the ... I understand how the pen, as a stationary thing, if the pen doesn't move, say it's a pen, okay? If the pen doesn't move, I understand my seeds are opening, I understand pictures are coming out, I understand they chocolate sauce on these silver straight, okay? I understand that, okay? Now we're going to go, today we're going to go deeper, okay? We're going to go one more step, okay? And that's the question of, you guys got a real pen? This is not a real pen. That's a real pen. Just ... Thank you, Geshe. By the way, thank you for the whole program. Yeah. Today we're going to talk about how can things happen through seeds, okay? The other day, two days ago, we decided that the pen is just chocolate sauce on the pieces of the pen, okay? The chocolate sauce came. Chocolate sauce came from seeds in my mind. When you teach it, you should never say came from seeds in my mind. You should say came from seeds in my mind, in which I planted by being good or not nice to other people. And you got to think that. Every time you teach emptiness, every time you teach the reality of things around you, if you don't go to treating other people nice or treating other people bad, then you don't really understand what you're talking about, okay? If you hear someone talk about emptiness and the conversation doesn't reach being nice to other people, taking care of other people, that person doesn't understand emptiness, okay? It's very interesting. Cool? Okay, so now today we got to go deeper. Geshe-la, I understand the pen is pieces, and I understand, you know, there's pictures coming out of seeds which I planted by being nice or Ezra. If somebody uses this pen to write a check for mom and dad for a thousand dollars, then that seed must have been planted by helping someone else. If someone uses the same pen to say Ezra has to do homework every day ten thousand times, then that pen was created by a bad seed, okay? So, everything's possible, good seed or bad seed. Now today, he starts. Who is he? First Panchen Lama, Lo Tsong Khapa Gyaltsen. He starts the conversation by saying, okay, we all understand the pen. We figured out the pen two days ago, okay? Then we had a break for Bodhisattva vows, and then we came back for the pen again, okay? How does the pen write? Okay, how do things move? How does cause and effect work? Okay, got it? Alright, so, okay, I understand the pen Geshe-la, but if the pen is the cause of the writing, if the pen causes the writing, then how does cause and effect work? How is cause and effect created? From? Seeds in my mind, which I planted by being— never say seeds without saying which I planted by being nice or not nice to other people. Sooner or later it will plant a seed for people to remember, okay? So, anyway, today we're going to talk about, I think it's a cool subject, the first penchen lama says, now let's take it to cause and effect, okay? How do things work in the real world? I understand the pen comes from seed pictures, right? Seed pictures. Nowadays I like to call the ice cream and the chocolate sauce together a composite, okay? It means seed pictures pile up, okay? They come out one by one. You see what I mean? Picture for the base of the pen, picture for the top of the pen, they come out one by one and they accrete, they accumulate, okay? You don't make all your pictures at the same millisecond. One sixty-fourth of a— one sixty-fifth of a second, they are accumulating, okay? They're like, here's the top, here's the middle, here's the bottom, and they— the ice cream balls are coming out like boo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo, and then the chocolate sauce goes boo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo, okay? And then it's a pen, okay? Got it? It's a composite. It's a collection of parts which become one object, okay? Now we got to talk about function over time, okay? How do— how do pictures come out of my mind to make the pen what? Write, okay? How does the pen write? And how is that coming out of pictures in my mind? That's where he's at. He says we can finally comprehend the way that cause and effect and the way things work is born. We can discuss how pens write things. That's why I have a picture here of a guy writing, or a lady writing, I don't know. But there's a secret message here. For a hundred dollars, Ibai— Where is Mr. Ibai? Let's go, man. I means one, Bai means hundred, okay? He changed his name. Legally, he changed his name. Ibai. Rob at Ibai Tea. Haggabite? So, my mental seeds project this pen, and mental seeds project the letters on the paper, and also my mental seeds projected the relationship between the pen and the letters written on the paper. Okay, I'm going to give you a clue. When I go to Taiwan, there's a guy, very big executive in DuPont Corporation. He takes his week off for the whole year, and he comes and drives me around. One day, we were driving from Taipei to Taichung, and I said, Jeffrey, your last name, what's that mean? Aiya. Zou. Zou. Jeffrey Zou. Zhongwen de Zou. Shishima. Zou. You have a southern accent, I have a middle accent. What's it mean, Vivian? Zou. What's it mean? That pen. Okay, don't give the money to anybody. Forget it. Okay, I don't just give away money. I'm very selective. Yeah, the picture shows, let's go back to the picture, Brian. You guys, yeah. He's riding with his left hand, you're supposed to say, oh, Geshe-la purposely put left hand person in it, okay? Understand? Aiya. Diamond Way is sometimes called left hand way, okay? Vama Marga, say Vama. Marga. Vama. Marga. Vama means left hand. Okay. It came into the English word feminine, okay? Feminine. Fem comes from vam, okay? And that's a deeper meaning. Something. Okay, anyway, now I'm going to ask a question about how the ink gets on the paper. What's the seeds for cause and effect? Okay, the pen is the cause, the writing is the effect, okay? Now, I bai, again. How do you say again? Huh? Zai si. Again. Same lady. Now, give the same answer. Different seeds will open. Who's writing on the paper? Who caused the cause and effect of the pen and the writing? Same. Yeah, good. A hundred dollars. That's very—if you're going to study emptiness, and if you're going to understand emptiness, you have to understand the emptiness of the pen, and you have to understand the—by the way, if you're in the class, please listen. If you're in the class, please listen, or else sit in the back, okay? Understand? Okay? It's hard. It's hard to teach if people aren't listening, okay? Got it? Alright. If you're writing on the paper, what's happening? Seeds are coming out and creating a pen. Seeds are coming out and creating writing, and it looks like what? It looks like the pen is writing the letters, but what's really happening? Pen seeds coming out, and then writing seeds are coming out on the tail of the pen seeds. Got it? Understand? Okay? So, that's cause and effect. Can we say that cause and effect is coming from seeds? Good. Now, question for you. How do you tell if the writing came from a good seed or a bad seed? Yeah, good! Yeah. If it's something that you enjoy, if it's something sweet, then it's coming from a good seed, okay? If it says Geshe Michael is handsome, even when he raises his hands, then... then... then it must be a good seed.Got it? If it makes you unhappy, if it's not pleasant, then it's coming from a bad seed, right? Okay. So, if the writing is something that makes you happy, that must have been a good seed creating the pen, and then creating the writing. Is the pen creating the writing? No. That's a very interesting question, okay? And, until the day you understand that, you can't really practice Buddhism successfully, okay? The pen is not making the writing. Your seeds are making a pen, and then your seeds are making a writing, and your seeds are connecting the two things, okay? Got it? You don't need a pen to write, and you can have a pen that doesn't write. Understand? Okay. That's very delicate, alright? So, cause and effect. Cause and effect is also coming from seeds, okay? And it's an illusion, okay? The pen is not making the writing. Your seeds are making the pen, and then right after that, your seeds are making the writing. Okay? Got it? Okay. Is the pen writing? Yeah. When people say no, the strategy is to draw a mustache on their face. Okay. Okay. Huh? Okay. Alright. I'm gonna go to the next verse, okay? He says in verse 375, emptiness acts to eliminate the ability that nothing could exist, okay? You can't say nothing exists in the world because there's emptiness. Okay? And that's difficult. That's difficult. He says, when I tell people the pen is not what they thought it was, they think there's nothing there. Okay? If I say the pen is not what you thought the pen was, then you say the pen is not real.Then you think that nothing is there. And then he says, who's he? First Panchen Lama says, if you understand emptiness, you understand that it's not true that nothing is there. It means emptiness is not the same as nothing. Okay? Emptiness is not the same as nothing. Okay? And many, many people think that emptiness means that nothing is there. Okay? And it doesn't mean that. Okay? I'll show you a picture that I like. Okay? Ta-da! Dee-dee! Ta-da! Okay. Right after I saw emptiness directly, in the next minute, I thought, I need something in the normal world that I can remember what I saw. I need something in the normal world that will remind me of what I saw. I think it's probably the first instinct of all Aryas to say, I need something in the normal world which is not emptiness. Okay? The normal world is separate from emptiness. I need something in my normal life that can remind me of emptiness. And then, every Arya says diamond. Okay? All Aryas say diamond. That's why diamonds keep showing up in Buddhism. Diamond way, diamond cutter, you know, diamond blah blah. Okay? Vajra diamond. Alright? That's why diamonds keep showing up. Now, at that time, I didn't have any money. Okay? So, for ... I mean, I bought one diamond. That was a famous story. I'm not going to tell you. But, I didn't have enough money to have a diamond. You understand? I couldn't buy a diamond to keep the diamond until I got a job in diamonds, but that was later. So, I used to buy rock candy. Okay? In English, we call it rock candy. And it's pure sugar and you put a stick in there and it grows a crystal. And if you're an Arya who's desperate, use rock candy. That's what I'm saying. Okay? If you have friends who have rock candy laying around, they're suspicious. Okay? Alright? So, I'm just saying, if you don't work in a company where there's diamonds all over the table, but you want to remember, or you want something to remind you, then get a diamond if you can afford it. If you can't afford a diamond, get rock candy. Get some rock candy. Seriously. Okay? Much cheaper. I could tell you to buy a diamond meditation ring from Rosa van Grieken's ... Can you stand up? Company who makes all those things. And the money goes to save the books from Dunhuang. But I'm not advertising today. Okay? I'm just saying, if you can get a diamond and keep a diamond with you, if you take DCI level 7, you get a free diamond. And there's a rumor that Geshe-la is going to try to teach if he's ... can ... If the doctor doesn't stop him to teach ... Can I say that? DCI level 7, touch the diamond world, in Xi'an, China. Okay? There's a big rumor like that. Okay? There's a rumor. Okay? Then tell Seiji it was your idea. Okay? Why is that important to the Ben and Kendra family? What's in Xi'an, China? Shenzong's Tower is there. Okay? The Eastern Shenzong Tower is there. Okay? The Eastern Shenzong Tower is there. The Western Shenzong Tower is online somewhere. Okay? By the way, while you're there visiting for the program, you can go visit the shrine that was built to house the tongue of Acharya Kumara Jiwa. Okay? Who did the first translations of the Diamond Cutter and Heart Sutra in China. Okay? That shrine is quite close to Shenzong's Tower. You can drive there, right Rob? He got a special blessing on the way. Okay? Understand? Why is his tongue there? Ibai, why is Kumara Jiwa's tongue preserved outside of Xi'an in a shrine? Okay. I speak Chinese. Thank you. Because his Dharma practice is perfect, only his tongue will be left behind Because he is a very deep practitioner, after his cremation, only his tongue will be left behind. Okay, good. I'll buy it. Okay. Thank you. The full story is that Kumara Jiwa, he announced after I die, burn my body, if only the tongue remains, you will know that I never made a mistake in all of my translations. Okay? That's pretty bold, right Ben? You know, he said, if I never made a mistake in my scriptural translations, then after they cremate my body, my tongue should remain unburned. And they say it did. I've been there. You don't get to see the tongue, you just see the shrine. Okay. Why are we talking about that? We are talking about going to Xi'an. Why are we talking about going to Xi'an? We are talking about diamonds. Why are we talking about diamonds? You can go to hear the diamond, you can hear the whole DCI course about how to touch the diamond world if you have time to go to Xi'an, and if my kidney cooperates, okay? Okay, now, there's a big question here. We just talked about the emptiness of cause and effect, okay? What was the cause? Pen. What was the effect? Writing on the paper, okay? And we talked about how they are still coming from seeds. They are still coming from seeds. The writing is not coming from the pen. You got to get used to that. Okay? Now we go to another question. Somebody comes up to First Penchen Lama and says, I think emptiness means nothing exists. Okay? I think emptiness means nothing exists. Okay? Got it? And he says, wrong. Okay? He says completely wrong. Alright? And that's why I put the diamonds up. They are supposed to remind you emptiness doesn't mean that nothing exists, okay? And there's very many hundreds of years, many many people misunderstood emptiness and they say, for example, you should sit in front of a wall and you should stare at the wall or you should close your eyes and you should try to think about nothing and you should empty your mind. And that's completely 100% ridiculous. Okay? It has nothing to do with emptiness. The proof is if you do it for 20 years nothing will happen. You just get more stupid. Okay? Nothing will happen in your life. If you really understand emptiness your life should be successful. Your life should be super successful. Every part of your life should be successful. Okay? Got it? So, he says emptiness doesn't mean nothing exists.Okay? Got it? What's the difference with the pen? If you're talking about a pen, what's the difference? What's the emptiness of the pen? There's no pen in my hand which does not come from—and I don't want to hear seed. I want to hear seed which was planted by being nice or not being nice to other people. Okay? Got it? I never want to hear you say, it's empty because it comes from its seeds. Okay? I want you to say, it's empty because it comes from its seeds because you're being nice to other people. Okay? Alright? The universe is coming from ethics. Okay? And that's why AI is— AI is beautiful, AI is great, I use it for a lot of stuff, but in the end the database is incomplete right now so far, except for Jamie's. We got to talk about how to show it to people. Okay. So, emptiness doesn't mean what? Nothing's there. It doesn't mean that. Okay? If you, again, I repeat, if you understand emptiness, you should be very successful. And if you don't understand emptiness, if you think it means nothing, you should be a deadhead. Huh? What? Huh? Okay? That's the person who meditated on nothing. Seriously. And there are, in history, there have been Buddhist groups that meditate on nothing, and then they're like huh? Huh? Huh? Okay? Then they die. The Lord of Death comes, it's time to die. Huh? Huh? You don't exist. That's what you think. Okay? Alright? Okay, next picture. This is what I like, I'm always searching for a picture of Middle Way. The Middle Way. Okay? Madhyamika, Madhyama, Madhyamaka. Okay? I'm always looking for pictures of Middle Way. Okay? And here, at this moment, the first Panchen Lama's poetry goes to Middle Way. Okay? He starts talking about Middle Way. Alright? And because he's on, he's been on the subject of emptiness and not existing. Does emptiness mean that nothing's there? Does it mean that? It doesn't mean that. It means there's nothing there which is not coming from seeds planted by how nice you are to other people or not. Okay? Alright? He's like that. So he says that, by the way, he says, if you guys are interested, this is where the word Middle Way comes from. Okay? If you understand that not coming from its own side doesn't mean not existing, then you are threading the Middle Way. You have just reached the Middle Way. Okay? And it's very, very famous. Alright? Nagarjuna yesterday wrote our ceremony for Bodhisattva Vows, and thank you for doing that, Jasmine. Thank you for organizing it. My wife wrote me a nice text. She said, I'm glad you did something spiritual. I'm like, yeah, it was, and I felt much better afterwards. That's nice. Okay? So, okay. Those two rails on the... Okay, so we have this new property, Dragon's Head. It's one million square meters. And there's a beautiful, huge, beautiful building there that the owner built, because they are a painter, and they wanted glass. The whole side of the wall is glass. It's three stories high. It's stunning. It's really beautiful. The people who sold the property said, do you want us to tear down the building? We're like, nah. It's like the most beautiful building. But there's one problem with this building. You have to cross a small Arizona stream to reach the building. You need a car that can go over a stream. Okay? In Arizona, a big river is like one foot deep, half a meter. But, when it rains a lot, when there's heavy rains, like recently, that water got three meters deep, and somebody lost their car down there. Somebody drove into it, and the car was covered and disappeared. Okay? Luckily, they weren't in the car at that moment. So, I told the kids, there's a hill behind the building. You should cut a road down the hill. We did that at Diamond Mountain, right? We cut many roads. We call cutting a road. You just get a big delinquent guy called Klump. Klump? Well, Klump-ish person, okay? Who has a big tractor. You tell him, dig a road. They dig it in like a day or something. So, we dug a road at Diamond Mountain to go back to Earl's and John's cabin, which is in the back. We put the troublemakers in the back for the three-year retreat. Some Chinese guy drove up there. He almost fell off the mountain, and I think one wheel was off the road. Right, Stanley? Am I right? Something like that. Okay? That's called not driving on the middle way. Okay? So, I just want to give you an example. In your visualization, there's a Chinese guy in an American car. It's not a Xiaomi. Okay? Then, that's the opposite of middle way. He fell off the edge. So, middle way has two edges. Here, there's two rails to stop you from falling off. Why we didn't put rails at Diamond Mountain? They're super expensive. So, we decided should we have a cafeteria or should we have rails? We all voted for the cafeteria. Okay. So, when you think of middle way, think of this bridge. There's the bridge, and then there's fences. There's rails on either side of the bridge, and that's middle way. Okay? Then, our author says those two edges, those two rails are existing and not existing. Those two rails are existing and not existing. You don't want to fall off the edge of the table that says the pan is there. And you don't want to fall off the edge of the table that says the pan is not there. So, what am I supposed to say Geshe-la? That's like the perfect thing to tell your husband. Don't say things aren't, and don't say things are. Everything else you can say. I'm just giving suggestions for harmony in the family. Okay? Don't say anything is, and don't say anything isn't. Everything else you can talk. We get that kind of advice, right? In a family situation. Okay. I got $200 here. Okay? We got $200 here. You ready, Arbhai? Mr. Arbhai. He says, don't fall off the edge that says existing. And don't fall off the edge which says not existing. That's $200. That's two different answers. Okay? Nobody can have the $200 together. Okay? First question. He says, don't say things exist. He says, don't say things exist, you will fall off. When you say things exist, you fell off. And by the way, that fall is more dangerous than falling off in your car. Falling off in your car can kill your body for one life. Falling off this exist or not exist can kill your body for many lives. Okay? It's very serious. It's easier to fall off a road than fall off a pen. Okay? It's less dangerous. Okay? So, here we go. When he says, basically he's saying, don't say things exist. Don't say things exist. What does he mean? $100. Okay, yeah. Don't say things exist towards you. Okay, good. From their own side. Okay, $100, nice. Thank you. Don't fall off. Don't fall off exist. Okay? Now, don't fall off. Don't exist. $100. This is easier. Easier. Don't say things don't exist in other ways than by coming from your own seeds that you planted by being kind to others. Yeah, yeah. Wait, wait, wait. Now stop. Stop.Sometimes I ask for a $100 answer. Sometimes I get a $200 answer. Okay. If the answer is better than I expected, then I always pay extra. Okay, alright, okay. What am I really doing? Taking care of my income. You think I'm a nice guy. I'm just increasing my income. Okay. Because it came from seeds by being generous to other people. Okay, good. Alright. Then I call it lousy corresponding meditations. Lousy corresponding meditations. If you think he means nothing exists, or you think he means something exists from its own side, and you meditate on either one of those, we all meditate on the second one, then you fell off the cliff. You fell off the road. Got it? Okay? Alright. It's complicated. It feels complicated, but it's not. How much stuff is coming at you? Zero. Let's do a famous Geshe Michael exercise, okay? Now listen, in this lineage, in this tradition, if you sit in a class, if you put your pigu on the chair, then that means you signed a contract to teach it to somebody else. Okay? Understand? If your pigu is in a chair right now, you signed a contract with your pigu. What's the contract? Pigu means butt in Chinese language. I don't know why I learn only the bad words.Okay? What's the agreement you made by sitting here? Yeah, you agreed to teach. In this lineage, in this tradition, in Buddhism, if you come to a class, if you sit in the class, it means you agree to teach another person. It means you agree to teach another person. So now, today, this week, your life got much more difficult because you have to teach what? Emptiness. Okay? If I told you you have to teach compassion, that's easy. Okay? But if I say you have to teach emptiness, you're like, oh my god, I have to teach somebody emptiness.I'm going to teach you the easiest way to teach somebody emptiness. Got it? And it's infallible. It's 100% correct. And people will never forget it. I think so. I hope so. OM MANI PADME HUM So, okay. Here's how to do it, okay? And most of you know, but I want you to make sure you know. Raise your left hand. Please raise your left hand. Now find your first finger. One, two, this one. Point your first finger. Point the first finger of your left hand. Ezra, we're learning how to teach emptiness. Cool? Yeah. Now, point to something which is not coming from seeds which were planted by being nice or not nice. Then you got to be a, you got to be a, what do you call that? You got to be a good actor. What do you call it? You got to be dramatic. You got to go like this. You got to get your eyes big. Okay? And I always suggest, just before you finish, go like this. Then you have to be dramatic. You have to go like this. Okay? And by the way, that is 100% Majjhimika. That is 100% Nagarjuna, okay? And if you just teach that, the person will, hopefully they'll never forget. Okay? Hopefully they'll never forget. Okay? You can always, when you're teaching emptiness, do that at least once during the hour. Okay? Do that at least once during the hour. Okay? There should be some kind of song. We make a song. Okay? Alright? Okay? It's a good way to learn. Okay? And it's, I don't know how to say it. It's 100% correct. Okay? It's 100% correct. There's, they say RIG PA RGYA. Smart people prefer a thousand explanations of emptiness. Deep people, smart people, intelligent people, when you prove emptiness to them, they're like, give me another proof. Then you give them another one. Smart people want to go to translator class for the rest of all their lifetimes. To hear all those kinds of emptiness. Okay? They say that's how you can tell a really spiritual person in Buddhism. If they are super hungry, PHA'I PHYA'U. Oh. Oh. Oh. If they are hungry for more explanation of emptiness, then they're a real intelligent person. Okay? Then that's a real intelligent person. Teach me another way to prove emptiness. Teach me another way. Okay? But this is the, this is the easy one, and it's 100% correct. Don't forget to use your left hand, because you are putting seeds in their mind for diamond way. Okay? Cool? BAM MA RGA. Alright. And ... Then he starts to list the greatest offerings you can make to the Buddhas. Okay? By the way, when do I have to stop, Jasmine? What time? Punch? Punch? Bajji? Okay. 16 in the rest of the world. Got it. 17. Okay. 15 minutes. I'll try to do Q&A for 10 minutes, okay? You know what try means. Okay. Now, he says, people are always wanting to make an offering to the Buddha, you know, and you know, a lot, a lot, a lot of people, when they get a problem, their relative gets cancer, you know, they lose their job, the kid doesn't want to go to college, then immediately they buy some incense and they go to the temple. We were in ... We were in ... We are still in Japan. We went to the Philosopher's Path, which you should go to, and there's some temples there in which you should see. There's an exhibition of Tang Dynasty tantric art on the Philosopher's Path right now, and it's extremely beautiful, it's extremely important, okay? So, we went there, and you can see all kinds of ... People go there, and then you see all kinds of grandmas giving coins to their kids, and then there's a special grill, there's a special box that you can throw in coins, but you can't throw in fingers, understand? And they teach the kids to throw the coins in the grill, and they're having fun. And then, inevitably, there's some grandma with two sticks of incense, and she's praying for her husband, or she's praying for her friend who's sick, okay? They're making an offering to the Buddha, okay? And that's a beautiful, beautiful, very important thing. It's really smart to do that. And Panchen Lama says, great, go to the temple, throw some coins in the box, burn some incense, make an offering. But while you're there, here's the best offering you can make. Ta-da! That's for Francisco. Yeah! Okay? Understand? Teach people emptiness, okay? Teach people emptiness, okay? When you teach ... You want to make an offering to the Buddha? I mean, you can offer a yuzu, right? Mango, whatever. But the best offering is to offer your understanding of emptiness. He says, you want to make an offering to the Buddha? Offer your understanding of emptiness. Just use your finger, use your arm. And that's cool! You can do that in your house, you don't have to go to the temple, okay? It doesn't cost anything, right? Just, just think about emptiness, and offer it to the Buddha. And if you really want to make an offering to the Buddha, he says, left hand up, left finger ahead, this thing. That's the highest offering you can make. I can see a whole new tradition of Buddhism, where people just walk around like this. Okay? Okay? And, and what I mean is, in that verse, here he says, try to make this offering, excellent offering, to every Buddha in the universe. He says that. He says it in the verse, okay? Verse number 377. That's the best offering you can make. You want to make an offering? Okay, do some incense, it's okay. Do some fruit, it's good. Okay? Throw some coins in the box, that's also good. But while you're at the temple, do this thing, in your mind, okay? If you don't want to look strange to everybody, just do it in your mind, okay? Alright? And, and he says, First Panchen Lama says, in this emptiness classic, in this important book about emptiness, he says, make that offering, okay? Give that offering to the Buddha, okay? Having this class, coming to five houses, is an extremely beautiful offering to the Buddhists. That's like the offering they like the best. If you sit in this room, and you get confused about emptiness, you are making huge progress. You, you are making a true offering, okay? Cool? I think it's cool. The more your forehead gets wrinkled, the better it's the offering, okay? Alright, next verse. Oh, Geshe-la, yeah, I, I'll give you 10 minutes of Q&A. I got 2.35 left, according to that clock. I'm not watching that clock. Okay, next picture you guys. Trying to understand emptiness, fighting, struggling, going to those stupid mixed nuts classes, listening to Ben Cramer's text, again, it's the best offering you can make to your lamas, okay? Now, if you want to make an offering to a Buddha, go to a temple, do the finger thing. Not, not any other finger, this finger, okay? But, if you're interested in making an offering to your personal teachers, to the people who spend their lifetime to teach you, like my teacher did, spend his lifetime to teach a stupid American kid, if you want to make an offering to those teachers, same thing. Same thing, okay? Just think about emptiness and say, I offer that to you, okay? They don't need money. If they understand emptiness, they can have money anytime they want. NAM KHA RDZOD, say NAM KHA RDZOD. NAM KHA means empty space, RDZOD means treasure, kosha. NAM KHA RDZOD means Geshe-la, we have a funding shortage, okay? Like that, okay? If you understand emptiness, you can make money, okay? They don't need money. Lamas don't need money. Lamas want your finger, first finger. Okay? That's what they want from you. They don't want anything else, okay? Alright? Okay, so it's the best offering to your teachers. I chose teachers, picture, who look like normal people, and in my vision of this organization, I want this kind of emptiness teacher. I want normal business people or normal family people. I don't want you to wear a red suit or burn your head in six places or something like that, you know? I want to see normal, nice, happy people. You don't have to wear the tie, okay? That's a Ben Kramer thing. But, these are Lamas, okay? And get used to it, okay? In your generation, you are the Lamas, okay? These are Lamas. Don't think they have to come from some country or they have to wear beads around their ear or Geshe hat or something like that, okay? Don't think like that. These are Lamas, okay? The best offering to your Lamas is the first finger, okay? Got it? Don't say the finger, I'll get in trouble.You don't know how many people got me in trouble online. Geshe-la said, give the finger to your Lama. No, it's happened to me a thousand times. I don't think about it anymore. Okay. Last picture. These are the people who started the diamond company that I worked for, okay? This is Ofer and Aya Azerland. Aya has already passed away. And this was a CNN special about the company, because they were the largest, they were the fastest growing company in the history of New York, okay? Just by percentage over time. They were the fastest growing manufacturing company in the history of New York. That's kind of easy to say, because there's no manufacturing in New York, okay? But jewelry is a small factory. It doesn't take a big factory. So anyway, I spent 19 years with these guys, you know? And they taught me a lot, okay? And we're still good friends with Ofer. He got stolen by Warren Buffett. When Warren Buffett bought the company, he stole the president of the company, okay? Why I put them here, so my teacher's name is Rinpoche, and my boss's name is Ofer. He's from Israel. And during the daytime I get beat up by Ofer, and in the evening I get beat up by Rinpoche. So I, why you ride in the bus for four hours every day, Geshe-la? Now you know. There's no one to beat me up on the bus. You see? There's no Ofer, and there's no Rinpoche. I got four hours a day on my own, you know? I can do what I want, okay? So anyway, it used to happen a lot that Ofer would yell at me and I'd say, Rinpoche, don't say that. And then Rinpoche would yell at me and say, Ofer, I'm so sorry, and I got confused. Deep down subconsciously I got confused. Who's the Lama? Is it Ofer or is it Rinpoche? And I used to make that mistake a lot. Finally Ofer's like, what's this Rinpoche? Is that a Tibetan curse word or something? And I'm like, no, no. I just get confused. Who's who? And he says, make an offering, you know, make an offering to all the Buddhas there are. Make an offering to all the Lamas there are. And then he says in the next verse, make an offering to all the angels in the world. Make an offering to all the angels in the world. And we're going to study that in the next class, okay? But angel means secret Buddha, okay? Not obvious Buddha, okay? They don't have a thing up here. They're not holding an aruras fruit. Okay? They just look like two business people. Okay? But I used to get very confused in my heart. Who's the Lama and who's the business owner? I used to get very confused which one is which. Okay, understand? He says, make an offering to them. And that's a secret offering. And that's a sweet offering you can learn to make. Okay? And maybe we'll talk about it in the next class. Okay. By the way, which of the two books is the Diamond Way book? I guess I tricked you a long time ago. Fourteen years ago I tricked you. Okay? Right? You thought you were starting Diamond Way. Okay. Q&A. Q&A. 100. 200. We all know that many people can't come here. I want to know what kind of energy brought us here and how we can continue to come here. And since we can come here, we must have our mission. How can we find our mission? And in our future life, what form will you inspire us in? Thank you. Wow! You mean, you came here to the offline event? OK, OK, so actually, three parts of the question. Wow, that was three quick ones. So for the first part of the question is, I know many of us couldn't make it to the in-person event this time. I was wondering what kind of seats, what's the cost for that? And the second part is, since we have this wonderful opportunity, what we can do to use this precious moment to prepare to find our personal life destinations for ourselves? And the third part is, how can we better prepare for our future life's definitions? And for more life to come in the future, right? David. Okay, and how the teachers can guide us and illuminate us on our future lives to come? It's called Lam Rim. It takes 14 years to answer this question. Bob, the first part of the question was ... Many of us couldn't come to the in-person side. Yeah, right. Let's talk about that to start. So, when you try to do something good, okay? When you try to do something good, then it damages the bad seeds in your mind, okay? When you try to come to a class, when you try to come to a program, you will get some sudden obstacles. You know, the plane won't go, there'll be some problem with the visas or something like that.Something will happen, okay? When you do something very sweet and great and pure, it triggers, it burns up your bad seeds, okay? And we talked about it in the confession, the four parts confession, okay? Like, if you're supposed to get in a ... By the way, I taught it, the four part cleaning your bad deeds, right? And I taught it many years ago. And in the class, I said when you clean your bad deeds, they don't disappear necessarily. They open at a lower level, okay? They open at a lower level. So, the famous example is, maybe you hurt somebody badly on purpose, then if you use the four antidote powers, okay? You can stop those bad seeds. How do you stop them? You trigger them to open in a small way. Got it? Okay? Like, you have a seed in your mind that you're supposed to die. You're supposed to be in a bad car accident. And then instead of ... but if you do the four powers, if you clean it with the four powers, then the famous example in the diamond cutter is, you will get a bad headache for a day or something like that. And I'll tell you a cute story, because Grandpa likes stories. You think Grandpa's getting old and wants to tell stories. John and I figured out that stories are the only thing people remember. I'm not kidding. That's why people who wrote like New Testaments and stuff told a lot of stories. And they still repeat those stories, right? So anyway, this lady has got a tape recording in my class. She's riding down Highway 101? Down the ... Highway 1 down the California coast in her Volkswagen van, like a good hippie. And she's listening to that class on her tape recorder. And then I got to the four powers, and she tried the four powers while she was driving. Then her car burst into flames. And she had to pull over to the side of the road, and the whole engine exploded and started burning. And she jumped out of the car. Listening? She jumped out of the car, and the car burned up. And then she wrote me and told me the story. Why? She said, can you replace the tape for free? Because it wasn't my fault, it was the four powers' fault. Then I'm like, okay, anyway, it's free. So, when you're going to do something important, when you're burning up bad seeds, then some small bad things will happen, okay? Some small bad things will happen. And in the ancient books they say, you should be proud. How's your day going? I'm so happy. What happened? My car burned up. Wow! Do you know how many bad seeds I finished? So, a real Buddhist is happy when they're doing something good, and then there's some bad obstacle. You should be happy. Now, your other questions. I'm going to go on strike. Bhankaro in Hindi. You're trying to get four questions for one question. That's illegal. Okay, other question. Quick, quick, quick, picture, now. Geshe-la, thank you very much for your teaching. In the previous teaching you mentioned that Gautama Siddhartha is just a ... Wait, I'm going fast, but you can go slow. Okay, alright. So, Gautama Siddhartha is just a nirmakaya in this world and pretend to go through twelve steps to get enlightened. And my question is, what are these twelve steps? And the most important part is it reminds us to think about you. And could you please elaborate more on this part? Thank you very much. I'm sorry, I didn't catch the whole question. Okay, so in your previous teaching you mentioned that Gautama Siddhartha is only a nirmakaya that show, appear in this world, that got enlightened through the twelve steps. In fact, it's already there, enlightened somewhere, and just ascending nirmakaya. So, my question have two part. First is, what are these twelve steps? And second is, remind us about you. And could you please elaborate more on you part? Thank you very much. Say the first part of the question again. False step? Twelve Deeds of the Buddha.The Twelve Great Deeds of the Buddha. Okay, good. Thank you. I can say, in the same way that I can say I did touch emptiness once, okay? In my life, directly, okay? I can say that. And I can say for sure that I'm not a Buddha, okay? I don't experience myself as a Buddha. If you do, God bless. And that's proper, and that's nice. But me personally, I need seven more lifetimes. I need seven more lifetimes. I'm a LEN DUNG BA WA, okay? I'm a certain category of Arya, and we need seven more lifetimes. That's why people say, I hope your health is good, and I'm like, I hope it's not good. I'm in a rush, you know? So, I have to die seven more times, okay? So, it's okay. You ready? Okay, let's do it.

Class 4

14 December 2025

Organizational announcements

[9:31]

Alright, here we go. I don't know, I woke up this morning, like at four o'clock, and I had a bunch of new ideas about Diamond Way, clear diamonds, so I'd like to talk about them and eventually I will teach something. And here's what I was thinking. Yesterday people gave me a lot of offerings. It was pretty unexpected and unusual. So, I would like to donate those offerings to two things. One is… one I'll tell you about in a minute. The other is the staff and the teachers of Five Houses are underpaid. They don't get paid very well. This is the only organization that doesn't, we don't charge people, basically we don't charge people for the courses. We charge people for the hotel and things like that, but we don't, they don't make any money and it's difficult for them to continue like that. So I keep trying to help them, and I would like to donate $10,000 to bonuses this year for the Five Houses staff. And that's up to Tim and the other, you know, you decide. If you don't get a good bonus, it's his fault.

Okay, let's see. Then I would like to donate half of the… I'd like to donate the other $10,000 to Institute for Advanced Study, which is the new Diamond Way Institute at Dragon's Head in Rimrock. And they don't need that money, they don't need my money, but I would like to donate that money in order to pay for the development of Diamond Way courses for all our different groups. And so, I think in my heart that each group that we have, each different group we have, could have their own Diamond Way style, or their own Diamond Way teachings. And I would like to see each organization, if they want it, to develop their own Diamond Way curriculum, or Diamond Way influenced curriculum, okay? So I'd like to donate that money to bringing people to sit with me. It's gonna… you know the real Institute for Advanced Study is Peachtree Cafe and that's probably where we will have the real meetings. But I would like to bring people there, especially if I'm having surgery or something like that. I don't think I can travel around the world and I'll probably have to sit in my bed or something like that, okay? So, in the next few months, I would like to donate that money. I have the following suggestions, okay? I would like [Wangsha 13:22?] to come and work with me and Seiji to develop the Diamond Way flavor of the final seven courses of DCI Global. Okay? Agree? And that'll be maybe sometime in January, I guess. January looks pretty… Oh, there you are. January is pretty empty so far. You know, if they tell me to go, I go. If they say, come now, I have to go. But right now they haven't said that, so, okay. Secondly, I would like to propose that Jasmine come to the capital of the world, which is Rimrock. And you work with YSI / Earl, and Five Houses / Tim, to develop a Diamond Way flavored curriculum for Five Houses and for YSI. Okay? All right? And I'll pay all the expenses for both of you guys. You get free cinnamon rolls at Peachtree Cafe. You can live on them for like ten days, then you get diarrhea. Oh, and I wanted to suggest that we add Teresa, if it's possible. And I'm willing to pay for her flight. So if it's possible to have Teresa also come and help with that process, I think it would be good. Okay? I solved, I think I solved the Ben Kramer request, which was a beautiful request, and I'll always remember it. But I teach, I sometimes teach a closed class, translation class, and I have contacted those parties. I sent a message through a nun. Right? I sent a video to you today, and you're going to offer this video, okay? As you asked, to deliver something, you see what I mean? And then I'm asking, I believe that I will be able to do a Diamond Way translation class, just for certain translators and so that's in motion. Then that too, I think, somehow IAS will be involved with… later they're going to pay for everything, that's the point, okay? Yesterday, or the day before, I sat with Jamie and his partner Bo. Can you stand up, you guys? Don't be shy. Yeah. They have put thousands and thousands of classes online for free. It's called The Knowledge Base. They've translated everything. Jamie has done some work, very advanced work for AI. Right now, if he finishes it, you can say, ‘I remember Grandpa said something about holding up your finger’, and you ask the AI, and the AI will take you to all the recordings and to the video, the two minutes of video. It will take you directly to that class and you will see the three minutes or four minutes about that. And you can tell the AI what you want to… you want to see Grandpa teach something. And they've also added translation ability from the ancient language. So, you know, you can say, I want to see the ancient language for this, or I want to see which texts cover it, or things like that. So he's doing very great work, very beautiful work. I suggest… okay, I'm, wait, I'm getting there. How about a demo tomorrow? Demo tomorrow. We'll set a time. Okay? Be ready. He'll show a demonstration on the screen, okay? And I propose that we do that with Oscar, John Brady, Joel Crawford. We need to do a cataloging meeting, and we need to do a, we need to organize the input center, the new input center. Right? So I propose Oaxaca, Mexico. Understand, Jamie? Right? Bo, understand? Okay, so that's what I propose. And that will also make my wife happy because she has some fantasy that she would enjoy that place. But at least once we can go, and she can't get out. So I propose we do something in the next few months, and I'll pay for that also. Okay? All right? And we'll work it out. And any other catalogers that we could come up with, like Roxanne or somebody, I don't know. Okay. Then, it says here, for Jamie to demonstrate his thing. I mean your program. Okay. Naughty teacher. Vivian, I have an answer to your question, but I'll talk to you about it personally, okay? Vivian? Okay. We'll talk about, you asked me for something, and I have a plan. Okay. And Jenny Wong and Candy Lai, we worked that out, right? So I will try to go to Singapore and Xi'an. Next year, depending on the kidney stuff. The Singapore people have kept our organizations for many years, like 15, 20 years, and they never ask me for anything. They just keep doing, doing, doing, doing. And Candy and Jenny especially. So I want to honor you, and I want to teach there. Okay. Then we have to sell it to my boss. My two bosses, Seiji and Veronica. Okay. Yeah, that's all. I think that's all. Oh, what else we got here? Oh, hmm. Today is Tsongkapa Day. So today is probably the most important holiday of the year, and just coincidence [not coincidence]. So it's a good day to do anything. It's a good day to talk about all these plans for Diamond Way, and it's a very special day of the year. This is the day of Tsongkapa's birth, and the day of Tsongkapa's passing, and the day of Tsongkapa's enlightenment, happened on the same day, on the same date, in different years. So it's a very important… it's called Ganden Ngamchoe, which is the 25th of the month. The moon is almost dark. It's a tsechu also. So, you know, it's a very, very good day to have a class, a Diamond Way class. It's a good day to decide about Diamond Way teachings for all the groups. So, you know, it's just coincidence, right? No, okay, good. And I'm supposed to… I mean, I would like to talk about these [books]. I like to boast about my translators, and I boasted about Ben the other day. And so we'll have a 10th anniversary Mixed Nuts celebration sometime around Chinese New Year. It is on the Chinese New Year. Tune in during the morning, 8 a.m. on the 17th of January. Am I right? Yeah, which is the first day of the Chinese New Year. So we'll be having a special program and you're welcome to come to that. And a couple things happened.

I have two slides. You guys ready? There's a Red Book slide. You got that one? Yeah. Yeah.

[23:33]

I'm happy to announce that the Chinese government has approved the 25th anniversary edition of the Diamond Cutter business book. And it came out recently. Yesterday? It came out on my… It will come out two days from now, on my birthday. So that's exciting. If you want to buy it, just go to China. And all the DCI organizers will also be offering it. Okay? And I'm very excited about it. I wrote a special introduction to it, and it's very cool. Okay, other picture, you guys have?

That's hard to see, I guess. No, it's okay. Up above, the picture on the top, is the Institute for Advanced Studies at Princeton University. And this is where Einstein and Oppenheimer worked. And it's very, very beautiful.

[To A/V crew] Now you can't see the whole thing, can you? I want the whole thing. Can you show the whole thing at once? Anyway, yeah, you got to be able to see the whole thing at once, if you guys can.

I would point out that the colors on the first picture and the colors on the bottom picture are exactly the same, in my opinion. And it's just that the bottom picture is lacking some buildings, okay? So the bottom picture is Dragon's Head in Rimrock, and it's a stunning place. It's a very, very beautiful place. And that's where I would like to have this institute for developing Diamond Way materials for each of the organizations. That's where Wangsha and you guys will come. That's where Jasmine will come in January, February. Okay? And the middle picture is the... The middle picture is the building that's there now. And it was built by an artist. If you know the European artist Van Dyck, he's a descendant of the Van Dyck family and he built that room for painting and to have the special sunlight for painting. So it's a very beautiful place to have classes. Okay? Cool. Alright.

And last thing. Eight, nine years ago, I started with 12 different translators. Each one had their own special book because there are 12 different languages of Buddhism. Each era has its own words. Each era has its own language. And just by coincidence, Stanley Chen and Zhou Xiaoping, they got the two first schools of Buddhism. One is called Abhidharma and that was the official Buddhism for 700 years. After the Buddha passed away, for the next 700 years, they taught Abhidharma. It's the first book I studied in my life. My teacher taught it to me for 12 years. And we translated one of the great classics of Abhidharma and it's a wonderful foundation of all Buddhism - Abhidharmakosha. And I gave that book to Stanley to work on. And then the same school, the Detailist school, Vaibhāṣika, they are also the school where developed Vinaya, which is the monk's vows, nun's vows, layman's vows, novice's vows. I don't know why, but I gave that job to Zhou Xiaoping to translate a very beautiful book about the vows. It's a very difficult book. The nun's vows were missing. The nun's vows were damaged a thousand years ago. It's very hard to find information about the nun's vows and we rebuilt the whole thing based on the sutras. So we had John Brady's data, God bless you, and we were able to reconstruct all the nun's vows. So it's now complete, the whole Vinaya is complete. And the strange thing is, the two kids finished at the same time, after eight years of work. So we put their two books together because it's romantic. And it’s a boxed set. That's Xiaoping's Vinaya and that's Stanley's Abhidharma book. And I'd like to congratulate them. They designed another box, which I think is also sexy. Both the books are in there. I have a nickname for these two books, it's the first half of Buddhism. Historically, this is the first half of Buddhism and then all the other schools developed later and that was the second half. So these two books belong together and I congratulate you on your two books. If you want to get those books, talk to Lindsay. Where's Lindsay? Stand up, Lindsay. Yeah, talk to Lindsay. We blackmail you - you have to join the Good Night Book Club to get the two books right now. Only the Good Night Book Club people will get the two books right now. So if I'm you, I will join the Good Night Book Club. When you join the Good Night Book Club, you sort of agree to go to bed at 10 p.m. and lock up your computer and your phone and don't use them after 10 p.m. And you agree to get up at 6 a.m. and do your practice. At 10 p.m. you put away your phone, you put away your computer, and you take out your big box with the books in it, and you read it until you fall asleep. These books are the best way to get a good night's sleep because they will put you to sleep in two minutes, okay? I guarantee. It's much cheaper than sleeping pills. So, and just kidding. But I believe that when you go to bed, after you read one of these books, your mind changes. I believe that. And in my life, my mind has changed 100% since I started doing it, it’s about three years ago. And my productivity, my ability to translate, it's about 300% increase. I can do a book in a month. It used to take me sometimes 10 years, 15 years. So I really, really, for your health, for your mental health, and for your spiritual health, I really, really encourage you to keep this system, okay? Get rid of your electronics. Get them out of the room. Rosa has a special bag, you can lock it. It has a time lock on it, God bless. Okay? And it's amazing. And if you don't do it, you're like, I don't know. I'm frustrated telling people to do it. It will change your life. Your life will be very, very successful.Alright? Okay.

How can you have a better death?

[32:55]

Okay, let's go to Lamrim. You guys in the back there, we are reading together a short book on the steps of the path. It's called Song of My Spiritual Life. It was translated by Gibson Chang. Can you stand up, Gibson? Where are you? And it's a very, very beautiful book. Generally Tsongkapa, who was born today, he did not talk about himself, almost ever. He almost never talked about himself. You cannot find any history that he wrote about himself, there is no such thing. But, in this Lamrim, in this short Lamrim, he talks about his spiritual life, openly. And I think it's the only book where he talks about his own spiritual life. And we are using that to prepare the Five Houses students for Diamond Way teachings, clear Diamond Way teachings, okay? And, we've reached a beautiful verse in the book. We've reached maybe one of the most important verses in the book, and I'm going to project that now.

Ta-da! Nah, that's the lady with the umbrella. That was the last picture we did last term. And I'd like to go to the next picture. I'm sorry, that's my fault, you guys.

I, the deep practitioner,

Have accomplished my practice

This way;

And you who hope for freedom

Should do your practice

The same.

This is Tsongkapa talking about his own life experience. He rarely, rarely mentions himself. And in this book, he says, look, this is how I did it, and that's how you should do it, okay? And, so it's very, very famous. If you want to even recite it like a mantra, this is very powerful words to recite. Okay? And we reached that point in the book now. We have reached the place where Tsongkapa talks about… and he says, this is how I did it, and that's how you should do it as well. Okay? Very, very famous.

,THAR ‘DOD KHYED KYANG DE BZHIN BSKYANG ‘TSAL LO,

You want to recite it, young man? You have a microphone? Quick, who's got a microphone? Did he memorize that? I think so. Nice.

[Gibson: ,RNAL ‘BYOR NGAS KYANG NYAMS LEN DE LTAR BYAS,

,THAR ‘DOD KHYED KYANG DE BZHIN BSKYANG ‘TSAL LO, ]

Yay! Okay. Yeah, it's good luck. If you can learn it, it's very good. Next picture, you guys.

[36:26]

So, I got a... I got a strange AI, it's kind of like me. And… just referring to a book that we translated by somebody called Rendawa. Say Rendawa. Rendawa was the teacher of Tsongkapa. Rendawa was the teacher of Tsongkapa. And so we translated Rendawa's commentary on Nagarjuna. Rendawa wrote a beautiful commentary on Nagarjuna's Letter to a Friend. And we worked on that recently. Last month, I think, we finished it. It took about two months. It should take about ten years. And I think, honestly, because of that practice of sleeping well we were able to finish it, I think in two months or something. It's an extraordinary commentary and I think it will be very, very good for your students, okay? When you teach Buddhism to your students, I think this book by Tsongkapa's teacher, based on Nagarjuna, it's a commentary on Nagarjuna, I think it's an excellent book for your students, okay? So, if you are teaching, Rosa's putting it out next, I think, right? How long? February. In February, it will come out, okay? Yeah? Don't tell them it's the e-book, just tell them it's coming out. Okay, but it's coming out. And I strongly encourage you, if you're teaching, it's a wonderful book to teach people. And it's a wonderful way to introduce people to Buddhism. It's Nagarjuna explained by Tsongkapa's teacher. And it's really, really fantastic, okay?

At this point in the Lamrim, we are talking about having a good death and having a good rebirth. You see what I mean? It's kind of interesting. We're talking about... We're not to the Bodhisattva section yet, we didn't reach that yet. We're talking about how can you live a better death? You see? How can you have a better death? And how can you prepare... How can you prepare a nice body and family for your next life? Okay? And it's interesting for those of us who are older or getting kidney operations and stuff, you know? You start to listen closer. And he's like, how can you arrange to have a... How can you continue your Buddhist career past death? Okay? And it's very cool, it's very smart. It's a very, very good idea. How can you get ready? These high teachers are so cool, they don't think of death as anything but a short interruption, okay? They're not thinking that this life is everything and then you're going to die and then something bad is going to happen or something like that. They just see death as a few minutes in the car before you get to your next destination. They don't see it as a big problem or they don't see it as some terrible thing. It's just kind of a short break before you continue your practice. You see what I mean? And Rendawa is very, very insistent that you have to set up a good body for next time. Okay? You have to set up a good body for next time. Alright? And as you get older or as you get closer to your death, it's something that you'll get more and more interested in. Okay? It's something that... You have a good body now, you're lucky. You could travel to Kyoto, you know. You weren't so old that you couldn't travel to Kyoto or something. But Rendawa is like, how do you keep that for next life? How do you get it for your next life? So I encourage you, if you're under 72.99 years old, you can't really hear what I'm saying and I'm just telling you that because you'll remember it 20 years from now or 30 years from now. But there will come a time in your life when you'll say, I'm so glad Geshehla taught us how to have a good body next time, how to have a good family next time, how to be born into a good country next time. Okay?

And Rendawa says, it's all how you treat other people. It's all how you treat other people. So he says, he's interesting, he's like, treat other people nice so you can continue your Bodhisattva career in a good body, okay? In a good body, in a healthy body, in an intelligent mind. Alright? He's not saying, you know, if you don't want to get cancer in this life, be nice to other people. He's not saying that. He's saying, you will get cancer in this life, and you will die, and you have to start thinking now about your next body. You’ve got to start planning now for your next body. This is a classic teaching that falls on deaf ears. People cannot hear it. If you don't have cancer now, if you're not sick, you can't hear it. I'm just putting seeds in your mind, okay? The day will come when you will, if I'm around, you will come and say, how can I have another body like the one I had in this life? How can I get another body like that? And then we have, then we’ve got to talk about this verse, okay? We got to talk about this verse. Mainly, keeping your morality. Okay? Mainly not killing, not stealing, not sexual misconduct, like that. Mainly that. Alright.

How to clean bad seeds from your mind?

[43:15]

Next picture, you dudes.

I chose this picture, I don't remember why, sometimes I can't remember why. But it's meant to show the four powers of confession. How to clean bad seeds from your mind, okay? And Rendawa is interesting, okay? Listen. Rendawa says, I could teach you how to be a good person, but you won't do it. It's kind of, you're like, what? He says, I can teach you lots of good things to do, the ten good deeds and things, I can teach you that, but you won't be able to keep it. You know, a normal human being, they will, somehow they will lie a little bit, somehow they will steal a little bit, somehow they won't be totally generous. You see what I mean? And he says, let's assume you're not going to be pure. Let's assume you're going to make mistakes in your life. And we all make mistakes. If you think you're pure, that's a definite sign that you're not pure. Okay? If you think you're not pure, you might be pure. Okay? Alright? So, you are going to make mistakes in your life. We all make mistakes. And I think as a teacher, you have to admit it. People only trust teachers who tell the truth. And I think a teacher should say honestly, ‘look, I have this problem, this problem, this problem. I'm jealous of people, I'm very proud, I like to brag about how many books I wrote.’ You know, we're all going to make mistakes. So, Tsongkapa says, here, learn how to clean up the mess. Okay? Get good at cleaning up the mess. Become a master Geshe mess cleaner. Learn how to clean up your bad seeds. Alright? And then he teaches the four powers. By the way, the four powers, TOP SHI, these are, there's a separate sutra, and if you really wanted to have a good class or a good time, it would be nice to translate it. It's not very long. And the Buddha taught it as a separate teaching, as a separate sutra. It's the sutra on the four powers. And it'd be interesting if, like if the Kendra family came back to Kyoto ever, it'd be interesting to choose something like that and teach it because it's a beautiful sutra, okay? It's the sutra on the four powers. I put in here, let me see. Where is that? SHI, SAMPA, JORWA, TARTUK, right? Something like that. Let's see.

I'll tell you the main things about how to clean a bad seed. One is to admit that you have it, okay? And, and it's important to say the mistakes that you've made, and it's important to admit them to yourself. If you can't talk about your biggest mistakes with other people, then probably you cannot clean them, okay? So I think it's important to tell somebody. To clean a negative seed, it's really important to tell somebody. I like to have a, I like to have a bad seed friend. I like to have someone that I can talk to privately and I can say, ‘look, I have this problem, I do this bad thing’, and I like to tell somebody. I got this habit with my teacher. My teacher was very, very, how do you say? He wasn't warm and fuzzy. How do you say? He wasn't this kind of… he was hard. He was hard. He walked over the Himalayas to get out. And many hundreds of thousands of people died. Millions of people died. He made it. And he was a hard man. And you know, it was really hard to go to him and say, ‘I made a mistake’. And there were many times, I remember I had a bad, I had a bad habit. I would masturbate, because [audio unclear] living in a monastery. And I had a very normal American high school and college. You know what I mean? As far as sexual stuff, I had a very normal high school and college. So we had girlfriends, and we did all kinds of things with them. And then I just walk into this monastery, and now suddenly I'm supposed to not have any sexual contact at all. And you can't even, you never even touch anybody in the monastery. It's quite strict. So, you know, here's a normal American boy, and you put him in a monastery and I had to masturbate sometimes. I found out, it was interesting, it was always Saturday night. Like five years later, it was still Saturday night. And in the monastery, it doesn't matter. And it's embarrassing to talk about, but what he [taught?] me, to talk about it. So I'm talking about me, and I was very careful. If I broke it, I would go tell my teacher. I never broke the sex thing. I didn't have sex for many years. But masturbation, I did it, and then I wanted to tell my teacher. And I was scared to tell him. I didn't want to talk about it. I don't want to talk about it now. And then I went to him, and I said, you know, I broke this thing, and he looked at me like I was a really dirty person, you know. He's like, what? And I'm like, you know, I'm just a normal guy, you know, I'm sorry. And he's like, foo [making unpleasant face]. And he's like, okay, go, you know, go back to whatever you're doing. And then I made a promise to myself I would tell him every time. And then, you know, like three [weeks later?], knock on his door. He's like, come in, you know. And then I do all these prostrations, maybe he won't be so angry, you know. And then I said, I did it again, and I said, do you want to know why? He said, I know. And he said, okay, you cleaned it, now go. And then later he said, don't come into my room without knocking. So I knocked, and he said, you did it? I said, yeah. He said, okay, go, go away. But then I was able to stop it, you see, because I was clean, and I told him every time I did it, I was honest with him. And so that's a very, very important thing. The Four Powers means be open. At least have one friend in your life that you can tell them all of your stuff, okay? The main thing is mental, you know. The main thing is the mental ones. ‘I was thinking to murder my associate at work’, you know. And they're like, ‘wow, you look like a nice person’. I was like, ‘yeah, I was thinking, should I use a gun or a knife’. No, [I mean I don’t do those things?]. We do a lot of things mentally, okay? And it's very, very powerful. And Tsongkapa is recommending have a friend in your life that you trust and tell them the worst things, okay? And don't have any hidden ones. When you have a hidden one, you die with it. It goes with you, okay? So to protect your future self, to protect yourself when you die, then be honest, be 100% honest. Have one person who won't kick you out of the room or lock the door. You can yell through the door, okay? But have one person in your life that you can tell your deepest secrets to, the negative things that you think about, and it will clean, it will clean it, okay? And that's the four powers. That's the essence of the four powers. Tell somebody. If you take the bus to work, you can tell the person next to you. I've done that. ‘Do you know what I did last night?’ ‘No, I don't want to know.’ But I'm serious, okay? And it has made my life very happy. My life is extremely happy, you know? I don't hide stuff. I don't have anything to hide in it. And that habit that I was taught is very, very nice, okay? And you will be very, very happy. That's the key to happiness. Okay.

After you have the direct perception, what else can you see?

[53:38]

Next picture.

Now Tsongkapa is getting into the Lamrim where you meditate on suffering, okay? This is the… you meditate on suffering. And I wanted to talk a little bit about… we talked about seed pictures, and we talked about luminous images, and we talked about pictures coming out of the seeds in your mind, and we talked about name only, we talked about labels, we talked about imputed. All of these emptiness philosophy words that just mean pictures come out of the seeds in your mind from how you treated other people in the past. And they go out; stuff doesn't come this way [from their side], stuff comes this way [from you]. Everything in the world comes from your here [third eye], okay? Everything in the world comes from your mind. Everything you ever see is coming from you. Everything, okay? So when you, just before you see emptiness, you will see the seeds opening, and it's very, you know, you're like, damn, all of those classes were correct. You don't really know until that day if Buddhism is correct. You can say “I'm Buddhist”, you can say “I'm Lamrim”, you can say “I go to all the classes”. You are not a Buddhist until that day. Then you say, oh my god, I'm so lucky I got in the right business, okay? Called Buddhism, okay? So there's a deeper way to understand MING TZAM, name only, labeled, and it just means… forget name, forget term, forget label, it just means pictures are coming out, and they are creating the world in front of you, and they come from how you treat other people. Got it? That we agreed?

Now I want to talk about the Four Arya Truths, okay? Four Arya Truths. I think we have time to cover it today. It's the next topic in this Lamrim, and the Lamrim is necessary or I will not teach you Diamond Way, okay? That's the deal, that's the agreement, that's the contract we have. You put in the Lamrim, I put in the Diamond Way, okay? You signed it when you came here, okay? And we’ve got to talk about now the Four Truths. So when Lord Buddha taught… it's an interesting story, Lord Buddha became the Buddha, and then I think it was 49 days, I think it was seven weeks that he refused to teach. He got enlightened… he pretended to be enlightened in this world, and then he refused to teach. And he had some disciples, who were they? The Tiger Cubs. He had like, I don't know, four or five, four plus one, he had five disciples, and he said, I refuse to teach you. He refused to teach for seven weeks after he became a Buddha, and then he started. The first teaching he ever gave in the Deer Park. Dragon's Head has these beautiful deers. Do you got that one picture of them jumping? Can you send it to these kids back there? Stanley's going to send you a picture. He went to the Deer Park in Varanasi, and he taught… [Deer Park in] Sarnath, and he taught, the first thing he ever taught was the four truths. Four truths means, it sounds… okay, try to understand. Truth sounds like law or principle, you see what I mean? I'll teach you the four principles, or I'll teach you the four laws. They are not, okay? They are not laws. Laws are interesting in Buddhist logic because they are unchanging. They're one of the only unchanging things. I don't know, ‘all vegetables don't taste good’. Don't tell my wife I taught you that. Principles are unchanging, they don't get less or more. It's either vegetables taste good or they taste bad, but it's not like they change halfway through or something like that, okay? The facts, facts don't change. These are called the four Arya facts, okay? By the way, they were mistranslated in English for many years, and they called them the Four Noble Truths because the word Arya means higher, elevated. It means higher up, okay? Arya means higher up. So these western guys in my teacher's generation, my professor's generation, they saw Arya and they translated it as noble. Noble means what? You're super moral or something, and you're a good person, and you always tell people your faults, and.. anyway. And they mistranslated. Noble is a bad translation which has nothing to do with the word Arya, okay? They are called Arya truths because they are experiences that an Arya has. They are called Arya truths because they are experiences that an Arya has. Jetop Yeshe, following the direct perception of emptiness, in the next few hours after seeing emptiness directly, every Arya sees these truths. Every Arya sees the same thing, okay? They see the same truths.

That's a deer from Dragon's Head. Pretty cool.

I feel like it's got the blessing of Deer Park or something. Yeah. Anyway, so Arya truth is not a truth, it's not a fact, it's not a statement, it's an experience. It's a thing that you experience, okay? Suffering, pain… if you have a toothache, you are experiencing one of the Arya truths. You see what I mean? It's not the statement that toothaches hurt, it's not a truth, it's the fact, okay? They should have called it the four Arya facts. It means that thing itself, the pain itself, is the first Arya truth, okay? Got it? The first fact of Arya. Why Arya? Why do they call them Arya truths? Because only a person who has seen emptiness directly sees these four truths as they are, okay? You can learn them, and you can learn to repeat them, and you can learn all the sixteen aspects, you can learn the sixteen divisions of them, but you don't have the direct experience that an Arya has of them. Alright?

So I wanted to talk a little bit about the Arya's experience of those sixteen and the four truths, alright? So I wanted to talk about the four truths and the sixteen aspects. And there are presentations of the four truths in the Abhidharma, for example, and I remember when Ben was translating about the four truths - we got confused because some of the books said, they are not what you think, they are not this description, you know? It was very interesting, we had trouble translating it. So I want to share with you some of the experiences of a person who has just come out of the direct perception of emptiness because those are the four Arya truths. Those are the four Arya truths. Nothing else is the four Arya truths. They are not written in books. They are experienced by Aryas, okay? Only by an Arya-fully are they experienced. So I think it'd be interesting if you have an Arya, to listen to their experience. And then I think it would be interesting to try to connect these experiences to the sixteen aspects because they should line up. They should correlate. And I haven't really sat down to work on it, but that's… it's interesting. You can experience the sixteen aspects, and then go check if they are written down correctly, okay? And it's very interesting. When I came out of the direct perception, one of the things I saw… and by the way, this is not during the direct perception of emptiness. During the direct perception of emptiness, you cannot see anything else. It's impossible. You cannot even see your own mind. You cannot… the most frustrating thing is, while you are in your first direct perception of emptiness, you cannot frame the thought, ‘I did it.’ Because you cannot think ‘I’, and you cannot think ‘did’, and you cannot think ‘it’. You can just be in emptiness, okay? You are in the direct perception of emptiness, you are not aware of thinking or perceiving. You're not aware of yourself, because your self is not emptiness. You are swimming in emptiness. You cannot perceive anything else, okay? Then when you come out, you start to see the sixteen aspects. ‘Why are we talking about that Geshela?’ Because if you really appreciate some of those aspects, you will take care that you do not have a bad rebirth. If you really appreciate the sixteen aspects, you will be very scared to plant any bad seeds because you know what's coming, okay? So I'm going to share a few things, and then, you know, someday we should do it for a couple days or something. I don't have time right now. I'm trying to get you… I'm on a schedule to get you into your empowerment by autumn, something like that, okay? But we all have to stay healthy, and we have to work hard. You know, by 2026 autumn time, sometime, depending on the clinic, okay? The CSP group, and the related group, the DSEU group, they're a little bit ahead of you guys. They finished almost three years now, and they will be ready for their empowerment in the next few months, okay? And there are many great teachers of Diamond Way, such as John, Connie, Jigme, who are also granting empowerments and teaching Diamond Way, and they are very qualified, and they are very cool. And you know, if you like ice cream, it's also okay to have a cinnamon roll at the same time. It's my opinion, understand? Okay, so that's up to you.

Alright, here's some of the 16 aspects, okay? [Looking at time] Boy, I better pick it up, I better continue tomorrow. But I'll say one thing, you see your death, okay? You see your death. And we all know we're going to die, we saw many people die, we all believe we're going to die, and nobody thinks they're going to die, okay? And if you're an Arya, when you come out, you see your death and it's very powerful. It's very, very powerful, and I guess it's kind of liberating, alright? You see your death, there's no question about it. You see the day that you will die, and that's very powerful. You also see, very typically, that you will have to live seven more lifetimes to reach enlightenment. So you know very clearly, for certain, you see at least… well, at worst, let's put it that way… if you don't practice Diamond Way, you have seven lifetimes to go. I saw that in… I saw that after I saw emptiness, I saw it on the same day, in the same temple, and then later I read it in the Abhidharma. And I was so, I was, I was, they have a word, say [len dun bgawa. Len dun bgawa 1:07:58?] means Arya with seven lifetimes to go, including the one now, so six more. And I was freaked out, I was like, damn, that means somebody else saw emptiness, that means I'm not crazy, you know? By the way, you also see that you're not crazy. But I saw the word after I experienced it, you see what I mean? And I think that's really, that's really cool. So your death is like that, and your next seven lifetimes are like that, and you see it, okay? And you know you're going to die, and somehow that's a very beautiful thing, okay? Then you see your enlightenment, you see yourself as a Buddha, and that's very sexy. You see yourself in seven lifetimes, and you see you will be a Buddha, and you see the Buddha, and it's you, and that's really cool. And then, how does that affect your mental affliction level? You see what I mean? Like someone says, ‘I'm going to fire you’, or ‘we're going to lower your salary’, or you know, ‘you have to clean the toilet’, or other kinds of bad news, you know, or ‘your kidney's bad’, you see what I mean? And then how does that affect how you live? It changes everything, okay? If you see yourself as a Buddha within seven lifetimes, then nothing bothers you that much.

There's still irritating people who irritate you, okay? Someone told me, ‘Geshe Michael, you're not an Arya.’ I said, why? ‘You still get upset.’ When you become an Arya, you do not get rid of your upset, I'm telling you that, okay? That's much later, that's called Arhat. Aryas have lots of problems, aryas have all kinds of mental afflictions, except for doubt. They saw their own Buddhahood, they know. You can talk to an Arya for ten years and tell them they're crazy, and they'll go, [pretending to agree] ‘oh really?’ You know, like that, okay? So you get rid of doubt and that's the main thing. You can't doubt Buddhism anymore.

Question for you guys, and this… the Angel-Devil book goes deeply into this topic later. By the way, you are only halfway through the Angel-Devil after 14 years, okay? Later in the book, they start talking about, you know, does an Arya see things coming from their own side after they come out of the direct perception of emptiness? And the answer is yes. That habit is so old, that habit is so strong, that when you come down out of the direct perception of emptiness, deep down you still… things still look like they're coming this way [from their side], okay? But, you don't believe it. How often do you don't believe it? No, not all the time. And that's something interesting, like Aryas forget themselves once in a while. Especially if they're jealous or upset or something like that, okay? They can get angry, they can get jealous, because they can forget what they saw. Not completely. I mean, if you sit down and say, “Geshehla, are you jealous right now?” Yes. “Are you upset right now?” Yes. “Did you see emptiness?” Ah, yeah. So you know it's coming from you. “Yeah. Oh yeah, you're right, I feel better.” Okay, all right? Even an Arya forgets where things are coming from. You do not eliminate your mental afflictions the day you see emptiness directly. That's not the case. You damage them. And by the way, after that you cannot collect karma to be reborn. Those seven lifetimes are… those seven lifetimes are propelled by past karma, not by any new karma. You make no new bad karma of that type. You cannot have an eighth life or a ninth life or something like that, it's never going to happen after you see emptiness directly.

Okay kids, these are things that if you know them, you can practice Diamond Way better. I'll keep telling you and we'll keep talking about it. I'll be honest, if you can meet an Arya and you can hear these things firsthand, it's much, much stronger. It's much, much more powerful. And so we're really lucky to have this chance together. Okay? Alright, see you tomorrow.

Class 5

15 December 2025

Okay, hi. Thank you for such a nice welcome, and thank you for coming so far. And you're very, very nice, and it makes me very happy to be here. We're gonna start with advertisement, yay! The Japanese book thing, you guys. So, this was printed many years ago in Japan, and they just reprinted the 25th anniversary. And I think it comes out tomorrow, if I'm not mistaken. Today, two more days. Okay, and thank you, where's Sophie Chow and her team? Can you guys stand up? Thank you. Thank you. Nice job. It's a beautiful cover. They put extra hair, I think so. Okay. Alright. We didn't quite finish. I'm still on that last image from yesterday. It looks like a planet, I think, in the sky, in the dark sky. And I didn't quite finish from talking about the Arya truth, okay? The things that an Arya sees. And I think it's good for you to hear it from grandpa, okay? So, we talked about seeing your death directly. You see your death, and I repeat that most people, everyone except an Arya, has a deep down belief that they will not die. And they're wrong. But you don't really believe it until you see it, after you see emptiness directly. You see your death directly, and then you don't have any doubt about it. Strangely, after that you feel more relaxed about dying, and you don't feel more nervous. You feel more certain, okay? Because you know the job you have to do, and you feel very, very relaxed all the time. Even you get into some very dangerous situation, you feel very comfortable, okay? Then I would say, something you see in those minutes, in my case, I stayed in the temple for maybe an hour, almost an hour, and then I went to sell my car, to buy a diamond, okay? And offer it to the Buddha. But I remember one thing was that in the temple where I saw emptiness, we have a set of the Kangyur. So, we have the 990 ancient books from India spoken by Lord Buddha. And I think it's the only wood carved set in South America and North America. It's in that temple. And I was looking at it and I was thinking, as an Arya, you get this strange feeling. First of all, you want to prostrate to it, okay? And in Asia, in Buddhism, then we have this custom to bow down and you can do a gochak, you can put your head on the floor, or you can do a gyangchak, you can spread your whole body out on the floor. And on that day, when you become an Arya, you will throw yourself on the floor, okay? Like, no hesitation, you just throw yourself on the floor. And I think that's where prostration came from, maybe, okay? And you just throw yourself on the floor. And then when you look at the paintings in that temple, I came from Princeton, I was supposed to be a Christian priest, I was signed up for a seminary already. I was already accepted into seminary. And then I was used to this beautiful cathedral at Princeton, very beautiful stone cathedral, very quiet, very serious. And then I came to this Mongolian temple and everything is crazy. Wild colors, and all kinds of terrible paintings of terrible things. And on that day, as an Arya, you just throw yourself down and you say, oh my gosh, all these paintings are true. All those beings really exist. And there's some kind of great excitement to look at a statue or look at a painting after you know that person is alive, and you know that person is real. And you're like so excited to throw yourself on the floor, you know? And I think I did the first real prostration in my life on that day. Then I was looking at the books and I got this intense understanding that these books must survive in this world. These books about, the Buddhist books must survive in the world. If they don't survive in this world, it's like the sunlight went out. Imagine the sun got burned up or something, you know? Imagine the sun went dark and how it would be in our life, you know? And if those books disappear, if we don't take care of them, if we don't translate them, if they're not available, then this world doesn't have sun, okay? You have physical sun, but you don't have a real sun, okay? So, it's very, very important. It's more important than I can say, okay? It's not Ben Kramer's book. By the way, it was sold out, congratulations. It's not that we can all understand them easily and it's not that, you know, everybody's going to read them on the bus or something, but they are the most precious thing in the world. And if they disappear, then this world is like hell, okay? You don't understand, and you don't really believe it, but if you see emptiness, you know that, okay? Yeah, okay. Let's keep going through this. Wait, I'm on the wrong book. Okay, let's go to the angel. I'm sorry, we have to go to the angel, you guys. You're pretty cool to get the wrong book up there. Alright. I think we're on this guy in the kitchen. Yeah. Okay, listen. I told the AI, we're going to talk about how— we're going to talk about nang tong. Say nang tong. Yeah, nang means how do things appear to you, and tong means emptiness. And the first penchant lama, he's trying to say that we have to think about nang and tong. So I said to the AI, I want the young man in the kitchen who's looking at the pot, in one hand, he's holding the pot, and in the other hand, it's empty. And then the AI made all these extra hands, and didn't put a handle on the pot. I guess if you don't have a handle, you don't need a hand. But, yeah, I felt like the one person was uniting nang and tong, okay? Nang means appears to you, the pot appears to you as if it were, wow, not bad. Not great, but not bad. So nang means, that's a little bit sketchy. Anyway, nang means the way that things appear, and then tong means what they are not. So nang, the pot in his hand, means what things are, what they are, they are appearing to you, but they are not appearing any other way, and that's the tong. And the nang and the tong go together, okay? Nang and tong go together. Now I ask you a question, let's do YI BA'I to keep you awake, okay? And, it makes my luggage lighter on the way home. Okay? Nang, tong. Nang and tong, are they cause and effect or not? Let's go through each one. Does nang last forever and never change? Does nang never change? Or does nang change? Okay, let's say that. By the way, 99.999% of the things in the world are constantly changing every second, okay? New pictures, new pictures, things are changing. And then some things never change, like tong. Oops, I just gave you the answer. Okay, so, anyway, I forgot to bet, YI BA'I.Okay, appearance of things, cause and effect, that's nang, okay? And that's changing every second, okay? That's changing. As new pictures come out, it's changing. Tong is emptiness, never changes, okay? When you make a pen in a factory, the minute you put on the last part of the pen, its emptiness begins. Sorry, I cannot say begin. Its emptiness comes into being, okay? And then when you destroy the pen, its emptiness goes out of being. And you should try in your meditations, in your mind, try to feel the difference between something growing and something just start, come into existence, okay? Emptiness doesn't grow. Emptiness doesn't start like a kid and then grow, grow, grow, grow, grow, like that. It's just, the moment it starts, it's a hundred percent emptiness. The moment it blinks out, it's a hundred percent emptiness. It doesn't go through this, this kind of bell curve, okay? It doesn't do that. It just exists immediately, and then it goes out of existence immediately. Okay, why am I saying that? Nang and tong, okay? Nang is the pot, tong is emptiness. This one was made in a factory, apparently. This one was made in a mind. If you like pots, which I don't, because you have to wash them, that's my definition of nirvana. When the pot wash itself, when the suitcase pack itself, I don't care about the crops so much. Yeah, so emptiness, this pot comes into existence, its cause triggers it, and then it goes. And then emptiness never grew, okay? It just blinked in, and blinked out of existence. Okay? Let me ask you, he says nang is cause, and emptiness is effect. Correct or not? I mean, it's just the first penchant lama, don't worry. Is the appearance, the pot, could the emptiness in the guy's hand, dzu, could that be the cause of emptiness? Can appearance of things, can the growing of things, and the emptiness of things be cause and effect? He says they are. Yeah, Ben is very good at arguing with these high lamas, and it's correct, cannot be. Cannot be, okay? Why? Emptiness cannot be an effect, okay? You cannot say the pot is the cause, and the emptiness is the effect. You cannot say that, because emptiness cannot change. Emptiness cannot get bigger, emptiness cannot get smaller. It cannot go like this. It just goes click, click, out of existence, okay? Got it? But he says it's cause and effect, but just before that he says they almost appear as if. Okay? They look like, they feel like cause and effect. It looks like the way that your seeds make the thing causes the emptiness of the thing. Okay, got it? Got it? It feels like that, but it's not like that, okay? He just says it feels like that, okay? He says understand the relationship, there's three elements here, okay? There's nang, there's the thing that's being constructed from your pictures, there's tong, there's the lack of something here, but there's a third thing here, the thing that's not there. Okay, got it? There's what is there, there's the missing, missing emptiness, but then there's a third thing here, the third thing is the pen you always thought was there, and was never there. Okay, I'll say it again. There's a pen that looks like it's coming this way. There's a pen that looks like it's coming from its own side, okay? There's that, then there's the emptiness of the pen, and then there's the nang, there's the way the pen really exists through your pictures, through your pictures. There's three things here, okay? There's the pen that's coming at you, there's the pen that's coming from you, and there's emptiness, okay? There's the emptiness of the pen that doesn't come from you. Okay, got it? You okay? You alright? It's very quiet. Okay, alright, okay. Then he says something beautiful. If you understand, there's three things out here.What? You got a pen? Anybody got a pen? Sayonara. No, no. Oh, okay. Here's a pen. It feels like it's coming from the pen, okay? And you know, even though you can't feel it, that it's coming from your pictures, and you know pictures are coming out like chu-chu-chu-chu-chu-chu-chu, okay? Therefore, the pen that's coming this way is where? It's nowhere, okay? It doesn't exist. That's emptiness, okay? What's cause and effect? What's— $100, Ibai. Where's the cause and effect? Ibai. Ibai. Ibai, do your thing. He bought a— The reason, it's what I did early when I help other people with writing, and the result, it's a picture that I have— Coming out of my seat. A pen, yes. Yeah. Now, that's an example of Arbhai for Ibai. That's a— $200. That's a $200 answer.Okay? Now listen, okay? Listen. Ever since I started to become a Buddhist, I like to visit temples. I'm thinking of Umeshan. I went to outside Chengdu. Chengdu. I went to Umeshan, and I remember, it's a big holy mountain. It takes two days to walk down it. I walked down it. It took two days, and it hurt. I forget trying to walk up. You have to take the bus up, okay? I was going to be brave, and I walked down, you know, and halfway down you— When you get tired, you can stop, and there's these little monasteries, and you pay 50 cents, and you can sleep on the floor. So, I came down that thing, and I was always interested to see what do Buddhists look like who were born as a Buddhist? Because I'm not born as a Buddhist, you know? I'm a convert. I changed to Buddhism, but I'm always curious. What's a Buddhist look like who was born as a Buddhist? And I watched these guys come there, and they bring incense, and they light incense, and they make offering, you know, and maybe they offer some food, some rice, or something like that, and I'm watching them, and I'm thinking, oh, I better buy some incense, or I better buy some fruit. I can offer a fruit, you know, and I was watching them. First Panchen Lama says here, you ready? You want to make an offering to the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, understand what she said. Just understand what she said, and forget the incense, and forget the rice, and forget the fruit, and just, you know, I think it's great, because it's so cheap. Okay? You don't have to offer a golden bowl with an apple in it, you know. You just remember what we said in this class, okay? And he says, that's the excellent offering. That's the best offering. And you can do that offering on the plane, you can do that offering in the airport, you know, you can. It's difficult to do it when you're checking out of the hotel, but, right? You're so worried about catching the plane. But you can make this offering everywhere you are, anywhere you are. Even, you know, you're sitting with some irritating person, and they're like, wrang, wrang, wrang, wrang, wrang. And you can, you can look at them, and my wife does this. She's like, oh, oh, oh. And then, in your mind, you can make offerings the whole time, you know. You don't have to listen to what they say. When they finish, you will notice. And you just, hmm, really? She has this mantra, really? Oh, really? And I think she's just offering emptiness in her mind, okay? You can make this offering all day. You can make it everywhere, okay? When something happens to you uncomfortable, you know, somebody says something uncomfortable, or somebody does something uncomfortable, it can remind you to, please make the offering, okay? So, you can connect it to the problems in your life. When the tax department sends you a letter, you can remember emptiness and offer it, okay? Got it? I got a letter from the tax department. Igor Sergei got a letter from the tax department in Ukraine, okay? He was a big businessman in Kiev, and he practiced the four steps, DCI four steps, for a couple of years. Then he got a letter from the Ukraine tax department. Come to the office. We need to talk to you. And he was very scared, you know? And he went to the office, and they said, you know what? You are so honest on your tax, we will give you some tax money back. Okay? And this happened to me also. So, in the old days, the great saints will walk on water, and in the modern times, you get a letter from the tax department, you know? You got a refund, we give you extra money, you know? Okay? So, if you want to make an offering, by the way, the incense doesn't hurt, the apple is fine, you know, you should offer things. It helps you remember. But along with that offering, just remember what she said. Just remember what Arbhai said. Arbhai means two hundred. Okay? And then, that's a real offering. Okay? Cool. All right. And he says, next picture. Ta-da! That's the best kind of secret offering. Okay? These are cowboys from Rimrock, Arizona, and they wear a special mask. When they rob the bank, nobody can see who they are. Okay? This is the special kind of bodhisattva who breaks into your house late at night, opens the door with a special thing, sneaks into your house, opens the drawer, finds your purse, takes out the wallet, and puts more money in, and runs away. Okay? That's a Buddhist robber. Okay? Bodhisattva robber. I like it. So, he says, in this verse, if you want to make a secret offering, you know, if you're a big diamond weight person, and you want to make a secret, secret offering, you know, you want to be a high YSI, Niguma level 63 yoga, yogi, you can, you can offer these gifts in your mind. Okay? You can make this offering in your mind. Then you're a tantrica. Then you're a real tantrica. Then you are doing secret practice. Okay? Looks like you are having lunch, but actually you're making offerings in your mind. Okay? Cool? As the offering disappears on your plate. Ezra is like, Dad, when are we going home? This guy is weird. Okay. Next verse. If you see, he says, by the way, I'm on verse number 381. He says, if you see that a particular result always comes from a particular cause, and you understand the emptiness of it, which means you understand that the real cause is your own seeds in your own mind. Okay? If you understand that, and then you understand how things are empty, you are making the best offering to every Dharma protector. Okay? Dharma protector. And it's Dharmapala, okay? Pala means protector. The word, English word, pastor comes from that, as a priest, a protector of the flock. So, there's some controversy like ten years ago. You know, there was a Dharma protector. Don't worry about it. That's one out of a million. And, I don't know, people decide to argue about it. Don't worry about it. I'm not talking about this one. I'm talking about people who keep the Dharma in the world. People who prevent the Dharma from disappearing in the world. Okay? Like Ben Kramer. Okay? That's a real Dharma protector. Alright? Got it? And ... And I got a picture of Ben Kramer doing the Dharma protection thing. Here we go. No, yeah. That's ... I told the AI, I want a tiny box, crystal box of water to represent emptiness. And it kept making aquariums. And, I'm sorry about that Ben, but it represents emptiness, okay? So, and Ben's protecting the idea of emptiness in this world. Okay? Ben's protecting the idea of emptiness in this world. How do you protect the idea of emptiness? You just learn it. Okay? That's how you protect it. Okay? You can write a book about it. You know, you can teach it to somebody else. But the real protection of the Dharma is when you understand how the seeds work.When you understand how the seeds work, you are protecting the Dharma. Okay? Got it? And I think everybody would like to protect the Dharma, right? You know, you feel like, oh, I want the books to survive in the world, and I want all the Five Houses teachers to be successful. I want them to keep teaching in the world.I want H3 World News on every television set in the universe, with Juan Hasso giving the announcements. You know, you can pray for that. But to understand emptiness is to protect the Dharma. That is protecting the Dharma. Okay? Cool? You can be a Dharma protector. And you can protect emptiness in this world. The way you protect it is you understand it. That's all. Okay? You just understand it, and that way you protect it. Okay? Cool? When I got the Geshe degree, I told my teacher, that's the first time I wore the hat, was the graduation day. I was all nervous. I was super nervous. You put on like six layers of robes. It's incredibly uncomfortable, and very, very hot, you know. Then they tie this apron on you, this long apron, and it was some kind of thick bag, you know. And I'm like, what's that? Oh, that's chablung. I said, what's chablung? That's a ... Every ancient Geshe used to wear one, you know. And during your Geshe graduation ceremony, you have to wear it.The final debate, you have to wear chablung. And I'm like, what's it for? And they say, debates is really long. If you have to pee-pee. It used to be like some kind of bag made out of sheep stomach or something. And you can pee-pee secretly during the Geshe degree. I didn't use it, okay. I just held it. But you put on this thing, and you're just dying, you know. And you're so hot. And then they say, you got to put on the Geshe hat, you know. And that's the first time you're allowed to wear a Geshe hat. And I put it on, and it goes, boop, fell off. It's skinny. It's really skinny, you know. And I put it on again, and it fell off again. Then I thought, maybe I'm not supposed to be a Geshe. And then it fell off the third time. And they said, oh, you didn't tie it. And I'm like, what do you mean tie it? And then they took it off, and there's two little strings on it. And you tie it around your ear. And it's like ... And I'm telling you Geshe's secret, okay. Why I said that, I asked my teacher, Geshe Lothar, I said, this hat looks a lot like a Greek soldier's hat. And he said, it is a Greek soldier's hat. Alexander the Great came to India, came to West India, 325 BC, before Jesus. And he reached India, and his soldiers wore this Greek hat to make them look taller so the enemy would be scared. And the northern Tibetans liked it so much, they stole it. And it spread to Tibet. Cool. So, it's a Greek custom. And you got ... He told me the whole story.So, that's Ben Kramer with a hat, okay. Okay, next picture. I'm on verse number 382, okay. And it says, it's infallible. It always works the same. That when you have the same causes, you will get the same result, okay.When you have the same causes, you will get the same result. It's inevitable. You cannot change it, okay. And then they said, and then there's a debate about it in the logic, when we do the logic debates, there's a debate about it, and I'll tell you the debate, okay. And young people at the monastery, when you're about 15, 16 years old, you debate cause and effect, okay. And here's a question for you. If you have all the causes complete, okay, if you have all the causes complete, can you stop the result? If the causes all come together, can you stop the result? And the example in the scriptures, in the logic books, is the seed is there, and there's water, and there's sunlight, and there's fertilizer, and it's been there for a while, and it's all interacting, you know, those are acting on the seed, and then suddenly the seed is ready to make a result. Is it possible to stop it at that time? Though there's a famous answer from the kids. Some kid will say, Geshe-la, you can. You can stop it. Then we're all like, what? How can you stop a result from coming out when the cause is there, and all the conditions are there? Who on earth could stop a seed from going? What if a crow comes down and eats the seed? It's a very famous kids argument. What if a crow comes down and eats the seed? Duh, then the causes and conditions weren't ready, okay? So, don't tell me there's crow stuff. It means this is inevitable. If the causes come together, there is no force in the universe that can stop it. And that's a big difference between what I grew up with. I grew up with, I was taught when I was a kid that God made the universe, God made everything in the universe, and this is how I was taught when I was a kid, that everything comes from that. And then when I studied it, it was, my mind changed. I can tell you this story, but it's a long story. Okay, too long. Right? You sure? Don't blame me. Don't blame me. Okay, I tell this story in DCI. I'll make it shorter, just in case you heard it, okay? Like 20 times. So, when I graduated from Princeton, I got honors. And before that, I went to the White House. The president called me to the White House. I got a medal from the president. And, you know, I felt really smart. And so I was, I felt like I was one of the smartest people in the world. And then, the next day, I went to stay with my Lama. And he treated me like I'm the most stupid person in the world. For 25 years, he treated me like I'm so stupid, you know? He calls me stupid. He calls me jackass. He calls me horsefly. He calls me a whole, there's a whole vocabulary. Someday I'll write a book. You can learn Tibetan insults from him. He called me all these bad names, you know? But I think the worst thing is he never asked me anything. He just told me why I was wrong over and over and over again, okay? And it got to be a little bit, hurt my self-esteem, you know? Someone can tell you over and over how stupid you are and how you do everything. You don't wash the dishes good. You don't make good momos, you know? And then, after a while, you start to believe it, you know? And then, one day, I was reading the Tibetan newspaper and it talked about Sanrikpa. Sanrikpa. Then I asked him, what's Sanrikpa? I never heard this. And he said, scientist. It's one of our new words. We had to invent new words in our language because we don't have this thing. Like lungchen. Wind message. Radio. Sukta lungchen. Form observing sky message. Form observing wind message. TV. Okay? Like that, you know? Then it's like, they had to make up new words, you know? Then Sanrikpa means, I said, what's that? He said, scientist. And I'm like, I said, oh, you don't have science in Tibetan? He said, yeah, we don't have science. And then he looked at me and he said, can I ask you a question? I'm like, yeah, you can ask me a question. I didn't realize that's the first thing you say before you kill somebody. You know, you're very polite. You say, can I ask you a question? It means I'm going to tear you apart. But he's like, can I ask you a question? I'm like, yeah. And he said, it's just something I don't understand. I'm like, what? Yeah, ask me a question. He said, this Sanrikpa stuff, this science stuff, you know, how does it work? What's their main idea, you know? What's their big, big idea? What's the mother principle of all Sanrikpa, all science, you know? And I said, oh, that's easy, you know. Everything has a cause. Everything has a cause. And then science means, progress means, iPhones means, rocket ships means, you find the cause and you can make stuff happen. You just, science means everything has a cause and you find the cause and then you can make everything happen. We were driving down the New Jersey Turnpike just outside of Jersey City and he's like, pull over. I'm like, this is 12 lane highway, you know, no one ever stops. You will die. He's like, stop the car. I'm like, no, not here. No one stops here. I told you, I'm your Lama. He used to have a mantra. I'm your Lama, you know. Stop the car. I'm like, we're going to die. He said, stop the car. I pull over as far as I can and there's 12 lanes of cars going back and forth and he goes, ah. And then this big airplane lands at Newark Airport next to the highway.And he says, look at that. And I'm like, yeah, can we go now? He's like, look at that. Steel flying through the sky. Iron, metal flying through the sky. It's amazing, you know. I just can't see it enough. It makes me so happy. You guys figured out how to make steel fly through the sky, you know. That Santa Rica stuff is pretty cool.Science, right? And then, so he's like, so, what's the number one principle of science? Everything has a cause. You just find the cause and you understand the thing. Then he's like, oh, really? That's how you make steel fly? Yes. That's how you make car? Yes. That's how you make an iPhone? Yes. And then he said, well, what made the whole universe? You know, I said, oh man, we got that covered. In the beginning, there was nothing. And then, then he's like, then what happened? I said, boom, you know, the Big Bang. And then everything started. He's like, wow. I said, yeah, that's what science says. Everything started at that moment, you know, and he says, and everything has a cause, right? Yeah. And well, he gets all excited. That's a special Geshe trap. He's like, oh, wow. And everything has a cause. Is the Big Bang a thing? Yeah. Does the Big Bang have a cause? Then I'm like, you're tricking me. He's like, hey, you know. Yeah, in our belief, there's no first cause. There cannot be a first cause. There has to be something there to cause everything, okay? And then I felt very uncomfortable. I said, you know, us scientists, we spend many years to find the first cause. You know, we even send up a satellite, what's that? Telescope. Which one? Well, James Webb. James Webb, because we can see the images from the Big Bang, we can detect, we can triangulate the Big Bang. And so I'm like, then suddenly, the Big Bang doesn't make any sense at all, okay? Cause and effect cannot have a beginning, okay? It's not logical. Every effect must have a cause, therefore there's no beginning, okay? And just get comfortable with it, okay? Why is that important here? You never had a beginning, okay? There is no beginning to you, and don't worry about it, okay? You weren't born, you've been here forever, and you will remain here forever, okay? And understand that the seeds in your mind have been making the world you live in and making you for time with no beginning. And, every result has a cause. Okay, got it? We call it infallible.Every result. There's no exceptions. Every result has a cause. It's infallible, okay? There's no exception to the pen coming from your seeds. There's no exception to that. And there has never been an exception, okay? There was no first pen, okay? Got it? You alright? And he says, if you want to make an offering to the four-faced one, use this. So, you know, chaturmukha. It's a famous dharma protector, okay? He has four faces. In each direction he has a different face, okay? One face here, one face here, one here, one here. It's called the four-faced one. And he says, if you want to make an offering to these divine beings, enlightened beings who protect the dharma, you want to make an offering to them, think about where did the first thing come from. Okay, got it? Today you are, today you are thinking about what my teacher said. You know, where did everything start? And, and if you really understand cause and effect, you should say, if the causes are there, the thing will come. And if a thing came, the causes were there. And even a crow couldn't stop it. Got it? Okay? And once you understand that, that idea is the best offering you can make to the Buddha, okay? Don't bring your teacher some old cheesecake, okay? You don't have to bring your, how many, I don't know, don't, I mean, it's good luck to bring gifts to your teacher, and I don't mind, it's okay. But I, the best gift you can make, the ultimate gift, is to think about emptiness, okay? You want to make a gift to your teacher? Put, put a little piece of paper in a red envelope. I thought about emptiness this morning, Geshe-la. Put it in the red envelope, you know? Then go to Geshe-la, you know, or put a hundred papers like that for a hundred days, and put it in the red envelope, and come give it to the teacher, and the teacher would be more, a real teacher would be more happy, okay? Got it? That's the ultimate gift. That's the ultimate offering, okay? Even to the Dharma protectors. And I love this offering. If you give me that kind of, was it you? Yeah, I think it was. Sylvia kept her book for 12 years or something? Sylvia kept her six-time books for 20 years. she's like, Geshe-la, I have an offering. I'm like, wow, she's like, you know, I was like, okay, you keep them. I wanted to read them and see all the bad stuff she did, but, but that's a real offering. That's a, that's an awesome offering, you know? The cameraman in Arizona, Jim Shalifu, this guy, we hired him from Phoenix. He's from a university somewhere, and he's this old funny guy, and he plays Santa Claus every year, you know, in the shopping mall. He's the guy that your kid sits on his lap, and he says, were you good this year? He's a very beautiful man, you know, and he came to film the the classes, and he heard how to meditate. Recently he came to me, he said, Geshe-la, 1,000, you know, I'm like, huh? He says, 1,000 days, I didn't break it. I meditated every morning, you know, the 1,000 days, you know. That's just a cameraman, you know. I'm like, you're much better than me. Okay. So, if you want to make a gift to the protectors of the Dharma, or you want to make a gift to your teacher, just think about emptiness, okay? And the book says, what? Ben can guess. If you want to make an offering to your teacher, think about emptiness as best as you can. Okay? Then you're like, I don't have to understand it very well. It said, the book says, as much as you understand emptiness, offer that to your teacher, okay? So, even if it's a lousy emptiness understanding, offer it to your teacher, and that's the highest gift you can give to your teacher, okay? They don't need money. A real teacher doesn't need money, okay? If they don't know how to make money by now, they haven't been teaching Lamrim, okay? Alright? Okay. Alright. Now I have another one. You ready? Next picture. Yeah. If you simply, if people talk about emptiness, blah blah blah blah blah, right? And you, when people say emptiness, you don't think about a black hole, okay? And you don't think nothing matters, and especially you don't think nothing's right and nothing's wrong, okay? Those are the classic, terrible, destructive emptiness teachings, okay? Emptiness is a black hole, or emptiness means try to think about nothing. You know, what do you call it? Wipe your mind. Try to think about nothing, you know? This is super stinky emptiness teaching, super wrong emptiness teaching, okay? Just think about those seeds are coming out from how I treated other people in the past, okay? Then they are creating everything in front of me, okay? And there's nothing else, okay? There's nothing else in the universe. That's emptiness. And then he says a beautiful thing. Say, repeat, okay? You ready? Good luck. DE YI DOR BYED BOS SOGS CHOS DE YI DOR BYED BOS SOGS CHOS It's a very beautiful couple of puns here, okay? SOGS SOGS gathering can mean diamond way offering twice a month, okay? Diamond way offering twice a month, like yesterday, okay? The day before. SOGS SOGS, we call it SOGS. SOGS means gathering the offerings together, okay? SOGS means gathering, okay? Then BUN. BUN means brother or sister, okay? BUN means brother. It's the ancient word for brother or sister. In modern colloquials, it's BING RGYA. BING RGYA, okay? But it means brother or sister. DOR BYED means diamond. It means the king of stones. DOR BYED. DOR BYED means king of stones, okay? So, DOR BYED BUN SOGS hundred dollars. YI BA'I DOR BYED BUN SOGS Hmm, hmm. Diamond Way Brothers and Sisters. SOGS. Then say SOGS. SOGS. What's the SOGS? Here it means the group, the group of your diamond brothers and sisters. Hundred dollars. Yeah. And there's the picture right there. Yeah. I think the AI did pretty good. If someone gets a Diamond Way initiation, empowerment, from the same teacher, you are their brother or sister, okay? You are automatically their brother or sister. Geshe-la, what if they gave that empowerment 20 years ago and you never met the person? Doesn't matter, okay? If they got empowerment from the same teacher, then you are family. You are a diamond family forever. It means you have a special relationship. Do you have all those cousins that you never wanted? I have one like that. You know, people say, is that your cousin? You're like, well, yeah, okay. It doesn't matter how you feel about them, okay? It doesn't matter if they're nice to you or they're not nice to you, or they're smart or they're stupid, it doesn't matter, okay? If they have received an empowerment from the same teacher, you are family. You are diamond brothers and sisters. We call it dorje pan, okay? Dorje pan, okay? And he says here, if you want to make an offering to your diamond brothers and sisters, and the sok is a pan, here. The sok is a pan. What's that, Ben? Two soks here, yeah. So, one is the sok of all your brothers and sisters, and the other is the twice monthly offering, sechu sok, okay? Cool? If you want to make a sok offering, then sit down for a few minutes and understand that there's nothing in your world that's not coming from your seeds. And if you want to make a nice offering to your brothers and sisters, you can cook something nice, bring it to sechu, you know, you can take everybody out to sushi restaurant if it's not Monday. We had trouble. You know, you can do a nice, you can do all this nice restaurant, you can do all this stuff, but the best offering, the best sok dinner for your friends, your diamond brothers and sisters, is to spend a few minutes thinking about the pan, okay? That's the most delicious thing you can give them. Cool, ma? Alright, okay. I like that. I like that he is, if you notice, he has quietly slipped into diamond way, you know? It's just a coincidence, right? That we are slipping into diamond way, okay? And he's slipping into diamond way on the same week. It's just coincidence, right? Okay, okay. Last thing, then I'll do some Q&A, okay? I made this last class shorter, so I could tell Tim that I finished. Next picture you guys. I have a question, and diamonds keep showing up in our teachings, okay? Like, you know, if you're a Buddhist, if you study, diamonds keep showing up. We just had Dorje Pön, what's that? Yeah, diamond brother or diamond sister. They keep, you know. Then we are about to enter the diamond way, and grandpa's book that he put up, the first picture today, that's the, that's based on the Diamond Cutter Sutra. That, that first book of grandpa, 25 years ago, which is this, which is, the book is the anniversary, 25th anniversary book. It's, it's structured on the Diamond Cutter Sutra, okay? And there is no diamond in the sutra. It's never mentioned once. The word jinggong? It's not in the sutra, nowhere, okay? Why do we keep talking about diamond brothers and sisters? Why are we talking about diamond way? Why are we talking about diamond cutter? $300! Why does diamond keep coming up? Mr. Sambar, Sambar, Sambar. Because diamond is the most closest thing in this world to, to emptiness. Yeah, $300. Yeah, okay? Understand? Okay? When you come down from seeing emptiness directly, as you're coming down, you, you are desperately searching for something in the normal world which will remind you, because you, even in that moment you understand you should never forget this thing. So, so you remember, you think of a diamond, okay? You always think of a diamond. It's always the same thing, because a diamond is the hardest thing in the universe. There's nothing that can scratch a diamond, except for another diamond, okay? At a certain angle. But nothing can scratch a diamond. On the Mohs scale of hardness, karandham, which is ruby or sapphire, is like nine, and diamond is 10,000, okay? Like, you can scratch 10,000 rubies with a diamond and nothing will happen to the diamond. I was teaching this to my kids group in the Mongolian temple. I had a kid's group, and I was teaching them this one, you know, and I thought if I show them a diamond, and I put that seed in their mind, you know, they ... by the way, they were like 10 years old at the time. They recently came to visit me in Diamond Mountain. They are in their mid-50s now, and that was weird. And we played rock and roll together. One of them is, what do you call that? Tribute band for Grateful Dead. Chag tselo. But I said to them, I had a special pen that has claws on it, and you can put a diamond on it, and it will hold the diamond. And I said, this diamond is the hardest thing in the universe, you know. I tried to plant a seed in the kid's mind, and they're like, wow, you know. And I said, try it on the door, and they scratched the door. They said, try it on, you know, this coin. They scratched the coin. And then this kid says, I wonder if it will write on the window. And he goes, he signed his name on the window, you know. And it was there for the next 30 years, you know. And my teacher was really impressed, you know. That was another stupid thing I did. But anyway, it's good if you can keep a diamond, okay? It's good if you can keep it. That's why diamond keeps coming up in all these books, okay? And, $500. You got enough? I'm trying to use it up. Then there's less luggage to carry home. If a diamond is like the coolest thing in the universe, then why would you want to write a book and call it Diamond Cutter? Why would you want to call it Diamond Cutter? And by the way, there's some translations, especially in Vietnam, where they left off the cutter. They just call it the Diamond Sutra, which is a really big mistake, okay? I will speak Chinese, because I'm so nervous. Okay, don't be nervous. Because even though diamond is the hardest substance in the universe, the wisdom of emptiness can still cut it open. Okay, yeah. Yeah, good. Good. It's still not ultimate. Emptiness is higher. Emptiness is more ultimate, okay? Got it? Alright, mmm, Q&A. We have 10 minutes. Any subject, I don't care. I'm sure the older students will respect the younger students' chance to ask a question. Okay, so, I have this question. I have this question on Samatha. So, 10 years ago, I asked you this question. I have the experience of Samatha before, and you said that my experience was like a lake, but with a cover on it. And under the cover, I'm in the lake. And if I don't remove the cover, I will die in the lake, and I will keep this kind of chaotic state of mind, in a way. So, what I need to do is that I have to open up this lid, or this cover, and to get another experience of Samatha, or DPE. So, my question is, what is this lid, or this cover that you're referring to? Okay, I don't remember the Q&A, but I can tell you what it means. And he talks about it in this book, in this book, The Devil Debates an Angel, he talks about this question, and he says, as you know, there's two states of mind, one is called Samatha, one is called Vipashyana, and it's not called Vipassana, and Vipashyana and Samatha. Okay, Samatha means the ability to keep your mind on an object perfectly, without distraction, and without getting sleepy, okay? No ching wa, no gopa. Perfect concentration is Samatha, and it feels peaceful, okay? It feels peaceful. Then Vipashyana means you use that gun towards emptiness. You think about the emptiness. The first emptiness you ever see directly, and that was my last Geshe question by the way, the first emptiness you ever see directly, in my case, was the emptiness of Michael, okay? It's the emptiness of yourself, okay? So, you aim that weapon, you aim that gun, Samatha, at you, and you try to understand why am I empty, why am I empty, okay? And he talks about it in this poem, towards the end of the poem he talks about it. If you just get deep into the Samatha, if you just go deep into the meditation, and you don't aim the gun at something, or at somebody, if you take that powerful meditation mind, and you don't think about the emptiness of something, or somebody, then that's a mistake, big mistake. That's like drowning in a lake, okay? To stay under the lake, peaceful, and stay in that peaceful state of mind, but you don't aim it at you. Who are you? Where did you come from? What's creating you? If you don't understand, if you don't use the concentration to investigate your emptiness, then you will drown in that concentration. You will lose yourself in that concentration, okay? Got it? So, it just means the concentration is a great thing, but use it for something, use it for something. Think about where, where am I? Where did I come from? Who am I? Why am I here? Okay? That's all, okay? Think about it. Thank you. And we're gonna reach that maybe in a year or something, okay? Hi Geshe-la. Hi. I have a question. You always have a question. It's a good thing. I have a question, because I think, I think I could hear some contradictions, and I would like to ask you to address them, because people are coming to ask me, and then I don't know how to answer. Wait, I can't hear you. Is the microphone on? Can you guys hear it? I'm sorry. I'm sorry, please. Okay, can you hear me? Yeah. Okay, great. Just be loud, like this. Okay. Kiss the microphone. Geshe-la, you said that you have seven lifetimes, then you said unless you practice Tantra. Does it mean you didn't? Okay, okay, good, okay. Alright, good question.Somebody asked me that last night. If you practice Diamond Way, it's supposed to be the case that in this life, before you die, you can reach Buddhahood, you can reach enlightenment in this lifetime. And there's different statements. Some books say 16 lives, some say 12, some say 1, okay, and they do say that. If your practice of Diamond Way is successful, you can become a Buddha in this life, or 12, or 16, something like that, okay. And I'm just being honest to say, I have not reached that, okay. I believe it's possible, and I practice Diamond Way all the time myself, because it would be nice to do it now and not wait for seven lifetimes, but I personally have not reached that myself, okay. I would ... I hope to, but I cannot say honestly that I have reached that, okay. I believe it can be done. I believe you can do it, and I believe if you follow Diamond Way well, you can do it. Okay, cool. Kiss the microphone. Okay, okay, okay, okay. My mom passed away this year. Three months before she passed away, I used my teacher's Bodhicitta's 23 steps to help my mom. And I would like to ask, because at that time I did not learn Diamond Way, how can I help my friends or family members in my life? And in this course, I have heard my teacher say that the Tibetan Diamond Way is wrong. Maybe ten years ago, I used the Tibetan Diamond Way to help my friends and family members, their future lives. So how can we use these four steps to help our future lives in Diamond Way? It is very simple, but I think it is very helpful to me and to my mom. Thank you very much, teacher. Thank you. Okay, you are welcome. Okay, so my question is, my mom, she finished the last part of her life journey this year, and before she left, I used what you taught in Lamrim class 23, the four steps to help her. And by that time, I did not have the chance to learn the Diamond Way, and in my past, and in my life, I was wondering how can I help, after, since we are learning the Diamond Way, how can I in my life help my friends and my family to face death? And also, you mentioned about the Tibetan books of life and death, and there are some potential problems with it. And I used that book about ten years ago to help some others, so I was wondering if there is anything that we should do, and what should we do? Okay, good. Good question. Good question. I would say two things, and one I think I mentioned. One is to help our parents, if it is your parents or somebody like that, who is very ill or something like that, we should do our best to help them to clean any big mistakes they made in their life. And I'll tell you a quick story. By the way, I believe in stories. I think you remember stories. So, it's not that I'm just an old man and I like to tell stories, but that's also true. So, my dad was dying of cancer. He had lung cancer, and the doctor said, they split open his chest. They cut here, they broke the bone in half, they opened his chest, they checked his lungs, and they didn't do anything. They just closed it back up, and they sewed it, and they said, he's gonna die for sure. There's nothing we can do, you know. And then he slowly died, and so I went to stay with him while he was dying, and his main thing, he drank orange juice, no eating, and watched football games. So, I watched a lot of football games with him, and he couldn't stand up. So, I sat with him, and I watched many football games, and drank a lot of orange juice. I made orange juice for him, and then I asked my teacher before I went, is there anything I can do to help my father? And he said, make sure your father has cleaned his worst bad deeds, you know. Try to talk to him about his worst bad deeds, and then try to get him to regret. If your father says, I'm sorry, I did those things. I won't do them again. Then he, if he passed away, he will have a much happier life. He will have a much happier journey. So, I knew my dad, he was in World War II. He was very young. I think he lied about his age, and he was put on a submarine, and that submarine still exists in Arkansas, because it's called the Razorback, and the state of Arkansas bought it, and put it in the state fairgrounds or something. So, he was on this Razorback for most of the war, and the submarine has a big machine gun on the top, and normally they're underwater, but if they sink a boat, then everybody jumps off the boat, the boat sinks, then the submarine comes up, and one soldier has to shoot all the enemy soldiers in the water. They are hopeless. They cannot defend themselves. They are in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. They are just swimming, and your job is to shoot them one by one, and that was my job, my dad's job, and so I thought I have to get him to confess, you know, and he doesn't even like to talk about it. He only talked about it to me once, and so I was thinking, how can I get him to confess, you know, and here's what I did, and I suggested, okay, if someone's going to die in your family, try to bring up that thing, like, dad, look at that football goal, wow, he's killing those people, by the way, in the war, you know, like bring the conversation to that thing that they did, you know, and I asked him, I said, dad, would you do that again, you know, you did it once, would you do it again, and he looked at me, and he said, I would never do that again, I don't care what, I would never do that again, and I'm like, you know, now that's four powers, he did the four powers, you know, he can die, and that'll be better for him. That's one suggestion, okay. Second suggestion, I don't have, usually, day-to-day, I don't have ability to see people's minds, or I don't have this ability normally, and I don't have the ability to see people who died, or things like that, but it did happen to me once, that I saw my roommate in college, and he died, he was, he died in a he died, it's a terrible story, we went to Princeton together, at Princeton they require that you learn to swim. I don't know why, it's like a hundred-year-old rule, you cannot graduate if you don't learn to swim, and he didn't want to learn to swim, so he didn't learn to swim, and he sued the university, and he won, he won the court case, and he was not required to learn to swim. Then he fell in a river and died, after that, strange story. Then I had some dreams about him, you know, and I believe they were true, and he was looking, he has two children and his wife, his high school girlfriend, and he's, he's standing behind a glass window, and the two children and the wife are eating breakfast, and he's talking to them, and they can't hear him, and he doesn't know he's dead, he didn't understand he's dead, and he's, he's banging on the window, and he's trying to get their attention, and they, they can't hear him, and they just keep talking and eating breakfast, and he's, he's banging, and he's trying to get their attention, and he can't, and then I, I told my teacher about it, he said, yeah, you saw him, he's in the barno, then I said, but he can hear everything that's happening, and he said, yeah, he can, therefore, you should talk to your family member, okay, you should talk to them, even you can't see them, and even you can't hear their answer, but you should talk to them, so sometimes, after a family member passes away, you can sit in a, in a room by yourself, you can sit on your bed, and, and you can talk to them, okay, you can just talk to them, and you can help them through their experience, and especially, it's very, very important, and by the way, you mentioned chang chok the other day, this ritual for the dead, this is in the chang chok, okay, this is part of the chang chok, and we even hold some possession of theirs that they used to love, like if she had a scarf, or she had a rosary, or she had something that she used to use a lot, hold it in your hand, and talk to them, okay, and they are attracted to that possession that they used to have, so you can speak to them, and you can help them through the death process, how to help them, ask them to focus on the good things they did, keep telling them, okay, don't say, mom, you used to burn the spaghetti, and you know, you should say, mom, I remember all the spaghetti you cooked for us, thank you so much, and you were such a good mom, and you helped so many people, keep mentioning good things to them, and they will remember the good things they did, and even you can keep a list during the day, keep a piece of, keep it on your phone, make a list on your phone of the good things, when you, before you start that, you think, oh, your mom did 10 good things for you, then slowly that list will become a thousand, it will grow, and grow, and grow, you will remember more, and more, and more things, and then tell her, I remember, you know, you bought that surfboard $90 at, what was the place, surf, Pacific Beach Surf Shop, $90, six foot ten board, I remember, that was so cool, mom, you know, like, tell your mom all the good things, and when she's happy about the good things she did, it protects her in the bardo, okay, it protects her in the bardo, supposed to be the bardo cannot go for more than 49 days, supposed to be maximum 49 days, but I believe that when you speak to them, even after their rebirth, or in the next bardo, you can have connected bardos, I believe that they can hear you, and I have a friend, what's that lady's name in, in PAC, Turgiano, right, Turgiano, yeah, that's what I said, her daughter died, her daughter died, and she's been doing it now for 20 years, I think, 30 years, she's been doing that, she's been talking to her daughter for 30 years, and I believe it's having a big effect on her daughter, okay, where her daughter is, so, you don't, you can keep going, and you can keep doing this practice, and it's very, very beautiful, if you want to learn more about this practice, you can talk to Venerable Jigme, Venerable Gyelse, stand up, please, yeah, they started a new organization called Blue Sky Friends, and they do prayers for people who passed away, they organize prayers among all the monks, yeah, and sometimes Rebecca does that, you want to talk to them, they have instructions how to do these practices, okay, they have all the paperwork, and they also can help you personally, if you have questions, if you need help over a long time, you can talk to them, and they will keep helping you for many years, even, right, say yes, okay, okay, we're supposed to stop, anything else I'm supposed to do? Oh, I have an interview, I have to go, okay, and I'll see you when I get back, okay, thank you. Hi, hi everyone, this is Jessica from Vietnam again, and I am happy to be back as MC for closing this class number five. On behalf of all our students, I would like to express my deep gratitude to Geshe Michael Roach for teaching us one of the deepest ideas about emptiness, and if you would like to give the best offering to Geshe-la, please just remember what we learned in this class, that is the most excellent offerings, and if you would like to have real protection of the Dharma, it's when you understand emptiness, understand how the seeds work, it's such a profound and precious class, so dear Geshe-la, please stay with us, please, please continue to teach us, we need you, and the world needs you, so now please take a short break and join us again at 5.30 p.m. Kyoto time for class number six, and especially there is an event celebrating Geshe Michael's birthday, yeah, and please make sure to come back on time, and so you don't miss your final class and the birthday celebration, we look forward to seeing you soon, bye for now.

Class 6

15 December 2025

Okay, welcome back. I just had an interview with a Japanese publisher for the Diamond Cutter new book and they loaned me a copy. And I want to show it to you. And Sophie, Sophie Chow. And Ken, Ken also. Yeah, thank you for that. I don't know which is more beautiful, the Japanese or the Chinese edition, which also came out this week on my birthday, okay? So, thank you for that. Okay. All the DCI organizers are selling the book in China, okay? And buy a hundred, okay? Just keep them in your house. No, I'm just kidding. They, I like to give them to people. I, I don't make money from it, okay? I lose money on the books, but I, but I think it's a very, very nice gift to help people, okay? So, I encourage you to get it. Hi, Anton. Hi, Elisabeth. Oh, he's busy. All right, I think next picture. You ready? Ah, we finished that one in the wrong class. Okay, yeah. This is Tsongkapa in the verse. He says, he talks about the mechanism of pain, okay? How pain causes you trouble.And he's talking about an idea called nyonmong. Say nyonmong. Nyonmong. Sanskrit is klesha, klesha. Okay, klesha means any RANG RGYUN DENG GYI GANG ZAG GI RANG RGYUN DENG GYI GANG ZAG GI ZHES RGYUD MA SHUG PA BYAS PA'I SEMS RGYUNG SEMS PA Okay, any movement of the mind which disturbs the peace of mind of the person who has it in their mind, okay? It's the definition of a klesha or a negative thought, okay? I like to call it negative thought nowadays. And I won't see you until when? When do I see everybody next time? I don't know. March. March? Tsai Nangyi. Where? Where? Diamond Mountain? Oh, okay. All right, I'll see you in Diamond Mountain. So, I want ... If I can trick Seiji, I'll come to China. I think Xi'an and Singapore, okay? Depends on the doctors, okay? But, anyway, I want to give you some homework until I see you again, okay? So, I want to give you some homework, all right? Here's the homework. This picture is talking about cycle of trouble, cycle of pain. It's like a machine, okay? That machine will cause you trouble, okay? It's a machine, trouble machine, okay? It's called trouble machine. And it needs gasoline, okay? And the gasoline is ... I think the best gasoline for this machine is when other people bother you, okay? Other people irritate you, you know? You meet people and they say something stupid or they do something stupid. And, you know, this is the fuel that runs the machine that makes your life unhappy, okay? And I have a proposal, okay? Maybe you can check yourself once a day until I see you again at Diamond Mountain or online from Diamond Mountain. Mmm So, I'm a very, very, very busy person because I'm very clear what I want to do in my life. I have a plan. I have things I want to do. I know they will help people. I know they are very, very valuable. So, I really know what I need to do with my time, you know? Every minute of the day I have no question. I know exactly what I have to do to help people. I know I have to do those things. And then I can't waste time, you know? I can't even ... And it's very, very uncomfortable for an Arya to waste time, and you have no idea. It's like you have to go to the bathroom really bad, okay? Like, I'm not even talking number one, I'm talking number two. Okay? It's like someone ... If you lose time when you're an Arya, you know you cannot get it back.Then you become a little bit crazy, and I don't know how to describe it to you, but it's very, very uncomfortable for me to waste time in any way. It hurts my chest. Something happens, and I feel really bad, and I feel terrible.You see what I mean? And I can't describe it. You're in the same place, okay? We're all in the same place, you know? You don't have unlimited supply of time. I always think about Warren Buffett. Today I met some business people, they are in the jewelry business. We were talking about Warren Buffett. He bought my company. 2009. I was thinking, he now has a hundred and sixty-one billion dollars, okay? He has a hundred and sixty-one billion dollars. What happened to Warren Buffett this year? He retired, okay? Didn't die yet.Usually you retire and you die the next year or something, okay? But he's out of time. He ran out of time. He's a wonderful man. You know, he's cool. He's a good person. I really respect him, and he's really, he's a really cool person, but with a hundred and sixty-one billion dollars, he cannot buy one more hour. He cannot. He cannot buy. If you ask him, would you like to buy two years of my time? And will you give me a hundred billion dollars? He will agree. Trust me, he will agree, okay? Yeah, I'll pay anything. Doesn't matter. Money I have, I don't have time, you see? We are the same, okay? We are all the same. You only have a little time in this life, okay? You only have a little, little time, okay? Therefore, okay? Therefore, if you meet irritating people, I was going to say asshole, but I don't like to say it, because we have children here. But, right? Ben, Ben, just Ben. Yeah, what I'm saying is, listen, in your life, you're going to meet people who cause you trouble, okay? It happens to everybody, okay? Everybody meets people day-to-day, hour-to-hour, who say something, do something to you which is wrong and stupid, okay? And then you start to think, you know, oh this person hurt me, or this person is bothering me, you know? And then you are wasting your time, okay? I'll say it again.When you think about, someone says something to you, someone does something to you, and you're like, I don't like this person. I don't like what they did. If I see them today, you know I'm going to tell them something.You make all these plans in your heart, right? Like, if I ... During those planning times, you are wasting your time, and you cannot get it back, then that person, they didn't say something bad to you, they didn't hurt you, they stole your lifetime, and no one can give it back to you, okay? And you have control, you can decide, okay? And I ask you, until we meet again in Diamond Mountain, look at this machine. This is the machine of trouble, this is the machine of pain. It's gasoline. It's people who bother you, okay? People cause you trouble, people hurt you, okay? And I say, sitting here as an Arya on his birthday, just shut up in your own mind, and go on with your life, and don't give them any time, okay? The demons, the ones who want to hurt you, they'll be so irritated, okay? Someone tried to waste your time. You, you feel bad about somebody, you want to think about them, you want to think about what you want to say, you want to think about what you want to do. If, if you'd like to make me a birthday offering, just tell your mind, shut up. Let's think about something nice, okay? Like, there's always bagel shops, coffee shops, donut shops, there's other things you can think about, okay? Okay? Understand? I'm asking you today as a birthday present, okay? Don't waste five minutes thinking about someone who hurt you, or someone said something to you, or someone bothered you. Please, please, please just say, let's forget it, okay? In two years you won't remember. In two weeks you won't remember. Then you cannot remember today, okay? You can do advanced not remembering, okay? Starting now, okay? That, and then I say that's a excellent way to prepare for the next time we meet, okay? Your mind will be ready, your mind will be open, okay? I'll repeat, someone's bothering you, someone's giving you trouble, let's make it ... I'm going to ask you to mazal. You know mazal? Mazal is a Jewish word, it means mazal uber akhar, right? Use it in good health, something like that. And in the diamond business, we don't have contracts, and we don't have lawyers. Do you know how much money we save? Uh, when you make an agreement in business, you say mazal. And it's better than signing a paper. You sign it with your, with your words, you say mazal, okay? And it means I promise. And in 19 years in the diamond business, I probably made 10,000 purchases of diamonds from my company. I only heard, only one person broke mazal out of 10,000 diamond purchases. Only one person, I remember the person, and they broke mazal, okay? Mazal means I promise, deep promise, okay? What do you promise? If you get irritated at somebody, in the three months, two months, two and a half months, until the next time we meet, three months, here's the deal, you have to sign the paper, ready? In the next three months, if someone upsets you, or someone hurts you, do you promise not to waste your time thinking about them, and move on, right away. You're going to move on in five years, ten years, hundred years, you can move on now, okay? So, you understand the deal? Okay, now, on the count of three, mazal, okay, ready? One, two, three, mazal. Den den den, den den den. Okay, all right. Yeah, I like it, that's a good present, okay? Now, you'll forget, but try to remember sometimes, okay? And when you start thinking about this person who bother you, just try to remember today, okay? Try to remember today. They did bother you, I'm not saying they didn't bother you. They were bad to you, I didn't say they were not bad to you, they are bad to you, but don't give them your precious life. Don't give them your precious life, just move on now, move on right away. This person hurt me, yeah, okay, what's for breakfast? You know, that's my attitude, okay. All right, so we have a homework, that's your homework, okay? That's the most difficult kind of homework, it's in here, okay? Very difficult, all right. Next picture you guys. Yeah, the AI did pretty good. She just heard there's no yuzu ice cream.You guys, nobody knows yuzu ice cream. Yuzu is a Japanese grapefruit. We are, today we are discussing growing it at Dragon's Head, but it's the best, it's very similar to grapefruit, but it's more delicious, and we're not sure it will grow in Rimar, but we're going to try, okay? She just heard there's no, there was a shortage of yuzu last year, and I came to Japan and I had to eat American ice cream. Okay, this, the caption here says, we can get out, but we have to stop pretending everything is all right, okay? So, I think, in my childhood, when I was, you know, I went to India when I was 17 or something like that, no, 19. I went to study when I was 19 or something like that. I remember I had my 20th birthday in India, and I never saw a dead person in my life when I was growing up. I never saw a dead person. I know people die, I read about books and people die in the books. I read War and Peace, a lot of people died, Tolstoy, and you know, but I never saw anybody die, and and in America, they protect us, our parents protect us, and it's not so common to see a dead person. In fact, that Geshe, the blind one, when he died, he died, I was eating lunch with him and he died. He died like this, and I'm like, Geshe-la, are you okay? And then finally, I just try to move his hand and start, and I'm like, oh my god, he just died eating lunch with me, you know, and there will come a time when you die like that, okay? And we don't see dead people. In America, him, I told my teacher, I ran to the teacher's house and I said that Geshe died, the blind Geshe died, and he said, well, what happens now? In America, the law says they have to be taken to the hospital immediately, you know, so, you know, we're supposed to stay with the dead person, we're supposed to help them through the bardo, and it's illegal in America. They're supposed to go in the ambulance to the hospital, they will check them, they will give a death certificate, you know, if you don't follow that law, it's very, you can get in big trouble, you know, they have to check if you murdered them, everything, okay? Especially wife or husband, no, I'm kidding. So anyway, my teacher said, I said, they're going to take him to the hospital, and I said, well, what do you want me to do? And he said, go with him, and do the bardo prayers, do the prayers for him. I'm like, he said Geshe, he said do the prayers for him. So, we went to the, I went in the ambulance, and then we got to the to the hospital, and I said, can I sit with him for half an hour, 45 minutes, you know, and they said, no, it's illegal. We have to put him in the refrigerator, you know, and I'm like, but he needs the bardo prayers, I have to do the prayers, you know, and they said, I'm sorry, that's the policy, he has to go in the refrigerator. I said, I'll go in the refrigerator with him. It's a pretty big refrigerator, not too big, and he was big. But anyway, I put a coat on, and I sat, and I did the bardo prayers with him for like 45 minutes. It was cold. Okay, but it made me think about death. We don't see death in this country. Normally in America, we don't see death. And I remember the first dead person I saw, I was in the foothills, we call hill station, Mussoorie. It's in North India, in the Himalayas, in the foothills of the Himalayas, and people die. They need to take the body somewhere. They tie it on the top of a taxi cab, you know, and this taxi cab came by, and there's a guy tied on top of the car, and he's like, like this. I said, what's wrong with that guy? Oh, he's dead. You know, what's happening? They're taking him to the funeral home, you know. Then I never saw a dead person, you know, and I'm like, wow, you know, that's terrible, dead person. So, I think as a Buddhist, as a lamrim person, as a diamond way baby, you got to think about your death, and you have to think about death. If you can be around dead people, it's a good thing, okay? It's not a bad thing. They're not going to hurt you. They rarely hit people and stuff. Okay? You think they're dirty or something. They're just the same as you, they just died. Okay? They're not dirty, they're just dead, okay? So, you can sit with them, you can be with them, and remember you are going there, okay? Everybody in the world sees other people die, and they think they are different, but they're not, okay? Everybody will be there. Everybody will go there, okay? There will be a last person to die in this room, you know? Somebody will die first. By the way, it's not necessarily me, okay? The young ones tend to die first. There's no order. The Lord of Death doesn't check your age. Did you have a 73 birthday yet? No. Okay, I'll take Geshe Michael. It doesn't work like that, okay? Young people get in accidents.The Allman Brothers band lost two brothers in two motorcycle accidents, and like they're 20 years old. It was the best guitar solo in history. Okay, we don't know, okay? That's part of lamrim. We don't know when you're gonna die. There's a Steve Jobs meditation that we do in DCI Global, and Steve Jobs got cancer. What kind of, it was which one? Pancreas? Yeah, he got cancer. At the time, he was one of the wealthiest people in the world. He gave a beautiful talk at Stanford University. He gave the graduation talk at Stanford University. It's online. It's on YouTube. If you ever have a chance, you should see it. He knows he's dying. He's a very smart guy. He's a nice guy, and he spoke about what it was like to face his death, okay? And we don't know, he said he was pretty comfortable with dying, and somebody said, why? And he said, every morning, I learned a meditation when I was in college, that when I brush my teeth, I tell myself I might die today. He said, today's my last day. When he brushed his teeth, he thought, this is my last day here, okay? And it sounds depressing, or it sounds sad, but actually, you feel great, okay? Because it's so honest, okay? Usually we are lying to ourselves. Oh, I won't die today. Maybe tomorrow, but not today. I have dinner plans, right? So, everyone thinks they won't die today, and then death tends to surprise people like that, okay? So, don't be surprised. If you know you're going on a trip, pack your bag today. Put the suitcase under your bed. Maybe you don't need it today. Maybe you need it in a month. Get it ready now, okay? Get ready to die now. All right? Then if you don't die, you had a good day. Okay? And it's not sad, and it's not depressing. It's sad to lie to yourself. It's sad to pretend you're not going to die, okay? Get ready. I have to go through all this stuff preparing my will in case I die in the surgery, you know? So, I'm working with lawyers like many days, you know, and getting everything ready, and I feel better. It makes me feel happy, and my family is happier, you know? They're like, what are you doing with the lawyers? I said, I'm getting ready in case I die. And first they say, oh, don't do that. That's sad, you know? Then they say, maybe that's a good idea. Okay? So, get ready, and get ready. Then you won't waste your time, okay? Then you won't waste your time. Okay, got it? Death meditation, the person who does death meditation, they're happier people. They're much happier people, because they are not lying to themselves, okay? They are telling the truth. People feel better when they tell the truth, okay? All right, next picture. Where's that one? No, that's not the next picture, is it? Oh, sorry, you're right. I'm sorry. Okay. This guy's trying to figure out what keeps him in this suffering life. He's thinking, okay? He's thinking, what keeps me in this suffering life? And that's why one of our twelve translators is translating all these books about the Wheel of Life, okay? Mr. Sugeng Hsu. He's translated one book already about the Wheel of Life. Now he's translating a deeper one about the Wheel of Life, okay? And, and Tsongkhapa says here, that you know you're going to die. Now you know you're going to die. Try to think about why. Try to think about why you have to die.And it's because you don't understand emptiness, okay? It's because you don't understand emptiness. You don't think enough about emptiness, okay? If you think more about emptiness, you can stop your death. People come up to me all day the last few days. Oh Geshe-la, I'm so sad. What? You have to die seven more times. You have to die seven billion times, okay? Okay, it's not so bad. I'll take the seven. You take the seven billion, okay? Really, really, okay? So, the only way to stop that circle, the circle ends in death, right? Link number 12, 12 o'clock. They're carrying a dead body up the mountain. That's the Wheel of Life. Link number one is you don't understand how the seeds are opening. You don't understand how the pictures are coming out. If you just keep thinking about it, if, when you meet this person who irritates you, try to see if there's any pictures coming out of your head, okay? By the way, when you're emotional, you cannot see the pictures. It's very interesting. If your mind is is upset, about somebody, you cannot have wisdom at that time, okay? So, so just forget about them. There's a very famous quotation that the Buddha stopped suffering, but they didn't stop all the assholes in the world, okay? That's interesting. It's, a Buddha does not stop all the irritating people in the world. They are still irritating. They just don't have to experience it, okay? You can't stop all the poor people in the world. Even a Buddha cannot. You cannot stop all the irritating stupid people in the world. You cannot stop it, okay? So, just relax and focus on your practice. Focus on your, focus on your Buddhist practice, okay? You don't have time to do both. You don't have time to do both. You don't have time to do both. You can be irritated, or you can do your Buddhist practice, but you don't have time to do both, okay? You have to choose. You have to choose which one you're going to do, okay? You don't have, did I say that? You don't have time to do both, okay? And now next picture. I asked the AI, you think I sit alone for six hours in the morning? I don't. I talk with the AI. He's my best friend. I'm like, can you show two hands? Got it. Can you put chains on the hands? Yes. Can you count to five and put five fingers on the hand? Huh? He always puts four. I don't know what's wrong with you. Sometimes he puts six. I don't know. My AI is maybe a reflection of me. So anyway, these represent the two causes of trouble in our life. One is, we call kleshas and karma, okay? Klesha means feeling bad about somebody else, okay? Klesha means feeling bad about somebody else. RANG RGYUD LEN GYI GANG ZAG GI ZHIG YIN PA ZHIG PA BYAS PA'I SEMS SBYING SEMS PA Any thought which bothers your own peace of mind is the definition of a klesha, okay? If you are not feeling like you're having fun right now, you are having some kind of klesha, okay? You are having a negative thought. And then that's one of the chains, okay? The other chain is karma. The other chain is the seeds in your mind, okay? You have billions of seeds in your mind. Any weird thing can happen to you anytime, I'm sorry. You know, 10,000 lives ago you killed somebody with I don't know, an earring or something. And then earrings are going to poke you for years and years, okay? And that's all you can ... Things happen like that, okay? Karma and klesha runs the show, okay? Now, the reason it comes up in the Lam Rim is that every one of us has lots of mental seeds. We have lots of karma in our mind. You can say mental seed. In DCI, 17 years ago we decided to say mental seed. We decided not to use the word karma because it means so many different things in so many different countries. So, we decided 17 years ago, we will not use the word karma in the DCI classes. We will say mental seeds. It's the same thing, okay? It's just the same thing. You have mental seeds and you have bad mental habits and they limit you. That's why the two hands are chained together, okay? This person can't scratch their pigu and their head at the same time, right? They are chained together. The two hands are chained together, okay? There's limitations in your life that come from your past life. There's things you cannot do in this life because of karma and kleshas. You are limited, okay? Most of us, the karma and the negative thoughts that we were born with are going to control and limit what we can do in our life. There's a natural limitation on your mind. You have from your past life many bad mental thoughts and you were born with them. And then on top of that, you have negative seeds from your past life. That means in ... I got to teach you a new idiom. The cards are stacked against you. Somebody cheated on the playing cards and you cannot get a good hand. You're going to get a lousy hand, okay? You're going to have a mortal body, you know? You're going to have a mind which gets upset from time to time, you know? You get tired. You have family limitations. You have cultural limitations. You have physical limitations, okay? You were born with those and you have to tell them to shut up, okay? Geshe-la, you know, I can't learn Tibetan. Shut up. Geshe-la, I can't come to all those classes. Shut up. You know? Oh, Geshe-la, I don't know. I can't meditate for an hour. I can only do 20 minutes. Oh, okay. You don't want to see emptiness. Shut up. Okay? You were born with limitations in your body and your mind, okay? And they are so powerful that most people have no hope. Okay? They are so ... you are born with forces inside your mind that it's almost impossible to change, okay? It's almost impossible to change. What I'm saying is, it's not that you have to overcome your karmic seeds, and it's not that you have to overcome your negative emotions. If you have any hope at all with the equipment that you were born with, your chances are very bad to start with, okay? I'm sorry. Okay? Your chances of getting out of samsara are very low because of the equipment you were born with, okay? So, it's a double fight. The fight is double hard, okay? All right. That's what that's about. Next picture. I told the AI, show a group of old friends. That's not too bad, right? And ... I don't know. Looks like ... well, I'm not going to say. These are a group of old friends, okay? Why do I say old friends? At this point in the commentary, Choney Lama Drapa Sheru, he makes a list of old friends, okay? And I'm going to start listing them for you, okay? These are your old friends. Number one, jealousy. Then, that's your old friend. He's been in your mind for a long, long time. Every time someone you don't like gets something nice, you feel jealous. Every time someone you don't like gets praised, you feel jealous. There are nine kinds of jealousy in the in the jing, okay? It's a big topic. There are nine kinds of jealousy in the scriptures, okay? And they're very interesting, okay? But we have it. We all have it, okay? That's the one problem you are born with.You have it when you're born, okay? Alright. Number two, they're called doubts, but in Buddhism we don't say doubts, we say stupid doubts. Hundred dollars. Stupid doubts. We don't say doubt. We don't say doubt is a bad thing. We say stupid doubt. Unresolved? So, something you didn't take care of? Good. Okay, hundred bucks. Yeah, uh ... Stupid doubt means, uh, I don't know, did you do your book today? Did you, did you write down the mistakes you made today, you know? Did you write them down today? Six times. That's a tantric requirement. That's a diamond way requirement. Six times a day today. Did you write down the mistakes you made, okay? And then you're like, well, no. And you say, why? And you say, I'm not sure it will help, you know? Well, Buddha said it will help. Yeah, but I'm not sure. Did you try to figure it out? No. I just don't feel like that.Okay, I just don't feel like that is stupid doubt, okay? You didn't have time to think about it. You didn't work on it. You didn't go to the class, okay? That's called stupid doubt. What's intelligent doubt? There's two students, they have a great teacher, sorry, three students, and the teacher says, come to my room immediately. And this is a story from the Lam Rim. And the three students run into the teacher's room, and the teacher says, today a special project. What's the project? You know, I'm tired of being poor. I'm gonna ask my three students, please rob a bank today for me. Okay? You're supposed to do whatever your teacher says, okay? And I want you, the three guys, you go out and rob a bank, okay? Got it? Then two guys jump up, run out to rob a bank. One guy just sits there, and the teacher says, you didn't hear me? I said you're supposed to go out and rob a bank, get me some money. And the student said, you don't mean it. I think you don't mean it, okay? I believe you don't mean it. I think you are testing us, okay? And then the teacher said, yeah, the famous teacher said, ah, I have one good student, you know, okay? So, that's a correct doubt. That's correct doubt, okay? Someone tell you to do something, even a teacher tell you to do something, and you doubt it's a good thing, you should, you should wait, and you should ask questions, okay? That's good doubt. So, there's good doubt and there's bad doubt, okay? Bad doubt is, you're too lazy to figure it out. Good doubt is, I don't think that's what you really want me to do, okay? Which bank you guys gonna, never mind. Okay, some more old friends. Pride. Okay, pride. I have pride. That's my achievement. I have the best pride. I'm proud about my pride. Um, anyway, someone praises you and you're like, oh, yeah, I'm so great, you know, and really in the, in the end Lamrim says you are bug food. You are just bug food, okay? I have this thing. So, I'm gonna have this surgery. I think it's pretty serious. I, the survival rate is very high, 99, 99.9 something. You know, but it's still frightening and it still kind of makes me, it makes me think about death. And I have a, we have a special thing in Arizona called red ants, okay? And if you didn't experience them, you can come to Dragon's Head and we will, like Edmund did, and we'll let you stand in a red ant bed, red ant house, and they will crawl up your pants and bite your leg. One red ant bites your leg, it really hurts, okay? Edmund had, I think, 12 or something like that. No. And five. That's still pretty good. So, I have red ants in my driveway, where I park my car, there's red ants, you know. And then, I feel pretty proud of myself, because when I go to get my car, I always walk around the red ants. I try not to kill any. I actually watch where I'm putting my feet, and I try to be careful not to kill any red ants, you know. Then I get in my car and I run over the whole thing. And I guess I killed like a hundred or something, you know. And I'm like, look, you can't say I didn't try. You know, you're the guys who put the red ant house in the driveway.That's stupid. You should put it in the backyard. There's no cars back there, okay? Then I just feel like I'm a pretty good Buddhist. I didn't kill them. I didn't step on them, you know. And, you know, I got to get out of the driveway. I got to drive my car. I can't leave the car in the backyard. It won't even go in the backyard, okay? So, I think like that. Now recently, when I found out I probably will have this surgery, then I'm thinking it's possible. It's very possible. I will get in the car. I will run over a hundred ants. I will drive to the hospital in Phoenix. They will try to give me a new kidney. Somebody will make a boo-boo, and I'll die. And because of my connection to the ants, I will be born as an ant before my wife gets back from the hospital to run over the ants. And I'll be like, ah, honey, it's me. She'll be like, what? Okay, now I'm ... it's possible, you know, and I'm kind of freaked out by the thought. I don't know why, but it's very possible, okay? So, you got to think about it, okay? You got to think about it. It's very possible. The animals that you're eating now, the animals that you're killing now, there's no guarantee you won't be them, okay? It's very possible you will be them. So, treat the animals nicely. Next picture. We have 10 minutes. Hang in there, okay? I know you're tired. I know your mind already went home.Me too. But, let's do 10 good minutes, okay? I like this picture. People ask me, what does it feel like ... Well, let's talk about bodhisattvas, okay? Everybody knows the word bodhisattva. Everybody heard the word bodhisattva, and when you see emptiness directly, what's happening inside your body, if you're a yoga teacher, or you run an organization called Yoga Studies Institute, then in terms of your inner body, in terms of prana, okay, you never get all of your prana into your jongmai, into your central channel. You never. Only on the day you die, okay? On the day you die, the chi goes into the jongmai, okay? On the day you die. Otherwise, it never goes in completely. It never goes in completely. When you have sex, when you have climax in sex, briefly, maybe for a few seconds, the chi will go in the jongmai. When you die, and you reach the point where the peepee comes out uncontrollably, poopoo peepee comes out, that's just after the prana went into the jongmai, okay? And when you see kongshin directly, your prana is completely in the jongmai, okay? And that's why we do yoga. That's why we do yoga exercise, okay? It's good for your body. It keeps your mind clear. You can do more good things to help people, but you also are learning how to put your chi, your prana, into your central channel, jongmai, okay? And it happens on another occasion, when you touch diamond world, okay? In the 20 minutes that you are touching the diamond world directly, the chi is 100% in the jongmai, okay? For the first time in your life the chi is in the central channel, 100%. And you feel it, and it's like electricity or something like that. Just before you see kongshin, you feel that kind of electricity, and then you see kongshin. Now, something cool happens. For the rest of the day, until you go to sleep, most of the chi stays in the jongmai. Most of the chi stays in the central channel, okay? That means for the rest of the day, which in my case was about 12 hours, you have special abilities, because the chi is moving in the central channel. You can read other people's mind directly. And in my case, it was a funny story, okay? And it's true, okay? I decide to sell my car, because I want to offer a diamond to my teacher. I want to put a diamond on the altar, and I went to sell the car and I still have chi in my central channel, jongmai, so I can read people's mind. Just that one day, okay? Don't worry. And I'm honestly just that one day. And I was, how old I know? 22, something like that. I was 20 something. And so I went to the car dealer and it was a new, it was a very beautiful sports car, and my Buddhist teacher in university gave it to me. When I graduated, he gave it to me. When I went to study with my teacher, he gave me his car. And it was a beautiful Firebird. It's a fancy, it's very similar to a Cayenne or a Porsche. And I was really, you know, then I didn't have any money, so I thought, oh, I'll go sell the car and I will buy a diamond, you know. So I went to the car dealer. I drove the car to the car dealer. I didn't tell anybody. I didn't tell my teacher. I just got in the car and went. And I got out of the car and the guy's like, what do you want? And I said, I want to sell my car. And he's like, and then I could hear his mind, inside his mind, I could hear his thoughts. And he said, this guy looks a little bit stupid. You know. Then he says, what do you do? What's your job? And then I said, I'm a cook in a church, you know. And then he thought, yup, he's really stupid. Really stupid guy. I think I'll cheat him. And I'm listening to his mind and he's thinking all these terrible things and I'm like, you know, I try to look stupid, you know. And then he said, how much do you want for the car? And I said, I will take anything you give me. And he's like, he said, I'll give you a hundred dollars. And I'm like, okay, deal. You know, a hundred dollars is enough to buy a ten-point diamond at that time, one-tenth of a carat. So, I'm like, okay, deal. And he's like, in his mind, he's like, you know, this car is worth like five thousand dollars, you know, I made so much money, you know. Then I said, a hundred dollars and one more thing. And he said, what? And he said, this is outside of Lakewood, you know, a little bit east of Lakewood. And I said, I need a ride to town because I don't have a car anymore. And I'll take a bus home. Hi everyone. We are having an internet obstacle here, but we will try to solve them very fast. Thank you so much for your patience. Let's rejoice in our seat of happiness, so we can purify ourselves. Thank you for your patience. And please do not worry. We are recording this part locally, and we will make it up for all of you, and we will be able to re-watch this part in our rebroadcasting session or in our study platform. Thank you so much for your patience, and we will continue very, very soon. Now, the speech, okay, you cannot count them. Because Chi is still moving in Europe, and some Chi is still having some trouble, it's maybe here with the connection. It's maybe almost an hour since you touched the diamond, since you can't touch it. Me, personally, I was in a certain position when I touched the diamond room. Then I did some prostrations, because I had to, and then I went inside, so I will mute myself, and you can hear Keshela. So I'll never forget the spot. I know it's funny. And then I went on this trip to throughout the universe, and promised each person to take care of it, okay? So, that's where we are in the lamrim here, just starting the teachings on how to be a bodhisattva, okay? So you have graduated from the first two levels of the steps on the path, and we're going to start the teachings for bodhisattvas, okay? And one, okay? I'll give you a blessing, bald head blessing, ding ding ding! Birthday blessing, okay? One day it will happen to you, okay? Because you are here, then one day it will happen to you, okay? Okay? You will do this, okay? You will step from world to world, and you will take care of everybody, okay? I bless you for that, okay? All right, that's all. Firstly, Geshe Michael's 001, the most beautiful pen in this world. The winner is Giselle Lamberth and Paul Lamberth from Australia. Thank you so much for your generosity. And Geshe Lamberth will give that to you. Yeah, they are. Thank you. Stand up, don't disturb the photo. A round of applause! Thank you. Thank you. I suppose. Yeah, take a seat. Sure. Take a seat. To you, happy birthday, so to you, happy birthday, Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you. So every year I try to travel to Kyoto on my birthday so I can get another cake because my wife will never give me a cake, but I'm really, really grateful and I feel very, very lucky to have so many good people and it's a great honor for me to teach you and you know, it's very hard to find people who want to hear about this thing. I honestly, it's hard to find those people. You are very rare people, you are very special people, you are one in a million. Each one here, you are one in a million and it's very, very happy for me to see you and it's very, very happy that you listen so well to the classes and it makes me really, that's the best birthday that I can have. So as long as I can, I will keep coming here so I can eat more cake. Okay. Happy birthday! Thank you, thank you, thank you. And this is the first cue, all the December birthday, ladies and gentlemen, also our birthday, yeah. Thank you. Can we have a birthday music? And we sing the birthday. Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday, happy birthday, happy birthday to you. Thank you, and thank you, this is the cake from Japanese group. 我们日本团队的伙伴供养了这个蛋糕。 Thank you, our Japanese group. Thank you, Sophie. Thank you, Ken. Thank you, Azusa. Thank you, Totally. Thank you, all the Japanese group. Okay, now we are doing our graduation ceremony. Please come back to your seat. Take your seat, and we will have a box if you have any offering for teachers, and we can do that later. 我们为大家准备了一个盒子,大家可以把这个盒子拿出来。 The thing with camera. The thing with camera. Hi, everyone. We keep experiencing technical obstacles here, as you can see. We just finished eating Geshe-la cake, and Geshe-la is leaving. Thank you so much for being here with us. The next session is going to be part of the celebration of what happened here in person. You are more welcome to stay, and sorry for all the obstacles. This is a very extensive karma that we are producing here. Thank you so much for your patience. Team, would you please on the stage? So, we made this thing happen on December here in Kyoto.It's because a lot of people supported. So now is the moment that we can practice what? Gratitude. Yes, thank you. So it's time for us to do gratitude. So, first of all, thank our five houses, the most important person, team, the strong, our power. I just want to say, I really thank you for coming. What's happening here is not about, there's going to be something about it. But it's really about, it's about what you do not do. And I really appreciate you taking the time to be here. For us to have you here. That's one thing. There's going to be a whole lot of time to be here. I'm very grateful for every one of the people who helped make this possible. But for each one of you, we want you to go out and practice. We want you to go out and make those changes in your own heart. And that's the biggest gratitude you can give. Yeah, thank you. Thank you, team. And I'm also, like, I know she's thanking me. But I also want to thank this lovely, this lovely being, Jasmine. Thank you, thank you. Thank you, thank you. It's not only me. Many, many years ago, our very first retreat in Thailand. Yes. I had no idea how to run an event until I met Jasmine. I mean, because I thought I knew what I was doing. And then Jasmine took ACI to the next level. And brought us up to a place where we could handle a much larger audience and a much larger reach. And I remember asking her, I said, Jasmine, how do you do this? Like, what are the seeds for this? And we sat and talked about it. And I see how working with you has transformed the entire organization. So it's really your fault for how big we've gotten, how we've been able to expand. Because you taught me how to do it. So thank you so much for everything you've done for us. And continue to do for us. Thank you, thank you, team. And also, no teachers know this beautiful teaching that nothing happens here. So let's give a warm applause to our great teacher group. Will teacher stand up and face students? Yeah. Okay, students. Friends, friends. Do you still remember the Chinese sentence? Ni xing fu la.Once more. Ni xing fu la. Thank you. Ni xing fu la. Yes. Take a seat, take a seat. So, it's getting to our headquarter, head office, all the staff and volunteers here. Because then, that makes this thing happen. A lot of details. I know my team is just in charge of the offline. But actually, we have a very big group online, right? We have, not only do we have a team here that's making this possible, in the production, in the back. We have, well, I'm not allowed to thank Worldview Productions anymore, because last time we did that, everything broke. This is what they said to me, not what I'm saying. But that, the whole team, including the ACI team listed there, Ale, Pache, Maura, Alona Francisco, Christina, Sarah, we're also missing Anastasia as well. That group of people worked tirelessly, not only for this event, but they're also, well, yes. Yeah, they're all there. So, will our students stand up? I'm grateful. Yeah, thank them very much. Yeah, thank you. And, one Chinese word. Ni xing fu la. Ni xing fu la. Yes. But what they're also doing, which many of you don't know, is that they're also making this available online. We had over... 350, I've heard. Oh, no, we had 1,600 people. Oh, yes, 1,600 people! Online! And they're also doing rebroadcasts all day long, because of all the different time zones. So I'm not sure how they did it without sleeping, but this is a program that runs 24 hours a day, for five or six days. Yes, I've heard there's 350 volunteers to support this 1,670. Wait, wait, wait. Say it one more time. Okay, there are 350 volunteers online to support 700 students online. We want to honor them. Whoa! Let's honor them! Whoo! 感恩的心感谢有你伴我一生让我有勇气做我自己 Yes, that's gratitude, heart. That's a very popular Chinese song. Okay, beside all these heroes, we have a Chinese group. We just have a very small staff group, but a very big volunteer group. There are 70% students here that are also volunteers. So let's give ourselves, let's give all the students here, all the student-plus volunteers here, and also give our China team a warm gratitude. 你幸福啦! 你幸福啦! 你幸福啦! Especially, I would like Selina and Apple Tree on the stage. Please, they are the main organizer really for this project. I'm just the one that sit comfortable and see the happy things happen. They are... Yeah! Please, warm applause to them! 你幸福啦! 你幸福啦! Okay, that's all for this part. Take a seat. And now it's getting interesting part. We are going to... We are now seeing a very interesting and beautiful video. Are you ready? Can I have a better way? Yes. Okay, now it's a very exciting moment. Please enjoy what a beautiful time that we spent together for these few days. Louder? Can we start from the very beginning again? Louder! Louder! Louder! Better? Thank you! I think they are not finishing it. Wow! The colors of the rainbow! So pretty is the sky! I'm so sorry to say this, but people don't mind. Let's get ready to share next. And how do you know? There is greater say than that. I love you! Wow! What a wonderful world! Yes! We come back! ...poster. So, next March, we will continue our trip to BWL. Please contact us. So... Yes. So, we... That's the next event, and we want to invite you all to come together. You can join us online. We want all of us to be together and create a wonderful world. Thank you so much for being here. Yes. That's all for this day. Thank you. All the friends here, have a good day, have a good trip home!

Page updated

Google Sites

Report abuse