The Essence of a Magical Life

Welcome, and thank you for coming to Arizona. We were at Diamond Mountain this last week And the director of Diamond Mountain, Sunam, she said, ‘wow, this is the two weeks when Arizona is not too hot’. So, it's good that you came at this time. Arizona should be pretty good this time. My job during this.. my main job during this class is I will teach twice a day. And there's two beautiful books that I really love and I would like to teach those to you guys. One is called BDAG ‘DZIN GSHAGS ‘DEBS. It means argument between the angel and the devil in one person's mind. I think we all have an angel in our mind, we all have a devil in our mind, and they argue all the time, right? Sometimes the devil wins, sometimes the angel wins. But it's a very, very beautiful text. It was written about 300 years ago, 350 years ago, by His Holiness the first Panchen Lama. So, in Tibet, the Dalai Lamas and the Panchen Lamas, they sort of alternate. When the Dalai Lama is a boy, the Panchen Lama will run things, and when the Panchen Lama is a boy, the Dalai Lama will run things. So, philosophically, or in the teaching lineage, you can say that there was the Indian lineage and then it entered Tibet. And then for about 400 years, there was some confusion in Tibet about what's the meaning. It's very similar nowadays in the western countries. The ideas about Buddhism, or these ideas, are many, many confused ideas. So, that was 400 years in Tibet, and then Tsongkapa came and he cleaned up the mess. If you really understand the great books, he's the greatest spiritual writer in human history, in the history of this whole world. I think so. But he came around 1,400 and he cleaned things up. And then there started a very kind of, I don't know, golden time of Buddhism. For about 500 years in Tibet, there was a very, very clear practice, very, very clear meditation, retreat, philosophy. So really the first Panchen Lama Is during that golden era, during that golden time. And I think he was kind of the perfect Buddhist. He was a great poet. Beautiful, beautiful poetry; I translated a book of his poetry. And he was a great philosopher. His books about dharma are the most accurate, some of the greatest books. For example, I know John Brady is interested in the transformation of the five heaps in the diamond way. He wrote the best book about that. Things like that. And he was a great retreater. He was famous for his retreats. He was a peacemaker. He got involved in some very difficult wars in his time and he made peace between the armies and between the fighters. He risked his life and he was able to bring peace among two countries at war just because he was so devoted and so dedicated. So he's a beautiful, beautiful teacher And he wrote this book about the argument in one person's mind between the good side of the mind and the bad side of the mind. And my teacher introduced me to it and my teacher passed away before he could finish it. And I always felt that I should try to finish it because that's really, I think, the only major book he didn't.. he passed away in the middle of it and he couldn't finish it. So I thought it would be important for me to finish. So I've been teaching it for 14 years and we're taking our time, if you noticed. In fact, maybe we taught it here 12 years ago or something. Some of you might remember, the older people. And the whole book is about 600 verses. I finished it recently because I'm in the Good Night Book Club, but I'll tell you more about that later. So I finished translating it recently, it's 598 verses or something like that. And nowadays I'm kind of writing a small commentary to it because some of it is confusing, some of it is very difficult. So I'm writing a small commentary and then you'll be able to get it, okay?

So let's start. And the reading I gave you guys, it starts out.. I took the one first paragraph of the book and I keep putting it in each time I give a reading. This is the.. I think this is the 21st session we've had. So 21 sessions over the last 14 years. And the first part is the same, okay? It says, this is an argument that happened between wisdom and her opponent, and her enemy. Wisdom's enemy inside your own mind is called the habit of thinking that things are real. The habit of thinking that things are real. So what we have in this book is a discussion between wisdom and this bad habit of thinking things are real, okay? And what does that mean? We’ve got to talk about it, okay?

And the argument started about the Sanskrit word called Mahamudra. Maha means big. Magnum, magnificent comes from that. And then mudra means a seal, like the seal that a king would put on a paper or something like that. It can be the seal or it can be the instrument. The wooden or the iron seal that they use is called mudra, okay? And mahamudra is a very, very famous meditation where the object of the meditation is your own mind, okay? And that's a special object of meditation called mahamudra. So when you say, what are you doing nowadays? And you say, ‘I'm doing mahamudra meditation’, it means you are meditating with your own mind as the object. So you're kind of stepping back from the mind and then watching the mind talk. You're kind of a spy on your own mind, and that style of meditation is called mahamudra. Later, that became a whole diamond way category.

So there are, in our database, John Brady's database, there are about 165 different tantras. So Vajrayogini is just one, Kalachakra is just one, Yamantaka is just one. And no one has ever cataloged them all, and John's project has, and there's 167, something like that, different tantric systems. So mahamudra entered that list, I don't know, maybe a thousand years ago, okay? When you say that a practice has become diamond way or tantric, then there'll be a whole body of literature that grows up around that style or that topic. So typically there'll be a root tantra from ancient India, then there'll be explanatory tantras, maybe five to ten explanatory tantras. These are huge works, these are a thousand pages, two thousand pages each. And then when it enters Tibet through Bengal, through northeast India, then these tantric lineages got stronger and stronger, and more defined. Then people started writing separate commentaries on the fire offering, or how to close the retreat, how to do the retreat, how to do the mantra, how to do the empowerment, how to do powa (how to leave your body at the end of your life). Things like that. There will be a whole separate system dedicated to that tantra. So mahamudra is one of those and John Brady's project total is 80 million words so far. Thirty-seven years of hard work. And so we have a whole system of secret practice called Mahamudra. So when you say Mahamudra, either it means an entire cycle, they call it a cycle of teachings, like maybe 20 to 100 commentaries. And then the meditation of Mahamudra. This book is more about the meditation called Mahamudra, although it automatically covers some of the secret practices, okay?

[20:47]

All right. So I'm going to pick up.. I'm going to start at verse number 352. How far did we get in 14 years? How many verses total? 600, 598, something like that. So we are just over halfway through. It's good luck. And I'm not going to speed up, I'm sorry. I'm going to teach it sweetly and the way we should teach it. And it's very, very deep, okay, it's very, very deep.

Okay, listen to this poetry. Listen to his poetry. It's all in poetry.

,SNANG BA BRTEN NAS SKYES PA ‘DIS,

,SNANG BA BDEN GRUB MTHA’ NGE DANG,

,SNANG BA GTAN MED MTHA’ GNYIS SEL,

,SNANG BA BDEN PAR MED PA ‘DIS,

,SNANG BA BDEN GRUB MTHA’ DE DANG,

,SNANG BA GTAN MED MTHA’ GNYIS SEL,

Like that. It's very poetic. He's talking about SNANG BA, TONG BA, NANG TONG. Three things.

Here's the first one, SNANG BA. We're starting this class.. And by the way, every day I will teach one class from Angel Debates the Devil, and then I'll teach one class from Song of My Spiritual Life. The second class is meant to prepare people for Diamond Way teaching.

If you do the full ACI course in Diamond Way, it's 18 different courses. It takes 7 years, if you do it properly, it takes 7 years to get through the 18 courses. And then you have to take 18 courses to prepare. So the whole, the classical ACI presentation, open teachings, then secret teachings, takes 36 courses, and normally it's 14 years of study. So I'm kind of in my old age, I would like to make an easier way for people to enter Diamond Way. Traditionally, for people who did the 3-year retreat in Diamond Mountain starting 2010, they had 7 years of training in open Buddhism in New York, and then at Diamond Mountain they had 7 more years of training, and then they started their 3-year retreat. For that course, the first year of Diamond Way study is to study a book called De Lam, or the Path to Bliss. And that was written by the same author, the first Panchen Lama. So if you take the traditional style, John Brady style, Connie, Jigme, if you have a chance to do the whole 18 courses, the first 3 courses that you go through are by the First Panchen Lama, same author, same writer.

So here in this class, for this week, we will do.. first class will be First Panchen Lama, debate in the person's mind. This first class is 75 minutes. The second class is 60 minutes just because people get tired, and I get, supposedly I get tired. So we'll do 75 minutes the first class which means we have some extra time for Q&A. And I enjoy Q&A, I usually talk too much and we don't have time for Q&A, but I'll try to control myself. So if you want to make a note about any question you have, probably at the end of this class, the last 15 minutes or so, I'll try to do Q&A, okay? And I enjoy all kinds of Q&A; I don't care what kind of question you ask. It could be personal, it could be business, it could be dharma, it could be translation, I'm happy to answer any question. That's what a Geshe is trained for 25 years - to answer questions. So, you know, I'm ready, and I'm happy to do it. And I enjoy asking my teacher questions. My teacher stopped eating meals with me because I asked too many questions. He made me bring his meal to his room and then he locked the door. And then I found out.. I had to drive him to teach in other states, sometimes five-hour drive, and I would ask him questions. And then he would pretend to sleep the whole way. Okay, and anyway, it's a tradition, okay? So I enjoy questions and I'm happy to answer questions, any topic is okay. Then the second class.. well, as I mentioned, it's a short Lam Rim by Je Tsongkapa and it was used as an introduction to a Diamond Way initiation about 100 years ago. And that teacher was my teacher's teacher, one of my teacher's teachers. So I thought it would be sweet to use that Song of My Spiritual Life. Tsongkapa never talks about his own practice, he never talks about himself. He wrote 350 major books and he never once talks about himself except in this one book, okay? So I thought that'd be so cool to teach the book where Tsongkapa talks about himself, and he mentions how to enter Diamond Way. So we're going to use that book and the translation I did was based on an actual teaching that was given to students who were preparing for Diamond Way, okay? So it's cool.

NANG TONG - Appearance and Emptiness

All right, I'll read the English translation, ready?

The appearance of things

Is the fact

That things arise in dependence;

The appearance of things

Draws a line

To stop things being real;

The appearance of things

Banishes the two extremes

Where nothing exists at all;

The appearance of things

Proves that nothing is real;

The appearance of things

Destroys the extreme

That anything is real;

The appearance of things

Banishes the two extremes

Where nothing exists at all.

So ‘appearance’ is the word NANG. NANG LO TONG means inner. Like SNANG BA is the Tibetan word for Buddhist, it means the person on the inside, SNANG BA. And then if you change the tone and you go SNANG BA, that means the appearance. And you’ve got to get this feeling in your heart when I say appearance, SNANG BA, it means like a soft pleasant light from the moon, or from even sunlight, but not Arizona sunlight, okay, some kind of Ukrainian sunlight, like a gentle sunlight, and that's called SNANG BA. You know some kind of light bulbs are frosty white or something and they they give like a gentle light, that's called SNANG BA. Anytime something makes its appearance, anytime something gives light, that's called SNANG BA. It's a very interesting word. And then it is the sister of [TONGBA?]. So [TONGBA?] means empty, and SNANG BA means light, soft light, the appearance of light. Soft light on one side, and then emptiness on the other side. And it's a very, very famous brother and sister. It's called NANG TONG. I think we have a picture, you guys, Francisco are you ready?

Yeah, I tried to find a picture.. it's supposed to be darkness and light, then you can say that NANG is on the right and the TONG is on the left. So NANG is appearance, and then TONG is more dark, okay, more like nighttime, like daylight and darkness, these are NANG TONG. And this whole section of the First Panchen Lama, Lobsang Chukyi Gyelten, he's gonna talk about.. by the way his first name is taken from Tsongkapa's first name - Lobsang. So he's gonna talk more about SNANG BA.

So you've got it in your mind, oh Geshehla is talking about like soft daylight, and then dark, soft daylight and dark, and it's called NANG TONG, okay? So get that in your heart first, and then I'll explain to you why it's wrong. So in our text it has a different meaning, and SNANG BA means the appearance of things to us. When we meet somebody, when we look at a building, when we see the blue sky, that's called SNANG BA, okay, things are appearing to us. And then [TONGBA?] means the way they really are okay. So in this case NANG.. the meaning of the word is appearance, but it means all the stuff that's appearing to us, whether it's outside or inside. Your thoughts are also SNANG BA, the thoughts you hear in your mind are also SNANG BA, and then all the stuff you see, all the people you see is called SNANG BA. And then somehow, that's light, and then somewhere there's [TONGBA?]. And now I'll tell you a secret - all the stuff you normally see is not in either one. Okay? All the stuff you normally think, all the stuff you normally see around you, if you ask Geshe Michael, is that NANG or TONG? Is that soft light, or is that emptiness? And I'll say neither one. Why? $100 question. His name got changed, Yibai, Rob Haggerty's name got changed to Yibai. Yibai means $100 in Chinese language, everybody says ‘Hi Yibai’. Okay, what was the question, I forgot? Yeah, well how come there's appearance, and then there's emptiness, and then there's everything else, and everything in this room is outside of light and dark, it's different. Okay, there's the light side of things - NANG, there's the emptiness side of things - TONG, and then everything here - all your thoughts, all your feelings, every person here, everything in the room is not either. Why?

[student: Maybe, Geshehla, because it looks like self-existent?]

Good, $100. She said.. so there's all the stuff you think is in this room, okay, there's all the stuff you think is in.. all the people, all the objects, the whole building, the town, the city, the mountains around the city. If you ask me are those like positive reality, or are those negative reality, NANG or TONG, I have to say neither one. Okay? Everything you see, every person you see was never there. Was never there, not possible, okay, they are impossible. All the things you see, all the thoughts you have, all the feelings you have, yourself, everybody else, they don't exist at all. The way you feel about them, they don't exist, okay, they don't exist at all. And it takes many years of practice, meditation, study, thinking, yoga, it takes many years of practice to realize that all the things you're looking at, they never existed at all. You're completely, totally, mistaken. Okay? Everything, everything around you, the way you feel about everything, is completely mistaken. You're walking around in a circus that's not real, I'm sorry. And if you say Geshehla, maybe I'm just 1% correct, I say no, you're not, everything you think you see is not what you think it is. Okay? And we’ve got to talk about that. So, the real light, and the real dark, okay, this is.. this picture is..

in the world, is it daytime or is it nighttime, that's one division of light and dark. But there's another division of light and dark. Here it is, Francisco, ta-da.

One of these is NANG, one of these is TONG. One of these is Nang, one of these is Tong. So, you know, this lady's making tea for her teacher, and she's looking at a pot. She's opening the pot on the left side, and she's gonna put water in the pot, and she has a certain feeling about the pot. As she's filling it with water, she has a certain feeling about the pot. That feeling, very deep down, very, very deep down, is that the pot is out there, and the pot is appearing to me. That feeling, [SOTONG?], if you know the word, it seems to be the pot is out there, Geshehla is out there, and then Geshehla is appearing to me. We even say in physics, light is coming down, hitting my body, and then reflecting to you. So then you think Geshehla is out there, that's your natural feeling, and then the light's coming from him to me. Geshehla is out there. That's how she feels about the pot when she's filling the pot with water. This refers to a real experience that I had 50 years ago, this year, okay, and I was studying hard, meditating hard, serving really hard, and I remember filling up a pot with water. Because that was my job, I was the cook for eight long years. My teacher got either meal A or meal B, because I only knew how to cook two things, I don't know how he survived. But, you know, I had to do all the dirty work for eight years. So anyway, I was making him some tea, and I was putting water in a pot, and it felt to me like that pot was out there. And I reached for the pot, and I put the water in the pot, and the water come from the faucet, and I put it in. Okay, that pot, that water, never existed, cannot exist. If you think someone made this pot, and someone made the plumbing to bring the water here, and you turned on the faucet and the water filled the pot.. when you feel like that, and when you look like that, which is all the time, ever since you were born, every single minute. You feel like it's out there and it's appearing to you, that pot [which is] on the left side [of the idim], it doesn't exist at all. It doesn't exist at all. The pot which is not coming from her.. the pot which is not coming from her, didn't ever exist, couldn't ever exist, doesn't ever exist. You see? Cannot, impossible.

‘So Geshehla, how could she make tea without a pot?’

That's the pot on the other side, that's the pot on the stove. And then I was cooking for my teacher, I was making Tibetan tea, and I was studying hard, hard, hard, and meditating hard, and serving hard. I built his house, two-story house, painful. And I paid for it, and I served everybody in the whole town, I was [Chibita?], public horse. I was the only person who had a car, so I drove everywhere, everybody, I was a slave for the whole town. And I was serving, serving, serving, and studying, studying, meditating hard. And then I was watching the pot, I was standing there watching the pot, under the influence of deep meditations, hard service of my teacher, hard, hard study. I was fanatic, I went home once in 25 years when my brother died, for one day, that's all. And I worked hard, I worked really hard, and then I'm looking at that pot, and okay, here's NANG, here's the real NANG, you ready? Real NANG, real appearance of things, means it starts with how you treat other people. NANG starts with how you treat other people. Are you nice to other people, are you kind to other people, do you share what you have with other people. Okay? I was looking for 20 years, I'm looking for a word for the first perfection, I hate.. no, there's a worse one, ‘generosity’, than even ‘giving’, I don't like it anymore. I like ‘sharing’, okay? If you're practicing the first perfection, and you are really sharing what you have, because sharing in English means you take what you have and you split it, and you say okay, this is for you, and I'll keep this, and you take that, and that's what the first perfection is. If you're working hard on constantly splitting your assets, you know, if you're an asset splitter, your bank account, the objects in your house, your car, your everything, you just always.. every day it's like atomic fission, you just keep splitting, splitting, splitting. You wake up, you take what was 100% yesterday, and now it's only 50%, and suddenly it's 25 [for others] and 25 [for yourself]. I was working on it in the car on the way down here, Rob Ruisinger’s on strike with my account. Anyway, if you've been giving, then you have a seed in your mind, okay, you have a karmic seed in your mind, and you walked into the kitchen with a karmic seed in your mind. Then you stood in front of the stove and the seed opened. And the problem is that karmic seeds open so fast, okay, 65 per second. Okay, watch, you ready? One, two, three, boop! That's about 300 seeds, okay? ‘Wow, that's the longest boop I ever saw, Geshehla’. So it's like, 300 seeds came out during that time. It's impossible to catch them, they are so fast. Your whole life you are creating things with your seeds, and you don't know because it's too fast, it's going too fast. A normal person cannot see it. The seed opens in your mind.. on the day that you understand this, something beautiful happens - you catch one seed opening, directly. You watch it, okay, and I'll tell you how it feels, and it's weird, it shouldn't feel like anything because a seed is not physical. A karmic seed is a possibility, okay? How many possibilities can you put in my hand? I mean it's possible I'm gonna have a good dinner tonight if things go right, but it's also possible they'll burn it or something, right? In my hand, how many possibilities can I put? Zillion, billion, doesn't matter, they don't take up any space, okay? People always say, Geshehla, how many seeds will fit in my mind? Dumb question, it's not physical, it's not even mental, it's a possibility, it's a maybe. It's a quantum - maybe it will be positive, maybe it'll be negative, we don't know, it's just a maybe, okay? Your mind is full of maybes, you planted them there, okay? So I had a possibility of a pot with water in it in my mind.. and on the day that it happens to you, that you see NANG of NANG STONG.. when you see NANG directly, it will be like that. You'll say it feels like the seed was back here [back of head], that's probably why John burned off here, both of us [no hair in back of head], it feels like the seed is back here [back of head], and it feels like the seed opens, and it feels like a picture of the pot comes out, it feels like it goes through the Bhrumadhya, between the eyebrows. It feels like that, it feels like the picture comes out of there, and then the picture goes down to the stove and makes a pot, okay? And that picture is so good that it's real. That karmic picture of a pot, you can boil water in it, okay? So, it's real, it is real, and it's coming from.. by the way, get this, okay? And don't forget this, this is the only thing you really have to know this week.. that means the whole world is coming from how you treat other people, that's all. It's not that you have a responsibility as a Buddhist to help other people, that's not the point. If you're a good person you should help other people, that's not the point. Every atom of your reality around you is being created by how you treat other people. And if you're like lazy being nice to other people.. [turns buzzing phone off].. That's the real meaning of NANG. When he said appearance, appearance, appearance, it means your mind is like a flashlight. Your mind is like an automobile light [coming from the back and throwing light on everything in front], your mind is sending things out 65 per second, millisecond. And that in Buddhism is called the appearance of the world. Appearance is a code word, appearance is a secret word, and you don't see appearance for what it is until you're almost ready to touch emptiness. I'm explaining it to you, you are conceptualizing it, while you conceptualize it, you are thinking of it the wrong way. While I'm explaining it to you, you are misunderstanding it. It's amazing, it's cool, not. Okay? So you are creating me, your seeds are opening in your mind according to how nice you've been to other people, and then they are creating every detail of your life, that's called appearance. In Buddhism that's called the appearance of things. It's coming from you. NANG.

[50:26]

Okay, we're ready to go to the second word, that's why it took 14 years to get here. Say TONG. So, I'll give a hundred bucks if anyone can explain TONG to me in terms of NANG. And it can't be Inna every time. Okay, Jasso.

[Juan Jasso: NANG is the light that comes up as dependent origination, and TONG is the darkness, but in the sense of an absence, empty, emptiness, there is no pot there other than the one that's coming from that seed.]

Okay, good, hundred bucks. To repeat what Juan said - how many pots are on the stove that are not coming from how you treat other people? Zero, that's TONG. NANG TONG is all reality comes into two parts, NANG and TONG, okay? NANG [on one side] means how much stuff in a positive sense is being created by your mental seeds, that's called NANG, the appearance of things. It's not the normal meaning of appearance, at all. Appearance in this text means all the stuff that's being cooked up by your seeds, okay? That's NANG. How much stuff isn't being created that way? That's TONG [on the other side], that's emptiness, okay? And that is a powerful reality, it's not just not there. Emptiness doesn't mean something's not there, it doesn't only mean that. It's a profound 50% of reality. It's how many pots you ever held in your hand that were not coming out of your mind, and the answer is zero.

What Have You Promised When You Come To Class?

In Buddhism, if you come to a class, I hate to tell you this, you have sworn to pass it on, okay? In a Buddhist class, when you attend a Buddhist class.. isn't that weird? You have to pay, and then you have to work afterwards. In Buddhism, if you hear 10 minutes of teaching, you swear to pass on that 10 minutes of teaching to other people. And by the way, it could be your sister, it could.. I get out of it, on the plane, I talk to the person next to me, ‘did you know about NANG TONG?’ They're like, no. So I do 10 minutes, and I say, okay, that's all, you can relax, you can sleep now. You have a responsibility. By coming to a class, it's assumed in Buddhism that you have promised to teach, okay? In your own way, in your own style. My teacher said you can teach anywhere, and that's teaching.

I'll tell you a cute story. So I commuted to the diamond business for 19 years, four hours per day on the bus, okay? I didn't take the money to buy a car, I donated everything to John Brady, which is a good habit. So I didn't have a car, and I had to stand out in the snow, rain, heat, and wait for the bus. It was four hours a day on the bus for 19 years. That's why I should get a new car, no, uh, karmically speaking. But my teacher said I should teach anywhere. So one day the bus broke halfway back to Howell. It broke up near Perth Amboy, and it was cold, dark night. It was midnight or something, and we all have to get out of the bus. We don't have cell phones in those days, okay? And we'd all look around, there's 50 businessmen, you know, looking around, and there's a bar. There's just a bar with a go-go girl, you know, which I have never seen and I've never been in a bar like that. And I'm like [looking around unsure]. Then I have to call my friend Art. So I went in the bar, and I sit down, and I called my friend. I said, you gotta come get me, I'm stuck on the road. And then there's a guy, two guys sitting next to me, and they're like, hey man, what's up? And I said, did you hear about NANG TONG? They're like, huh? So what I mean is, wherever you go in your life, try to share with somebody. Don't bother them. If they say ‘you're bothering me’, then you shut up. You're not allowed to bother people. In Buddhism, you're not allowed to bother other people with your religion, okay? Stay quiet, stay chill, wait for them to have three beers, and then start talking, they don't mind. Anyway, I did teach in the bar.

Okay, so now you know appearance and emptiness, NANG TONG. Then all the stuff you ever saw in your whole life, and all the people you ever met in your whole life, I'll ask you, I'll confirm, are they NANG, or are they TONG? They are neither, they don't exist at all. Because you had the wrong feeling about them, got it? That's tricky, you have to say that.

‘Geshehla, your computer is there.’

That's true.

‘So are you saying it doesn't exist?’

It doesn't exist the way you feel it exists, therefore that computer that you feel is up here, is not here. And that's neither Nang or Tong, it's outside of Nang Tong, it's zero. It's not there, it was never there. Especially people who irritate you are not even there, okay? That's a tragedy, you know, eight billion people irritated during the day at nothing. That's tragic, that's a disaster, that's a global disaster. All the wars, all the wars, all the disagreements, all the arguments, they're all about nothing, literally nothing. People say, don't argue about nothing. You say, it's not nothing to me. But it is nothing, there's nothing there, okay? So Nang and Tong, okay?

[58:15]

All right, Tsongkapa wrote a book called Three Principal Paths, I think it's ... oh, you're gonna try to stop me with a timer, you're assuming I will look at it. Okay, Tsongkapa wrote a very famous book, probably his, well, one of his greatest books, Three Principal Paths, and in there there's a famous verse.

[NANG BA BSTAN DANG LUS BAR MED PA DANG, STONG PA SKAD LEN PHYAL BA'I GONG YIN, JI ZHIG SOGS PA NANG BA DE ZHUGS DU BDAG LDAN THUGS PA'I KHONG PA RTOG PA MED, NANG BA BSTAN DANG LUS BAR MED PA DANG

SNANG BA, he talks about, SNANG BA means, how you treat others comes back to you exactly the way it should, nothing ever breaks the laws of karma. Nothing ever breaks the laws of karma, okay? NANG BA BSTAN DANG LUS BAR MED PA. LUS BAR MED PA means, there's never one percent variation from reality, okay? Everything that happens to you is exactly what's supposed to happen to you, okay? And you talk about the power of God, you know, eight billion people are getting their karma back to them at this moment, exactly what they deserve, and there's no collision. It's weird. So if Stanley has the karmic seed from saying nice things to his retreatants, then he's gonna see this computer as something useful. And then if Kat, I don't know, if you were yelling at somebody yesterday, you're gonna see the same computer as something sinister, something not so nice, okay? The computer is the same, but karma allows eight billion people to get exactly what they deserve with no collisions, that's unbelievable. The objects have to stretch to fit the karma, okay? This computer has to be able to look bad and good at the same time, okay? It's amazing, it's unbelievable.

So, Tsongkapa said SNANG BA BSTAN DANG LUS BAR MED PA DANG, DONG PA SKAD LEN CHAD BA'I DGONG NYID. And the understanding of emptiness, which he calls.. dangerously, he calls it SKAD LEN CHAD. SKAD LEN means position, take a position, CHAD means void of any position. And that three syllables has caused a lot of trouble for hundreds of years. JI ZHIG SOGS PA NANG BA DE ZHUGS DU If you think this light and this darkness are separate things, BDAG LDAN THUGS PA'I KHONG PA RTOG PA MED, you still don't get what the Buddha meant.

So, I'll leave you with that, okay? What did Geshehla just say? The appearance of the pot on the stove, the pot on the right, that you just understood.. the pot on the right is the one that Geshe Michael saw the seed opening, and the picture coming out, okay? That's the pot on the right. The pot on the left was two minutes before that. The pot on the left was two minutes before that. Two minutes before that, I had never seen a karmic seed open in my life. And then two minutes later I did. See what I mean? So the lady on the left is dealing with something that's not there. She's putting a lid on something which is not there, okay? The pot on the right is good, it's making tea, you can make tea with it, real tea. You’ve got to think about it, you’ve got to think about it, okay?

Is one of these two pots SNANG BA? Yeah, the one on the right, because I already understood that it's coming out of my seeds. Is any of the pots in this picture TONG BA? Yeah, the one on the left, because it's not real, it's empty of being real. She's got emptiness in her hands and she doesn't know it, okay? It's very interesting.

This is the clash of angels and devils, really. This is real light and real dark in the moral sense. This is real truth fighting with lies. This is light and dark in the sense of war or hatred. These two little pots are the world, okay? Got it?

Q&A

[1:03:58]

Okay, Q&A. Let's do Q&A. I got through one-third of the class, not bad. Any question about anything, I don't care. If you don't, I'll go to dinner.

[Student: Geshehla, I'm a little bit confused because in one part, if I teach to someone that doesn't know about this, maybe I will confuse them more and I don't want to plant that seed. But at the same time, if they are coming from me, they're just.. I put them just to practice teachings, so should I be more empathy and maybe not teaching these deep teachings, or just teach?]

Good question. It's a famous bodhisattva vow not to teach people emptiness too soon. It's a famous bodhisattva vow. There should be another vow that you taught them too late, okay? But, you know, this is what we call TAP KE or skillful means, [Ubaya?] in Sanskrit. The teacher, the one giving the teaching, with sincerity and with love, they have to judge the student's level. They have to judge the level of the student. And normally, real emptiness teaching like we gave today, is something that takes a few years of training for the student. The student should not hear this kind of teaching unless they've had some training before, okay? And we break a bodhisattva vow if we confuse a person about emptiness. So it's a very delicate thing. I would say you break a vow if you don't teach gently something about emptiness, but you also break a vow if you really confuse somebody about emptiness. So you have to use your best judgment. And I think when you talk about bodhisattva, bodhisattva vow, bodhisattva behavior.. it's so nice to be able to use Buddhist words in this audience, by the way. I don't have to DCI business talk. It's so nice. Bodhisattva means you’re really hoping that this person will reach ultimate happiness all the time. All your interactions with other people, you're like, what can I say at this moment that will help them be a good person? So, that's all.

And I'll show you a way to teach emptiness though. And I mean, my friends know this. Show me your left hand. Point your left index finger. And by the way, if you're ever asked to teach emptiness, you can do it this way and you're totally safe. Nobody, nobody will have a problem in the room, okay? Okay, you guys ready? Everybody got their left hand index finger? Now, please point to something in this room which is not coming from the karmic seeds in your own mind. Then you’ve got to be an actress or an actor. You’ve got to go [looking around]. You know, you’ve got to.. in English we say you’ve got to ham it up. You’ve got to be like a comedian. That's why Zelensky is such a good leader, by the way. And always at the end of that comedy, go like this [point at self and then away]. And that means there's nothing in this room that's not coming from you, not coming from your seeds, right? You can't find anything. When you want to teach emptiness to a group of people, this is very powerful and very correct. And I've never had anyone really take off their clothes and run around, you know, with this particular emptiness, okay? So, I think it's pretty safe. I think it's pretty safe. And it's easy to remember when you're on a.. when you're teaching a group of people, you feel a little nervous. You can say, okay, everybody raise your hand. And then you can also see who's dozing, who's sleeping. They're like [asleep]. They don't raise their hand. Then say, everybody raise your hand. Then it's a.. every once in a while as a public speaker you can try to wake up the whole audience, which is a challenge.

Okay, other question?

[Student: Thank you, Geshehla, for this beautiful teaching. And the obsession for me with the SNANG BA and the TONG is the self. I'm trying to deconstruct how I constructed the self. And I'm so attached to my eyes. I'm so attached to my ears. I'm so attached to all these parts that are functioning in my body so that I can listen to the teachings, see what's coming, all your slides, and all these parts. And yet the end goal, I.. the part of the self that I think is existing is wrong. And I think that I'm going to get there and experience something. So, can you help me to apply the SNANG BA and the TONG to where I'm at right now, so that I can help to work on the self inside me, so that the mirror outside me can be more powerful moving forward to get to the end goal.]

Okay, great. First of all, we have to talk about the word ‘self’ in Buddhism, okay? It's so nice to be able to say the word Buddhism. So Buddhism, we always talk about DAK or self, in Sanskrit ATMAN. And you heard in Buddhist talks [for] so long that self-grasping is a bad thing, and you're a bad person because you think you're yourself, you know. And it gets very confusing, and it gets very useless to think you shouldn't think yourself. So, the word ‘self’ in Buddhism.. listen, okay? Listen, the word ‘self’, Atman, DAK, means anything which is not coming from a seed in your mind. That's all, okay? The pot on the stove which is not coming from you, is self, that's all. It doesn't mean you shouldn't think you're yourself. I mean, that's led so many Buddhists to be so frustrated for so many years. ‘I shouldn't be myself.’ Who? ‘Me.’ But that is yourself. ‘Well, but it's wrong. Somehow I'm a bad person’, you know. And it's just one more thing to feel bad about yourself, you know. You should be.. By the way, the second teaching today is about how you should treasure your ear, and your eye, and your fingers, and your human body, and that self is the most precious thing anyone ever gave you. And you should be attached to it, and you should take good care of it, and God bless you, you know. It's a good thing. You have to take care of yourself, okay? So, it's not wrong, I mean, by the way, I'll tell you something cool. I was in a discussion, a big discussion with a bunch of famous people. This is in Peru by the way. And they're like, what's the basis of Buddhist ethics? And I'm like, I bet you cannot guess what it is in Buddhism that makes something right or wrong. Why is war wrong? Why is sharing what you have right? I bet you cannot guess what it is, what divides right from wrong in Buddhist ethics. I'll give a hundred bucks. I hope we've got to find some more money, I don't know, I forgot to rob my piggy bank, but we'll work it out, we'll go to the bank. What divides right or wrong in Buddhism?

[Student: I'm so happy to be here, thank you, Geshehla.]

It's nice to have you here by the way.

[Student: Yeah, I'm so excited. Anything you do to other people that will make you suffer in the future is a bad deed, and the opposite.]

Yeah, good. The definition of good and bad in Buddhism - if it hurts you in the future if you do it, that's bad. And if it helps you, just you, in the future, it's good. And that's the line between good and evil in Buddhism, okay? It's very interesting. There's a small print, the only way you can help yourself is to help others, heehee. But anyway, it's very interesting. If you undertake an action and it hurts you, that's evil. And if you undertake an action and it ends up helping you, that's good. And that's the only measure of good or evil. I went to Princeton, I was in the religion department, we argued for hours and hours about if one person has to die to save a hundred people, is that good or bad? You see what I mean? Should they die or shouldn't they die? We had these kinds of arguments. And from a Buddhist viewpoint, if that action would create happiness for you, then it's correct. And if that action would create pain for you, then that's incorrect, that's evil, okay? Cool?

We are out of time. Now, explain the bathroom ethics here. We have a 30-minute break. See you at 4:45, okay, and we'll start the Song of My Spiritual Life. Thank you.

Class 2 -

24 October 2025

You got a first picture, Francisco? It's a diamond, I think, a box?

All right, so welcome to Song of My Spiritual Life. And as I mentioned, Tsongkapa never talks about himself, except in one short book called Song of My Spiritual Life, which is kind of a book of spiritual experience or something like that. And only in this book he talks about his personal life, and he talks about his personal experience.

And it's so beautiful to hear him talk about his own inner self, that me and Gibson, is Gibson here? Gibson Chang? You would stand up, handsome? And Gibson finished that book. I’ll bet Lindsey's gonna get a copy. Is that what you're doing? You should have sold cars. I’ve got one here. It's this book here, and if you don't have a copy, I guess we have it, we have them back there, I guess, I don't know. But Gibson just finished this. It just came out and it's a beautiful book. We did a whole series of small books, pocket books, that you could carry in your purse or something like that, and read on the bus or something like that. So I really, really like it, and Gibson did a beautiful job. And so this is the book that we're learning, and this is how I'm doing preparation for Diamond Way for this group. I have other groups around the world that I'm doing different Diamond Way introductions, but for you guys, this is the book that I'm teaching, okay?

And I think that's a wonderful introduction for a Diamond Way course, to read Tsongkhapa's own verses about.. and the commentary is by my teacher's teacher, Pabongka Rinpoche, who wrote the great Lam Rim that we studied for 14 long years. People say they're my student. I say, how many of those 14-year classes did you come to? And they’re like, ‘oh, I think I came to one’. [laughs]

All right, so I was in the diamond business for.. after I saw emptiness directly, I had this intense, during the same hour after I came down, I had this intense desire to not forget what happened to me for the rest of my life. So I thought, I need something to remember. And I, I just worked really hard. I was still sitting on the same cushion, and I was thinking, thinking, thinking, you know, what's the one thing in this world which is similar to what I saw? And then I said diamond. I said to myself, it's diamond. If you read the Diamond Cutter business book, you know the reasons why. But diamond is the closest thing in this normal world to emptiness, and it's not close at all, okay? So, what's the closest thing in the whole universe, physical universe? Diamond. How close is it? Not at all. And that's why I think Lord Buddha added the word ‘cutter’ to the Diamond Sutra, because it's not close. Cut, okay, cut it. And there's some countries I've been to, they call it the Diamond Sutra. That's very, very wrong. It's Vajra Chedika Sutra, which means Diamond Cutter Sutra. And what ‘cutter’ means, even diamond is not close. But it's the closest thing, okay? So I, in that moment, in those five minutes or something, I decided I must touch diamonds, I must be close to diamonds, any way I can do it. And it took me years to get into the diamond business. It's like trying to join the mafia, and they're like, well who do you know in the mafia? And I'm like, I don't know anybody. They're like, go away. Many, many, I got kicked out of 30 companies. So anyway, then I started this diamond business with some friends, and my only goal for 19 years was to touch diamonds every day. That's all. I don't care about money. I used all the money for John Brady's project, mostly. But I didn't care about jewelry at all, I still don't care about jewelry. And nobody knew why I was there. Sometimes my partner would ask me, why are you here? What are you doing here? And I'm like, that's my private thing, you know. But I just wanted to touch diamonds all day long. And we did, towards the end, we processed 300,000 diamonds every day. And we had a special building with a special basement, you guys saw it [pointing to someone]. And an armored car comes under the building, we close the iron gates, and we take the bags of diamonds out of the truck and we put them in the elevator. Millions of diamonds every few weeks. During those 19 years, doing millions of diamonds every two weeks, I never saw a perfect diamond, okay? There is such a thing, there is a perfect diamond, it's extremely rare. So in 19 years, dealing with millions and many millions of diamonds, I never saw and I never touched a perfect diamond. There is such a thing. It's called D color, internally flawless, IF, 1.0 carat. There is such a thing. It's extremely rare. Hehehe. And someone gave me one not too long ago, thank you. And I keep it in my, well, I shouldn't tell you. It's right next to Tsongkapa on my altar, okay, if you ever need money. But I'm going to hand it around, and just touch it, it's good luck. In 19 years, I never touched one. Perfect diamond. It's a perfect diamond, and you can hand it around, people can touch it. No. Don't open, no, you'll lose it. It'll fall out. So, please don't open it. But I trust you, which is why I'm handing it around, okay. Why did I bring that today to you guys? Number one, Geshe Michael likes to show off. My friends know that, right Jingmei? So, but the other reason is, we're going to talk about DELG YOR. Say DELG YOR. DELG YOR means all the things about your life that allow you to practice, okay. Like, you have a human body, it didn't fall apart yet. You have a good mind. We're not having war, nuclear war this week, I hope. You know, we are living in good, good times. You have John Brady's project, you have Seiji's teaching business people, you have all the translation, you have extraordinary resources to study. You sit here, you know, and you don't understand that you are one in a hundred million people. Each person here is one in a hundred million people. You are more rare than that diamond. Each person here is more rare, you know. And I don't know, I was talking to Peter and Maria during the break, to find a good student, you work for years, you know, and then you find one, and then they drop out the next week, you know, right? So, no, I mean, you are rare. You people are much more rare than this diamond, and much more valuable. You are extremely rare. To be alive, to have both kidneys working, or even one, okay, to have a mind, to have the ability to travel, to go to classes in the hotspot of the world, you are so, you are much more rare than that diamond, okay? So that's what we're going to talk about today. That's what this class is about. Say, del-jor, del-jor. It means the specific things about your mind, and your heart, and your body, that are priceless. Much more rare than this diamond, okay? Each person here is one in a hundred million, really. I'm not exaggerating. I like to exaggerate. That's, I don't know why. But, you are more rare than that, you know. If you are sitting here in this class, and it's funny because half the people in here are like, Geshehla, I'm not a good person. You're one in a hundred million god damn, you know. You are, I don't care if you think you're good or not. If you're here, that's proof that you are, out of a hundred million people, you are the best. Seriously. Insight, okay? Insight. You are, you are very valuable. And you are valuable for the future for other people. If you are here, and you are learning something, you are extremely valuable, you know. Each time, Peter, Maria, John, Jigme, when we teach somebody, and they learn, Seiji just did a wonderful one-month program for his teacher training, SCAM. Each person who comes out of that training is priceless. It's much more valuable than this diamond, you know. They are priceless. And those conditions don't last, okay? Your body will not last, okay? Your ability to travel, your ability to learn, your ability to sit on your cushion and meditate, it will not last. Your body will lie to you, your body will cheat you, your body will die, okay? Every person here, you know, that's the way it is. You have to use it now. You have to use it while you have. So, that's this part of the Lamrim that we're going to study today, okay? Who's the diamond? Where's the diamond? Yeah, you! Much more valuable than this diamond, okay? Alright.Each time we have this kind of diamond way preparation class, I like to show you one of the 12 practice posters that we created when we translated the life story of Tsongkhapa, okay? And those were put together by myself and Rob Rossinger. And so, there's a set of 12 posters that give you advice for your life, okay? I'm sneaky, I don't know, someday we have to print them and sell them, right Tim? To raise money for ACI, find houses. Deal? Okay, so here's the poster for this term, and it's the 12th of the original posters, and these are ... each poster gives you a suggestion for your life. This poster says, get away and go do retreat somewhere, okay? Get away and go do retreat. We just had a wonderful 10-day innovation retreat. Stanley Chan, stand up, thank you. Yay! And we had 40 participants. These are high-powered business people, and we are trying to pass on the methods of finding new products, new ideas, new markets, innovation through retreat. It's a new idea for corporations, okay? Does it work? Geshehla built the largest jewelry company in the world. It was bought by Warren Buffett. Maybe it works? Okay, I'm just saying, there's, I don't know, there's a hundred thousand jewelry companies around the world, okay? The largest was built with new products and methods that were invented during deep retreat, and specific deep retreat is like a three-day, four-day, ten-day deep retreat. So I'd like to congratulate Stanley for ... that was a wonderful ... and I think, I think 12 of the retreatants are here, and could you stand up? If you are, if you were one of the retreatants, can you stand up? No, I mean this last week, this week. Yeah, these guys, yeah. So they were working on special projects. I gave them special projects to work on, to invent a new process, or to invent a new product, and we did it. It was a great job. They did a great job, and it was a ... they were very brave to come to a foreign country and go to a very wild place and do deep retreat there, and I'm very happy and very grateful, and you guys did a good job. I heard you did a good job, that's what your boss said. Alright, here's a picture of those guys. This is their corporate homework. They are doing wisdom mantras at Diamond Mountain, okay? So this is a picture from last week. We chose Diamond Mountain because it's one of the wildest places, emptiest places in the world, and we calculated how close to ... it's two hours to the grocery store, okay? It's purposely out in the middle of nowhere, and that's a very, very good thing, and I think to me, when you talk about how precious is your mind and your body, how precious are you, you are part of a new generation. And I told some friends recently, my ... I had 12 major teachers in the monastery. I had 12 teachers, some of them spent 25 years teaching me, and the last one passed away this year.They're all gone now. All 12 teachers are gone, okay? And that's ... that's the way it is. That's the way things go, okay? And then I was ... I don't know, John will appreciate it, I think. I was thinking about the future of my monastery. My monastery was started in 14 ... 1419 or something like that. My monastery was started 600 years ago, and I'll be very honest, you know, and I spent 25 years there, and I built a lot of things there. I built the library. I built the school for 400 people, children. Somebody's here who helps support that school. Can you stand up, Candilai? Are you here? Yeah. I gave a ... we built the school. It's a huge school, and I gave a talk there. I ... they asked me to give a talk at the opening of the school. This is, I don't know, 20 years ago or something, 25 years ago, and so I'm trying to impress these kids, monk kids, and I'm like, who can tell me the difference between a human and a dog? And I thought they're gonna say education, and then I said, what's the difference between a human and a dog? And one little kid goes, I know, I know, yeah, what's the difference? Which means, oh, respected sir, dogs have tails. And recently I met a Geshe in New York, and he says, I know you, and I said, how do you know me? He says, you built the school where I studied. You and Candilai built the school where I studied. And I'm like, well, I'm sorry, you know, you changed a little bit. And he said, well, I once answered a question about a dog. And I'm like, okay. Anyway, something happened to me when my last teacher passed away, and I was thinking about my 25 years there, and I'll tell you something very close to my heart, because I love that place. I think those days are gone, you know. I think the days of those places are gone. I think the training, 25 years, difficult years. I think the training of five houses, the training of YSI, the ALL effort, I think Peter and Maria's group, these are all, to me, more valuable. And I think they are the future. I think they will change the world more than those ancient, you know, monasteries where people, very few people come out of them. Very few people go anywhere. They just live there, and it's only a few thousand people. And so, I think it's a, when I see this picture, I call it the new galaxy. And I think you are the stars, okay. And I don't mean rock and roll star. I mean star in the sky. You are the light. I think it's the students in five houses, the students in John's programs, all these guys' programs. I believe, and I love these monasteries. I love them. I care about them. I built more monasteries than any human in the world, I think, okay. But I don't think, I think you are the future, okay. And I think what you can do with your training will change more people, and will help more people. I believe so. I think so, okay. But, you have to take the diamond of your life, and you have to use it well, okay. You have to, you have to learn to use it well, okay. You have to take the diamond that you have, and you are the hope for the future. The people in this room are the hope for the future, basically, okay. There's other groups that we have. We have DCIS. We have these other groups. They are all the same. They are galaxy, future galaxy. They are all stars. They are all precious. But you are the only hope, I think, people in this room. You are the hope for the future. And I would say, so recently I was translating a new book. This is a book by Arya Nagarjuna. Nagarjuna wrote, we found 140, me and Stanley, something, 140 books by Nagarjuna. Only two are letters to kings, and he was asked by the king of the country for advice. And Nagarjuna wrote two letters to kings. And they are exquisite, and they are special, because they were not written for monks or nuns. They were written for normal politicians, okay. No, I mean business leaders. These two letters are extraordinary. They were written for normal family people, working people. They were written for working people, you know. And so, I was working on this, and I found a commentary by Tsongkhapa's teacher, okay, which, to be the teacher of the greatest Buddhists who ever lived, must be pretty cool guy. And his name, say, Rendawa. Yeah, his name was Rendawa, okay. And he wrote an exquisite commentary to Nagarjuna, okay. And so, I finished translating it. It took me about two months, three months. And my teacher taught me this book 40 years ago. And so, it was something cool for me to translate it 40 years later. And it's here, okay. Can you hold it up? Can you take it out? You can pass it around, okay. The manuscript is a slim 600 pages. And you can just hand it around. You can poke into it. That's Rendawa on the cover, by the way. And the reason I'm showing it to you, Rosa doesn't ... where is Rosa? Is Rosa here? Rosa doesn't like it when I let books out early. But, she's on her way. I can do anything, okay. They're not ready to print. They have to be fixed by Anatole, who's our ... where is Anatole? Are you here? Can you stand up? You should thank him. He works many, many hours every day to polish grandpa's books. And he does a really, really good job. Utpala spent many years doing the same. Utpala, stand up. Okay. Why I'm showing you this book, I was curious about the teacher of Tsongkhapa. Like, how did he get to be so special that he would teach ... you can split them up and pass them around. How did he get to be so special to teach the greatest teacher of all? You know, what's this guy's life story? So, I spent ... I looked in John Brady's database. I searched for him. I found 700 stories, okay, in John Brady's database. That's how cool is his database. And so, I put together his life. It took me a long time to read 700 stories, and I did it. And deep inside one of those stories is his 16 steps of how to use your diamond well. There's 16 steps how to use your diamond, flawless diamond life well, okay. So, grandpa took them out. Grandpa made a list, and Tim printed it. I hope ... did you? You ready? It's time. You got it? Oh, nice. Okay, everybody has a copy. 16 guidelines to have a good life, alright. And that's how I would like to teach Dhelmjor. That's how I would like to teach the value of a human life, okay.Here are 16 suggestions for living a good life, okay. This ... I got it here. 16 suggestions for ... 16 suggestions for living a good life. I think if you follow these 16, we finish this part of the book, okay. Alright? Okay, so here ... we're going to go through them one by one, alright. I can't read it anyway. Okay, thanks. Say, RIGS LA SIG NE SKYE BA SHES TSUL. Let's see, I got to watch the time, because I tend to talk too much. Okay, 29 minutes and 17 seconds. Alright, I might run over to tomorrow, okay. Don't worry about it. RIGS means ... in Tibetan language, RIGS means family? Especially in society. Like, where's the level of your family? It's called RIGS. It's also used in the five Buddha families. They are also called RIGS. RIGS NAM, okay, the five Buddha families. So, you can say SIG is a very polite word for Chenrezig, to look.Avaloka, look down at all the people's problems, okay. So, RIGS LA SIG NE SKYE BA, birth. SHES means he agreed to do it, okay. So, there's SKYE BA means ... SKYE BA is sort of a bad word in Buddhism. It means forced to take a birth. Then they added a second verb, he agreed to the deal, okay. He ... they're like, would you take birth on our planet? He's like, yeah, okay. That's called SKYE BA SHES, agreed to take birth, okay. So, I translated it. He orchestrated his birth, and he chose a good family. Good means, what's a useful family at that time, in that part of the world, okay. It could be any family, but in that particular society, in that particular time, what's a useful family to be born into? And people choose, okay. Great beings choose, okay. All you parents can be suspicious of your kids, that they chose you, okay. They choose you, alright. So, he chose his parents, and he chose to take birth in a certain place, okay. So, if I tell you there's 16 things I want you to do, please take birth in a useful family, in a useful country, okay. Now, it's too late, but I'm talking next time. I am talking next time, okay. You've been born many millions of times. Be more careful. Choose your family carefully, okay. And you will have some power over it, okay. You don't know how to do it yet. That's a later class, okay. But put it in your heart now, that grandpa expects you to make a careful selection next time, of what family, in what country, in what language, in male or female body, what will be most useful for you to teach next time, okay. And don't think it's a stupid or crazy thing. I'm working on it now, myself, okay. You gotta understand how to do it, and then you have to do it, okay. He chose his country, and his language, and his people, his sex, he chose everything carefully, okay. So, that's part of using your dharma well, okay. Second one, shun nu du kyi nampar tharpa, those of you who know Tibetan, nampar tharpa, nampar means biography, but in this case it means, what's the story? And shun nu means, when he was young, how did he spend his time? How did he prepare for his adulthood? You know, even as a elementary school kid, as a little kid, how did he prepare himself? And usually this involves learning to read, learning to write, learning basic math, science, your elementary education, okay. You don't think about it, and we don't appreciate elementary school teachers, they are the backbone of a country, and they're the lowest paid also, okay. They are, if you have good teachers of children, your country is successful, and we don't pay them anything. So, he knew that, he was very careful, shun nu. There's a pun here also, his monk's name was shun nu lodru, say shun nu lodru. His general name is Rendawa, Rendawa means Shanghai guy, that's his place name, okay, that's where he, that's the place where he was born, was the town called Renda, Renda, okay, and he's called Mr. Renda, but his personal name is shun nu lodru, young wisdom, okay, kumaramati in Sanskrit. Alright, so anyway, I'm asking you, next time, okay, don't think there won't be a next time, you go faster than you think. Have the intention to prepare yourself well during your childhood, okay. I'm gonna crack the books, and I'm gonna listen to my mom and dad, and I'm gonna be a good girl or a good boy, okay, alright, it's not crazy, I'm asking you to use your diamond, okay, and you have to start as a child, and it's a, isn't that interesting, everybody in the world dies, everybody. There's no course at Princeton or Harvard, maybe at DSU, I don't know, about how to die well, and how to die intelligently, there's no course, because they don't know what's gonna happen, right, you will come back. By the way, you need mathematical proof, you ready? If something can happen once, it can happen twice. Duh, I had a ballet teacher, she's like, duh, you know, I mean, come on, if you can come once, and time is unending, you can come twice, okay, so get ready, it's not stupid to get ready, it's not stupid to set your intention, I'm gonna study really good in elementary, I'm gonna listen to my, I will put a few thumbtacks on the teacher's chair, but in general, I will be a good student, okay, alright. Number three, gye jung chupay chi mey ten su, at a fairly young age, he took his bodhisattva vows, and his basic ten vows, when he was 15 years old, like that, okay, he got his vows early, okay, and that's a good goal, he got his bodhisattva vows at 15, before he took his monk's vows, because you can't take monk's vows, full monk's vows, until you're 21, okay, so he took his vows, and he followed the vows, okay, he took vows, he made it a point in his lifetime, I gotta take some vows, I gotta take some normal vows, okay, why are we having this class? We are preparing to take diamond way vows, okay, you are preparing to be granted the extraordinary good luck, the diamond of all diamonds, to take diamond way vows, okay, you are training to do that, okay, he took his vows, and he kept them, well, okay, all his vows, bodhisattva vows, Vinaya vows, Pratimoksha vows, Tantric vows, he kept them, okay, how many we got? Four, we got 12 more, okay, 16 suggestions, from whom? Venda, this Duryodhana teacher, come on, alright, like Jesus' teacher, private teacher, okay, that's his position, that's who he is, okay, and by the way, that book, I'm trying to push to get it printed quickly, because it's a wonderful, wonderful introduction to Buddhism, it's a complete introduction to Buddhism, written by the greatest emptiness teacher in history, Nagarjuna, okay, alright, number four, Dhamme ngakpe tachit-tensu, even as a young person, teenager, he acted in a kind way towards other people, and he, he watched his viewpoints, okay, meaning, he's very sensitive to the fact, that he created all the people he met, okay, there's an old Diamond Mountain joke, we were studying this subject for a long time, a new person came, they were irritating, I would say number one irritating person I've met at Diamond Mountain, and they were irritating everybody, and then, I remember, they stood up, and they were surrounded by a bunch of old Diamond Mountain people, and this lady said, she looked around and she said, I'm surrounded by idiots, you know, and everybody's like, right, because you create all the people around you, get it, everyone around you is a mirror of you, okay, everyone around you is a mirror of you, you know, what you see when you look at other people is you, okay, so anyway, he not only acted nicely towards other people, but he understood that they are the mirror of him, every person he met, he understood, what I see is who I am, okay, even as a young, like a teenager or something, okay, that's number four, we're getting into ones that you can do now, you don't have to wait for next life, okay, you can look at other people and say, I'm so glad I know Bhagavati, because he's my reflection, and I'm proud of that reflection, like that, okay, all right, number five, kibbut dampa kupe ten su, how he took himself to holy teachers for study and spiritual development, okay, and he had the opportunity to study with the greatest teachers of his time, especially Togme Sambo, Togme Sambo pretty much invented lojong, okay, 37 practices of the bodhisattva were written by Togme Sambo, so here's Randhawa's root lama, is pretty much the one who invented lojong, okay, that's not bad, right, he also studied with Tsongkhapa after he got to know him, and it's a very rare circumstance where they taught and studied with each other, you know, sometimes Randhawa would teach, and sometimes Tsongkhapa would teach, okay, got it, cool, and they did that for many lifetimes, and we even know their names in those lifetimes, and it's really cool to read that biography, okay, all right, so I wrote an introduction to that book, the introduction got so long that I moved it to the back of the book, because I thought no one would read the book, so there's a long hundred-page biography of Randhawa in the back, it is exquisite, it's an exquisite thing in how he studied, what he chose to study, and I'll tell you something that means a lot to me, okay, the teachers he chose, and the subjects he studied, were the exact Geshe course, every year, he studied, by coincidence, exactly what a modern Geshe studies, he studied the exact course of great books that the Geshe program studies, you can say he invented the Geshe course, okay, and you can say that he learned it himself from his teachers, and it's a beautiful, beautiful thing, okay, for me it means a lot, okay, tens of thousands of Geshes in history have followed him, okay, that's something, the classics, studying the classics, okay, by the way, I feel strongly that we should study the classics, even in these courses, so tomorrow morning, am I right, we will have our normal translator class, and because of the time that they opened this place, we will not do early meditation, in Rimrock, we do a 7 a.m. meditation for the local friends, we can meditate together once a week, and then we do the translator class, so what we have to do here, because of the opening time, is we will have the translator class at 8 a.m. here, yeah, and we have 12 translators studying, and Tim is one, and so Tim will be having his class tomorrow morning, okay, Tim is translating Prajnaparamita, meaning part of the Middle Way school, he's translating, he has a book to translate, which will take 56 years to finish, okay, how we're gonna do that, we might have to pick up in the next life, okay, I don't know, we'll see, all right, so anyway, Randhawa did his homework, and he worked hard to find the right teachers, and he studied, now listen, something very important, only Randhawa learned the great classics on emptiness by Nagarjuna, Shantideva, and Chandrakirti, okay, only, only Randhawa had that transmission at that time, the only place that Tsongkhapa could have learned emptiness was Randhawa, nobody else knew it, nobody else could understand it, he was the one person who understood emptiness in Tibet at that time, okay, so that's pretty cool, he worked hard to get there, and we'll talk about that, okay, number six, we're not gonna make it through 16, tell you that, okay, how he devoted himself to learning what the Buddha really meant, which is called gongpa, say gongpa, gongpa means what the teacher really means, okay, what the teacher really means. In the case of Lord Buddha, this is a very big subject, because Lord Buddha taught emptiness, for example, many different ways, to many kinds of students, only one of them is actually correct, okay, only one of, so why did he teach so many kinds of emptiness? Because the students weren't ready, so he checked the student, and then he would teach the emptiness to fit them, the one I taught you today is the ultimate one, okay, no kidding, really, okay, seriously, okay, all right, so anyway, he spent, he wasn't satisfied just to sit in the class, he wanted to go deeper, and he wanted to see what's the real truth, okay, he worked very hard on that, okay, and if you're interested, you can get the book, and you can follow him through his education, his Buddhist education, okay. Number seven, how he gained the profound, the deepest understandings of a perfect view of reality, how did he see emptiness, did he see emptiness, how did he see emptiness, what happened to him when he saw emptiness, these are things you can read, okay, but it's exactly the same books that I'm teaching you, okay, he used those books also, exactly the same books, okay, all right, that's number seven, RANGS GA GZHAN DE'O RNAM SHES RDZADS SU, how he wrote commentaries on the classics, so he explained the classics, and then he wrote new classics, okay, and that part in his biography is, for me as a Geshe, it's very interesting, because he wrote a great commentary on each of the Geshe topics, he covered all of them, okay, when I say commentary, if you translated them into English, they would be four to five thousand pages each, that's a commentary, and maybe you can cover one page in a day, right, if you try to study them, you know, imagine this person wrote, I don't know, a hundred thousand pages something, it's incredible, and they're all amazing, and by the way, John Brady's project, Nick Lashaw, Ben Kramer, they found a handwritten copy of his books, and I got the final input this morning, okay, it's 14 volumes, it's 14,000 pages, and John's team input those pages, I got the last volume this morning, okay, they've been working on it for five years or something, so it's really amazing, all right, and it's free. Oh, hi Malaysia, oh that's Lashaw, oh hi, congratulations, yeah, he sent it to me this morning. You're not looking at my bald spot, are you? Okay, okay, okay, no, they're over there, okay, all right, number eight, Rangga Shendron Namshe Dze Tsu, yeah, how did he write his commentaries, and how did he explain those books, and his style of writing is uniquely accessible, and this book is special because it was written for a person who was not a monk, this book was written for a person who was not a monk, and he talks about it, inside the book he talks about it, okay, Nagarjuna talks about it. Arya Nagarjuna wrote two letters to kings, there's a third letter to a king by a great scholar named Nagasena, and we have those three letters to kings, and they are extraordinary pieces of advice for business people, because kings were the ultimate business people. So me and Stanley and Xiaoping, we're working on a book, you don't know the name, Dragon Strategy, something like that, and it's how to use those three letters to run a business, okay, a successful business, so even if it's a nonprofit to him, okay, like that, I think it's gonna be cool. The third book is called Malinda Paha in Pali, and it means the questions of King Malinda, which is a corruption of the name Menander, which is a Greek name, and he was one of the Greek kings of India, so Alexander the Great, with the help of his teacher Aristotle, conquered the entire known world, all the way to India, and conquered big parts of India, and then he left generals there to run the country for 500 years or something.Menander was one of them, okay, so it's very interesting. The Geshe hat comes from Alexander the Great, right, okay, and it's very, it's very interesting, okay. Alright, I still got five minutes okay, hang in there. I was sitting in a small hut, was crushed in with 30 Geshe students, the teacher, we didn't have any classrooms, the teacher was sitting on his bed, because that was the only place to sit, and it was the monsoon, and the roof was straw, and water was dripping down on all the students, half of them had tuberculosis, and I'm sitting there, and it's like, and it's hot, and it's wet, and I'm like, I make a solemn vow, when I become a teacher, I will make those people suffer. Understand? That's why you have to sit so long, okay. Anyway, alright, number nine, by the way, this is a, this is a list of things you have to do in your lifetime, okay, don't forget. Number nine, chen yin zen jay lo mang pel tsul, how he grew his group of disciples and spread the Dharma among them, okay. So, by the way, a group of disciples for some of you, means talk to people at work, or talk to your family members, and try to get them not to fight with each other, that's Dharma teaching, okay, that's, that may be your Dharma teaching, you know, we don't know, but everybody here has to teach, okay, and it may be, what I'm trying to say is, it doesn't have to be you're teaching the Geshe course, maybe you can help people more, if you just teach people at your job to get along with each other, and the best way to do that is, be a good example, okay. I asked my teacher, you know, when I first went to the diamond business, in the first few months, I told my teacher, I can't stay there, and he said, why? And I said, they're doing some dishonest things, and they're fighting, and I can't stay there, and he said, you see if you can change it, you see if you can clean up, and it took 15 years, but I did it, and at the end it was like a Buddhist pocket in Manhattan, the whole building, you know, like 800 people, they were all like ... except for Pelma, okay, nah, I'm just kidding, I'm just kidding, alright. By the way, just so you know, and I don't know, Peter Maria, I think of you, I don't know why, so Randhawa's student was Tsongkhapa, but before Randhawa met Tsongkhapa, he had two other students called Gyeltsabje and Kedrupje, okay, so just Tsongkhapa's two closest disciples started with Randhawa, and then Randhawa trained them, you know, and trained them in the classics, and these are, these are the two great disciples of Tsongkhapa, and Randhawa told those two disciples, there's this person named Tsongkhapa, he's new to our area, Central Tibet, Central and Central West Tibet, Tsang and U, Utsang, and Randhawa assigned them to go help Tsongkhapa, okay, that's weird, you know, a teacher takes his two best students and offers them to another teacher, and they became the two right-hand people of Tsongkhapa. If you know the history, we are studying, I mean, Nick's translating Gyeltsabje, Nick already translated a different Gyeltsabje, Adam is translating Kedrupje, Gibson is translating Tsongkhapa, it's all, you know, it's all came from Randhawa, it's very interesting, it's so interesting, like if you have two great fundraisers in your organization, like your John Brady, and then Tim needs money because he's not allowed to charge, and then your John Brady, and you offer your two best fundraisers to Tim, that's, that's what Randhawa did, it's weird, it's pretty weird, I'm not saying anything, okay, okay, number, we still have zero minutes, oh, we gotta stop, okay, where did we stop, number, no, we did ten, oh no, we didn't do ten, you're right, we finished nine, okay, and then we'll go to ten, I should get the diamond back, I hope so, don't worry, it's here, I trust you guys, alright, we have to leave pretty soon, I think they have to close the place, right Tim, am I right, okay, so please don't dwaddle, or dwaddle outside, okay, and I'll see you guys tomorrow, thank you for coming so far, thank you for coming so far, okay, thank you very much, your classes are immaculate as usually, few announcements, for those who are online, you will have meditation with Sugen at 9 p.m., for those who are on the website, please take your garbage with you, okay, leave the place pure, and also we have a necklace, orange stone inside the diamond, so maybe if it's yours, I have it, you can come to me to take it back, okay, have an amazing, sweet, sweetest dreams tonight, and see you all at 8 a.m. for our translation classes, goodbye. I'll send all my loving to you, I'll pretend that I'm missing, the lips I am missing, and hope that my dreams will come true, and then while I'm away, I'll write home every day, and I'll send all my loving to you, I'll pretend that I'm missing, the lips I am missing, and hope that my dreams will come true, and then while I'm away, I'll write home every day, and I'll send all my loving to you, I'll pretend that I'm missing, the lips I am missing, and hope that my dreams will come true, and then while I'm away, I'll write home every day, and I'll send all my loving to you, I'll pretend that I'm missing, the lips I am missing, and hope that my dreams will come true, and then while I'm away, I'll write home every day, and I'll send all my loving to you, I'll pretend that I'm missing, the lips I am missing, and hope that my dreams will come true, and then while I'm away, I'll write home every day, and I'll send all my loving to you, I'll pretend that I'm missing, the lips I am missing, and hope that my dreams will come true, and then I'll write home every day, and I'll send all my loving to you, I'll pretend that I'm missing, the lips I am missing Hey, I'll, I'll say, I'll love, I'll be true

Class 3 -

26 October 2025

Hi. Francisco, Brian, it's 1.3. Picture 1.3. Yeah. Okay, good. Thank you for organizing this class, and thank you for inviting me. It's nice to be in Phoenix, and it's a beautiful place. I think it's a beautiful place to talk, okay? I should warn you now that we didn't have much time to practice your music concert. It's pretty bad, so just put some earplugs and come, okay? All right. The musicians are good, we just didn't have time, okay? We were talking about NANG tong, and these are difficult ideas, and a lot of people don't learn it. You can't learn it very often, but this whole part of the angel talk, devil debate to angel talk, is about the subject of NANG tong. So nang, again, try to get an idea in your mind, when Geshehla says nang, it means what appears to you. What appears to you. And it's all of those things which are coming from pictures from your mind. It's all of those things which your mind is creating with pictures. By the way, it doesn't mean they're not real, okay? We used to teach it in New York, it was very funny, Nancy knows, Chen Stong knows, but if some student said, nothing's real, because it's just a picture coming out of your mind, then I will tell them, okay, you go out on 3rd Avenue, stand in front of a New York taxicab, and you will have the appearance of a broken leg, then you can go to the appearance of a hospital, and you will get the appearance of a big bill from the hospital, and it's all real. All those things are real. So appearance, nang, say nang, yeah, it's high tone, nang. What's a low tone nang? $100. Rob, wait, wait, wait, raise your hand, low tone nang, nang, nang, nang, nangpa, nangpa. You're getting as bad as word. Okay, one is an insight, and the other one is kind of luminous light appearance. I want nangpa, nangpa, okay, cancel that. Peach tree, Buddhist, yeah, wait, not you, too late. Hey, Rob, just give him the number to my bank account, we don't have to work so hard. Okay, yeah, NANG means inner, inside, nangpa means Buddhist, inside person. And then say nang, NANG means all those pictures that come from the seeds in your mind. The result of the process of the seed opening, and the picture comes out, and makes things. But it's so fast, you don't understand it. You never saw it, very, very few people ever see it. That's called nang. Then dong, dong means if you try to find something which is not made by your pictures, you can't find anything. There's no such thing. That's emptiness, that's emptiness. What's the $100, okay, ready? Peter and Maria gave me some money yesterday from my publisher in Europe. What was the question? I can't hear you. Okay, oh, I didn't say the question yet, okay. If NANG is all the pictures that come from you, then what is dong according to nang? Yeah, okay, good. Yeah, you can say that. Kind of, yeah. If you try to find anything which is not coming from your seeds, you won't find anything, and that's shunyata, that's emptiness. Who's next? What's the Spanish I forgot, vacuidad.Okay, all right. So I want you to know NANG and dong. Say nang, dong. Then today I want you to learn two more words. YOD DAG MED DAG YOD DAG MED DAG His Holiness the First Panchen Lama goes to nang, then he goes to dong, and then he goes to YOD DAG, and then he goes to MED DAG. So the word DAG means edge. It means like the edge of the stage here is called DAG. Who can name a famous teacher who has DAG? Wait, you've got to raise your hand. And I didn't offer any money. Darchin. All right, you could wait until I offer the money. Yeah, Tar Chin was my lama's name. And DAG means edge. In this case, DAG means edge. TAR means to the edge. And CHIN means he already went past the edge. He went past the edge. It means he reached Buddhahood or something like that. His name was Tarchin. But in philosophy, TAR means you went too far in your mind. You went too far. And what you are thinking about is wrong. It's impossible. So TAR, in philosophy, TAR means you went too far in your thinking. And there's a YOD DAG and there's a MED DAG. So YOD DAG means you went too far thinking of what things are. YOD. That's called YOD DAG. And then there's MED DAG. MED DAG means you went too far in thinking about how things don't exist. So YOD DAG, you went too far thinking how things exist. MED DAG, you went too far thinking about how things don't exist. And those are the two problems for people who learn about SNANG STONG. Once you understand everything's coming from your seeds, and once you understand that there's nothing that's not coming from your seeds... By the way, emptiness is always a double negative. There's nothing which is not coming from your seeds. That's emptiness. So SNANG STONG. How can you... So if I tell you the person who is learning SNANG STONG, they can go too far thinking something exists, what do you think it is? Yes, standing went like this. They think that things could exist without your seeds. And you are not making the pen. The pen was made in a factory. And the pen writes things. You think that. There's a deep point that you have to understand. The pen exists. It's real. The taxi cab exists. It's real. It can break your leg. And the pen can write things. For $300, tell me how a pen writes things. The pen which is coming from your seeds can write things when seeds are coming from your mind and kind of touching the pen. And the pen never touches the paper. And the picture is coming from your mind and viewing the letters on the paper which are coming from your mind. I'll make it $400 if you can say one more thing. But you got the $300 already, so maybe... Then how does the ink in the pen run out if you write? When you are out of seeds for making this picture having the letters on the paper, then you see the paper with no letters when you're trying to write down something by pen. Okay, $400. Thank you. All right. All right. So, THA. THA means cliff. Oh, there's the picture. And there's a big debate about it, but basically in your mind, you fall off the cliff and you kill yourself. You die. These two ways of seeing things wrong are called falling off the cliff because they kill you. They ruin your life. So, if you believe YOD THA, things exist too much, it means they are coming from their own side. If you believe things are coming from their own side, then you fall off the cliff. The existing cliff. The cliff that things are there. The cliff of believing that things are there. If you believe they are coming from their side, you fell off that cliff. $100. How would YOD THA, how would falling off that cliff that things exist too much, how would that affect your relationship with other people, especially irritating people? Sure. So, if you're thinking that things are coming from their own side and that they exist independently, it would mean that if you ran into someone who's annoying, you would think that they're just being like that and that you didn't have anything to do with that based on your behavior in the past. $100. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And then, your reaction would be to hurt them, to try to hurt them, okay? And that's, if you want to know what it looks like when a person falls off the cliff of existing too much, they will not get along with other people. They will blame other people. They will say, I told this person a thousand times, they still don't listen to me, they really bother me. That kind of person is living at the bottom of the cliff, okay? They already fell off the cliff. There's a famous percentage, okay? The number of people who fall off the too much existing cliff is 99. And the people who fall off the cliff of nothing exist, they are 1%. For no money! Who fell off the cliff of don't exist? It's those who already know about karma, and they believe that everything and everybody they see just projection, so which means they don't exist at all, and it's very dangerous because you can do whatever you want because it's just your projection, and this way you don't feel too much love to them because they just, I don't know, illusion. Sometimes people give hundred dollar answer. Anyway. Okay, yeah.Thank you. There's a very famous stupid idea that Buddhist people believe in emptiness, therefore Buddhist people believe nothing exists, therefore you can do whatever you want because it doesn't matter, nothing's real, and there's whole hundreds of years of Buddhists in some countries sitting in front of a wall and close their eyes and try to think about nothing. You know, just stare at the wall and try to think about nothing. And that's a terrible, tragic, terrible, terrible accident. This car fell off the cliff, you know. A whole religion, a whole country's culture, religion, a Buddhism of some countries, they just believe you should sit and think about nothing, and it's an extraordinary mistake, huge mistake. It's a suicidal mistake, okay? So, you know, you gotta be, okay. All right. So now you've got four words that I want you to remember even after the class ends. Nang, tong, yata, metar. Okay? And feel comfortable with those, okay? Nang means everything around you which is coming from you, and it has a little bit of a, when you see seeds in your mind opening, you will see that they open as a luminous picture. It's not just a picture. It's a little bit shining, okay? It has a halo around it, okay? That's why they call it appearance. Pictures coming out, and the day that you see it, you will see those pictures with a little bit of a halo. Nang, like my head, John's head. Tong, Rick's head. Tong. Then, TONG means things that come from their own side, they just don't exist. There's no such thing. That's emptiness, okay? All right. Then he says something, well, you can meditate on those four things now. Nang, tong, yata, metar. If you need a meditation, that's a useful meditation, okay? Then he says, it's the yin yang. You got it, you guys? The next picture, I think. Skip the meditation picture, go to the next picture. Oh. You can go back to that guy. Yeah. I explained it to the AI for about half an hour. Finally, the AI, the AI finally understood. And by the way, I cannot teach an AI not to do this thing, which is impossible to meditate like that, okay? Your hands fall asleep, you can't do that, but all the AIs believe that. That's a problem with AI, but anyway. So, he's meditating on tong. The wall in front of him represents tong, but there is a NANG behind him, which is his breakfast or something. Okay? That picture is supposed to represent NANG tong, okay? Something appears behind him, nang, but he's also, there's nothing else which exists in the other way. That's tong, okay? Alright, next picture you guys. Yeah. These two things NANG and tong, they define each other, okay? They coexist, okay? Because there's nang, there can be tong. Because there's tong, there can be nang. They are intimately interconnected, okay? Because things appear to your mind, because things appear to you through pictures, then they're empty of not appearing through pictures, okay? So, those two things define each other. And by the way, that circle is all the things in the world which exist, okay? That's all. There's nothing else in the world. Things are either the fact that things are appearing from your mind, or they are what is not that way, which is nothing, okay? That's emptiness. Can you think about emptiness and it becomes nang? When you see emptiness directly, is it a picture coming from your mind? It has to be, okay? It has to be. It actually has to be. Everything that exists is a picture that comes from your mind. Even emptiness is a picture that comes from your mind, okay? That's a difficult point, but that's something delicate, okay? Then I changed the translation, okay? So, I finished translating this book 14 years. I finished it a few months ago. I finished the whole thing. It's about, I think it's 600 verses, I think. And I finished it. And now I'm writing a little commentary, mini commentary, just to, I want to stay in the background and just throw in a few comments once in a while for Buddhist ideas that people never heard of. You know what I mean? But I don't want to write a commentary. I just want to help people as we go. So, it will have little comments between the verses for things that people never heard of. I don't want to do footnotes because it's too, it messes up the appearance of the poetry, I think. And I don't want to, I thought about doing a commentary in the back, but nobody will look at it. So, I decided just one flow, and then I decided to break it up. The angel and the devil switch places 20 times in this poem, okay? 20 times the angel talks and 20 times the devil talks, okay? And they're just about equal verses, okay? It's just about 300 verses for each person got democracy, the devil got to talk half time, and the angel got to talk half time, okay? I changed this translation. Tim asked me, did you change any translation schedule? And I did change this translation for this verse, okay? And I'll read it to you now, okay? The verse says, for all the reasons that we've named here, that's a joke, okay? For all the reasons that we've named here, emptiness almost seems to arise from the appearance of things. And the appearance of things almost seems to arise from emptiness. Ah, can't you see what intimate friends they are? Who's talking? Angel or devil? Angel's talking, okay? It's yin yang. The emptiness is defined by the appearance and the appearance is defined by the emptiness. They are creating each other, okay? But then he says, emptiness almost seems to arise, okay? I translated it originally as arise, okay? And then I noticed more, I noticed more strongly the word da. If you know Tibetan, the second line, the third line, has da at the end, which means seems like, okay? Seems like. So I changed the translation to, it almost seems that emptiness is coming from appearance and it almost seems that appearance is coming from emptiness. But actually, sorry, arises from emptiness, okay? It almost seems that emptiness is arising from appearance and it almost seems that appearance is arising from emptiness. Why is it wrong to say emptiness arises from appearance and appearance arises from emptiness? Why is it wrong to say that? They are two sides of the same coin. By the way, I stopped using, in my lifetime, some ideas have become too old to use, like a pen, okay? Nowadays I use this side of the iPhone and this side of the iPhone. I don't say two sides of the coin. The penny was abolished, do you know that, John? Bad news. Yeah, they stopped printing, minting pennies because they're too small, okay? So you can't say two sides of the same coin much. You have to say two sides of this bankrupt cyber coin bank. Okay, anyway, why you cannot say that one arises from the other? Tim, you want to try? Which is? Yeah, good. Emptiness is uncaused. Emptiness cannot arise. Arise means you are born, you're small, then you get bigger and bigger and bigger. Arise goes like this, and then it goes like this, okay? That's a changing thing in Buddhism. That's a change. All functional things, everything that does anything, by doing something, it kills itself, okay? Emptiness and appearance never change. They were not born, okay? They did not start. They never started. They didn't go, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh. Okay? They just exist or they don't exist, okay? They don't grow. They cannot start. You gotta understand that. It's very important, okay? Emptiness cannot grow.Emptiness starts. Emptiness, emptiness begins but doesn't start, okay? Like these, my glasses, I made them in Shenzhen, I think. And so, you know, they made them, they put them together, they took them to the store, they sold them. These glasses went like that, and these glasses will break someday, okay? That's, that's the functional thing. That's a made thing. That's something which started, okay? The emptiness of these glasses began on the day they were finished, but it never changes until, until you smash the glasses. Then the emptiness of the glasses is gone, but it doesn't go like this, do-do-do-do-do-do, okay? It goes like this, start, start, start, start, stop, finished, okay? It doesn't start like that, and it doesn't end like that. You cannot say that emptiness arises from appearances, and appearances arise from emptiness. And then I, when I was gonna teach it, I noticed he put the word, here, you can see it, da. Da means it almost seems like, it almost seems like. That's because he knows it's not correct to say emptiness started, or arose from appearance, and appearance arose from emptiness, got it? It's important to understand these things. You think it sounds dumb, you think I'm talking about philosophy, but if you cook your mind in these ideas, you will see emptiness someday.You will see emptiness one day, okay? So people are like, why should I see emptiness? I mean, for no other reason, in 20 minutes, you will visit every planet in the universe. And that's, come on, you gotta do that, okay? It's unbelievable. It's, there's nothing like that, okay? You gotta do it. If you can sit in these stupid classes, and then you get to have a 20 minute trip around the universe, even if you never do anything else, I think it's worth it. I think it's worth it to sit in class for a few years. If someone give you a 20 minute trip around the universe, you know, and you can say you met a, people say things about people, I say that's not true. And they say, why? And I say, I met all of them. And that's not true, okay? Then they're like, what? No, I'm kidding. Are living beings infinite in the universe? Can you meet everyone? Yes, okay? It's very nice. It's very cool. Okay, so get used to the fact that some things don't start. They come into existence, but they don't begin. They don't arise. They don't wake up, baby, then get bigger, bigger, bigger, bigger, then get older, older, older, older. They don't do that. Some things come into existence and bling out of existence without changing, okay? And those are the big things. Neng and dong are two of them, okay? Very important. Therefore, he has to be saying it seems like. It seems like each one is born from the other, but they cannot be born. They're not born. They just happen. I've had a, I had the pleasure to teach 12 great translators for eight, nine years now. And, you know, we work on these words. We try to work on these words. After eight years with the translators, and after 40 years before that, I'm still not sure what to call dependent origination, which I hate this word. And I'll tell you something interesting, okay? When you translate the word dependent origination, pratītyasamutpāda, you cannot use a word that means start, or arise, or grow. You can't use a word like that. You have to say happen, okay? And you can say, so lately I came up with things that happen in depending on each other, or something like that, okay? Things that happen in dependence. You cannot say grow, okay? You cannot say that, okay? Nang happens from tong. Tong happens from nang, but they don't grow, okay? They don't grow from small to big, okay? And I'm not saying that because it's philosophy or something like that. That's really boring, and I never liked it ever. It's very important to know that emptiness has a starting point, and emptiness has a stopping point, but it never grows, okay? It's just the way something is, right? So I'm playing around with events in dependence, or something like that, okay? Because event doesn't imply starting, okay? It happened, but it didn't grow, okay? That's something important. Alright, so if you study Abhidharma, and we'll talk about Abhidharma, if you studied the original Buddhism, Abhidharma was the only Buddhism in the grocery store for 700 years, okay? So it's good to learn it. It's good to know about it. They will divide ... CHOS NAM SAGS CES SAGS PA MED LAM DOR PA'I DU BYAS NAM SAGS CES GANG ZHIG DE DAG LA SA NANG KUN DU RGYAS PAR GYUR SEMS MED LAM GYI BSTAN PA DANG SDUG MA BYAS NAM ZHIG YIN DE'I DNGOS DANG NI SGOS PA DE'I DE LA DNGOS MA DE'I BO Opening lines, okay? And it means that things can start. There's things that start and die, and there's other things which happen and stay until they stop. Okay? Big difference. One is DU BYAS, sanskara, created by causes and conditions. The other one is DU MA BYAS. It exists, but it wasn't created by causes and conditions. My question to you, what's the percentage? How many things in the universe exist but were never caused? Compared to how many things in the universe start from a cause, like your mom or I don't know, gasoline or something. What's the percentage? How many things start and come to exist, and how many things exist without ever starting? Without a process of starting? What's the percent? It's like, yeah, 99,99,99,99,99,99, to 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, okay? There's, in fact, the Abhidharma opening lines, DU MA CHEN NAM SUM YAM TE, there's only three things in the universe that, according to Abhidharma, that exist but don't grow. Okay? And there's only three. NAM KA DA NI GO PA NYID Empty space and the two cessations. That's another story. Okay. Therefore, the first Panchen Lama wisely says, it almost seems as if they grow from each other. Okay? He uses the almost. He says almost. DA, DA. Okay? Alright. By the way, if I really taught you this text, it wouldn't take 14 years. It would take 100 years. He's extremely great philosopher. He's one of the top 10 in history. Those of you who are studying Dalam as a preparation for Diamond Way, it's a wonderful opportunity. It's a great opportunity. He wrote that. Alright. But I'm gonna give you the same thing in a different way. Okay? So don't worry about it. Alright. I'm not the same person who wrote the Diamond Way courses 23 years ago. Okay? Maybe I'm getting older. I don't know. Just kidding. Okay. Then he says, it's very funny. He says, it's hard to decide who is more kind to you, NANG or tong? And you're like, wait a minute, Geshehla just said they can't be people because they don't start. They exist, but they don't start. They don't grow, and they don't die. They start and they stop, but they don't grow and they don't die. How's that? Okay? Then how can you say they are your friends? Okay? Like if you say, if I ask you, who's your best friends in this life? You should say, NANG and tong. You know? Then everybody says, oh, where are they from? That's a weird name. My two best friends are NANG and tong. Okay? And then he says, if you understand NANG tong, that's your best friend you ever met in your life because he saves you a lot of misery. It saves you a lot of misery. All the misery, suffering. I like the word misery. In English, misery means constant, long-term, irritating suffering. Suffering is just kind of like short. Misery is years long, like with a bad husband or something. Like that's misery. So he says, why are NANG and TONG so kind? Why do they give you kindness? They save you from misery. They save you from long-term misery. Okay? Why? Easy answer. Yeah, you don't yell back. You know? In theory, I still yell back. Okay? After 50 years exactly of touching emptiness, I still yell back. Okay? It doesn't fix your mind forever. It starts the process of freedom, but it doesn't fix your mind in 10 seconds. It doesn't happen like that. It takes many years of practice with emptiness to stop feeling irritated at people. Okay? I'm trying to confess that I still feel irritated at people. You know? Sometimes. And it's so wrong, because I know where, I know if you ask me where they're coming from, I'll say, oh, I must have been irritating to my wife. You know? And I know that. But to change your behavior is very difficult. My teacher said that, he asked me one day, I remember I was sitting next to his chair up in his room, and he said, is there anything good about suffering? And he said, yeah, it reminds you to try to improve yourself. Okay? Every time you get angry at someone, it reminds you that you're not there yet. Okay? So, in a way, all the irritating people in the world are very good little reminders that you're not there yet. Okay? Irritating people in the world function to remind you you're not there yet. Okay? Cool? Because you get, you got that picture? Come on, Brian. Nah, come on, next one. Yeah. This is the reaction of a person who understands NANG TONG when they meet an irritating person. Okay? By the way, it doesn't fix the irritating person, but, if you're the person who understands NANG tong, then you will, you will not get irritated. Okay? You will hold your, you will restrain yourself, which is called vinaya. Okay? You will keep yourself back from getting irritated. Okay? In this way, NANG TONG is very kind. Thank you very much, NANG tong. Okay? You reminded me that this person comes from my pictures. Okay? You reminded me, thank you very much. I'm very grateful. Okay? They're coming from you. Every time you get upset, you are planting not one, but hundreds of new irritations in your life. That's kind of scary. Okay? Every time you really dislike someone, you are creating many more people like that. Okay? So, you gotta be tough with yourself. You gotta stop. Alright. Next item. So, I've been working for, I don't know, 50 years to find a good picture of what it feels like to walk, to step from planet to planet after you see emptiness directly. I've been trying for many, many years to find an appropriate picture. And, I think I was trying to tell the AI to do something else, but it came up with this one. That's why the AI is a result of diamond way practice. Because, diamond way means the AI really is artificial intelligence, and it's sending you message, especially every time it messes up. Okay? Listen, you can quote grandpa later. When AI messes up, it's Vajrayogini sending you a message. Pay attention. Pay attention. Okay? I haven't figured out why she's insisting that people have three fingers. I'm not sure yet what's that message. I'm working on it. But, my AI came up with this picture, and I love it. If you have to say what it feels like to get to bodhichitta, real bodhichitta, after you see emptiness directly, in the next hour or something like that, this is what it feels like. Okay? Just let that image cook in your mind. Plant a seed in your mind. That's what it feels like. That's how you will feel when you're stepping from planet to planet. And it's very cool. You know? I have this film crew following me around nowadays, and they're asking me stuff, and I'm just like, it's very hard to explain to you what happens, you know? I can say it, but you won't believe it, and you think I'm some kind of weirdo or something. But this is between us, right? In English we say us chickens. We're all the same chickens in the same group, right? So, I can talk about stuff like this. That's what it feels like, okay? And the question that First Panchen Lama talks about here is, he asked the question, what's the difference between Karuna and Mahakaruna? What's the difference between Karuna and Mahakaruna? What's the difference between compassion and what we call great compassion? Nyingje and Nyingje Chenpo. What's the difference? And anybody want to guess? What's the difference between compassion and great compassion? Don't forget what he's selling at this point in his book. Becoming bodhisattva is a great compassion, and compassion just like as you are a human being is still compassion, but when you have the experience meeting every living being, then becoming a great compassion. Yeah, so you're right so far. Here's normal compassion, and then here's great compassion, and basically you said great compassion is bodhicitta. If this is bodhicitta in this picture, what happened between? Emptiness. Direct perception of emptiness. Okay, alright. You got to think of it that way. Alright, you have to think of it that way. Do you have compassion? Yes. Why? You know, I don't like to see people suffer. I truly don't like to see people suffer. When I see people suffer, and I'm not suffering, I feel really sad, and I feel like, come on man, I can help you. I can really help you. You can stop suffering, you know. And then they're like, yeah, I'm too busy, you know. And I'm like, okay, see you suffering later. And, you know, I feel like I want to, I feel like I could help them to stop suffering, but they won't stay still long enough to listen. And then I've learned to respect that. I've learned to not be an asshole. You know, I just, okay, I'll meet you later. We'll talk about it later. When you're ready. When things aren't bad enough, check in with me, you know. So that's one thing. So there's normal compassion that we can all have. And then there's this kind of experience in the picture, after you see emptiness directly. And what takes it from compassion to great compassion is emptiness. When you see emptiness directly. Because for a person who's seen emptiness directly, suffering is so avoidable. It's so preventable. You really understand that people don't need to suffer. And then your compassion goes to a higher level, you know. Are you sorry about all the people who had car accidents this week in America? Because they were smoking marijuana, okay. And you say, yeah, I'm sorry. I heard about many people broke their back or smashed their head or something like that. And then you say, do you feel bad about it? You say, yeah, I feel bad about it. But what if you could stop it, you know. That's compassion. There's one thing to feel bad about. People getting into trouble and causing themselves pain. That's compassion. Great compassion is, oh man, I could teach you in five minutes how to stop that. You don't have to do that, you know. You got to understand emptiness. Just understand emptiness. Emptiness takes compassion to bodhicitta, okay. Emptiness takes compassion to great compassion. Okay, bodhicitta. Okay, cool. And that's what His Holiness is talking about in this part. He's trying to say, how can you take things from compassion to great compassion? It's the experience of emptiness, okay. So emptiness is not some kind of philosophy. It's very practical, okay. All right. And I wanted to say, you know, they make a big deal about, how can you say? They make a big deal about how normal Buddhist kindness is a good thing. It's a very wonderful thing. Without seeing emptiness, you can learn normal Buddhist kindness to where you truly take care of other people every day. Several times every day you do some major thing to take care of other people. And that's a delightful life, okay. I'm at the end of my life, I know. But, and I can tell you what's good in life because I went through it. You still have to go through part of it. I'm pretty much through it, you know. And I can tell you, I can swear to you, that taking care of other people is so cool and so firm and so yummy, you know, that you have to try, okay. If you, you know, it's the best way to spend your time, okay. And I did a video recently with some company. They said, did you ever take drugs? But you don't have to answer if you don't want to. And I'm like, yes, I took drugs. You know, what was it like? Oh, you know, it was okay. And then I decided they were too temporary and they also cost money. So I'd rather meditate. And we talked about that. So, I've been through a long life. I've tried almost everything. And there is nothing more fun than full-time helping other people. Every moment, you know, every hour of the day, you know. And then sometimes I'm like overwhelmed. You know, he tells me how much money I committed yesterday. And I'm like, whoa, really? And he says, yeah, you gave 10 to that one, you gave 20 to that. We're talking thousands, right? And I'm like, whoa, I don't know if I can afford that. He's like, ah, we'll figure it out, you know. It's a wonderful, wonderful life just to keep giving to other people. To be super generous and to keep doing that all your whole life is yummy, yummy, yummy, okay? And I swear it's the best thing you could do, okay? I swear there's nothing better unless you can add emptiness to that. Because then you can do it planet to planet. And that's even more fun, you know. I call it, we should write a book, Peter, something, playing marbles with planets, you know. There are beings who play marbles with planets, Indra, Shakra, Brahma. They're so powerful, they play games with planets, you know. There do exist such people. So try to imagine being super generous and making other people's dreams come true on an interplanetary level. That's like awesome, intergalactic level. They showed me some picture from the innovation retreat people were at Diamond Mountain looking at the stars. And that big bunch of stars, they are inside the Milky Way. You are looking down the Milky Way. It's that string of stars there, you know. That's just one galaxy. That's nothing, you know. That's just a billion billion stars. That's nothing. That's like less than a zillion percent. It's nothing. There's zillions and zillions of those stars. I learned the word septillions. Add 60 zeros to one, okay. That's how many stars in our galaxy, okay. So imagine that you were able to make people's wishes come true on that level, on that magnitude, every day, every day, okay. Imagine that was your business. People are always asking me, how do I make a million dollars? How do you make the largest diamond company in the world? I mean, would you rather work in billions of stars or you just want to have one jewelry company? Which is more interesting? Which is more fun? And these are available to everybody if you can meditate on emptiness, okay. Emptiness makes normal, yummy love into galactic, galactic magnitude. You are helping billions of people at the same time. Somebody is like, Geshehla, I got 300 people online in my class. I'm like, let's go for a billion. Let's go for a hundred billion, you know. Okay, got it? You can do it. What makes the difference? What puts you from one game to the next game? It's emptiness. You got to see emptiness. This book is great. Angel Devil is great. I keep waiting for him to teach something else because I'm afraid people are getting tired of emptiness after 14 years. And he's like, nope, there's nothing else. He refuses to teach anything else. Just 600 verses about emptiness, okay. Anyway, we got a ways to go. How are we doing on time? In five minutes, I'll take questions, okay? So get your questions ready in your head. Okay. Okay. Next picture. Yeah. This is a dear ... Hector and me worked on this for a while. Ellie and me worked on it. But this is a ... You know, there were refugees ... Do you want to buy ... Anything they can sell. Do you want to buy some shoes? Can I get your ... And this guy had a woodblock print of the Wheel of Life. I didn't know anything about anything. And I opened it and I looked at it, just like King Udayana. And I was like, that's pretty, you know. That's pretty cool. I don't know what it means, but it looks pretty good to me. And so I bought it, you know, for a few dollars. I bought it from him and I took it home. And since then we've used it on many books and things like that, okay. The Panchen Lama talks about the wheel, the cycle of dependence. But then he says, if you really want to understand this wheel, there's one important thing you have to understand. So if you look at the wheel, on the wheel, the outside rim, there's 12 pictures, right. And it's supposed to be one triggers two, two triggers three, three triggers four, like that. It's supposed to be that the wheel goes like that. It's more complex than that. You know, ten is triggered from a combination of eight and nine if you have two, like that. You know, it's more complicated than that. But, you know, we got this wheel of life. We got all these, we've got all these 12 pictures. Let's say they go one, two, three, four, five, like a clock. That's kind of convenient by the way. The wheel of life and a Western clock go the same direction and they have the same number of divisions. That's kind of lucky, good luck.I'm almost tentering. And then, so it's going and then, but it's called interdependence. It's not called dependence, okay? It's, okay, I'll say it again. It's called interdependence, not dependence, okay? Two depends on one. Three depends on two. Four depends on three. Five depends on four. That's okay, you know. One goes to two. Two goes to three. Three goes to four. But, on a deeper level, one is one because two came. Three is three because two came. Sorry, yeah. Two is two because one came. Three is three because two came. You know, I'm sorry. Two is two because three came. Yeah, two is two because three came, okay? Later things cause earlier things. You can't have a second link before the third link unless the third link is there already, which means the third link has to come before the second link, which means there's a mutual causation between things, okay? And it is the case that being irritated at your people around you because you don't understand they're coming from you, it is the case that that is causing you suffering, okay? But, that kind of misunderstanding couldn't exist without the irritating person, okay? So, there's a deeper level of causation where the result causes the cause. There's a deeper level of causation where the result causes the cause. The person who criticizes you created your criticism of other people that caused them. The person that criticizes you was created by your earlier criticism, but that was created by the person who comes later, okay? And we'll talk about it. I think we're out of time today, right? If I keep my promise. Remind me tomorrow. Remind me tomorrow. If you really want to understand why you suffer, and if you really want to understand emptiness, and you really want to understand causation, you have to understand that the first step of the wheel of life causes the second step of the wheel of life, but the second step of the wheel of life also causes the first step of the wheel of life, equally, back and forth. That's like, you can be nice to other people, but until you see emptiness, you cannot walk planets. Okay? Which is the bigger being nice. Got it? Okay? There's something, understanding emptiness turns compassion into universal compassion, galactic compassion, okay? And then understanding emptiness creates an understanding that things don't cause other things later. Things later cause other things before. It goes both ways, okay? And if you understand that, you can be ultimately compassionate. Okay? And then, what's that got to do with, what is it? The king's, the king, the king's affection. Okay, if you haven't seen The King's Affection on Netflix, you gotta see it. This is the best of K-pop. K-pop is Korean soap operas, okay? And me and my wife kind of got into it. I'm sorry. But they are so innocent and beautiful. They're just like BTS, okay? And they are beautiful, and they are extraordinary. Attorney Wu, The King's Affection, you know. The only irritating thing, oh, Crash Landing on You. I'm not so into that yet, but anyway. I'm trying to say, Netflix is really good at saying, see you in the next episode. And you'll find out if the king ever kisses his tutor? Guy? Because the king is really the princess. Now I got you.You gotta come back next time. Okay, I'll just, I don't want you to think I'm strange. Two children are born at the same time to a Korean emperor. One is male, one is female. They come in to assassinate the male baby, and they assassinate the, sorry, yeah, they assassinate, they do assassinate the male baby, but the queen wants everyone to think that the male baby survived, so they bring up the princess as a boy. And she actually makes it to take over the empire, and no one figures it out, except for a romantic problem. Okay, so I'll tell you later. Okay, any questions? I have a question from Malaysia. Okay. Hi, Malaysia. Thank you for doing Malaysia, Jasmine. Hello, Geshehla. We are here with teacher Nick and teacher Sarani. So, we have a question from one of our smart student and excellent translator. Hi, Geshehla. Hi, Geshehla. Thank you very much for your teaching. We are really grateful for your teaching. We do have a question, because in Malaysia right now, we are going deeper on the idea of teacher drug, and one of the ideas is, when we look at the things, what is the thing that making us to think? How do we realize different categories? That is the question we are trying to explore at the moment, yes. So when we, for example, when we looking at the things, the cup or the pen, and what is the thing immediately in our mind that we can think? Because a lot of people say that, oh, our mom taught us when we are young, but some people will say, oh, what if those people who live in the forest, they never got to be taught about pen, then how it is, yeah. So that is the idea about teacher drug. Could you please go a little bit deeper on that? Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you for asking me to go deeper. I enjoy that. Then it is not my fault if you get confused. I got to tell this story. I am sorry. I like telling stories, but I think you remember stories, and if I just tell you the answer, I don't think it is as easy to remember. So, I was talking to some people recently. There is this, they are doing a biographical film about grandpa, and they interviewed my brother two days ago, three days ago, something. And so, he was bragging about me, number one student in Arizona, went to the White House, got this award from the president, and then went to Princeton University, got honors at Princeton, and then went to study with my teacher the next day, the day after I graduated. So, I was feeling pretty smart, and I thought I was a pretty big guy, you know. And then I went to my teacher, and my Buddhism professor delivered me to my teacher into his hands, and said, please take care of him. And my teacher swore to make me a good Buddhist, like, teacher or something. He swore he would do that to my other teacher. So, there is this big handoff, and I am feeling like the most important person in New Jersey, at least. And then, you know, I spent 25 years with this really hard ass teacher, and he kicked me in the same place, over and over, and every time I tried to say something, he would prove I was wrong. Every single thing I said, if I said the pizza was good, he'd say, no, it's not really. And, you know, it was like that, I never got a chance to be smart, not even once. He's just keep telling me how stupid I am. And if it wasn't for my extreme pride, I probably would have had a complex about it. But, so, I'm like, then one day he said, hey Mike, and I'm like, what? And he says, can you explain to me this word science? We don't have the word science in our language. They made up a word, it's called scenery, but it's an artificial word. They didn't have the word science, they didn't have the idea of science, and he said, you know, I understand it's really the religion, or the philosophy of your world culture, science. What is it? What are some of the ideas of science? And I said, well, he said, for example, how does science say that the universe began? And I felt so joyful that he's asking me something that I can teach to him. And I felt, finally I felt like, finally here's my chance to show how smart I am. And I'm like, well, this is how it is. In the beginning there wasn't anything, and then, suddenly there's this Big Bang. And with the extra atmosphere telescope, you can actually observe, you can get close to the Big Bang because it took time to get here. You can look back. If you can look a long ways towards the Big Bang, in theory you could watch the Big Bang happen, because that light is still traveling. The light traveling from the Big Bang is still headed to the universe. So, he's like, wow, that's great. That's where everything came from, right? And he said, yeah. I said, yeah. And he said, well, is there any main principle of science that science believes? I said, science believes everything has a cause. You just have to be patient. No superstition. I said, it's not like you're a monkey and you're a witch. So, the ancient Tibetans believed that Adam and Eve was a monkey and a witch, and they had sex, and that's why we're so weird. They created the human race. And this ancient Tibetan belief, I said, we're not like those monkey and witches, you know? We believe in the Big Bang. We believe everything has a cause. We look for the cause. You can cure cancer. You can make metal fly in the sky. You can do everything. And he says, wow. I should have known from his excited... This is an old debater's trick to make you an idiot. He's like, wow, that's so great. And he says, yeah, everything has a cause. This is the very foundation of your really science is your religion in the whole world. People have their own little tiny Baptist and Hindu, Shakra, Bhakta, whatever. But really the world religion is iPhone and science. And he says, that's amazing. Everything has a cause. You can figure out everything from the result you were to the cause. I said, yeah, it's amazing. And he says, wow, so everything had a cause, right? I should have recognized it. And I'm like, yeah. And he says, wow, what caused the big bang? And I'm like, the big bang didn't have a cause. Oh, there's things that don't have a cause. Yeah. The biggest principle of science is that everything has a cause. Yeah, but some things don't have a cause. Right. And everything's caused by a cause, right? Except some things aren't caused by a cause, right? And I'm like, you're playing with me. Now I know you're playing with me. You are criticizing my belief that the universe began. And he said, yeah, I am. And I said, well, what's your option? What do you think? And he said, if the universe had a cause, then obviously it couldn't have a beginning. Duh, don't be so stupid. If something's there, something caused it, okay? And if something caused it, the thing that caused it had a cause. Duh. And there is no first beginning. And I was very, I felt very hurt and kind of angry because I was brought up with the monkey and the witch. And I mean, big bang, you know? And he's like, come on, Mike. He called me Mike. Mike, try to calm down. Try to think clearly. By the way, that's Buddhist logic.Pramana means try to think honestly. Try to think clearly. Try not to be swayed by your culture. Answer me honestly. Is it possible something could happen without a cause? And I say, no, it's not possible. Then there's no beginning. Then it's obviously foolish and wrong to say there's a beginning. There cannot be. Whatever was the first thing had a thing that caused it, then just try to get comfortable with it. It's okay. You're not a bad person. You know? There was no beginning because any point you take had a cause. And that had a cause and that had a cause. Therefore, if you are truly logical and if you are unbiased by your culture, which is a huge goal in life, can you admit that there was no cause? First cause. No first cause. I say, yeah, you'd have to say that. You would have to say that. Then I slowly started to get used to it because I grew up in a Christian church, strong, happy Christian, still respected, still feel comfortable with it. And then my first grade teacher said things had a start. My whole education told me things had a beginning. Now here's this guy trying to say there's no beginning, which means if you came to this world once, it's completely illogical to say it's the only time.It's completely wrong. It's just by logic. If you throw the dice 12 times, you will get 12 once. If you throw the dice 10 zillion times, you will get 10 zillion 12s. It's okay. That's the way it is. If there are causes and conditions for you to happen once in this lifetime, if time is infinite, what are you talking about you've only been here once? How can you say that? How can you logically say that? If you came here once, if you have all the causes and conditions to be born here once, and if time is infinite, if you throw the dice a billion, billion, billion, billion times, by the way, not just snake ice or 12. Snake ice means two ones. You will, billions of times, the dice will land on its edge, on its point, and it will balance there. Okay? If you throw the dice a billion, billion, billion times, a billion, billion times, it will land without falling down. It will land on the corner. You see what I mean? It has to be. Therefore, you have seen and experienced everything in the universe countless times. I like to say, Rick, you have been Miss America countless times. It was yesterday, I think, Miss America contest. I saw it in the newspaper. But, you know, you have been everything. You have been president of the country countless times, you know. You have been a mass murderer countless times. Who are you to judge these crazy people who shoot people? You have done ten times worse billions of times, you know. So, every image in the universe, except for emptiness, that's another thing, is in your mind. You have seen everything. You have seen everything. You have seen a cup. You have seen a pen. You have seen all those things. When we teach those topics about the first mental image that you had of a car, or a cup, or a pen, or something, when we teach it in DCI, we cannot what? There's a certain line in DCI. We cannot cross it. We cannot go to religion. And it's a DCI principle. If you're going to teach these ideas, you have to know the limits of your audience. You're teaching a business audience. You do not go to former lives. That's a religious thing. People take it as a religious thing. You have to have the good sense to know how far you can go with your audience. Okay? And if you're in a business audience or something like that, you do not say, your mental picture of a cup came from your 13,000 lives ago. You know? Which is true, but you can't say it. So, that's just being a good teacher. A good teacher has to know the limitations of their audience. And they have to, they have to go to what the audience can accept. And so, I think a lot of us who are trying to be teachers, ACI teachers, five house teachers, you have to know this rule. You know? You have to judge your audience. You know? There may be laws in the country where you are, I was teaching in Uzbekistan. Whoa! The police were circle around the room. And they're waiting for me to say something, you know, that's not correct. And it was like walking on a tightrope, you know? And they were actually standing there. And, you know, so you have to respect the laws where you are. You have to respect that it's each country's right to make their own laws. You cannot say to a country, you know, I know law better than you know. I'm American. You know? Especially nowadays. Okay? It's not a reason to say you understand law. You have to follow the customs and traditions of where you're teaching. Okay? So anyway, when we teach it in DCI, we go back to your mom teaching you a pen. But that's, that's just Chang'e. That's just for the audience. We're just trying to fit the audience. Okay? If you're in a five houses audience, and you can say whatever's true, and not get locked up the next day, or have your friends locked up, then you have to, then you can talk about, look, you never had a first pen experience. You never saw your first pen. Come on. That's, that's Big Bang. You're talking Big Bang. Got it? You never had a first pen image in your mind. You never, there's never been one. You've been having them forever. Okay? Got it? You alright? You okay with that? That's the truth. I can say it in a five houses audience. Okay? If you say I said that in another audience, I'll say, I didn't say that. Again, so you've had pen pictures in your mind. You've had, your mind has been defining pens since forever, since infinity. And your, and your mind has been defining everything since infinity. Then there comes obviously the argument, what about emptiness? Have I seen emptiness countless times? And the answer is, what do you call it? Unabashedly, I'm not embarrassed to say, no. You haven't got to the first one yet. It is, that's also possible. That is also possible. It happens to be the case. I like to say we are in the back row of the galaxy class. Most planets already got enlightened a long time ago. Okay? We're like the stupid of the stupid. We're like those fish at the bottom of the ocean who never saw light. We're the human race. We are the bottom feeders of the universe. We'll get there. Don't worry about it. Okay. All right, I think we have to stop there. How long, Tim? Pachi? We'll come back at 4.45. Okay. I'll sit here. I mean, I'll say hi to as many people as I can. Probably I can't say hi to everybody. Be considerate of the other people. Don't start to tell me your whole life story. Like half your life story is okay. All right. Okay. Thank you.

Class 4 -

26 October 2025

Okay, hi. So, we are going to the song of my spiritual life, which is preparation for Diamond Way. If you would like to participate in Diamond Way with grandpa, by the way, there are many Diamond Way teachers, there are very good Diamond Way teachers in our group. And they are all working hard to teach Diamond Way. They are all good, okay? And if one candy is good, two candy is even better. That's my philosophy. My wife doesn't agree. So anyway, very welcome. And then talk to Tim, basically talk to Tim and figure it out, okay? So, at this point in my life, it's uncomfortable to tell people they cannot learn Diamond Way with me, right? So, it's up to you. If you really have a true hope or something, talk to Tim. And Tim will make it happen somehow. He does everything. Alright. Alright. I'm teaching 16 Steps of a Good Life by Jetsun Randhawa. This is the teacher of Tsongkhapa. Honestly, we don't study his life much in the Geshe course. We don't study much about Randhawa. We don't study his works. So, it's been very wonderful experience for me to translate one of his greatest books and to learn more about him. And he gave these 16 suggestions for a good life, okay? To have a good life. And I was thinking, you know, we don't get together very often. Life is impermanent. We don't know what will happen. And if I have to make sure you're okay, I think if I can leave you with these 16 Steps of a Good Life, that's a very, very beautiful guide for your whole life. People are always asking me, Grandpa, can you teach us meditation? And, by the way, my wife gets mad when you call me Grandpa, okay? Because that means she's Grandma. And she says, I'm not ready to be Grandma. And by the way, she'll come tomorrow, okay? She's being a Grandma, you understand? We have two new grandkids, okay? Two and a half. In English, we say the bun is in the oven. One of the half is that she's having a second grandchild with her younger son in Tucson, okay? I hope. So anyway, when you meditate, you can just go through the 16 Steps and say, Grandpa asked me to do these 16 Steps. How am I doing today? If you can't think of something to meditate on, just look at the 16 Steps, okay? Left hand down first, right hand down second. Look to the dirty, to the horizon, like that. And then look at the 16 Steps. Like, how are you doing on the 16 Steps, okay? And then you'll have a good life. All right, so I'll repeat some of them. The first one was ... The first one was basically learning the skill of choosing your next life. Learning the skill of choosing your next life, okay? Geshehla, you said we're going to learn Diamond Way with all of the Diamond Way teachers, and I said, yes, you are. And then they said, well, I'm just going to become Buddha in this life. Yeah, that's the way. But sometimes it takes a little longer, okay? And that's okay. You know, that's fine. And so it's good to know how to choose your next life, and how to get on the right bus as you die, all right? And it doesn't have to be a sad thing, or it's a depressing thing. If you're a good Buddhist, death is just another adventure, you know? It's another cool place to practice emptiness, so don't worry about it. You don't have to worry much. The whole world has to worry except you, okay? So you just ... Okay, by the way, I have a ... There's a student here, a good student from China. Her mom went to the bathroom last night, and didn't come out. And the family went in, and she passed. She was not sick. You know, I'm sure she didn't expect to die last night. But it can happen to all of us. It can happen to any of us. She passed away on the toilet, and nobody thought she was going to be sick or anything like that. So it's just good to be ready, okay? If you know something's going to happen, then get ready. And if it doesn't happen today, you're ready, okay? So anyway, learn the skill of choosing your next life. And it's not crazy, and it's not some kind of weirdo thing, you know? It's weird to know you're going to die and not prepare. That's weird. That's really weird, you know? And the whole world does that. Every single person does that, okay? We should be ready. We should be, you know, people say, are you going to die tomorrow? You say, look, honestly, I don't know. People are asking me, are you going to survive this surgery? And I'm like, hey, I don't know. I really don't know. And then, well, aren't you worried? I say, no, I got ready a long time ago. You know, I'm okay. So be ready. Know how to choose a useful life, next life, okay? Know how to choose a good body and a good mind, okay? Learn it. And have that skill in your hands. And then you don't have to worry about it. You can have a happy life, and when the time comes, you're ready. Pack your bags now. Keep the suitcase under the bed. Philosophically, okay? And then when the time comes, you're like, yeah, okay, I'm ready. What's next? You know? You can see your next life. You can plan it. You can have a wonderful one. You can choose a, you can design it. And it's quite, I don't know how to say, it's exciting, you know? It's like, I don't know, going on a trip to a new place and you're excited. It doesn't have to be scary, or it doesn't have to be sad, or something like that. You can plan it, and then you can make it happen. And it's wonderful. It's tasty. It's exciting. It's a whole new thing. Okay? That's the first step, okay? Second step. Third step. Pembetang. Say pembetang. Pembetang means make great plans.You know, have some good plans in mind. Okay? What's the great plans? In that next world, I'm going to use my childhood very well, okay? Are you going to watch TV? Yes. Are you going to read science fiction books? Also, yes. But I'm also going to prepare for my spiritual life, you know. My childhood will not be wasted, okay? I've got plans for my childhood. I will learn to read well. I will start my basic ethical training at a young age, you know. I got plans. I got plans for my six-year-old to twelve-year-old next time. I already got plans, okay? So, be ready. And you can do it, and we'll learn how to do it, okay? Don't worry. We'll learn. Then it's all taken care of. Okay, next, third thing. Yeah, start learning the activities and the viewpoints that will give you a good life next time, okay? Like, what ways of looking at the world and what kind of things to do would be useful for next life, okay? And get used to them, okay? Start practicing them now.What? Buddhist practices and Buddhist meditations, Buddhist ways of looking at things. Get them ready. And then, you know, start them when you're about twelve, okay? Okay, don't wait so long. This life you were a little bit slow, okay? Before you got your bodhisattva vows. Next life, by the way, you don't have to be twenty-one to take bodhisattva vows. Take them at twelve, okay? Plan for it, plan for it. Don't be crazy. Plan for it. Okay, fifth one. People ask me, when you saw emptiness, is there anything else you saw? Technically, I saw sixteen things, which are the four aspects of the four arya truths, okay? One of them is, I know where I'm going and I know I will have teachers from infancy. From the time I'm one or two years old, I will already be, I will already have people in charge of my Buddhist education. And I know that, okay? And it's very wonderful. It's a wonderful thing to have that kind of comfort, you know? I know I got good teachers lined up, you know, as a baby, as a two-year-old, you know? I will, they will be taking care of me and they'll be training me. I know that, okay? Alright? So, prepare that. In your meditations at least, think about it, okay? Look, do you want to be, do you want to meet great teachers in your next life? Yeah, sure. Do you have any plan for how to do that? And you say, I don't know, Geshehla didn't teach that exactly. He talked about it, but he didn't really cover the details. Then you should learn. You should learn, okay? But I'm Geshehla, I'm not planning to die. Neither did everybody else who died. Okay, alright. Number six. Then he learned, how can I say? He, number five, step number five, he had teachers, he studied with them. Number six, basically he learned the great schools and he learned how to reconcile them. He learned why the five great schools, what they are, and he learned the details of them. And then he figured out what the Buddha really meant, okay? So, it's one thing to learn a bunch of Buddhism. It's a different thing to learn what's the core, what's the core truth of Buddhism. That's a different task. You're going to have to do both. You're going to have to learn many, many Buddhist teachings, and then you're going to have to kind of arrange it around your own life, and then you will reach some kind of core practice, okay? That's learning what the Buddha really meant. Buddhism is very beautiful because Buddhism encouraged many different schools of thought. We didn't kill off all the mind-only guys. We didn't shoot the Abhidharma guys. You see, all of those schools exist. They all exist because they help somebody, and they all get along with each other, and we have different schools. They teach different things, and they're all good stuff, okay? They're all good stuff, and you should master all of them. You should learn all of them. Why? They fit different people. You say, I'm going to teach, I'm going to help living beings. Are you committed? Yes. Okay, then learn all the schools because they were designed for different kinds of people. It's like yoga, you know? There's certain kinds of yoga that are going to break your neck if you're like me, okay? And then there's other kinds of yoga which are great for different people, okay? It's different people have different needs, okay? Learn all of them, and that's the smartest thing, right? Just learn all of these schools. That's what we're doing in the translator classes, okay? We are going through all the schools. Be there or? Be square. Oh, Geshehla, it's boring. I know. It's too difficult. I know. You guys go so slow. I know. But you're crazy if you don't listen to this. You don't have to be a Buddhist scholar. You don't have to learn Tibetan. You don't have to learn Sanskrit. I'm not saying that. Just go there and open up your mind like a mirror, and let the ideas float around, and they will change your life, okay? The more you don't understand them, the more you should be there. Am I right? Why go to a class that you understand everything? Why go, you know, go to the class where you don't understand anything. That means you can learn something. Got it? Right? Only a few people nodded, okay. Alright. Go to the class where you don't understand what the hell is going on, okay? Because that means it's going to help you the most, okay? Don't go to, keep going to the same class over and over again, okay? Alright. Number seven. Understand emptiness, basically. Learn to understand emptiness. There's nothing more important than you can learn, okay? Try to learn emptiness. They say a real Buddhist student wants a thousand explanations of emptiness. And some people say, oh, Geshehla, I just want one explanation. Then, come on, you know. You can't learn it very well if you don't learn many explanations, and definitely, you cannot teach many people if you only know one kind of yoga, for example. You see what I mean? If you really want to help other people, master all of the schools, and teach, master all the emptiness ideas, okay? And don't be satisfied and don't stop. I have one rule in my life. I think my close friends know. I refuse to waste my time. I bitterly refuse. If you try to get me to do something that wastes my time, you're just wasting your time, because I will not do it, you know. I know I'm going to die. I know how much time I have left, and I refuse to do something that doesn't help me or other people. I refuse, and I don't care. If you threaten me, or you tell me, you write me an email every day, I don't care. I won't answer, you know. I don't care. I cannot waste my time. I have things I need to do, and that I must understand these teachings. It's the only thing that really helps people. I must, I must learn them. I must master them. I must translate them. I cannot waste ten minutes. People think I'm fanatic. Geshehla, I just want five minutes to tell you my problem, you know. And I'm like, I already taught you how to fix that problem, you know. Like, don't, don't, it doesn't, the argument to Geshehla that you just want five minutes to waste my time doesn't work. Because my life is made of five minute pieces. And if I lose them, I'm dead. I'm gone, you know. I refuse. I refuse. And you should refuse. Okay. Is it a waste of time to watch The Emperor's Affection on Netflix? No, that's a Buddhist practice. No. Resting and having fun, entertainment is a Buddhist practice, okay. You gotta take care of your, you gotta take care to have some fun sometimes. I don't trust a Buddhist who has no fun. You know. Then, okay, you gotta have, having fun is, is definitely a Buddhist meditation. And you gotta know how to have fun well. And you gotta be serious about having fun.Okay. And that's not a waste of time. Okay. It's a waste of time to not have fun. Okay. Alright, number eight. Then he taught, basically he taught, he was a great writer. And he wrote two kinds of books. He wrote commentaries on the classics, okay. He wrote unbelievable thousands of pages. He wrote commentaries on each of the great classics of Buddhism in the last 1,400 years before him. 2,000 years. And he wrote commentaries on each. And if you care, all the books we're studying in the mixed notes came from him. Okay. All the books we're studying in the mixed notes were written by his students. And, you know, so you should pay attention to the classics. Okay. And I, I know it's not popular to say that. But if you look at them once a day for 15 minutes, your life will change completely. Okay. People say, I don't have time to look at the classics for 15 minutes before I go to bed. Then I say, why? And they say, I'm working. I have work to do. Then I say, why are you working? And they say, I need to make money for myself and my family. And then I say, if you spend 15 minutes a day with the classics, you make more money than you ever dreamed of. You give away this, in the car, $40,000, $50,000? You think this $100 thing is good? You know, on the car, in the car, on the way here, is it $40,000 or $50,000? $60,000. Anyway, we're just like, you know, who's next? You know. So, people say, why? Why can you do that? I came from a very poor family. I can show you my house. You know. It's a poor house. It's a poor person's house. It's not far from here. It's half an hour from here. But I studied the classics. And the classics, don't think you have to work and not study the classics. Think you should study the classics and then not work. Okay? Understand? Okay? And, trust me, it's true. And it's more fun. It's a lot more fun. And I'm not saying you have to be one of these nerds like Word or Gibson or one of those guys. You don't have to be like that. Just expose your mind to it for 15 minutes a day. That's all. It doesn't hurt you. And by the way, there's no better way if you have trouble sleeping than to read Madhyamika. Okay? I learned that in the Geshe course. When I have trouble sleeping, I pull out Ketuptenpa Darges, you know, Uma Chidan, put you to sleep in five minutes. Okay? All right? Don't tell me you can't look at the classics. All right.That's number eight, right? And then he wrote his own commentaries. He wrote commentaries to the classics, and then he wrote his own books. I had a fun time. There's three or four famous samuchayas, right? Stanley knows. He's translating one of them. There's three or four famous ancient Sanskrit compendiums. Okay? Compendia. And it's called samuchaya. And there's a weird samuchaya in his collected writings, rendala. And it's a couple thousand pages of English if you translate it. And no one ever figured out what it was, which of the great samuchayas it is. And the answer is, it's none of them. So he's writing his own great commentaries at the same time. Okay? Peter wrote a book recently, and he and Maria wrote a nice book, and those are, that's cool. That's cool. You know? The best way to help the people in your modern world is to write a modern book, right? That's also helpful. Okay. Number nine. Then he grew his group of disciples, okay? Then he taught people. And it's funny. There's a new TV series in America called The Chosen, right? Not new. It's like six, seven years old. And it's about Jesus' life. And it's really fun to watch because they tell the story of the disciples. So he's got these 12 disciples, 12 and a half disciples, and you get to watch them, and they're complaining, and they're fighting with each other. They're always complaining about the food. You know? We follow this teacher of mankind and he never heard of a good breakfast. You know? And it's... I love that show because it's the truth, okay? When you start teaching students, you're going to get white hair and lose your hair, okay? Each one will give you trouble. And it's so beautiful to see it in the TV, you know, that Netflix, that here's this teacher. And it wasn't all happy days. And it wasn't all love between the students. Normally the students are jealous of each other. They're fighting against each other. They're all complaining. There's not enough money for everybody. And guess who has to take all the trouble on themselves? It's the teacher, okay? So get used to it. And I don't want to hear you complaining, okay? Guess I got ten students. Good. Nine of them are assholes. I know. They're so stupid. I'm like, that's why they're students. You know? So, okay? So just relax and have fun, okay? It's like a big family. When you have a big family, there's lots of problems. I came from, our family had six and a half people. I'm counting the dog, okay? And we had so many problems. And, but we had love. We really had love. We had many, many challenges. You know, my brother fell off the roof, tore up his leg. My other brother, you know, was blind or something. You know, it's okay. That's a family, okay? So it's a lot of trouble, ask Tim, to have, to arrange teachings for a lot of students. It's a lot of trouble. Nobody will thank you enough. They'll come to you and say, Tim, I have to say something. You're like, yeah? They say, I didn't like the breakfast. And you're like, oh, I thought you were going to thank me. You know, so don't, you know, just take it easy and have fun, okay? There's nothing more fun or beautiful than serving difficult people, okay? And if you don't think you're difficult, you are, okay? And when you're a teacher, you have to, you know, just kind of relax in the middle of all these disasters, you know, financial problems and all this stuff, people fighting with each other, people having trouble. As a teacher, you have to come on, don't take it so seriously, you know? That's what a parent agrees to. When you have a baby, that's what you agreed to, okay? So don't forget you agreed to it. And then have some fun. Geshehla, can you have fun when your students are arguing with each other and fighting and causing you trouble? Definitely. You can definitely have fun, okay? If you don't know how to do that, you're not a Buddhist. Okay? Buddhist has fun with everything, okay? There's not like a good car accident. Okay. I had a good car accident last weekend and we had fun. It was funny. We lost two cars, totally smashed.Grandpa has to pay. And I'm like, within five minutes, we're having a really good time with the other driver, which is something very strange, you know? We're almost like, hey, let's get together and go out, you know? He's like, yeah, you know? Okay, so ... I mean, a real Buddhist should be having fun all the time. You can't get ... You can't be, oh, the student called me stupid. You know, you can't go, you can't do that, okay? You gotta relax and have fun. Because you're doing the best thing in the world. Okay? You're doing the best thing in the world. It's an honor to have pain in the ass students. Okay? It's the most wonderful thing in the world. You're so wonderful. All right. No, you can say, no, Geshehla, it's fun to have a pain in the ass teacher. All right. Number 10. He had certain heart practices, core practices. And I had trouble with this idea. It's called ... What's it called? Tukdam ... Tukdam til. Tukdam til. Say, tukdam? Til. Tukdam? Til. Til means ... This list, which was written by his close disciple, is the most exquisite Tibetan I've ever read. And that's why I added it. If some of you are brave and you want to study it, it's the most elegant Tibetan I've ever read. And this one is ... Til means the palm of your hand. Tuk is the high word for heart. And tam means ... Tamtsik means sacred pledge. Sacred pledge of the heart. Sacred pledge in the palm of the heart. It's such a beautiful image, you know. And it means, at a certain point in your Buddhist practice, you should figure out what's going to be your heart practice, okay? Like, what are you really going to focus on, okay? And I remember, I went to my teacher. I said, oh, I want tukdam til dzinpa. I want tukdam til. Give me, oh, holy teacher, give me my tukdam til, you know. What should be my core heart practice for the rest of my life? And he said, logic. I'm like, I hate logic. He said, logic. He never say it three times. If he has to say it three times, it's with his hand. What, logic? Huh? Logic. Okay, logic. So, you're lucky I don't do that. I think my hand would be worn out. So, tukdam til means decide a practice that's going to be your heart practice and follow that, you know.Everybody's excited about Diamond Way right now. That's fine. That's okay. Inside of Diamond Way, there's 167 different practices, different systems of Diamond Way. And, you know, it takes time, but in your life, when you meet your honey for life, like I did when I was 16, 17, you will know. You will know. So, keep your eyes out for your heart practice, okay? Your tukdam til. Keep your eyes out for it. You don't have to decide. Don't get nervous. Oh, Geshehla said I have to have a tukdam til, but I don't know what it is. Don't worry about it. It will come. But keep your nose out, okay? Keep looking for it, okay? You will go to Buddhist teachings. You will hear many teachings. And there's one that is like an arrow in your heart. Then keep that one close and keep practicing it. I did. I chose my tukdam til many, many years ago, 50 years ago. And keep it. And you will keep it in your heart. Don't get nervous and say, I don't have a tukdam til yet. Oh my god, I must be a terrible person. Okay, just be patient and have fun and your tukdam til will show up. Okay? Probably the best way to make it happen is to help somebody else do it, right? What an idea. Okay. Number 11. He made a sacred promise to his divine teacher that he would spend his life taking care of other people. That's number 11. That's awesome, okay? Again, how do I want you to relate to these 16? What do I want you to do with these 16? Do a meditation on them like once a week or something. Doesn't matter, okay? Go over the list. You don't have to finish all 16. Finish 5, finish 10. What am I doing this week to keep my promise to my divine teacher to serve other people? What did I do this week? Oh, you know, I was handing out tea at the class. You know, something like that, okay? Just check in. This can be your checklist. How am I doing with 16 things, okay? Guess I haven't been focusing on preparing my next life's childhood. That's a mistake, okay? Don't think it's farther away than tomorrow, because it may not be, okay? I'm saying all 16, okay? Take care of where you're going to be born next. Take care of what you're going to study. We're going to go through it in Tsongkhapa. We're going to go through it in the song before we finish. He's going to give advice for making those preparations, okay? Very cool. I like number 12, how he dedicated himself to deep retreat. He lived to the age of, he and Tsongkhapa passed away in their early 60s, and Rendawa, five years before he died, he announced he's not going to do this kind of teaching anymore. He said, I'm going to do retreat. And then there was a big, everyone's like, ah! And he said, I will teach sometimes in retreat, but only to four or five people at a time. And so, towards the end of his life, he spent five years in deep retreat. And he only taught a few students in deep retreat. So, it means throughout his life, and he and Tsongkhapa did some nice retreats together. And you can see them in the King of the Dharma book. There's a few paintings of Tsongkhapa with his teacher doing retreats together. And it's a very sweet thing. Tsongkhapa had a student, Kedrupje, within a few days after he met him, they went into Diamond Way retreat together. So, you know, it's a, one thing in my life, I'm very happy about my life, I'm very satisfied with my life. I think I did exactly the right things, mostly. But, I feel bad that our retreats, I feel bad that we're not doing more retreats. You know, we worked so hard to build Diamond Mountain Retreat Center. Now we also have Dragon's Head. We worked so hard to build these beautiful retreats. This last innovation retreat, me and Stanley had a good idea that we would visit each retreat within the first few days, in their retreat cabin. And we would make sure everything's okay physically. Is the feng shui correct? Do they have the right ventilation? Do they have the right seat? Are they sitting in the right direction? All this thing. And we went to each person's cabin, which I had never done in all these years. I had never gone to all of those cabins. it was amazing. Those cabins are unbelievable. You know, they have, they have this energy from the three year retreat. They are unbelievable. Every cabin is unbelievable. And each cabin has a distinct aura of the person who built it, and the person who did retreat there. And I can feel them, and I can see them. And it is awesome. That place is awesome. So if you have a chance, it's very, very important when you do retreat, to do retreat in a place where another person did deep retreat. You see what I mean? Then they kind of karmically prepared the whole vibration for you. And I, this last trip I thought, wow, that's really true. You know, each one of those cabins is amazing place. It has a beautiful energy, amazing energy. And I'm, we should be really grateful to those people who built them. Some of them are here. Yeah. And Stanley's group agreed to build some more. They're going to try to build retreat cabins similar to Dunhuang, China in the Gobi Desert, which are half cave and half retreat building. And we are working on a new daytime retreat cabin in a tree at Dragon's Head. We're working on that. I think it'd be awesome. When I was a kid, I used to hang out in trees. I don't know. Okay. Next. What next thing we on to? Number 13, right? Yeah. I like 13, and there's a word here that I'm really hot on nowadays. It's called dang. Say dang. There's an old cowboy song. Dang me, dang me. They ought to take a rope and hang me. Dang. So, dang is a very unusual Tibetan word that means guarantee like that. It's a very strange word. It means like you buy a car, you get a dang. The company will give you a dang. But, if you practice sweetly and with your whole heart, you will reach a point of dang in your life when you know you got it. You know. You know you. Like when we try to play music, we all try to tune the instrument, and you go too sharp, and then you go too flat, and then finally you hit the dang. And it's just right. Okay. And there will be a time in your life when you hit the dang. Okay. Dang means perfect. Everything's perfect. I worked hard. I went to all those stupid firehouse classes. You know. I helped out. I did everything. And there will come a time in your life when you hit dang. And you're like, phew. You know. I got it. You know. And it's a kind of a lifetime guarantee. Multiple lifetime guarantee. You'll be everything will be beautiful for the rest of your infinite lives. Everything will be beautiful. And it's a extraordinary feeling. It's a wonderful feeling. Okay. It's a cannot describe it. Okay. But number, what is it, 13? Yeah. You gotta try to reach dang. Okay. Each person here, there's a place you can reach if you practice well. When you're just like, phew. You know. And everything is a miracle after that. And you can do it. Okay. And you can't lose at dang. Dang is unlosable. When you reach dang, you got dang. Nobody can take your dang away.Okay. Okay. Seriously. And it's, I can't describe it very well, but I'm saying you, when you go through the 16 steps, you should say, look, I don't know exactly what I was talking about, but that dang sounds pretty cool. And I hope I get it someday. That's enough. Just know there's a place in your lifetime you will hit perfect practice. And you're all set. You're like finished. Okay. Before you're finished, you're finished. Okay. Got it? And it's a guarantee. It doesn't go away. Cannot go away. So, pray for dang. Okay. All right. Dang is also a bad word in Calvary English. It means damn it, damn a dang. Okay. That's not bad. Okay. All right. Number, how much time I got? I got one minute. 15? Oh. Cool. All right. We can go much further. Number 14. This is weird. Yeah. Usually when people pass away, it's a little bit sudden, like we had last night with a friend. Or it's a little bit chaotic, you know. People get injured, people have a stroke, people, something goes wrong, cancer. And then they're like, I'm not ready. You know. I'm not really ready to go. And my life is not in order. I haven't got, I still owe, okay, $100. What was Socrates, what was it that Socrates had not finished by the time he drank the poison in his cave? Raise your hand. Yeah. Oh, you know? Paying taxes? Close. It's not, it wasn't that. Cancel. No. Emily, did I teach you that before? He pay off his debt before he drink the poison. No, there's one more. Okay, cancel the bet. I love to cancel bet. He borrowed a chicken from somebody. And then he has to, the government required him to drink hemlock, to drink poison in the next 10 minutes or something. And he has to do it bravely. He can't cry or whine.He's like, you know, and he says, oh, wait a minute. I owe some guy a chicken. And he made sure his student took responsibility to give the chicken back. Okay? So what it means is if you're a good Buddhist and you practice your Buddhism well, then you should be ready to die. And it shouldn't be like everyone's wah, or you know, you're like, what happened? Oh, my kidney's gone. You're going to die? Yeah. Well, what are you going to do? And I say, everything's ready, don't worry. You know, everything's good. Okay? So I think, first of all, most people think they're not going to die or they refuse to think about dying. And then even if they're sure they're going to die, they don't know how to get ready. No one ever taught them that at Princeton. They don't have that course at Princeton or anywhere else. Okay? Like how to die right. So I think it's, and all of you are already, because you're still sitting here after yesterday, you have promised to become a teacher. Right? So, you got to be a good example for your students. It's your responsibility to know how to die. And it's your responsibility to get ready properly. And body and mind. Okay? It's your responsibility. Your finances, your stuff. The worst thing you can do is leave all your old junk for someone else to clean up. Okay? My mom, my stepmom, who died recently, she's like, let's get this house cleaned out. You know, I'm not going to stick all you boys with this junk. And it was junk. Okay? Your precious stuff of a lifetime is someone else's junk. Okay? And don't put that on them. You know, die with, die with consideration. Die with style. Die with class. You know, die well. You know, get rid of all the stuff. You know, take care of all your finances. Don't, don't, don't leave your children or your friends with all your dads, for example. That's so, that's such an impolite thing to do. Take care of your life. Wrap it up wisely. And then get ready. Okay? The last part of this life should be spent preparing for the next one. Okay? The last part of this life should be spent bravely preparing for the next one. Okay? And you can do it. You have all the information you need. Okay? Alright. So he did that very, very well. Rendawa did that very, very well. And it was a good example. Just talking about it is a good example. Okay? We don't talk about it much, you know. Are you ready to die? You got everything ready? Are you screwing your children? You know, you got everything ready for them? You know. I was thinking yesterday, I was like, how far does this children thing go? Like, I can see taking care of my grandkids' finances. What do you think, Ellie? Is great-grandkids included? I would kind of draw a line. They should make their own money. Right? Yeah. I got to ask my boss. Anyway, get ready happily, peacefully, skillfully. Get ready. Be brave. Be a good example for other people. They need you. We need Buddhist people to be a good example. All right. What's that number 15, right? How he passed on to other worlds for the sake of his disciples. And that, that was an interesting translation challenge. It says, what's it say? Dülce Dündü, right? Dülce Dündü. So, it means for the sake of his disciples, he died well. Okay. And then, you can read it as dying well so that your students have a good example to follow, or you could read it as he had other disciples lined up for afterwards. Okay. I believe it was both. I believe it is both. Okay. You should live a good life. You should die a good death. That you should die in a way that helps your students learn to die well. And then, you have responsibilities for the rest of the universe. Where you have to go next, you have to be ready. Okay. So, you have disciples behind you and you have disciples in front of you. And it's your job as a Buddhist teacher, if you're... Did I say that? If you're here, you're a Buddhist teacher. It's your responsibility to take care of the people you're leaving behind, your students, but it's equal responsibility to take care of your future students. And so, he died a good death for both. He planned for both, which is really cool. And that practice is very heartwarming. Okay. It's not depressing or something. Oh, I'm going to get cancer and nobody will like me. You know. It's not like that. It's... I'm going to die as bravely as I lived and I'm going to serve people on both ends. I'm ready. You know. I'll be a good example for the people I'm leaving and I will be trained properly for my next group of friends. Okay. Like that. That's a beautiful... That's how it should be. And nobody talks about this stuff. Okay. Nobody. Not even Buddhist teachers, I think. But it's something that he talked about, something that he followed, Tsongkapa's teacher. Okay, number 16. He left behind a legacy for his faithful disciples. The story I like here, I don't know if I told you this story. When you get to my age, you can't remember who you told this story or who you didn't tell this story. If I told you this story already and you think I forgot that I told you this story, you can pretend I'm just trying to emphasize this story. Okay. So... Okay. So... Here. I like this. He... In his final year of his life, you know, what happens? Netflix always comes just before you die. They don't come in the middle of your life when it would have been useful, right? So, you know... He... He got famous in the last... He got super famous. He got global famous in the last year or two of his life. And we call it the two kings, the Eastern King and the Western King. So, the Eastern King was the emperor of China, Da Ming. And the Western King was the Guge Gyelpo, which means the King of Kashmir. So, if you go west from Lhasa city, you hit India, Afghanistan, Kashmir. If you go east, you hit Xi'an, Chang'an, the capital of the traditional Chinese empire. And then... He's like a sandwich in the middle. He's... They were not very powerful. They were stuck between two great kingdoms who kind of tried to run their business like we do with Puerto Rico or something like that. And, you know... So, if you're doing good work as a lama in those days, the emperor of China will send you symbolic gifts, which means he approves of you. And you... It's almost like giving you a lifetime position or something. So, he sent golden robes, woven from gold. So, you know, here's these monks who are supposed to wear robes taken out of the garbage, patched together from the garbage. That's the rule in the Vinaya. And they get these pure gold robes. Must have been heavy and uncomfortable. I don't know how you wash them. So, he's got these pure gold robes from the Daming, from the Chinese emperor. And then from Gu Ge, Gyalpo, the king of Kashmir sends him a casket of saffron filaments, the middle of the saffron flower, which is what makes the orange color and makes tapas, Portuguese tapas, so delicious, right? What's that thing we got in Peru, Lima? Haggerty, soup with all the... Bulabays or something? Paella! Paella! We got paella in Lima. So anyway, if you're going to make paella, it's good if you have some saffron. Saffron is a... you put it in the rice, it turns the rice yellow. You use it in your offering bowls, it turns the water yellow. One filament, one thread can make your water bowls, all of them beautiful color, beautiful smell, the king sends him a whole crate. It's equal to its weight in gold. It's from Kashmir, only Kashmir can grow it. And he sends him this box. So what does Randawa do? He takes the gold clothes and he sells them. And he takes the box of saffron filaments and he sells it, right? And he gets all this money. And this is... he's about to die. He's old, you know, he's about to die. And he sells all this stuff while he's still conscious. You got to do that, okay? While you can still think, divest, get rid of your possessions. You know, you should die with, you know, a good tea in your hand. And the rest is already given away to everybody else.See what I mean? And the last tea, I'll give you the last half. You should get rid of all your stuff. Everything's taken care of. He gave away all his stuff. He sold those two precious gifts. And he commissioned three copies of the Nartang Tengyur. Okay, he commissioned. So Nartang Tengyur, me and JB have a debate, but generally you can say 3,700 books in the extended version. Okay? It's a quarter million pages. And he paid for three copies. Those days they didn't have wood blocks. You hired someone, you hired like a few hundred people to write it. You know, you rented a huge room and you got quarter million pieces of paper and you paid a hundred guys to sit down and write them by hand. He paid for that. That was his thing. Okay? We are currently working on the Nartang Tengyur. We are, John had an input, Oscar, Word, Anatole, John Malpas. They are cataloging it. It'll take, I don't know, six months or something. And you should leave, you should not have assets as you die. You should use them, okay? You should use them for something good. Okay? So you kind of time it. It's like running out of gas just before you reach home. Then your parents will pay for the rest. Okay? So you should kind of plan everything, you know, give away your money, but do something useful with it, you know? Like, that's a very excellent thing. I hate to send more sponsors to John, but Nartang Tengyur would be a wonderful way to use your funds, you know? Grandpa needs help to pay those workers. Right now I'm trying to pay them all myself. It's a little bit stretching. So anyway, he died with style, and he's not gonna ever read that Tengyur. He's never gonna look at that quarter million pages. He knows he's gonna be dead before they finish, and he still does it. You see what I mean? So you leave behind things for other people. Okay? That's your responsibility as a Buddhist. Okay? You can't be selfish and think about your own life. Somebody wrote down this talk called the Diamond Cutters Sutra, and that was 2,500 years ago. That's 100 generations. Okay? For 100 generations, people have reprinted, recarved, retranslated the Diamond Cutters Sutra until today. 100 generations of parents or grandparents thought it was important to reprint that book, and that's why we have it now. 100 generations of Buddhists thought it was important to go out of this world with a bang. You know? Let's make a goal. Let's print a Diamond Cutters Sutra with a beautiful carving of the Buddha in it, and hide it in a cave in Dunhuang. And that's the one we have. That's the oldest printed book in the world, is the Diamond Cutters Sutra. So we have to live with the same kind of... There's all these people... I feel like the... Do you know what is... What do they call it? Roadkill. Do you know what's roadkill? When you hit an animal with your car in Arizona and it dies, then the birds come, and they're all like... You understand? I know the class is ending when all these people start opening doors and looking at me like... Anyway, we did finish the 16. Let's give ourselves a hand. This is... You know, all of us are teachers. Many of us are full-time teachers. This is a great teaching to share with people. So I really encourage you. You can say, I was there when Geshehla taught it, and I can give you the real thing, and then pass it on. Okay? And it's a wonderful meditation. You can use it every day as your meditation. How am I doing on number 6 to number 8? You know, you can go through it over and over again. This is a guideline for leading your whole life. This is a guideline for the rest of your life. Okay? And don't leave out the first four or five. Okay? It is your responsibility to prepare your next childhood. It is your responsibility to die and go to a good place where you can help people. Okay? Don't think it's numb. Don't say, I'm going to skip the first three, I don't understand. Try. Okay? Get ready. Alright? Okay. See you tomorrow.

Class 5 -

27 October 2025

Alright, welcome back. I'm sorry I'm late by a few minutes because I had to pick up my beautiful wife, Veronica.Thank you for coming. So, we were talking about this picture of the Wheel of Life. I told you I got it in the Himalayas like 50 years ago. We didn't finish talking about this, so I put the picture in the middle. The picture in the middle is a picture, actually I use it for DCI classes. In the ancient books, it's called Stack of Spears. In the old days, when people used to fight with spears and bows and arrows, when you took your lunch break, you used to come back to the camp and you want your spears upright so you can grab them if the enemy shows up during lunch. So, it was a tradition to keep the spears upright when you got back to take a break from the battle. And then it was a tradition to stack them point up instead of point down. You see what I mean? Because then you would ruin the point, it would get rusted and then it would fall apart. So, there was a custom to stack them like this, in a teepee shape. It comes in the ancient books pretty often, when they're explaining the Wheel of Life. It's just like stacked spears, it's like a stack of spears. And the idea is that the spears are supporting each other, you see? So, you pull out one, they all fall down. It means, the real meaning of dependence, that everything, in Chinese, yin gong, cause and effect, that everything depends on its causes. It's actually, in a deeper way, it's not that things, results, are waiting for the causes to happen and the results come out. That is a kind of dependence. And you can say, that's kind of a Wheel of Life. In the Wheel of Life, the first link of the twelve, like a clock, numbers on a clock, causes the second link. The second link causes the third link. But it's more subtle. In our text, the devil debates an angel. The first Panchen Lama is going much, much deeper. And that's why we spent 14 years on it so far. And he's not satisfied with explaining dependence as, if you... what's the first link? Misunderstanding. We changed it from ignorance. People used the word ignorance a long time ago. Ignorance means not knowing. The I is an ancient A. It was meant to be negative. A-A-Knowing.Ignorance. And then, it's not that easy. What's really happening in our life is that we are making a mistake. It's not that we don't know. It's that we misknow. We misperceive things. For example, we think that, I don't know, some kind of problem we have with other people is coming from them. And thinking that is misunderstanding, wrong knowing. So, it should be that misunderstanding leads to, we call it fresh karma. And that's similar to watermelon seed. My wife, you don't remember, when we started the garden in our house, 15 years ago or something, she's like, let's plant watermelons. And I say, no need. And she says, why? And I say, watermelons are grown in the back of the grocery store. And then they bring them out in the front. And she said, no, that's not how. Well, I really believed that. She said, no, watermelons you can grow in your own garden. And I'm like, show me how. I don't know if you remember, she brought me a pack of seeds, which I paid money for. But actually, you can just buy a watermelon and eat it and spit out the seeds. And you can get a lot more seeds. So we opened the pack and then she says, lick your thumb out. Then she says, stick your thumb in the ground. Put the seeds in there. Cover it up. Put a little water there. And then she started to go in the house. You don't remember. And I was sitting there and I was waiting for the seeds to grow. And she said, no, no, no, they take time. They're going to grow in April. And then the watermelons will be ready in October, September, something like that. And that's the same idea in the Wheel of Life. The first link is misunderstanding. So it means you don't understand where these people you don't like are coming from. You don't understand, like the pot on the stove, they are coming from you. So then you... that's misunderstanding. Link number one. What's the picture of that link? Yeah, it's a blind man with a cane. So it means you don't see. Something you don't see. And then you do something to them. You say, you're stupid. Or, why are you causing me so much trouble? And that's how you plant the seed. What's the picture there? Do you remember? A... Potter. By the way, I can't hear anything you say. The speakers are here and they're headed that way. So you're just going like... It's kind of pleasant. Just kidding. Yeah, so the potter means you are making fresh seeds. And those are called sanskara or stuff like that. Planting seeds. Then all the way over at link number ten, which is... you can count. Ten o'clock, what's there? What is it? It's a bird. It's a bird, I don't know. Anyway, ripe karma. So, if you consider the watermelon seed in April, when we first put it in the ground, it's a seed, it's a potential, but it's very asleep. And then if you water, water, water, and it gets warm, warm, warm, then it will reach a point where it's ready to split open within a day or something like that. It doesn't look different. If you dig the seed up, the watermelon seed, it looks the same in April that it does in early September. The seed doesn't look different. It's getting ready to open. But there's a big difference on the inside. I like to think there's little guys in the seed, like a factory, and they are running around and saying, you guys got that sprout ready yet? We have to push it out the top of the seed. You see what I mean? So there's a big difference between a karmic seed which is in your mind, but not activated yet. And then by link number ten, the seed is activated. And it will grow. It will trigger something. It will trigger seed eleven. I know what that one is. It should be a lady having a baby. And that baby represents that the seed opened and the result started coming out, which is, in our example, an irritating person. All right. So, something happens between the time that you irritate another person and then there's a time gap. It takes time underground for that seed in your heart to cook. In fact, it's called pachyati. We had it in Manjushri's mantra, umarabhatsanadi. So it means there's time. It takes time for the seed to ripen. And then link number ten, it splits open. Link number eleven, you are born. You are born into a new life. The important thing here is link number eight and nine. And I think a lot of people don't understand it. And because we are translating the ancient sutra about this wheel. We're translating Vasubandhu, who lived 1600 years ago, 1700 years ago. We're translating his commentary with Sugeng Shi. And there's a very interesting explanation by the king of all Abhidharma teachings, Vasubandhu, Master Vasubandhu. And he gives a very interesting thing. He says, do you know why the seed decides to open? And then he says, it's just like any other seed. It's like the watermelon seed. If the watermelon seed gets activated underground, it will open. What activates the seed? Causes and conditions. What are the causes and conditions? They are water, sunlight, fertilizer. And it's kind of a magic. When water touches the seed underground, when fertilizer touches the seed underground, it suddenly decides to get into action. It starts to wake up. And then Vasubandhu says, what do you think is the water and the fertilizer for our karmic seed in your mind? And Sugeng's text is amazing. That text is almost 2,000 years old. It was lost. It was never explained by anybody. It's never been... Nobody's ever written anything on it. So for us, it's quite a challenge because it's also corrupted. And the Sanskrit is lost. So it's the perfect text for a mixed... Okay. And there's something beautiful in there, okay? A hundred bucks. E-buy. What's... If fertilizer and water and the warmth of the sun wakes up the watermelon seed... And by the way, sometimes we're too busy. We buy seeds. We put them in the package out on the porch. It rains. The package gets wet. The seeds open inside the package and try to put a sprout out and they get frustrated and we lose the money. They break open and they don't do anything. What makes a karmic seed break open? That's... It's very beautiful. Ignorance. Wait. You got to raise your hand. The money only comes if you raise your hand. Wait. Don't give it to her yet. We don't know. What's that? Ignorance. Yeah. Not understanding the seed. I just explained why I don't want you to say ignorance. What's the other word for ignorance? Better word. Not understanding the seed. You misunderstand the seed. A hundred bucks. Now my wife's going to find out where all the money goes to. Now she's happy. We'd do it together. It's very, very interesting. If you have a seed in your mind, it will only ripen if you don't understand it. It's very interesting. What's the sunlight and what's the water and what's the fertilizer for a seed in your mind? When you are irritated by somebody and you say something about them, or more likely in a Buddhist group, you think of what... Oop, I almost said a bad word. Irritating person they are. But you don't say anything because you're a Buddhist. But the thought is the mother of all karma. You think this person's a real... And then that plants the seed. What makes the seed open later into can-irritating people? That's the problem. Mental seeds are just like physical seeds. You get from one watermelon, you get how many seeds? Hundreds of seeds. You can grow a hundred watermelons from one watermelon, from the seeds. Karma is similar. As soon as you mentally criticize a person, then that seed will multiply in your mind. When you put the fertilizer on it, when you put the water on it, it will slowly over time open into a hundred more irritating people. Very, very, very interesting. What is the water? What is the warmth of the sun? What is the fertilizer for that mental seed? It's not to understand it. It's very strange. What makes the seed crack open into can-irritating people is if you never understand how seeds work. Therefore... By the way, Buddhism says that you have seeds from billions of years in your mind. When you meet an irritating person, it's possible you planted that person a thousand lifetimes ago. We don't know. It's hard to say. They say only a Buddha could know. Not even an Arya would know. A person who's seen emptiness cannot tell you why you're experiencing an irritating person today. It could be thousands of lifetimes ago. It's possible. So it's difficult to remove that seed from your mind. You can say it is impossible. You can't remove it totally from your mind. But, what? You can starve it. You can starve it and it will never open. Got it? You can starve the seed and it will never open. It will stay in your mind. Piles, millions of seeds will stay in your mind and they just sit there. It's like a watermelon seed that never got any water and it will just sit there. So how do you make your bad seeds do that? If you really want to stop an irritating person in your life, then stop watering the seed. How do you stop watering the seed? Study, study, study. Read the classics. Read the ancient books. I hate to keep saying it over and over again. The ancient books are good for two things. Number one, if you cannot sleep, open one of these books and definitely you can sleep a lot faster. And, if you are tired of meeting irritating people in your life, then for goodness sakes, just read an ancient book for a few minutes a day. Maybe 10 minutes a day, 15 minutes a day. That's enough. As soon as you understand more about the seeds, they can't open anymore. The bad seeds can't open anymore. Cool? Also, when you read the classics, you learn to be very happy about your good seeds and that makes them grow. Being happy about your good seeds makes them grow wildly and then understanding bad seeds makes them shut down. In theory, a well-educated Buddhist is going around happy all the time because they know how to shut down the seed. In theory, that's what's happening. Now, the spear thing. That's more sophisticated. No one ever put the spears in the middle and I was a little hesitant to do it because it blocks the three animals that represent the three parts of our mind.There isn't. I put the spears in there because, if you think about it, okay, be careful. Think carefully. What confirms that a seed is a seed is a tree. What confirms that a seed is a seed is a tree. You can have a little weird thing in your hand and you're not sure if it's a seed or not. Is it a seed? Is it a viable seed? Is it a real seed? Meaning, can it grow a tree? What's the only way to find out? Grow a tree from it. Then you can say that the growing of the tree created the seed. The growing of the tree confirmed that the seed is a real seed. Got it? The Wheel of Life goes backwards also. Twelve causes eleven, eleven causes ten, ten causes nine, nine causes eight. That's the point that the first Panchen Lama is making here. He's saying the results you get from how you treat other people are a cause for you to treat other people properly. Got it? They're both a result and a cause. It's very interesting. Got it? He's very sophisticated. Next picture. Next picture. I call it the devil's loneliness. Don't forget the devil is talking. Who's the devil? It's the part of your mind that doesn't understand everything. There is no other devil in Buddhism. There was never another devil. The devil is the part of your mind that doesn't understand things, misunderstands things. The part of your mind that thinks that irritating people come from their own side is the only devil in Buddhism. That's the real devil. What's the real angel then? Yes, understanding where things come from. Those two exist. They really exist. They do exist in your mind. All right. There's an interesting verse here. Again, this text is very unusual. You can smell the difference between this and the Song of My Spiritual Life. This text is like advanced, advanced Buddhism. Then we go every afternoon, the second class, we go back to the basics of the lamrim, steps of the path. He says, I'll read you the verse. I call it the devil's loneliness. The nature of the devil is to be lonely. The nature of the devil is to be lonely. Here's what he says. All the beings there are follow the same pattern. O you who think that things are themselves, with you these can never be in the slightest any such understanding of things. And thus, with you, nothing could ever exist. If you follow the devil's point of view, then irritating people could not exist. If irritating people are coming from their side, and if they're not coming from your side, then if they're coming from you, they cannot exist any other way. They cannot be irritating from their own side. You're making them that way. What I always think is that their mother thinks they're really reasonable. You ask their mother, is your kid really irritating and stupid? And they'll say, no, my kid is wonderful. That's from the mother's point of view.You alone decided, this is interesting, the angel is accusing the devil. Where? In your mind. Inside of your mind. Inside of your own mind, the angel is accusing the devil. Here, it's very sad. He says, you are alone.You're the one who decided to stay single. You live by yourself. You get by on your own. You are the solid one who stands alone. You rely on no one. You never depend on anybody. So the angel is kind of saying to the misunderstanding, the devil, he says, it must be lonely to be so wrong. If you really believe that everyone is just stupid and you're the only one who's smart and all the irritating people in the world are coming from their own side, the angel says something interesting. That must be very lonely. You must feel very lonely. I don't think, like Tim, we don't see that in a typical scripture. We don't see a description of emptiness and the presentation of emptiness and say, if you don't understand it, you're lonely. You're a lonely person. It's a very interesting accusation by the angel. I would not want to be you because you are infinitely lonely. It's interesting. It means if you don't understand that other people are coming from you in the end, that's terribly lonely. You have no real connection to them. You have no real connection to them. Even if they're angry at you, even if they're causing you trouble, you have no real connection to them. If you think they're not coming from you, it's very interesting. You will always have more friends if you understand that all your enemies are coming from you. Got it? You will always have more friends if you understand your enemies are coming from you. They're like your people. You created them. It's kind of a comfort to know where people are coming from. You don't feel so isolated from people. Actually, every person you meet is a part of your own face in the mirror. You can take joy in that. There's good in everybody. There's beauty in everybody. If you realize that they're coming from you, life is very pleasant. Life is really nice. Oh, my neighbor is a really kind person. Ralph is a really kind person. Then you can take credit for it, which is what I like to do. You can say, well, that's a reflection of myself. You will be more lonely if you don't understand where things are coming from. In the end, they're coming from you.Then that's less lonely. It's a much more happy way to live. You feel more a part of the world. You are. You are more a part of the world. Next picture, you guys. Here's the verse. Angel is still talking to the devil and telling the devil how lonely they are and how miserable they must be. You are the one who stays forever. You are the one who never changes. Your dark ignorance stands darkest among all the ignorant ones. Your ignorance is matchless. Your ignorance is supreme. There's no ignorance greater than your own. There is no ignorance in all the three different realms of sentient existence that the victors have ever described as bigger. You are ultimate ignorance. There you can not know atomic theory. You can not understand physics. You can not go to psychology school or something. But there's a higher kind of ignorance. When you don't understand where things are coming from, you are super ignorant. You are really wrong about everything. That's a sad thing because you will stay there forever until you change, you will stay there. It's very lonely. You can't get out. Until you realize that things are coming from you, you can't really be happy. Next verse. You are the blind one with the sightless eyes and the reason is that you refuse rebirth even as you are born. You refuse getting old even as you age. He's talking about it's human nature to think that... You can talk to a normal human being and say, have you known anybody who died in your life? Yes. I knew my grandma died. People will say something like that. Then you say, well, did you know anybody who ever got old? Did you meet someone who was strong and healthy and cheerful and energetic? Then slowly, slowly they got old and old and old and then finally it was difficult for them to walk or to talk or to do anything. Did you know people like that? Yes. I'm not stupid. I have observed the world. Then are you scared? No. Are you nervous about it? No. Do you think that that could happen to you? No. No, that's human nature. It's really weird. Under a certain age, for some unexplainable reason, you think it won't happen to you. Everybody does. Everybody in this room who didn't die yet, deep down you doubt that you will die. You don't really believe that you will die. You don't believe that you will get old. That's a sign of ignorance. That's the talk. That's ignorance. That's misunderstanding the devil talking in your mind. Where's the devil? Where does the Buddhist devil exist? Do you have to go to hell to meet the devil? No, it's in your own mind. What's the devil look like? I don't know, but I know what he says. What does he say? That's about other people. When they say people die or people get old or people get ugly, they're like, oh, that's those other people. You meet an older person. Sometimes we go to the nursing home to help people. You feel almost like, what's wrong with you guys? Why are you old? You blame them for being old. Why do you pee on the sheets? Why do I have to pay this lady to clean up your sheets? You feel almost irritated by them. You feel like they were stupid to get old. It's very important as a Buddhist that you recognize what's coming.Next picture. I tried to find a lady who was getting old who didn't know it. I think I did a pretty good job. She's not like got white hair and she still has her teeth. But there's this science. There's this, I don't know, 40 years of thinking that irritating people come from somewhere else. There's 40 years of misunderstanding the world in her face. We wouldn't call her elderly, but we would call her aging. She is aging. You can smell it and you can see it. If you look carefully at anybody, except for my grandson, Sela, who just looks like a watermelon. Cantaloupe or what? I think more like cantaloupe. Even as we watch the people around us age, we refuse that we're getting old. Even as we see people die around us by accidents and other things, somehow we think it doesn't apply to me. That's just other people. Then there's a part of you that feels like they are dumb that they got old. Like, why did you get old? That's so dumb. Why did you die? It's so strange. While we say that, we are aging. While we say that, we are stepping closer to our death. I told my... In the Geshe course, you're not allowed to study yoga until you graduate from the Geshe course. It's considered a high secret practice. In my monastery, you're not allowed to do yoga until you finish 25 years Geshe course. Then the day I finished my Geshe, there's a strange ritual. It's very mystical or something. They take you into the abbot's personal... his personal residence, which is on top of the highest temple in the monastery. There's a special room for the abbot. I know because my teacher became abbot, so I used to hang out up there. There's a special room, special bed, fancy bed, fancy clothes. Then there's a secret back room to the abbot's office. You're never allowed to go there. No normal monk is ever allowed to go there. You only go to the abbot's office when you get punished. You have to do something really bad to get to the abbot's office. Otherwise, the scripture teachers will beat you. But to be beaten up by the abbot, it's a special honor. You have to do something really bad to have the abbot hit you. They have two big guys, the two strongest guys in the monastery. They're called DOP DOP. Say DOP DOP. DOP DOP means monastic police, monastery police, like those guys around here with the guns. They wear football pads for hundreds of years. It's two boards. They wear under their shawl, under their monk shawl. They look about seven feet tall. Then if you do something really bad, the DOP DOPs come to get you. I don't know, I had a friend who snuck out of the monastery, went out to the cornfields to work in the fields, and then snuck into town to a secret shop. It's like a candy shop, tea shop. In the back, there's a secret room where you watch movies. The tea shop owner knows that the monks want to watch movies, but they're not supposed to. He has movies going every night. The young monks sneak out and they go there. If you get caught, then the DOP DOPs will come. They will take you to the abbot's quarters. Then the abbot has this huge paddle and he hits your bottom really hard and it really hurts. He'll hit it like 10 times, 20 times. When I finished my geshe, I got a message. I got a telephone call. Do you know what's a telephone call in the monastery? There's no electricity most of the time. There's no phones at all in my time. You had to travel about 30 miles to use a phone. There were no phones. What's a monastic telephone? It's one of those baby monks.They're like five years old, seven years old. The way you make a telephone call in the monastery is you get a baby monk and you say, go tell Michael he has to come see me. They'll go, okay, okay, I'm going, okay, okay, I'm going. They run. Then they get into a game with their friends or they stop at the store for candy. Then they forget the telephone message. You have to send two or three kids usually. One will get there. It's like the abbot, tell Michael, the new geshe, tell him the abbot wants to see him. I go up there to the abbot's quarters and I thought he was going to punish me because there's no other reason why the abbot would call me. I went up there and I'm like, I didn't do anything. He's like, I didn't say you did anything. I need to talk to you. I'm like, well, what do you want to talk about? He said, well, you finished your geshe degree and now you have to do a special ceremony, secret ceremony. Probably I'll get in trouble if I tell you, but it's fun. Come in the back room. You go through a carved stone entrance into a secret room and the original throne of Sarah is there from Tsongkhapa's time. It was carried from West China by somebody and it's still there. The original throne is still there, the abbot's throne, and it's secret. Then the abbot says, it's very cool, the abbot says, get on the throne. Normally a monk is not allowed to touch the throne of the abbot. If you touch the throne, you will get punished. Then the abbot says, get on the throne. Go sit on the throne. There's a joke among the young monks about why you're not supposed to touch the throne. In the monastery, there's a joke. The young monks believe that they're not supposed to touch the abbot's chair because there's bedbugs on it. That's true, actually. Anyway, you go in there and the abbot says, sit on there. If you sit on there, you'll get punished. You'll get hit on your bottom. If you're lucky, it'll be on your bottom. He says, sit on the chair. I said, I respectfully decline. Then he says, sit on the chair, I told you twice. I'm like, twice I say no. Now third time is magic in the monastery. He says, I ask you a third time to get on the throne. He's swinging his rosary like that. I'm like, okay, okay, I'll get on the throne. You sit on the throne and they lock the door. They close the door and they lock the door. It's total darkness in a stone room on a 600-year-old throne. They put the abbot's hat on your head, which you are not allowed to touch. You're sitting there on the abbot's throne in a pitch black room with the ancient hat of the abbot on your head. You have all these visions. It's amazing. It's really something special. It's really unusual. No one ever talks about it. At some point, I guess maybe an hour later, they come in. They open the door and you're sitting there and you had all these visions, beautiful visions. Then my logic teacher came in and he said, okay, now you're mine. Now I'll take care of you. I'm like, but I've graduated. I don't have to study anymore. Say, RGYAS SHES Say, RGYAS SHES RGYAS SHES STANG RGYAS SHES STANG RGYAS SHES STANG means you finished your RGYAS SHES exams and you passed. But the same verb means to throw out your books. You understand? Many RGYAS SHES, the first thing they do is go throw out all their books because you don't have to study anymore. You can just drink tea for the rest of your life. I was deprived of this right I had to teach. Anyway, he says, you RGYAS SHES STANG, you finished your RGYAS SHES. Then I said, well, what are you doing here? Why has my logic teacher come? He said, because it's time to start your yoga classes. I'm like, we don't have yoga classes. He says, if you're going to be a logician you should say, we don't have any yoga classes that I ever saw in the monastery because many people are doing yoga here and you never saw it. Everyone who's finished their RGYAS SHES is doing yoga. I'm like, wow, that's something. It's a secret practice in the monastery. Want some water? Why am I talking about that? I'm getting there. Old men tell stories. Then it's monsoon season. In monsoon season you take your shoes off and walk around the monastery because there's about two feet of mud and you lose your shoes. When you step down and you step up, the shoe stays and the foot comes up. Everybody walks around the monastery with their shoes and their hair. It's going like... We don't have anything like paved roads or anything like that. I'm like sucking down the road. I met one of my lodging, one of my scripture teachers. He said, where are you coming from? I said, I'm coming from my yoga, some of my first yoga classes. With my lodging teacher who turns out to be the secret yoga teacher. He's still alive. He's visited the United States. I'm walking through the monastery and I say, I just come back from yoga class. He says, how long were you at the yoga class? I said, an hour. He said, huh, one hour closer to die. He didn't say, I'm glad you're getting exercise and it's so great that you're learning yoga. He's like, I'll never forget it. He looked me in the eye and said, you're one hour closer to dying. You know that. That exercise you did so you wouldn't get old. You got an hour older while you were there in the yoga class.Does it mean you're not supposed to do yoga? I didn't say that. It was a funny thing. That's what the angel is saying here. Everyone is getting an hour older while they're in the yoga class. Your body is an hour closer to falling apart, no matter how much yoga you do. No one understands that. Everybody thinks that somebody else is getting old. That's a characteristic of the devil in your mind. It's a characteristic of the devil in your mind to not be aware that you are aging every day and that you are closer to your death every day. Is that a depressing thing? Do you have to be sad about it? No, it allows you freedom. It gives you freedom. Everyone else is lying to themselves. They're saying the cream is really working. No one can tell my age. Everyone else is not being honest to themselves. But a real wisdom says, yeah, I am getting older. Every day I get older. Every day I get closer to my death. Let me do something while I still breathe. Let me do something with my mind while I still breathe. That's a very Buddhist attitude. I saw him handing out bikes. Am I out of time, Tim? Total or tell the Q&A? Oh, you cut today's class short. No, I'd rather play music. Let's do Q&A. But the point is the angel in the person's mind says to the devil in the person's mind, you stop making this person so blind. Please stop making this person so blind. Let them see the truth that they are getting older every day. The wrinkles are piling up on their face from teenage, from teenager time. And they will just increase, increase, increase. Your energy in your body will decrease, decrease, decrease. Even the time you spend in yoga class is time that your body is falling apart more. Did Geshehla tell you not to do yoga? No. You should do yoga. You will live longer. But during that time you are aging. You are still aging. So the devil refuses. The one thing the devil refuses to do is to admit the truth. If you say, what is a Buddhist devil? It's not who made you eat a piece of apple pie this afternoon. My wife brought me a homemade apple pie. It's not that the devil makes you eat apple pie. It's that the devil forces you to believe it won't happen to you. The devil forces you to believe it's not happening to you. But Geshehla, it's more convenient and a lot more comfortable not to obsess about getting older or being closer to my death. It's a lot more comfortable life if I don't think about it every day. That's not the truth. If you know what's happening and you admit it, you are free. Then you can do something about it. Until you admit it, until you take responsibility for your aging and your death, you are truly a prisoner. You are a real prisoner. Understand? You'll feel a lot better and a lot happier. You will make the right choices in your life if you admit that you're aging and if you admit that you will die. Then you will be really free. It's not depressing or sad or anything like that. Buddhists are crazy. They giggle about their death and their old age. Like that. It's not to be sad. It's sad to ignore what's really there. That's sad. Q&A. By the way, that's the loneliness of misunderstanding. That's the loneliness of not understanding it. Questions. Q&A. You always cause trouble. Are you sure? I have a question. You already teach more than 50 years and a lot of truth you wait for maybe more than a few decades to tell the truth. So my question is when you step into the audience event, what kind of criteria you will have to decide you are going to tell the full truth or to tell the half truth in order to benefit the audience? Yeah, okay. I think as I mentioned before, in Buddhism, when you attend a class, it's understood that you are therefore agreeing to teach other people to the best of your ability. You don't have to be a Geshe.Just what you heard today, you can share with other people and then you become a teacher. In a Buddhist class, when you take the class, when you sit down in the class, you are therefore swearing to teach other people in your own way, which a lot of teaching happens on the airplane. You sit down next to somebody. By the time you get off the plane, they are equal to Nagarjuna. Just kidding. But when you agree to come here, when you agree to listen to Buddhist teachings, then it's a part of the deal that you agree to teach to the best of your ability and to the people that you happen to know. If you take that responsibility seriously, and you start tomorrow or you start tonight and you try to explain something to the clerk at the hotel desk, within 10 minutes, you will understand the principle that you have to judge the other person's level before you open your mouth, before you say anything to them. Or within a few minutes, you have to decide how much will they be able to digest. It's considered a big mistake as a Buddhist teacher to give somebody more than they can digest. To give someone Dharma indigestion is a serious mistake for a teacher. So if you ask me, do I edit what I say? Do I censor what I say? Do I adjust what I say to the audience? Of course. Of course I do. And then later, who has done... Some bodhisattva will ask me, did you really mean what you said about emptiness? And I'll say, well, sort of. Which is a famous incident that happened to Lord Buddha. One of his disciples, Akashamantissa, asked him later, you taught the Shijing Heart Sutra, you taught Jinkanjing Diamond Cutter Sutra. Is that serious? Is that what you really think? And because he asked the question, Buddha said, no. It's not true that nothing exists. It's not true that there's no form. There's no feeling. There's no discrimination. There's no other factors. There's no mind. I was just exaggerating to wake up some sleepy students. Actually, things are half empty and half non-empty. And then he taught the Mind-Only School after he got the question. If he had taught the whole Buddhism in the first place, he wouldn't have gotten those questions and he would not have created the Mind-Only School. Got it? Even Lord Buddha was a shapeshifter. Someone told me recently, I had an interview with somebody and they said, are you a shapeshifter? And I said, it sounds bad. Can you tell me what's a shapeshifter? They said, you seem to adjust to the audience. And they were following me around for a couple of years. And that's true. I think as a teacher, you do have to, you have to shift to the audience. Otherwise, the audience won't listen. I have to dress to fit you. I can't wear what I want to wear. I have to wear what's comfortable for you. Next question. So yeah, it's a Buddhist skill. It's a teaching skill. And it's important to say it's not dishonest or it's not misrepresenting yourself. It's your duty to go to the level of your student. So Geshehla, we have about 30 seconds. Jasmine's here in Malaysia. Yeah. And their group is there studying with us simultaneously. And she wanted to say hi to everybody and, I think, promote Kyoto. I'm wondering, Jasmine, if you can tell us a little bit about what's going on with your group there and Uncle Nick and Sarathmeet. And tell us what's happening there in Malaysia. Jasmine? Yes, we're here. Thank you, Geshehla. And see our students here, shaking hands. And say hello to Phoenix and Teacher Nick, Teacher Sarathmeet here. We are very happy. Except that the air conditioning here is very cold. It's Malaysia. It's supposed to be cold. Yeah. And thank you to have this opportunity to share what's happening here. And we really send our video. We send our video to Phoenix and hope you enjoy what's happening here. And what do you want to say? Hi. We did a four-power ceremony last night. We had 100 people smashing their bad seeds and celebrating our good seeds. And it was really beautiful. And a lot of happy people. And a lot of bad seeds destroyed. I'm just grateful for all of the amazing participants here and the sincerity of the people here. It's really inspiring and beautiful. You just like it that you don't have to wear a suit there, Nick. You know? There's something to it. It's really fun to sing the prayers and hang out during all these things. Sarathmeet, what are you thinking about? Thank you for teacher Sarathmeet to come here. It's really a long, long distance. The practitioners here are amazing. The heart-opening practices that they do are so inspiring. So I hope that they will continue their practice and bring themselves to Kyoto so that they can get the transmission from you, holy Geshehla. Yes. Thank you. Thank you. And I want more students can come to Asia, come to Kyoto, that we can have a beautiful time together. Please come with us, the Phoenix students. Thank you. Thank you, Geshehla. Thank you, team. Thank you, Jasmine. Hey, Jasmine. I'm doing a video for you next week, I think. OK? I promised her. OK. Tim. 30-minute break. OK? I'll sit here if you want to say hi or, you know. OK? All right. 30-minute break. See you in 30 minutes. Thanks, everyone.

Class 6 -

27 October 2025

Hello, hello. Oh, I woke up so many people. All right, let's start. We're going to do Song of My Spiritual Life, which is Tsongkhapa's story about his own life, the spiritual side of his life. And I'm going to start with the Good Night Book Club slide. This is called the Good Night Book Club, and we reached the part, we finished the 16 steps of a good life, okay. And please use them in the next few weeks, okay. Read them, don't skip any, okay. You can say, oh, I don't know how to prepare for my next life. Then start thinking about it, okay. So don't skip any. Go through the 16 again and again. If somebody is cool enough to teach Tsongkhapa, he's probably cool, okay. And I don't know, a couple years ago, so there's my story. I told you this story, but I have to tell you again, because somebody still didn't listen. So I never owned a TV in my whole life. I didn't watch TV. And then during COVID, I started to watch TV shows on my computer, because I'm stuck at home all the time. And then it gets worse and worse. I start to watch movies. I start to watch violent movies. I start to watch dirty movies. They're bad movies. And then I get more and more addicted, and then I start to watch all the time. And then I found a way to stop it, and I decided, I have a friend in Arizona, my student, Will Duncan. He has a small retreat center, only two or three people allowed at a time. And when you go to stay there in the evening, he takes away your phone and your computer, and he turns off the internet in the house. So even if you have a secret phone, you can't use it, the secret computer. So I heard about it, and I knew about it for a long time. But somehow I didn't think to try it myself, because I'm his teacher. Why should I do what he's teaching? So then I actually tried it, and it's unbelievable. It's unbelievably cool. And it's very important, if you try to do those 16 steps of a good life, it's very, very, very helpful if you can control your use of the cell phone, and your use of movies, and things like that. And I wish I had done it earlier. I wish I had done it 10 years ago or 20 years ago, because I started a couple years ago, and I'm very strict. 10 o'clock, always at 10 o'clock. Either if I'm with my wife, I put the computer and the phone on her side of the bed, and you cannot sneak by my wife late at night. She will catch you. So it's safe. I won't touch it. And then if I'm traveling by myself, Rob, my assistant, my beautiful personal assistant, he will come at 10 o'clock and take my computer and my phone. No negotiation. I cannot say 10.05, 10.10. He's like, no negotiation, Michael. Give me your computer. It's time to sleep. So 10 o'clock, I give him my computer. I give him my phone. And then he brings it back at 6 o'clock, which means I have to wake up before 6. And I know John Brady, and Connie, and all those guys are very good Buddhists, and they wake up early and meditate. I never did that much, except for a three-year retreat or something. And I was lazy, and I had trouble waking up at 6 o'clock. So now for a few years, I'm going to bed at 10, forced to go to bed. And then 6 o'clock, I wake up, and I have a whole special system about going to bed and waking up. And I would like to talk about it because it's very important for living the 16 steps of a good night. We covered the 16 steps in the last two days. And if you keep this good night book club habit, at 10 o'clock, you give up your phone, and you give up your computer, and you don't watch movies. And then 6 o'clock, you wake up. And from 6 o'clock up to 11.30, I try to study, or I try to do my practice. I translate, and I don't see other people usually until about noontime or something. So it's pretty strict, and very few people can prevent. Basically, you have to really work hard to interrupt me, okay? See, like that. So anyway, and then if you follow this system, can you show the bag, the bag you got? Yeah, we created a bag. Rosa Van Grieken and me, we worked together. We created a special bag. Lindsey's showing it to you. That bag fits your computer, that bag fits your phone, and it has a lock on it, okay? It has a special time lock, okay? It locks at 10 o'clock, and you cannot open it until 6 o'clock, okay? It's a very, very good idea, okay? And then we have a tote bag that you put the computer bag in. I use that all the time. I carry it all the time, and I use it all the time, okay? So we're not selling it. If you don't have money and you want one, I'll give it to you. I don't care, but it's amazing. It's a miracle, okay? If you get... My third grade teacher told me, you need to sleep for eight hours, and I didn't believe her then, and up until a few years ago, I didn't believe it, you know? I said, look, I'm a tough guy. I was 19 years corporate slave, vice president of the largest jewelry company in the world. I don't need sleep. I'm a tough guy, you know? I can, four hours, three hours, five hours, it's okay, I can do it, you know? I'm not like you normal people, you know? And I feel very proud that I don't need to sleep, you know? Then suddenly, I'm trying to do this thing of work, sleep eight hours a day, and in the beginning, I was just sitting there like, you know, 10 o'clock, 11 o'clock, 12 o'clock. I don't feel sleepy, you know? But then I started to sleep at 10, and I started to wake up at 6, and if you ever had a schedule like that, you start to wake up without a clock. You start to wake up at 5.59, and it's fun. It's kind of fun. You wake up at 5.59, you have to be quick to turn off the alarm clock, you know? Then you say, I turned you off before you went, you know? And you can get this really incredible habit, and it starts to make your mind stronger, okay? If you get eight hours of sleep, by the way, you just get down on the bed at 10 o'clock. I don't care. You feel sleepy, you don't feel sleepy, I don't care. Shut up, get on the bed. 10 o'clock, you know? And if you can't fall asleep, lay there. I don't care, okay? And stay there until 6. You can jump on the bed, but you can't get off the bed, okay? Stay there until 6. And something will happen to your mind, and it's just wonderful, okay? And I was afraid to keep this system because I have so much work to do. I have thousands of pages of translations to do. I don't have time to sleep eight hours a night. What happened was my productivity increased 300%, okay? I used to finish one book in a year or something like that. This year, I finished five or something like that, okay? If you get eight hours of sleep, your mind changes, and you're very powerful mind. And people can't believe it. I just keep translating a book every month, two months, ancient books, 2,000-year-old books, because I'm rested. My mind is rested. So, we call it the Good Night Book Club. Lindsay Jilk runs it. Where's Lindsay? Yeah, talk to her, okay? I'll tell you a secret. She's a big real estate person in the United States, okay? She doesn't need to do this job. She does it as a volunteer. She does it for us. I caught her in her garage in 115 degrees heat, 47, 48 for you centigrade people. And she's out there in the middle of the night packing books for people, okay? So, if you join, we have a special club. You can join the club. You make a donation to help the translators who keep having families and stuff like that. So, it's my job, Geshe Michael's job. Eight years ago, I agreed to pay 12 translators, and I've done it for eight years, okay? But it's always hard to find the money. It's a lot of money every year, and it's very, very difficult for me. But I promised, and I still do it every year. I raise the money for them. And from their side, none of them has quit. Out of those 12 translators, nobody has quit. Each one is learning a different ancient language, okay? Each one of them is learning a different ancient school. There are 12 ancient schools. They have specific vocabulary. If you understand one school, you don't understand the other school. Only Geshe learns all the schools. So, I'm teaching 12 people. They're learning 12 different dialects, 12 different languages, technical terms, very difficult technical terms, and they are translating like crazy, okay? So, we connected it to this Good Night Book Club idea, you see? So, at 10 o'clock, when you get on your bed, you're not allowed to look at electronics, but you are allowed to read a paper book, okay? And we supply the paper book for you, okay? And by the way, I believe deeply in my heart that Bluetooth and cell phone transmission towers, it is radiation, okay? People get cancer from radiation. Radiation means the sun gives radiation. The sun that comes up every day, it sends sunlight to the earth. It has many radioactive particles, gamma radiation. They go through buildings. They don't care about wood. They don't care about steel. They don't care about, they just pass through it like it doesn't matter. If they hit your chromosome chain, if a single gamma particle, much smaller than a piece of sand, goes through the roof, goes through your skull, and hits a chromosome chain and breaks it, and if that chromosome duplicates in your body, that's called cancer. That's how you get cancer, okay? That's how many people get cancer, just being alive, just sitting in the world, just being in the sunlight. By the way, you don't have to be in the sunlight. You just have to be in a building and the sunlight hits it, and that's how people get cancer. That's one of the ways that people get cancer, okay? All of these new transmission towers, Bluetooth, telephone transmissions, putting it up to your ear, close to the cells in your brain, I believe, I sincerely believe it's very dangerous for everybody. I believe it could cause cancer. I believe it's caused, I think it's responsible for the rise in cancer rates. It's such a wonderful idea to put it away and turn it off when you go to bed, okay? At least eight hours, you don't have that radiation close to you, okay? And I'm not paranoid, and I'm not a hippie, I'm a hippie, but I'm not a hippie nutrition person, you know? I don't eat healthy, you know? I do all kinds of things, but I do believe it's dangerous. I believe the cell phone, and I believe in the future people will say it was a mistake. I believe that, and in the meantime, if you can avoid it for eight hours at night, I think it's a wonderful idea, okay? Get rid of your cell phone, turn it off, don't use the internet. So guess what, at 10 o'clock, get on your bed, get one of these books, okay? Now, it looks like a book, but it's not a book, understand? These are, by the way, the team of 12 translators has finished about, what are those, 12 books, 15 books? So far in eight years, they have finished 12 very difficult books, very, very deep books, and I'll show you two. These two came out last week, okay? These two are a few days old, and I've sat with these two translators for eight years, and we worked on these books hard for eight years, okay? And they finished early this year, and then we cleaned it up and we worked on it. Anatole helps a lot, and Aisha, his wife, helps a lot, and we finished, these are the two newest books to come out, okay? One is called, one is called Everything in the Universe, and that's a good translation of Abhidharmakosha, okay? And the translator's name is Stanley Chen, and he's, you want to stand up? So, I worked on this book for 12 years with my teacher, and Stanley finished in eight years because he's smarter than me. So, it's a beautiful book, and then the other book we finished is called The Essence of the Ocean, a classical summary of Buddhist ethics. This is a very, very famous presentation of Buddhist ethics, and it's the oldest book we translated. It's 2,500 years old. It's called Vinaya, and it was very, very difficult. It gives the, all the rules for men and women who want to follow vowed morality, who want to take ethical vows, okay? And in Central Asia, this system for women was lost. It was destroyed. There was a king, a bad guy, who actually killed the nuns, and it takes 12 nuns to make a new nun, and he killed so many nuns in that time that there wasn't enough nuns to make new nuns. So, the rules for nuns in particular, but also the rules for monks started to disappear. People don't understand them. People don't understand the story behind them, and we spent eight years with John Brady's database, and we got the ancient books back from before the king, two and a half thousand year books, and we worked like dogs, okay? My wife can tell you. We worked really hard, and we finished. We saved the women's vows, and we saved the men's vows for the first time, and that's Zhou Xiaoping's work. Yeah, and she teaches this book to business audiences, and it works. People use it, okay? I have an idea to package these two together in a single box, and you can say that this is half Buddhism, okay? Historically, in the last 2,500 years, these two books are half of Buddhism, and they were lost, and they recovered them, and it's the first available translation of this kind, and I'd like to give them another hand. So, these are called pre-publication copies. They're not the final, final, final, final copy. They have small things in there, and you cannot get it unless you join the book club, which means you kind of agree to go to bed at 10, and you agree to get up at 6. You agree not to look at your movies on your cell phone under your covers at 10 30, okay? And you get one of these books. When you join the book club for a small fee, which goes to feed the starving translators, when you join the club, then you make a donation, and Lindsay sends you the latest books as they come out, okay? And you get these books, okay? I want to say one more thing about this kind of book, okay? And I want to warn you, okay? You cannot sit there at 10 o'clock and read this book from cover to cover. This is not a Buddhist book. That's not what we do with a Buddhist book. A Buddhist book is a lifetime friend. You don't read a Buddhist book. You don't read, you know, start it on Monday and finish on Friday. It's, that's not, these books are different. These books are a lifetime experience. You spend your whole life reading them. You don't read it in one week or two weeks. It's not, that's not your relationship to a Dharma book. This book is a lifetime friend. And I don't try to, I've been reading them for 50 years. I've been translating them for 50 years. I never read more than half a page. Never. I read half a page. It puts me to sleep. There's certain topics are better. Madhyamika is excellent. But I, I don't try to read the book from cover to cover. It's, that's not what we're doing. It's a very holy, mystical experience. Read half a page and then sleep. Sleep fast before you think of other stuff, okay? No, I'm not kidding. Before you worry about your taxes and stuff, read half a page and close the book and turn off the light and go to bed. And this book will talk to you all night, okay? It will sing in your mind all night. And your mind will explode, okay? You have to try it, okay? You have to try it. And you, your life will change completely, okay? Your life will, will become so amazing, you know? Why can Geshe Michael give away $100 bills? When I left Diamond Mountain, I was $30,000, $40,000 in debt. Nowadays it'd be $200,000. I was in debt. And then I started to, you know, study DCR. And now, now I'm very, very, very, I can give away money all day long and it's okay, okay? It's because of these books. You see, if you understand these books, you serve and you serve and you serve and you're so happy, super happy. And things just come to you, like crazy things happen. Dragon's head appears 10 minutes from your house, you know? You're like, what? It's a whole valley nobody knew about. It has a beautiful river flowing through it. The owner who sold it to us is like, do you want to keep that huge classroom that's built there or should I tear it down? And we're like, yeah, we'll keep it, you know? It's this beautiful, huge cathedral glass. It was built by the descendant of the painter Van Dyck, the third, fourth generation. It's a Van Dyck, you know? And that, they're like, do you want the house or should we tear it down? We're like, well, we'll keep it, you know? And then we held a class there the next week, you know? We didn't have to build a classroom. It fits 150 people for free. The guy said, I'll throw in the classroom, you know? We're like, okay. So what I mean is if you follow this Good Night Book Club, you will save yourself from cancer maybe and your mind will change and your life will change and you can give away $100 bills for the rest of your life. And, you know, we have trouble. The bag's getting heavy. The bag's too heavy. I spent the afternoon, my wife knows. I'm trying to get rid of the $100 bills, you know, because it's too much to carry around, you know? And your life will change and you'll feel so happy. You'll feel so delicious all day long. Try, give it a try, okay? You don't read the book, right? Half a page. Which half a page? I don't care, you know? There's a saying in Buddhism, what? You'll tell. Chinese donut. It doesn't matter which side you start from. It all tastes delicious, okay? You can open this book anywhere. And Diamond Way means, uh, Tanjiogini will send you a message, okay? Diamond Way is not start on the first page and go to the last page. Diamond Way is, and she'll send you a message. And it's amazing. It's a miracle, okay? You just trust it, okay? And it's so beautiful. It's just beautiful, okay? Please try it, you know? I'm an old man. I don't have much time. This is one of the most valuable things I could teach you. It will change your life. It will really change your life. Don't be stubborn and don't be lazy, okay? Like, start tonight, okay? Go back, pick out the book that's most weird. And there's lots of them, okay? If you're super donor, okay, we created this box, okay? It's, we call it the red lacquer box. It's a special finish. It takes a long time. We have a special wood craftsman who makes the boxes. It takes a long, long time to make one box. They're very, very special. And if you're a super donor to those starving translators, right, where, if you're a super donor, we give you a whole box, okay? And the box has 12 books, books, 12 books, 12 books inside, okay? So basically all of Buddhism. And we filled up four boxes so far, okay? So what I found, my wife and I, we have a very small house. We have trouble with room in our house. And we found out that if you get, we got four of these, right? And they stack. They're built to stack on each other. So you can get four boxes with 12 books each and you just stack them on each other and they look beautiful in the house. They look really beautiful, okay? My wife's very picky and they look really nice, okay? So that way you can support the translators, teams of translators. Keep all these guys going, okay? Why is it, why am I talking about it in this class? And by the way, I asked the team to consider when these are available to the public, I would like them to have, be in a box together. This is the first 700 years of Buddhism, okay? This is the first, you can say a thousand years with Abhidhamma from China. This is half of Buddhism. These two books are half of Buddhism. They're the first half of Buddhism. So I'd like to keep them in the same box together. And I'd like people to get them together. And I'd like them to stay together. You understand the meaning of that? Okay, if the two books stay together, I think you'll be good luck, okay? All right, I remind you that this King of the Dharma book is available, new edition, new size, super slick, okay? And you can get it. I'm not trying to sell books, okay? It's a bad business. I'm a diamond seller. That's a good business. You can make some money.This is a lot of work and no money. So I'm not trying to sell something to you. Get them, read them every night.Why am I talking about that? When you read half a page, it stays in your mind. It's the blessing of all the Buddhists, okay? It's the blessing of a million Buddhists. And it will change your mind as you sleep. That's a good deal, okay? People say, Geshehla, I can't sleep. I have a friend who refuses to do the eight-hour sleep. And they say, Geshehla, I can't get everything done. I have lots to do. And I say, no, God, you don't understand. If you do this system, you can do three times more work, okay? Really, I swear, you can do three times more work, and you feel happy. You feel well-rested. You feel relaxed. You feel much, much better your whole life, okay? You will live longer, okay? And you're supposed to live as long as you can, right? That's your job. Okay, I'm going to go on to the next picture, Mr. Brian. I don't know about this. Oh, so we passed around the diamond. And you have to remember why I passed around the diamond. I still have the diamond. Don't worry about it. I know where it is. It was the first perfect diamond I've ever touched in my life. And I have touched millions and millions, many millions of diamonds. But that diamond, never forget it. You want to pass it around again? It's fun. It's in there. I'm just waiting for it to disappear, and we search everybody. That's why the guys with the guns are running around. No, I'm just kidding. It's in there. It's in one of the three pouches. When you see that diamond, when you touch that diamond, when you hold that diamond, understand it represents your life, okay? That diamond represents your life, okay? You have eyes to see. You have ears to hear. You have a brain, a good mind. Everyone here has a good mind, okay? You are unique. You are more precious. You are more rare than this diamond, okay? This is a perfect diamond. There's no better diamond in the world.It's a perfect diamond. And don't forget what it represents, okay? It represents you, okay? You are a perfect diamond, okay? And you are extremely rare, and you're extremely precious, and you can change the world. Each one of you can change the world. This is not the diamond. You're the diamond, okay? So hold the diamond and say, I'm the diamond. You're just a rock, okay? Pass it on. It's very, very precious, okay? That's what we're talking about. To have a body that's not sick, to have a body that's healthy, to have a mind, to be in this class, to be allowed to be in a class in your country is very, very, very rare, okay? You are the real diamonds, okay? You are very, very special diamonds, okay? Don't forget. That's just a nice rock. I like it though. So do the best with your diamond. Don't waste your diamond, okay? One way to use your diamond well is this, okay? Use those eight hours well, okay? Don't waste your diamond. By the way, they're very hard to get, a human body. It's almost impossible, okay? You just take it for granted. Oh, my dad didn't have anything to do one night, so that's not how you exist, okay? You are extremely rare in the universe. You are uniquely rare, and you've got to use your body while you have it. It won't last forever, okay? You've got to use it wisely, okay? You are a diamond, and you have to use it wisely, okay? To get another one, it's almost impossible. All right, don't assume you won't get another one, okay? All right, um, next thing in this class, Tim, when do I get freedom? Man, thank you, Brian. I mean, I have a Japanese-Mexican friend, but the Mexican-Taiwanese friend, that's really weird. Okay, all right. So, this got kind of serious, okay? 23 minutes, kind of serious. I don't know, like, seven, eight years ago, I did a blood test, and the doctor said, you have a kidney problem, and I'm like, no, I don't, and he said, no, you have a kidney problem, and I'm like, I don't feel anything, you know, and he said, that's what kidney problem does, you don't know you have it, and then I said, well, what's going to happen, and he says, you will die, it will kill you, you know, and you have to do something about it. So, I went to a kidney doctor, like, eight or nine years ago, and they, I've been going for eight years, nine years, something, and they try to keep it going, but it will deteriorate. Everybody's kidney falls apart, just most people, it falls apart after you die. So, my kidney's going to fall apart before I die, and we know, and we have a schedule, we know it's going to happen. So, I'm kind of, you basically, in my position, you have two choices. You can do dialysis, which means you hook up to a machine for four hours a day or something, and it hurts, and it doesn't work very well, and you die after five years. The other option is a kidney transplant, and then someone donates a kidney to you. Everybody has two kidneys. Basically, one is extra, in case you play football and hurt your kidney, okay? So, basically, most people have, everybody has two kidneys, and it's very interesting. So, they get a donor. Somebody says, I will give you my kidney, and they put it in your body with the other two. So, it's not that they take one out and put one back. They give you an extra one. So, I will be, especially, I will be the most kidney person around, and I will have three kidneys. And so, someone has already said they would donate a kidney, and it doesn't hurt the person. They lose 20, 25 percent of their kidney function from getting one kidney, but it's a messy operation, and it's funny. Guess where's the best hospital in the world to get this operation? It's called Phoenix, okay? And they do 3,000 a year here. It's 10 minutes from here, by coincidence, and so, they're like, would you like to have a new kidney? And I'm like, no.Then they're like, would you like to die? And I said, no. So, you got to have a new kidney. So, it will be probably in the next year. I will have to, it's a six-week messy thing, and they take away your immune system so that the kidney won't be rejected. You see what I mean? So, you get every cold, you get every flu, you get everything. You get skin cancer very easily, stuff like that, but it's better than going to the neck early. So, that's the situation. I'm looking at this thing in the next year, maybe. I have to do it sometime. I don't feel anything. It's called the silent killer or something. It just stops one day, and so, I'm fine. I feel happy. I don't hurt. Nothing hurts, but it put me in a strange position, which we have reached in our text, okay? I mention it because we have reached it in the text. In the text, it says, each one of us will reach a day that Geshe Michael reached this year, and your life will run out, okay? Your life will finish. You won't have more life, okay? We are, by sitting here, you are using up your life, and you only have so much life. I like to say, the guy who bought my jewelry company, which became the largest in the world, is Warren Buffett, and he just retired. He's 94, something like that. He has $140 billion. He's sitting on $140 billion, and he retired. Why? He couldn't buy one hour of life. You see, Warren Buffett, with $143 billion, cannot buy one hour more life. No one can give it to him. He cannot go to some poor person and say, hey man, I'll give you 50 billion for, you know, give me a couple weeks. You can't do that. There's no such thing. Your life will finish, okay? Everybody's life will finish. I think it's very lucky to have a teacher whose life might finish soon, and then you can really get the feeling. You can really understand that your life is pouring out of your mouth. As you sit here, your life is finishing. The life you have is, you are using it up, okay? So, I have this weird thing in my life. I have to make plans, you see? It's not like I just have a family. I have a big family. I was on an airplane. Did I tell you this story? It's funny. I'm on an airplane. I was teaching British Airways' nine vice presidents. I had a job to teach them DCI. So, I flew to London on this plane. Guess which company's airplane? British Airways. First time in my life, I'm in first class. Not business class. First class, you know? And then this lady rushes on the plane, sits down next to me. She's got this book in her head, you know? I'm just sitting there, and she's going like this, and then she goes like this. She puts it next to my face, and it's the Diamond Cutter. She said, I was reading the Diamond Cutter business book, and is that you? And I'm like, yeah. I felt so famous for five minutes, you know? I'm like, yeah, that's me, you know? And she's like, oh, you know, it's such a pleasure to meet you, and I feel so lucky. And then she asked me, we got to talking about our families, and I said, do you have children? She said, yeah, I have two children. And I said, wow, that's cool. And then she said, do you have any kids? And just automatically, I said, yeah, about 400, because I meant my students, you know? But I got to tell you a joke. She looked at me like this. Like, am I a superhero? And I'm like, no, they're not really my children. They're my students, you know? But I have to worry about them. You see what I mean? It's the same thing. If I die, if something happens to me, I have to plan the best plans for my students. I have to make sure I can do the best thing before I pass. I have to do what's most beneficial for my students. And I have to think about your future, and I have to worry about your future. So in this part of the Lam Rim, it's talking about this exercise. I've been forced into it, but you also have to start thinking about it, okay? You will pass. I'll tell you something cute. Stanley and Xiaoping, you were with me that day. I went to the kidney doctor, and she said, it's getting bad. It's getting pretty bad, you know? And I'm like, yeah, okay. And I'm like, that's cool. And then she looked at me, and she's like, can I ask you a personal question? I'm like, yeah. She says, do you meditate? I'm like, yeah, a little bit. And she's like, she thought I should be screaming and running out of the office, and so I mean, it's not to get worried, and it's not to get depressed, and it's not to think terrible things are going to happen, but each one of us has to plan for that day. And it's very irresponsible not to, okay? There are many people depending on you. There are many people who need you, and you must think about it, okay? You must think about the people who will miss you and who will need you, okay? So you have to prepare for that. Each one of us, you have to prepare for that, okay? It's, will you die? Yeah, Geshehla. Do you know you'll die? Yeah, I know. Will you die today? Nah, I'm still, I'm not like you. I've got time. Then you can't say that. We lose people all the time. We lost somebody yesterday. Somebody yesterday had a heart attack who didn't expect to have a heart attack. She was fine. The day before, she was walking around fine. Somebody's mom. Then she just fall down and die, okay? So you've got to, part of Buddhism is to think about it in a happy way, okay? You're getting all serious on me. Everybody's like, okay. If you're a real Buddhist and you understand Buddhism, it will not make you sad, okay? You know what's going to happen. You know where you're going. You prepare them. Your suitcase is ready, okay? And you feel relaxed and you feel joyful and you're just like, I don't know. The train stopped in Paris and then the train is on its way to Rome and everything's good. You see what I mean? It's not a, you don't have to be so serious. We all have to go on that train, okay? At this point in the text, it's talking about getting ready, okay? And you have a great teacher for this because I have to get ready, okay? So each one of us, you must get ready. You must get everything set and then you're fine. I know where I'm going. I have seen it. I know who's my teacher. I don't have, I don't really have to worry much about it, okay? But you have to think, you must think about it. You must think about it, okay? You cannot go there without preparing, okay? That's crazy, you know? Are you setting money aside for your taxes next year? Yes, because I'm not a fool. Are you getting ready to dine? No, it's later, Geshehla. So are your taxes, okay? Get ready, all right? That's what this part of the Lamrim is about, okay? Everybody says, I want to study dine and wait. Geshehla, can you teach me dine and wait? Yeah, but you have to be ready to dine, okay? That's kind of, you can't practice dine and wait unless you know how to dine, okay? Understand? Don't tell me it's depressing, okay? If you practice well, if you study well, you know where you're going and it's beautiful, okay? It's no problem, okay? And the ones you love will be there, okay? No problem. Okay, so the next part of the Lamrim, the next part of the spiritual song is meditation on death. And there's a section called next picture D, watch this one. Oh no, can you go back to the last picture? I forgot to tell you. This is a concert in Taiwan. This was a public talk about emptiness. And I think 6 or 7,000 people came. And I got to play rock and roll, which is my lifetime dream. Me and Stanley played in front of a huge audience. He sang. It's a little bit better than, well, I won't say. We had a really, really good time. And there was a film crew that came there from, they work for Netflix. And they said, can we make a Geshe Michael Netflix movie? And I said, what kind of movie? I'm smart now. I asked. And they're like, well, we'll give you two choices. They are very, very nice people, extremely nice people. They said, what kind of movie are you talking about? And they said, we'll give you the choice. You can decide. And I said, what's the two choices? They said, number one, we can make you look really good. Like you won't even recognize Geshe Michael. He will be a perfect person, always kind, always smiling. We will make you into a super rock star. And I'm like, that sounds pretty good. And then they said, or we could tell the truth. And I'm like, what's that mean? And they said, we have a proposal for you. And I'm like, what's the proposal? And they said, you go to four different continents in the world. You go to South America, you go to Asia, you go to Europe and North America, something like that. And in each continent, you find one person who doesn't know anything about Buddhism, who doesn't know anything about your system. And then you teach them. You choose one person per continent. So there'll be four people in the movie. Each one has a dream. And then you teach them your system and make the dream come true. And we will film it. And if the dream doesn't come true, we'll film that also. Are you willing to take the risk? And I'm like, I think that's fair. I think we should make a movie like that. So we chose three of the people, I think. One was in Peru, one was in Germany, one was in Asia. And then the guy in Peru had a nervous breakdown. The lady in Europe went to the hospital at age 25 with some terrible cancer. It was a disaster. The whole movie, the whole thing was terrible. Then they found out about my kidney thing. And then I'm like, we'll make a movie about your client. And they said, you have special beliefs about how to die, right? You have special opinions about what happens to people when they die. And can we film you as you prepare? As you prepare for that? Can we make a film? So this is a piece of the movie in front of 6,000, 7,000 people for the first movie when I was supposed to be a rock star. And we had many meetings, and the film crew has decided we will make a film about Geshehla talking about his life and the danger. How does a Buddhist person prepare to die? How does a Buddhist person prepare for the last part of their life? And I said, wow, now that's a useful movie. I went to Princeton. It's number one university in the world 50 years ago. They don't ever teach you how to die. They don't even mention it. It's the only thing you have to do. And there's no biology diploma. There's no biology department. No one teaches you what's going to happen. No one teaches you how to get ready. If I can make a movie like that, if Netflix can do a movie like that, I think that's something very beautiful. So we're working on it. And you may be asked to be in the movie. They're interviewing people. Okay, just tell them how great I am and stuff like that. My brother, Florin, they asked him about me. He said some wonderful things. I should say terrible. No, he said some good things. But the point is, and not to be serious, how much time I got to? Yeah, that's my life. It's not to get so serious. You're all too serious. We all have to go there, right? Let's get ready. And you can be super relaxed. And you can be super excited. You can see where you're going. If you practice well, if you touch the diamond world, you can see exactly where you're going. And I can tell you the color of the sky there. It's not blue. And you don't have to worry. You don't have a big worry. Will you be with your loved ones? Yes, you will. Don't worry about it. You can design the whole thing. That's Buddhism. That's what we're doing. The 16 steps included, dying well. Did you know this? The 16 steps include that. It's something we all have to do. If someone can teach you to do it well, you'd be crazy not to learn. You'd be crazy. That would be really crazy. If someone can teach you to do the right thing, go to the right place, be with the people you want to be with, you'd be crazy not to learn it. That's what we're doing. Okay. Anyway, so that's the first movie. I've got two minutes. My philosophy, never waste two minutes, okay? Next picture. Ta-da. You recognize me? This is my cat. Why she wants to stand on my computer and stick her butt in my face, I don't know. This represents trying to translate in the morning and people disturb your work. You're doing something on the level of teaching people how to die. And someone writes to you about, I don't know, they had a fight with someone. Geshehla, can you be the umpire? And I'm like, you don't understand what I'm doing. You don't understand how precious is an hour or two hours of my time to me, to me who doesn't have time. And you want me to help with a fight you're having with your girlfriend or something? Look, I respect that. I know it's important to you. But I got bigger fish to fry. There's a new idiom. I got bigger things I have to worry about. I have to fight with death. And I have to teach my students to fight with death. And it's a little more important than your girlfriend disagreeing with this. You see what I mean? The nature of your life as you age, the nature of your life is that things will come to waste your time.Things will come to waste your life. I'm here to tell you, you can't do that. You must do what's important first.You cannot waste your time. I'm telling my cat right now, you know, I got to work. Don't stick your butt in my face and don't touch the computer. And I'm just, I mean, it's kind of funny, right? But what I'm saying is your life is so precious. Your life is so valuable. There's so many important things you have to do. Don't waste your time, okay? Don't waste your time on having disagreements with people, being grumpy, you know. Are they assholes? Yes. Should you disagree with them? Yes. Should you talk about them? Yes, you should. Criticize them as much as you can. When you have time, okay? And you don't have time, okay? You don't have time for all that, okay? You got to focus on dying well and going to a good place and taking care of people there also.That was one of the 16, right? He prepared to die in order to take care of his students, and we didn't know if it was the ones here or the ones there. I think it's both, okay? So don't waste your time with small things. Don't waste your time being upset at people. They're going to die. All the people have, mostly the people who really criticized me in my life, there was a guy who made a Bishop Michael website, and he spent his whole life criticizing me, and now he's dead or he's gone. I don't know where he is, and it doesn't matter, you see? It doesn't really matter. They will be gone. You won't remember them. I have a long list of people who didn't like me who are dead, and probably I will die before some of the other ones, and you can't worry about it, okay? Your life's too short. Your life's too short, okay? Don't waste your time. You don't have the time, okay? Got it? You really don't have the time, okay? Don't worry about stupid people, okay? They come from anywhere. So just relax, okay? Life is not so serious. The people you don't like are not so bad. It's not so important to make sure they suffer. Just give it up and focus on what's important, okay? And by the way, you'll be super happy.You'll be super, super happy, okay? Cool? That's Lam Rim for today, and then I think the schedule is we set up for music for how long? An hour? And then we'll play music at 6 30, is it? Yeah. Now let me talk about the music, okay? When we have time to practice, and when all the good musicians show up, we're still pretty bad. And this time, we didn't have any time to practice, and all the good musicians couldn't come. So just move with the music and enjoy yourself. It was supposed to be tomorrow as a celebration for the end of the course, but some of the musicians couldn't come. The whole schedule got messed up. So we're going to do it tonight. My suggestion is don't listen to the music, just dance, okay? All right? And have fun, okay? Have fun. That's a big, big, big Buddhist practice, is to have fun, okay? And when I meet those really dull, serious Buddhists, it's just, you know, dance, have fun, celebrate, okay? You did the most viable thing in the world this week. You are the coolest people in the world, and come on, you can dance a little bit, okay? Even Tim can, you know, like this, okay? Anything else before we, yeah, go ahead. So one of the things we're going to be doing, we're going to be dancing. We're also doing this concert as a benefit for one of our very important programs at ACI. And every year we offer scholarships to the Sedona High School students, and specifically to students who, well, Sedona is where we live, and it's a very, we all live in Rimrock now, apparently. It's a small town, and there's a lot of children of immigrants in Sedona, and they've had difficulties being able to afford going to college. And about 10, 12 years ago, we started this program with Christine Walsh to offer scholarships to about 10 students a year, so then they can fund their first year of school. And so we give $15,000 of scholarships every year. So we're asking, normally this money comes from our generous donors in Taiwan, and we thought, wouldn't it be nice if maybe everyone else had an opportunity to support this program? So we're looking to raise $15,000 tonight. We've already got $100, which is in my pocket, so now we have 3,000 or 300? So now we have 3,100, and we're trying to get to 15,000 so we can support about 10 people going to college next year. So dance, shake your booty, have a lot of fun, and donate to this. And part of the idea is that we're planting seeds because we're here to, this is an educational organization, and we're trying to learn something very special. So we're trying to, we're giving opportunities to other people to follow their dreams and learn what they want to learn. So that's one of the reasons we do that, as well as supporting people who are, in a lot of cases, they need the money to be able to even go to school. So if you're interested, there's a QR code behind my head. I'll get out of the way. I will come up on stage a couple times to see how well we're doing. Those of you online, you also can help us out as well. So we're going to take about an hour break. We'll get set up, and then, excuse me, it's an hour. So we're going to set up and we're going to ask everyone to mosey on out so they can rehearse because they want to make it the best they can make it in the short amount of time they have. And again, just enjoy yourself. It's supposed to be fun tonight. All right. Thank you very much.

Class 7 -

28 October 2025

It's a guy walking out of a door, Brian. You good? So we're going to go back to the angel, the devil debates an angel by his holiness, the first principle. And there's a verse here, I'll read it to you. It's actually a couple of verses. As you perform even the slightest accidental movement of your body, you stay without moving an inch. If you go like this, you actually don't move. Even as you stretch and bend your legs and arms and the like, you never stretch and you never bend. A hundred dollars right away. It hasn't been one minute yet. You Vajrayogini guys, he's purposely using a very familiar phrase called stretch and bend. Um close. What's the Tibetan? Khen kum. Yeah. Nice. It's not Khen kum. Wait, my assistant. Hey Ibai. Let's wake up. Okay. Yeah. It's called Khen kum. Say Khen? Khen. So, in the Vajragini Diamond Way, which is the one we will be studying, if you wish, she's got like, this is her, okay, and, oh, thank you, so he's being cute, okay, in English we say he's being cute, he's showing off, which I never do that, and he's saying, even you gyan or you kum, okay, and it has a big meaning in Vajragini, gyan kum, you never stretch, you never bend, as you go, you never go, as you stay, you never stay, when you lay down, you never lay down, when you fall asleep, you never sleep, when you awake, you never wake up, when you eat, you never eat, and you can drink and drink and never drink, you dress, but you are never dressed, okay, that's the first Panchen Lama, you know, what's he trying to say, he's trying to say that if things are coming from seeds in your mind, if when you raise your arm, you're not raising your arm, the arm didn't move, right, the seeds changed, and you're seeing a new result of seeds, okay, it's not that you decide to raise your arm, and the arm goes up, there's a day that will come in your life, when your arm will refuse to listen to you, okay, which is very frustrating, if you've ever sat with dying people, which I have, they get very frustrated, you say, get up, and they're like, I can't, you say, Okay, just sit up. No, I can't. Put your head up. And then I can't, I can't. And then they get very angry, actually, some of them. And there will come a day for each one of us when we cannot raise our hand, we cannot raise our hand. Okay. And it's very frustrating. And you feel angry. It's strange, how a person who's dying will feel so angry, but it's very common. And the body doesn't listen to you. What she's saying to the devil is that seeds are opening in your mind, seeds are opening, pictures are coming out, a new picture comes out of your hand up. And there was a picture before that of your hand down. And it's just one picture after another picture. Okay, you are not raising your hand. You are not raising your hand. And that's so uncomfortable. For all of us, you know, you're like, guess that. I want to raise my hand. I will look watch. Go up. Oh, go down. Good boy. You feel like you are in charge of your body. And he's saying something very radical. He's saying, when your hand goes up, it's not because you wanted it. It's because your seeds changed, that different seeds are opening in your mind. You are not raising your hand. Who are you then? That gets complicated. Okay, who are you? If you're not the person who is driving this body like a car, then where are you? And who are you? And listen, it's kind of amazing. You are your seeds. You are the opening of your seeds, which means that you are how you treat other people. That's very radical. Okay. And literally, you are your seeds. You are not a cat who decides to raise their arm and jiggle his smiles. It's not you. It's your seed shift. And then your hand is up. Okay. And that means there's no real you of the kind that we used to think about. There's just newer seeds opening. Okay, you, you do not have any self-control. Well, we knew that, especially with dessert, right? Asking my wife, she said, by the way, she's always trying to get me to eat better. And somehow the salad disappears and the cake shows up. I don't know what happens. Somebody asked me how many students you want in your life. I said 365 with different birthdays. But you don't. Okay. By the way, Michael, that means I'm not me. That means I'm just the opening of seeds. And that's correct. You are just a pile of seeds. And those are how you treated other people. So it's not that you act a certain way to other people. And then things happen to you. It's not that karma is happening to you. And you're responding to old karma's opening in your mind. The responder is a seed opening. The things that happen to you are seeds opening. You are just seeds opening. Okay. And you don't really have a choice about a lot of things. And I think I have a lot of Asian students. And I love them. And it's amazing. And I feel very happy from all countries, many countries of Asia. But I often get a question, and I think it must be in those languages, especially Chinese. People will say, guess what about fate? What's the Chinese word? Bing yin? Bing yin. Yeah. What about fate? So there's a big thing in many countries that when you're born, like in India, they'll ask you, they want to ask you what's your birth date? They'll say, which planet were you born under? And then you say Saturn, and they go, sorry. You're supposed to have a hard life if you're born under Saturn. And many people ask me, what's the place of fate in this Buddhism? In this correct presentation of Buddhism? Where is fate? What's the place of fate? And we can say there is no fate. We can easily say there is no fate. And if you were born in a country or in a system of your cultural system that told you, oh, you were born on Saturday, you're always going to be having headaches, or something like that, you can just forget it. There's no such thing. You are in complete control of your destiny. Your only destiny is what you decide. But you have millions of old seeds. You have millions of old seeds. So your whole you, there's no other you than your seeds. And that's the emptiness of the person. That's a big part of the emptiness of a person. We talked about the emptiness of the person and the emptiness of things, which means the parts of the person. It doesn't mean glasses and buildings and things like that. That emptiness means it's not happening from its own side. It's coming from the seeds. Everything's coming from the seeds. Well, Geshe-la, that means there's no fate. That's correct. That means no one can help me. That's not correct. You can help yourself. If you massage your seeds, if you work on your seeds, then you have power to do what you want. You have power to make what you want happen. Because you are seeds opening and nothing more, you have ultimate power. But you have a lot of tendencies which are hard, ingrained. They are very ingrained. You have a thousand seeds for being jealous of someone in your mind. If you're that kind of person, it's going to be more difficult to not be jealous. But because the jealousy is coming from seeds, you can change it. Everything's changeable for a Buddhist. And by the way, for everybody else, they just don't know about seeds. And that's why if you're going to have two great books about Buddhism, you might want to have one that tells you how the seeds control your life. And you might want to have another one that tells you how to be a good person, moral person, so that you make good seeds. Yeah, that was slick. Who did that for you? That was slick. We didn't plan that. Yeah, so you want to have Stanley and Xiao Ping's books. And I, you know, I like that we work together a lot. I'm happy that they are successful in their translator work. But it's not only that. It's that the two books they chose long ago, Grandpa chose for them. They are very, very important for what we're talking about. And you can understand a lot more if you get the books and you read them. A hundred bucks. Actually, Veronica loves to give away money almost more than I do. So it's lucky we married each other. What was the question? I can't remember. When I say read these books, what do I mean? Read half a page before you go to sleep. Yeah, good. Thank you. That's Mike Hoffman, right? Yeah. You played amazing piano last night. Almost as good as Nick Su, who is almost as good as Anatole's piano. But the best one of all was Kitty. Where is he? Thank you for that. We have lots of piano players, but we have a guitar player shortage. Okay. So I have a picture here. Where's that other picture, Brian? You ready? No, the one before. Yeah, the guy stepping out of the door. It's not the guy stepping out of the door. Who's stepping out of the door? His seeds are stepping out of the door. How much control does he have over this? I like to call it, you know, me and my teacher. So 50 years ago, we both moved to a Mongolian temple in New Jersey. And we were both guests. We were not Mongolians. And it was a little hard there. Everyone spoke Mongolian or Russian. He was a guest, I was a guest. And we were not part of the community. And the community was a very tight community. It was hard. It took many years for us to be accepted in the community. And so we had to do a lot of the work ourselves. I built his house by myself, mostly, and the classroom. And then in Buddhism, if that classroom and that house are close to the temple, there should be a circumambulation sidewalk around ball, you don't split the temple from the priest house or something. So we had to put a sidewalk in and nobody would help us. So you know, my teacher is 60 years old. And I don't know anything about cement. And we we did it, we went to the library, there's no internet, okay. Diamond Mountain was built from YouTube videos. That's why people poured the cement down their shower drain while it was still wet. And we had interesting things happen. But we had to, we had to screen it, we had to figure out how to lay the cement and all this stuff. And I became very familiar with cement. Because we really messed it up for a few times. We built a special cement platform for fire preachers. And teachers from all over the East Coast used to come and do their preaches there. So there's three kinds of cement. One is wet. One is setting, you know. And you can scratch it, but you can't really screen it, you can't make it flat, you can scratch it, you can write your initials, but you can't change how it looks. And then when it gets harder after another day or so, you can't affect it at all, you could just crack it. So cement goes through this process of being wet. And then it gets hard, but scratchable. And then it gets hard enough that you can't change it unless you break it. And good cement, the reaction, the chemical reaction, which is a very valuable thing in human culture, it will, it will set for two or three years. It takes two or three years for the cement to reach its hardness. It's a chemical reaction on the inside, it's hot, it's warm. And if it gets cold, if it's, if winter comes before it sets, then it will never. So your seeds are similar to that cement, okay? Your karmic seeds are very similar to the cement. In the early days, they are very movable, they are very changeable. After a little time goes by, you can work on them, but it's hard. And then there comes a time when they're so hard that it's almost impossible to change them. But they continue to, what's the word for cooking? Pachyate. Pachyate. They continue to cook from the inside. So it's important to know people often ask me, you know, a dark cancer, can I fix the cancer? And then I'm like, well, can you tell me, is it a wet seed or is it a dry seed or is it a hard seed? You know, what kind of seed is it? What kind of, what kind of cement is your seeds for your cancer? And then, of course, they'll always say, I don't really know. Who knows? They could be a thousand years old. I don't know. So there are all kinds of seeds, all seeds. But something important to say, no matter how ripe, no matter how long your seeds have hardened, it's never too late to change them. It's never too late to change them. You can always change them. There's still some cooking process on the inside that you can change. So is your, are the decisions you make sitting in your chair to move or not to move, you know, to nod your head or not nod your head. This decision about your eyelids. I'm just kidding. Afternoons are bad. My wife asked me, why do you have your classes in the afternoon? And I'm like, well, you know, we like to do yoga and meditate in the morning, stuff like that. So I take this time with the classes. The point is you can change your seeds anytime. Some seeds will be harder to change. Certain diseases, certain events in your country, you know, there's certain seeds that are difficult to change, but all seeds are changeable because all events happen from seeds. So you always, if you know the four powers, you can you can. And you should try and you should not give up. You should keep trying. All right. To summarize that process, you should, if something bad is happening to you that you don't want, then the most powerful thing you can do is to try to regret what you might have done to plant those seeds. And I don't put a huge amount of emphasis on that. I don't want all my students going around grumpy and telling themselves what a bad person they must have been. I don't think it's that helpful. I think a positive approach is better. The antidote power, of course, you're supposed to regret that you might have hurt someone else. You might have made someone else sad or something like that. But I believe more in a very positive, active antidote, what they call antidote. Do something especially sweet and do something especially helpful to other people. And, you know, you can sin and be guilty about your old bad deeds. And you can be, you can feel like you're a bad person. And I don't think that's as helpful as the fourth power, third and fourth power, where you choose good things to do, new good things to change the cement. So that's a very important teaching. You should decide, no, your seed should decide to help other people joyfully. And then you can fix all your old karmas. So when I see people really grumpy and telling me about all the people they hurt in the past, I'm like, no, you're supposed to be happy that you have all these chances now to help other people and do sweet things for other people. And that changes the cement much faster. And personally, I'd rather concentrate on that. I'd rather concentrate on being sweet to other people to cancel my bad seeds. I like that. I don't like to sit in a chair in a dark room and think about how bad I used to be. Okay, I don't think that's as powerful. I know it's not as powerful. All right. Yeah. Okay, so even stepping out the door is a pile of seeds going on. Next one. Yeah. This picture, I was trying to accomplish something. We tend to think of our life as the major events of our life. Like you say, where did you grow up? And what was your favorite activity in school? And where and how did you meet your husband or your wife? Something like that. When we talk about the karma of your life, then people tend to think of the big things in their life. This is the day I met my wife. This is the day this happened. This is when I had my first child. People remember these dates and then they talk about the car. This is the day we had the car accident. And I hurt my neck and it still hurts, or something like that. When I talk about seeds that have happened in your life, seeds that have opened in your life, you tend to think about the big things that happened in your life. And the next part, the angel is reminding the devil that there's time in between those big events. Like there's a couple of years between when you met your wife or your husband and when you had your first baby or something like that. There's all those minutes between the major events of your life. And the angel is encouraging the devil, don't think of seeds as something that goes off every three to four years and something big happens in your life. That's not the point. If you walk from here to the bathroom, you're just using up a whole stream of seeds. The stream of seeds opening from the day of your birth to the day of your death is constant. It's 65 per second. Even you sleep, even you, I don't know, fall asleep in class, you're still using up seeds. You're still using up seeds. And it never stops. The seeds opening is what makes time pass in your life. If there were no seeds opening every second, the watch on your hand would stop. That makes time pass for you. Seeds make time pass for you. And so seeds are going off all the time and you really can't stop them. They are going off all the time. So it's a mistake to think of karma as a bunch of stuff that goes off every two years or something like that. Every time you get a major sickness, every time your work changes dramatically, and you tend to think, oh, I have seeds opening. No, they were opening the whole time. Between the time you got married and the time you had your first child, you were using up seeds every second, every millisecond. So it's important to be sensitive. What the angel is trying to say is, when you blink an eye, that's a huge pile of seeds used up. And that process continues throughout your life. And it should be a source of hope for you. Because every second of your life, between big events in your life, is also coming from your seeds, then you're the boss of your life. You can change your life. You can change everything about your life. You can't complain. Once you know about karma, once you know about the four steps, you have power to change your mind. And you have power to do anything. But you have to know that in order to do it. It's never too late to do anything. Karma doesn't respect limitations of time. Somebody tell you, you can't build a house in three weeks. If you have the karma, you can build a house in three minutes. We did it at Dragon's Head. Right? We did. It should be we buy the land and we build a classroom. We bought the land and the classroom suddenly showed up. And I was like, man, Kat, we should have known that back in the Diamond Mountain days. You know, we worked so hard. When I go to Diamond Mountain, my hands hurt. All right. Then it gets into an interesting thing. Okay, next picture. I asked the AI, I read in the news this morning, OpenAI just invested $80 billion in another AI company. Microsoft laid off 2000 people as a result. And I'm like, I don't care if you have 80 gigawatts of power running your AIs. Can you just put five fingers on the guy's hand? Or can you get his face straight? I said, can you put a guy standing on his head? And this is what I got. Which is logical, but not correct. Which is a big difference in Buddhism also. Then I was looking at it and I was a little bit irritated. But I told you, you know, you want me to teach Diamond Way. You think I'm going to teach you Diamond Way after these classes. AIs don't make mistakes. In a Diamond Way world, there's no mistakes. Then I looked at the picture and I said, Vajrayogini sent me this picture. Now, how do I use it is a different question. And then I was thinking about it and I like it. It's pretty good. Say NYON DANG BA. By the way, very useful, Tim, in your text especially. NYON DANG BA DANG SOS PA MED Okay. This is a debate ground expression. A lot of the debate ground expressions are unique. They are not normal to them. In fact, in our monastery, in the debate ground, we will have about 500 guys debating at the same time. The local farmers will come to watch. It got to be a little bit too crowded because we were slapping and we would keep hitting farmers with your hand. Then they made a rule that they had to stand behind the wall. They made a special wall only waist high. They could stand outside the wall and then we'd debate close to the wall so they could hear. We made this agreement with all the farmers around, the Tibetan farmers who wanted to come and listen. Then they figured out they couldn't understand anything anyway. Because we debate, the language we use for debate is 1000 years old. We debate in 1000 year old language and it's very difficult and it's fast. BSAM N支 Mont YON DU MWas MAY GYUR RGYAS SBANG ZHUGS MA BYA there are some men who can do it, some men who can do it, some men are done with it, but the yamata, bleh. Like that. And for someone just learning Tibetan, so there's a whole special, I don't know how to say it, doth, Timothy, doth you thinkest that unchanging material entities should change to changing material entities if they have the requisite karmic causes of those 13 kinds. And then you can say, I almost said a bad word. But then there's these common expletives, expletive, new word. It's like, something like that. And we use them in debate. That's how Noah's the Postulate for the 14 unanswered questions. You just say, what the hell are you talking about? So you mix, how do you say? Disrespectful, funny language between 1500 year old words. You see what I mean? So this is one of them. NYON DANG LA DANG TSOS PA MED It means, I refuse to debate with an insane person. There's no benefit. NYON PA is the ancient word for to go crazy. NYON DANG LA means, we have English, baddie, lose your mind completely. Lose your mind completely. And then there's a tradition in the monastery. If a guy refuses to be logical over and over and over again, you give him logic and he's like, I don't believe that. And then you say, okay, is A B? Yes. Is B C? Yes. Is A C? And he says, no. And then you're like, let me repeat. Is A B? Yes. Is B C? Yes. So is A C? I don't know. I disagree. And then you say, NYON DANG LA DANG TSOS PA MED And it's a very beautiful word and it's a beautiful rule in the debate ground that you have the right to walk away from a debate anytime. You're in front of 500 deshi candidates and you're in the middle of a debate. If your opponent refuses to be logical, you can pull the NYON DANG LA. It means, I love you. I'm sure you're very intelligent, but you're just not being logical. Did I prove the first thing to you? Yes. Did I prove the second thing to you? Yes. So is the first thing the third thing? No. Okay, look, man, you keep going. I'll be over on the other side of the debate ground. If you decide to be logical, come over and let me know. And that's a... It's an accepted strategy in the debate ground. You can say to another person, you're just not being logical. I can't talk to you anymore about this topic because you refuse to be logical. It happens between husbands and wives a lot. Not my marriage, but you see it happen between people who are very close. And I wanted you to know that there is this custom which you would never guess. In a very serious monastic debate, it could be deciding whether you will get a Geshe degree or not. And you have the right to bail out if the other person is not being logical. And I think, we're in the middle of an argument between wisdom and misunderstanding. We're in the middle of an argument, six, 598 verses, argument, between wisdom and misunderstanding. And then there's certain points in the debate where misunderstanding refuses to be logical. And she, the angel, she sweetly says, I love you, I'm sure you're a good person, you're not being logical, and I have better things to do. And so there is an example, several examples in the text where the angel says, I'm sure you're a good person, I like you. We had some pretty good debate. We proved a few things. Now you're getting crazy. Now you're not being logical. Then what is the proper Buddhist thing to do? And now we're talking about, when you're talking to somebody about karma or something like that, and they just get, they get to where they refuse to think logically or to be logical. And I think all of us have been in that position, especially with family members, things like that. And the tradition in our lineage is to let it go. Don't stand there and say, you're not being logical. If you were logical, you would accept my seed thing right away. The people in your life, including yourself, will not always be logical, I think. And then you have to relax and you have to understand when the point has come that people are not being logical. And you have to be compassionate and you have to let it go. And you can't keep fighting or arguing. Okay, let it go. Tell them you like the shoes they have on. Where'd you buy those? God, those ninja, those shoes, something. Just change the subject gracefully and just let it go, okay? As a Buddhist, who's correct.And talking to a family member who is undertaking a course of action which could kill them. Got to be graceful. And you got to be calm. And you have to let things go sometimes. There's just times when it's not going to work, okay? And you have to, in your heart, you have to say, NYON DANG BA DANG TSOS PA MED You know, this person is not being logical, but that's where they are right now. So you can't get upset, you can't get angry. Who made them illogical? You did. That's such a hard logic. Yeah, so this person, they're being contrary.They're saying everything opposite. They're standing on their head. In English, we say they're standing on their head, okay? And it is kind of ugly, but I don't know. It's okay. It represents being illogical, okay? And there comes a time in a Buddhist life when you have to say, NYON DANG BA DANG TSOS PA Let it go. You have to let it go. And it might be years. You have to let it go. And you have to be graceful. And you have to realize where it's coming from. You have to relax, just relax. Don't get into these big Dharma arguments with NYON DANG BA. Okay? Just let it go and move on, okay? Come back when they're ready. That's what Buddha did. Come back when they're ready. Be ready to come back when they are ready. Don't give up on them, but come back when they're ready. Oftentimes, when there's a tragedy, people are more willing to listen to new ideas, okay? So that might be the time. All right. Next. Yeah. I go to 4.15, is that correct? Just like you started 10 minutes late. Are you going to add the 10 minutes? Okay. We'll do Q&A in nine minutes, okay? Any Q you have, I will A. Unless you're NYON DANG BA. Okay. Having said that, if someone's truly not being logical, and you're trying to help them, you're trying to say something, and they're just not being logical, then in our tradition, back to the time of the Buddha, you let it go, and you be sweet to them, and you take care of them, and serve them, and make them happy, and then you wait for the day when it's the right time to talk about seeds or something. And then you let it go, okay? Gracefully. Because we have been there also. The Buddha's waited a long time on us also. Okay? All right. It's just recently that we started to listen. But having said that, back to the time of the Buddha, there's a tradition in our lineage of arguing, logically. There's a tradition of ripping apart ideas and fighting logically, intellectually, with each other. And that's a... And it's very disturbing. I had a guy, he was the head of the Asia Division of New York Public Library. And I kept going in my lunch hour.My office was two blocks away from the New York Public Library. John with the two lions out the front, just like a Tibetan temple. Okay, on 5th Avenue. There's two lions in the front of the library. And I used to go there to read the Tenggyur. They had a copy of the Tenggyur, which is the scriptures. And I used to go to read it. And I got to know him because there's not a big demand for Tenggyur. And he was sort of interested that someone would come and borrow these ancient books and sit there and read them. And so we got to know each other pretty well. And he asked me, eventually he said, could I come and see your monastery? Could I come and see your monastery? And I said, yeah. And I set the whole thing up. It was a big deal. He's an important person. I want to make sure he doesn't get diarrhea too bad. And so I got everything ready. We went together. And then after two days, he said, I'm leaving. And I'm like, I did all this work to get you here. I got you into the monastery. You had to have a special pass at that time to enter a monastery. And you had to have a government permission. And sometimes it would take six months or a year to get it. And so I went in, I took him in and he said, I can't handle the debating. Everything else is fine. The monks are sweet. The prayers are nice, the meditations. We get up at five, we meditate together. 3,000 people meditating together. And he said, that's so sweet. And the morning prayers, they're beautiful. And everything's cool. But the debate disturbs me.It seems too violent. And it seems too much the opposite of meditation. You are attacking each other. You are looking for ways to attack each other. And then you're doing these very violent motions. By the way, in 25 years in the debate ground, I never saw anyone hit anyone. There's a limit. There's a half a centimeter rule. In that you never actually hit the other person. You would be thrown out if you hit another person. But you're supposed to taunt them and yell at them and tell them how stupid they are. And scream all night. You get big cuts between your fingers. And then the blood spurts in the guy's face. If you're having a good debate, his face should be covered with blood. So then he said, it disturbs me, this kind of aggression in the debate ground that disturbs me. And he left, and he never came back. It disturbed me too. When I first got there, it was disturbing. But then I did it for 25 years, and it's actually quite noble, and it's quite uplifting to be able to prove your points under pressure. The idea is that if you learn to defend your positions logically, calmly, under pressure... By the way, the attacker is supposed to be insane. Jump up and down, smash your feet, slap your hands. And the respondent is supposed to be, duh. My... Suck. You're supposed to sit there like, huh? What? You kidding me? Like that. The respondent is supposed to be super chill. And then the debater is supposed to be crazy. But you switch. During the debate, you switch positions. You always switch positions. You have a chance to be the aggressor, and he has a chance to be the peaceful one. So you have to learn both. Why am I saying that? In Buddhism, for two and a half thousand years, there is a place for being tough in an argument, especially about dharma. There is a time, there is a place when you should stand up for what you believe, and you should hold it, and you should be tough, and you have to be hard as diamond. There is a place, and there is a proper time I think especially if someone's hurting someone. I was studying in the Himalayas, and I was also learning sitar at night. I'm not sure my teacher approved of it. I don't know. But I would walk down the mountain to the sitar teacher's house, and then walk back up the mountain every evening. And then that time there were a lot of refugees, and coming to the Himalayas, and there was a lot of tension, racial tension. So I was walking down, and I saw a big group of Indians beating up a Tibetan refugee. And I was above, and I was walking down the mountain, and I could see them really beating him up, and hurting him. And so I got my sitar ready, and I started running down the mountain, and then I hit them with my sitar. And like 10 guys are like, boom, and the whole thing just exploded, and the sitar was all smashed up. But they stopped hitting the guy. My sitar teacher got really upset. He heard about it before I reached the school, and he was waiting for me. Anyway, so there is a time, there's a proper time and place when you should resist, and you should insist. So this represents, they're having, if you have a close friend, and if you care for each other, and they're doing something karmically, which will hurt them a lot, then there is a place, and there is a time to be tough, and to stand up and say, that's wrong. You shouldn't be doing that. That's a wrong thing to do. Like war, there's a time when you should stand up, and you should say, I disagree. This is wrong. You should not do this. So there is a place, Buddha, we have like six holidays, Buddhist holidays every year, major holidays. It's called Duchen. Duchen means big time. And one of them is the day that Lord Buddha attacked his opponents, and he went into battle on the debate ground, Lord Buddha, two and a half thousand years ago. And it was a bloody day. Nobody really bleeding, okay? But it was philosophically, it was a bloodbath. Of course, our side won. But what I'm saying is, there is a time and place, if you love another person, and you think they will listen, if you fight, if you argue, if you stand up for the idea of not hurting people, or something like that, then you should, as a Buddhist, you should jump into the fray. We call fray, new word for you, battle. We should jump into the battle, and we shouldn't be afraid. And there is a time when you should stand up for what you believe. There's many cases, I think, in Christianity, where a Buddhist has been asked to, recently, hundreds of cases, where a Buddhist was asked to hurt their teacher, and they refused, and they fought back. So there is a time and place for debate. If you think there's a chance the other person might change, then go at it. If you're close to the person, and they trust you, and you love them, then kick their ass, philosophically. Don't let them put up with sloppy thinking about karma, and things like that. Stand your ground, and be tough. There is a place for that. There's also a place for, ,GNAN YIN DE BA DANG SEMS PA MED, You go out in the corner and argue with yourself, I'm out of here. You're not listening to anything. And just gracefully, say, look, I got, you know what always works for me? With the kidney thing? I'm sorry, I gotta go to the bathroom. I'll debate with you when I get back. Don't worry, we'll go at it. And then I just never come back from the bathroom. There's time for that. And then there's a time to fight. All right, we have time for Q and A. So who wants to Q? Right, can I ask something? That's the whole idea. Yeah, two days ago, you said something that, excuse me, you said that the direct perception of emptiness is a projection of the mind. And then that led me to think, okay, well, if it's the projection of the mind, are you watching a seed that's ripening? And if that's the case, how do you distinguish between a seed that's ripening as deceptive reality and a seed that's ripening as ultimate reality? Or is that projection of the mind, you're witnessing something that's not a mental seed at all? I didn't understand. That's a good question. And it gets very delicate. And you know, in the monastery, in the Geshe course, then we'll say, the teacher will say, oh, that's delicate. That's a delicate question. And it means very difficult to understand, okay? During the direct perception of emptiness, you, and by the way, it comes in the angel debate, in the devil angel debate. It's a big, big topic. And it goes on for probably 50 verses or something. It's a long, long topic. Supposedly, when you see emptiness directly, it's not like when you're looking at a tree, for example. Okay, when you look at a tree, your seeds are opening into, pictures are coming out of your mind and they are creating this tree, the image of a tree. And you are watching pictures that floated out of the back of your mind through your madhya-bhuvah, bhuvah-madhya, and then it created the tree. So Bill's question is really good because in the direct perception of emptiness, supposedly you are seeing only the absence of anything else, okay? Could a tree come any other way? Could a tree be any other way? And the answer is no. How many trees don't come from people's... I call them seed pictures, personally. I like to make a new word called seed pictures. How many trees don't come from seed pictures? Zero. When you see zero, is it also opening from a seed? See, that's a question.And I think you have to say it is. There's no existing thing in the universe which is not opening from a seed. But Geshe-la, that implies this kind of curve. That implies the seed opens, picture comes out, picture gets firm, you see the thing, and then it wears out. That's why we get old, for example. The seeds are wearing out. So then you're implying that emptiness can change. And the answer is no. It's not true. Emptiness cannot change. Emptiness exists, but it doesn't grow. Emptiness exists, but it doesn't decrease. You see it. But to say that it's not coming from a seed is a problem, because that would mean that it didn't have dependent origination. By the way, origination word in the native language is not the word for growing. It's the word for coming into being. Okay, big difference, all right. So that's a valid debate. It's a very famous debate. Geshe-la, are you then having conceptual thought during the direct perception emptiness? You say no. But are you perceiving a result of the process of something coming out of your seeds? You'd have to say yes. You'd have to say it is. You'd have to say that. And that's why you come down out of it, for example. Okay, the seeds wear out, all right. Okay, it's a difficult point. You can say this. Your seeds are producing the image of something missing. That's okay. We can say that. Your seeds are producing the image of something missing, which never changes. Is that because emptiness is always associated with something that's positive, with an object? Like if it's an emptiness of an object? You could have the emptiness of the lack of enough money to pay your bills, okay? And that's an absence, you see? So you could have an emptiness of an absence, but you could have the emptiness... Obviously, you can have the emptiness of a positive thing, but you could also have the emptiness of a negative thing or an absence. You can also have the emptiness of things that never change. Otherwise, you'd have to say that the fact of space to accommodate objects is contradictory to emptiness. See what I mean? It's a delicate question, though, and it's a very, very good question. The process of the perception of normal reality and the process of the perception of emptiness are completely different. You can say that, but they're both still caused by seeds. Well, they come about through seeds. Okay, something like that. They are not experientially, they're completely different. It feels completely different, okay? All right, next question. I'll leave it up to the microphone nurse. Thank you, Geshe-la, for your teaching. And you said different time student, and sometimes you had to wait until the time to come to listen to the pen story, something like that. And sometimes you had to fight them, I know, such as you broke your instrument, and sometimes you had to debate your idea. So how do I know what's the time to question? Yeah, yeah, sometimes they make me annoying. Okay, thank you, Geshe-la. So basically his question is, is it correct, am I being a good Buddhist if sometimes I just let it go? I'm debating something with somebody, I'm trying to convince them of something, and then they just refuse to be logical. They refuse to follow logic. There is a time to walk away, happily, with a smile. And then there's a time to not walk away, and there's a time to fight. And of course, the judgment of whether to fight or walk away depends on how much do you love that person? How much do you love that person? The decision to fight or walk away should be determined by love. If you love them enough, and if they're ready, then fight. And be willing to cause a disturbance, and be willing to get their hatred back. And that may happen. And then you still love them, it doesn't change your love for them. And then if you love them enough, then fight. Or if you love them enough, let it go. But the decision has to be what will help them. And I think many of us, by the way, until you are an Arya, you never do a selfless thing in your whole life. Until you see emptiness directly, you never do a selfless thing in your whole life. Not a single thing. After you're an Arya, you do selfless things once every hundred years or so. Big difference. Now, what I'm saying is, until you touch emptiness, the basis on which you make decisions is always faulty. You're always making some... There's always some self-existence there. And it's never pure. The decision to fight or the decision to let it go for another 20 years is all selfish. It's all a selfish thing. Until the day you see emptiness directly, you never do a good deed selflessly, 100% selflessly. You never. There's always something self-interested. That's why Jesus said, don't advertise your good deeds. Don't tell anybody about your good deeds. So anyway, I think if you really practice Lojong, I think Seiji's here. His book, you should get his book. It's 900 pages on how to be a nice person. And why we need 900 pages? Because it's so hard. So it's a masterpiece. His book is a masterpiece and you should get it. But in the end, it has to be, whether you fight, whether you keep arguing, or whether you say, let's talk about it later. It's okay. We'll talk about this more later. The decision is made on what will help the other person, what will help this person. And that's hard to do, especially when you're having an argument or something like that. It's hard. It's really hard to think what will help this person the most. And we have to say one thing, right? There will be days when your judgment is wrong. There will be days when you decide to fight and you should have given it up. Or there'll be days when you give it up and you should have fought because the person dies the next day. And then, by the way, nothing feels worse than that. I had a chance to convince this person and they were close and then I gave it up. And then they died the next day. And then, it could be thousands of years before you meet again. So, again, it's a judgment. But I think you, like all other moral judgments, you have to do your best. You have to try to love the other person intensely and that'll help you make the right decision. And you have to be ready and brave enough to make the wrong decisions sometimes, because you will. And don't get all personal about it. Don't give up talking to other people because one person got really angry at you and won't talk to you. Don't give up teaching just because you have one bad experience. The moment you teach, you will attract demons, okay? The moment you start to teach somebody, you will attract intense negative energy. And you got to understand that ahead of time. The moment you start to build a retreat center or a five-house organization, stuff will happen. And you have to be graceful and you have to be, what do you call it? Funny. You have to be in a good mood, you think. How's it going? Tim, how's it going? You say, God, we don't have enough money. 20 people just quit. The contract sells through for the hotels. And it's, man, it's so much fun. So you got to have good humor or you can't be in this Dharma business.You got to be able to have bad things happen and you keep your smile and you just keep going, okay? They say in the Dharma books, a good Dharma person should be a donkey, just be a donkey. You hit them, and they're like... And then you push them and they're like... And they just keep going at their own speed, right? You got to work with donkeys. Then you can handle Dharma students. I'll see you in half an hour? 4.45. Thank you.

Class 8 -

28 October 2025

What Might I Become In The Future?

So Brian, I know the big question. It's a guy stepping on ants.

All right. I'm supposed to teach you how to die. We reached this section in the Lam Rim.. so please don't be depressed, and I don't know why it came at this time. It's almost like Vajrayogini was pushing it. But recently we were at Diamond Mountain and Stanley and Xiaoping came to me and they said, we're going to teach a meditation in the morning, do you have any suggestion for the meditation? And just the day before, I was looking at an old book that I translated 45 years ago. It's the death meditation from Je Tsongkapa's Lam Rim Chen Mo, the Great Book of the Steps on the Path. And I don't know why, but I just said.. it was in my hand already, and I said, do that, teach the Death Meditation from the Lam Rim Chen Mo. So it's been on my mind, I've been thinking about it. And I've been getting ready in case something happens to me during the surgery. I don't plan on it at all, but it's a good time to think about things. And then if it goes wrong and I live a hundred more years, no problem. So don't worry about it, don't think about it. But my job as a teacher is to make you depressed and upset. So my wife and I, we have a small house and we have a driveway. Our neighbor, Gary, he had a big truck full of gravel, big gravel rocks. And he decided to dump them on our driveway as a gift. And it's very difficult to walk up and down now. But there's a red ant house there, red ant bed. And I don't know if it's coincidence, but those red ants, they have a bad bite. They make a bad bite. They made their house exactly where people step out of their car at my house. So the other day, Xiaoping stepped out of her car and stand there talking to me, and I'm watching the red ants crawling up her leg. And I'm like, move, move. So why I'm talking about that? I had this weird thing happen to me the other day. I'm walking out on that gravel. I'm walking near the ants’ house. They are very busy. I'm trying not to step on them. But come on, how careful can you be? If you're really careful, you cannot walk anywhere. So I kind of have a democratic opinion. I will step on some of you, but not all of you. And just because otherwise I can't go to the car, I can't walk to the car, because there's thousands of them, hundreds of them. So at some point, or even when you drive your car away, you're going to kill some of them, right? So then this strange thing happened to me, and I was working on this class, and I was working on this death meditation. And it occurred to me that tomorrow at the same time, I could be there and my wife stepping on me, or the car smashing me. You see what I mean? It's logical, right? It's not crazy. And it's not depressing or something like that. It's just, it's true. I have a karmic connection with those ants. For 20 years, I've been trying not to step on them. But I'm like, well, sometimes you step on them. And then that kind of karma, it's possible if something happened to me, I will be the step-ee and not the step-er. Understand? I will be the one down there, and then maybe they will be the one stepping. You see what I mean? So I think it's a good death meditation. I don't know if tomorrow I won't be one of them. I really don't know. In fact, it's kind of logical that I have some kind of connection with them, because I stepped on them for many years. So I don't know, and you don't know, that you won't be those ants tomorrow. You don't know. Then you start to step more carefully. Then you're like, well, okay, maybe I can avoid them. Maybe I can be careful.

So I don't mean you have to sit down and do a death meditation every day and get depression and think about your funeral casket colors and stuff like that. I'm not saying that. I'm saying logically, you don't know if you won't be them tomorrow. You don't know. So we say in English, act accordingly. If you understand that, then try to be kind to the ants and try to be kind to the animals. You cannot say if you will be them tomorrow or not. You don't know. It's possible. If you met them and you walked on them for 20 years, you probably have some connection. You probably have some karmic connection. Who's to say you won't be born there tomorrow? And it's a good death meditation. I don't like to sit and be depressed and think about myself dying or something. I don't like that. But I try to help myself do healthy meditations when I get a chance. And I don't think you have to sit in your meditation cushion to do a death meditation. I think you can do it all the time, you can do it walking across the lawn. And you don't have to tell anybody. Just do it. Just do it and then you will be ready. The idea is to be ready. If you know something's coming for sure, get ready and then relax. Okay.

What Are The Jewels That Can Protect Me?

All right. This is Gibson's book, right? Okay. They go into a part now about if it's true that I could die anytime, and if it's true that I could become an ant or a cat or anything else, we don't know. And I don't know, then I should do something to get ready. I should have a plan that I don't become an ant. I should have a plan. If I think about it and I notice them, and it occurs to me I might be there tomorrow and John Brady visit me and walk all over me or something, we don't know. Maybe it will happen. We don't know. Someone go to Peachtree Cafe and step on me the whole way. It's possible. I have to say it's possible. So what should I do about it? Is there anything I can do? And then the text goes into the Three Jewels. The Three Jewels. In our tradition, the Three Jewels means three kinds of people can help you, three things can help you. In this situation where you might die and you might become those ants or something, or somebody else, there is someone who can help you, and that's the Three Jewels.

First I told the AI, give me three jewels on the palm of a hand, and they gave me some lousy emeralds. And then I was like, no, I want diamonds. So this is my version of the Three Jewels. And we always talk about Three Jewels and I think it's good to talk about what they are. The ACI courses have a great section about who is the Three Jewels, what are the Three Jewels. And there's a difference between Buddha and the Buddha Jewel, and there's a difference between Dharma and the Dharma Jewel, and there's a difference between Sangha and the Sangha Jewel. So I don't know, Gyelse, what was the year at Vajrapani that I went there? First time? Okay, 1995. I think it was one of the first times I was ever asked to teach in my whole life. It was 1995, something like that. And some group in California asked me to come and teach. And I was very excited because.. No, it was before that, it had to be before that. Anyway, I was so excited that someone wanted me to teach. And I don't know them, I don't know those people much. I think, is that where I met you [Gyelse]? I don't remember. That's where I met you. So I went to teach and they said, what do you want to teach? And I said, I would like to teach about the Three Jewels and how to take refuge, because they say how to protect yourself from a bad death is to take refuge. So I'm like, well, what's taking refuge? It means going for shelter. Like if you're outside and it starts to rain really hard, then you will automatically look for some place that has a covering and you will run there. And that's the idea in Buddhism of taking shelter. You have a problem, it's raining or something like that, you don't want to get wet, and you run under the tree or you run under the place. That's called shelter, that's called taking refuge. And supposedly there's three kinds of refuge that can help us. There's three kinds of refuge that can help us. And I was excited to go to that center in California to teach it because it's something we learn in the Geshe course early. We learn it in the first few years. What does it mean to have Three Jewels? What is the Three Jewels? How can they protect you? How can the Three Jewels protect you? And Buddha and Buddha Jewel is a big difference. Dharma and Dharma Jewel is a big difference. So we say in Buddhism, if you understand what the Three Jewels are, they can protect you. So it's good to find out what they are, and then they can protect you.

What Makes Someone A Buddhist?

And they say interesting thing - there's an old joke that two monks were sitting in the temple. There's 3,000 monks there. The abbot gets up in front, you know, the most educated Geshe in the whole monastery gets up on the throne. And one monk said to the other monk, you see the abbot? ‘Yeah’. He's the greatest Geshe in our monastery. ‘Yeah’. And then he said, you want to know a secret? And he said, ‘what?’ He's not a Buddhist. Everybody's like, ‘what?’ Yeah, the abbot is not a Buddhist, the best Geshe in our monastery is not a Buddhist. ‘Why?’ He doesn't know what are the Three Jewels, and he's not using them. If you're not using the Three Jewels, if you don't know what they are, technically you're not a Buddhist.

Somebody asked me the opposite question. In DCI, for example, we have a rule that we do not teach religion because we teach in many countries. Even in the Buddhist countries, everybody has a different kind of Buddhism. We don't teach religion because we want to teach everybody. So we take the idea, and we teach the idea, but we don't teach religion. So is it possible.. we just said it's possible to be the main person in a monastery of 3,000 monks, and you are not a Buddhist because you don't know what is the Three Jewels. Is the opposite possible? I would say, yeah. Is it possible for a person who's not interested in Buddhism, but they understand what is the Three Jewels, then they become Buddhist in their heart. But do you have to know you're a Buddhist to be a Buddhist? The answer is no. You can be a Christian, and you can be a Hindu, and you can be Jewish, and you can still be a Buddhist in your heart, and there's no contradiction. I would say it's a culture. Some of my teachers said the most careful thing to do when you're a Buddhist teacher around the world, and you're going to many countries, don't talk about Buddhism. Let people do what their parents did. Most people decide what religion to follow, they just follow their parents. My teacher said, that's great, that's fine, because that's what their parents taught them, that's what they grew up with.

I had a big problem. I was at Princeton University, I was in the Christian group. I stayed in the church house for my senior year. I lived in the church house with the priests and I went to the Princeton Cathedral. It's one of the most beautiful cathedrals in the United States. It's beautiful, beautiful Christian cathedral. It fits 3,000 people. So I went there. The next week, I'm in this little Mongolian temple in Howell, New Jersey, and they're all going [rough throated Tibetan singing]. Then I’m like augh [hard on ears]. One week ago, I'm like [singing soft Christian songs]. I'm like, I don't understand, and it was very uncomfortable. I remember it was really uncomfortable. The pictures were terrible, some of those hell realm pictures in that temple, they looked like Salvador Dali on a bad day. And it was hard, it was very hard for me. And then I realized that's my upbringing, that's my culture, it's not my beliefs. The beliefs in both places are very similar. A good Christian and a good Buddhist are doing the same things. I felt close to God or Buddha, in each temple and church I feel the same. I felt.. some friends of mine went to the garden today and I feel the same there. But culturally, what your parents taught you, most people feel comfortable with that. So there's no contradiction in my heart. Sometimes when we travel to San Diego, we have a favorite church there, and we go on Sunday. I take the two Chinese people, and it's fine. And everyone feels happy, okay? That's possible.

So what makes you a Buddhist, in your heart, you can be a Christian, you can go to a Christian church, you can follow Christianity. There's nothing Jesus taught which is contradicting to Buddhism. You can go there, but in your heart, if three things are there, you are a Buddhist also. You are, I don't know, Christian Buddhist. Which is okay, it's fine. Jesus will agree and Buddha will agree. I don't know about the other people. But if you ask the two big guys, they will say, fine, for us it's fine, we like it. So anyway, if you want to be a Buddhist, it doesn't mean you do what your parents did, and you light incense, and you go and put it in the temple, and you say, namo gurubhya, namo buddhaya, namo dharmaya, namo sanghya. Just saying something doesn't make you a Buddhist. Just lighting incense in the temple doesn't make you a Buddhist. Understanding the Three Jewels makes you a Buddhist. And it's very possible to understand the Three Jewels, and you don't know you're a Buddhist, and you're a much better Buddhist than the Buddhists. It's very possible, okay? If a person has a good heart, it's possible they're a better Buddhist than Geshe Michael. Okay, it's possible. There's such a thing, okay?

What is The Buddha Jewel?

All right, so let's go through the Three Jewels. And I had a film.. somebody filming my life story and my death story, and they're like.. we're talking about my church days and what I was, and if you understand what's the Three Jewels, you are a Buddhist, okay? So here's what it is, and I have pictures for you. You ready, Brian?

I love this, you [the image] changed colors. How do you do that? It's strange, mine is gold in the background. Hmm, okay, that's not the same picture, it's not the same one, but I don't mind. I'm just curious how it got up there. Okay, it's close. This is Maitreya, this is the next Buddha. We say there will be a thousand Buddhas in this million years, and our Buddha who came 2,500 years ago is number three, and number four is waiting. Buddha number four in this world is waiting. I like to say that Buddha number four, whose name is Maitreya, is very close, almost arrived. And I like to say much closer than you think, okay? It's very fun, okay? And so they represent that Buddha with one leg is down. It means that Buddha is coming into this world, that Buddha is coming into this world. You can say that Buddha has two parts, like we have two parts - we have physical body, and then we have a mind. So those two things together is Buddha, the Buddha’s body and the Buddha’s mind. The difference is that Buddha’s mind can see all things at the same time, and the Buddha’s body will never die. It's a special body. And the most cool thing about a Buddha, and the thing that makes a Buddha the Buddha jewel.. so if you understand what makes Buddha a Buddha jewel is that.. so they have three bodies - physical body, mental body.. we call body, but it's not really they have three bodies then they have to buy six shoes whenever they go to the store. It's not like that, okay? They have physical body, they have mental.. they have a physical part, they have a mental part, and they have an emptiness part, okay? That beautiful body of Maitreya is coming from their seeds, that mind of Maitreya that can see the whole universe at the same time is coming from their seeds, and there's nothing about Maitreya which is not coming from their seeds, and that is Maitreya. There's nothing about Maitreya's body which is not coming from Maitreya's seeds, there's nothing about Maitreya's mind which is not coming from their seeds, and those two not coming is the real body of Maitreya, and that's emptiness, okay? That's emptiness. You can't find something which is not coming from how you treat other people. You cannot find anything which is not coming from how you treat other people. That truth about Maitreya is Maitreya's real body. That's the ultimate body of Maitreya. There's nothing about Maitreya that didn't come from being nice to other people. Simple. You don't have to make it so complicated, okay? Find me one part about this dude that didn't come from being nice to other people. You can't. You won't find it. That's Maitreya's emptiness. Okay? That's the emptiness of Maitreya. That's the core of Maitreya, and that is the Buddha jewel. That is the Buddha jewel. Do you take refuge in that jewel? Tell me yes or no. Each person, tell me yes or no. Do you take refuge in that jewel? Yeah. Then you should be nice to everybody. Okay? All right? Do you believe in Maitreya? Yes. Do you believe Maitreya has a physical body? Yes. Do you believe he's like that [sitting with one leg down]? He's always like halfway down? Which is very important, he's on the way. He or she is on the way. And then do you believe that there's nothing about Maitreya that didn't come from his seeds or her seeds? You have to say, yeah, I believe that. Okay, you are 33% Buddhist. You are 33% Buddhist. You're already almost halfway there, okay? If you believe that there is such a thing as a person who's created from perfect kindness and compassion, then you are almost halfway to be a Buddhist. That makes you a Buddhist. Okay, cool? You don't have to be a nice person, you just have to believe it. It's much easier. Just kidding. And again, traditionally, he's not sitting cross-legged. He's sitting with one foot is already in the world and he's on his way. He's very close.

What Is The Dharma Jewel?

All right, next picture. Second jewel is a Dharma jewel. I love this picture.

This is the little tiny Mongolian temple where I stayed for 25 years and was educated by my teacher, tirelessly. The first day I met him, I offered him my bank book and he took it and he's like.. he had a car accident, his voice is very Star Wars [gruff like Darth Vador].

[Khen Rinpoche:] What's this?

I'm like, that's a book.

[Khen Rinpoche:] I know it's a book. What kind of book?

I said, that's called a bank book.

He says, what's a bank book?

I said, that's all the money I have. That's everything I have and I'm offering it to you.

And he goes like this [Geshehla throws handkerchief into audience]. And he threw it at me. [Handerchief] Has a special blessing, Rob, be careful. He threw it at me. He hit me on the head with it. And he said, I don't want your money. And he taught me for 25 years and he never asked me for anything. Did I give him? Yes, but he never asked me. And he said, I don't want your money. And he never charged money for his teaching. He would take offerings, but he would not charge money. So anyway, I built him a house in the back of this temple and then I had this weird life where the people in that temple were refugees. They came from Europe, from Southern Russia in 1947. They were all the same age. By the time I got there, they were all exactly 75 or something. Everybody was old and many people had died. And the kids didn't want to stay in a little dirty town in New Jersey, they wanted to go live in Manhattan. So very few younger people there. And the temple was empty all the time. So I have a beautiful, stunning Buddhist Mongolian temple with an original conduit, the only one in North America or South America, and all the Tsongkapa paintings, the only one in the West. And I have it to myself and I can sit there. I can go and meditate there every day as much as I want. So that's where I saw emptiness. I saw it there 50 years ago, last summer. And when a person sees emptiness directly, that is the Dharma jewel. Dharma, you can say books, John Brady saving the Dharma, you're teaching the Dharma, you're studying the Dharma. That is Dharma, that is the teachings. But it's not the Dharma jewel. The Dharma jewel is to see emptiness directly. That's all. If you see emptiness directly, then when a person sees it, they are the Dharma jewel. Their mind is the Dharma jewel. Okay, got it? You don't have to be a Buddha. If you see emptiness directly... You know what's funny? If you see emptiness directly, then every Buddhist in the world is praying to you, if they're real Buddhists. If they're a real Buddhist and you have seen emptiness directly, then every Buddhist in the world, when they go to church, they are praying to you. It's very interesting, it's very strange.

What is The Sangha Jewel?

So Buddha Jewel is the emptiness of a Buddha. Dharma Jewel is the direct perception of emptiness. For $100, what is the Sangha Jewel? By the way, the plain Sangha, if you don't say Sangha Jewel, is people who have the vows of Vinaya. They are the normal Sangha, they are the community. One more thing. Synagogue, Jewish word for church, synagogue, the ‘syn’ comes from Sanskrit sang. ‘God’ comes from Sanskrit ‘ga’. Sangha. Synagogue comes from Sangha, if you want to know.

[Student: Sangha is a person who has seen emptiness directly.]

Good, $100. Yeah, so the nominal Sangha, or what people think of as a Sangha, is all the people who are ordained in some way. Even people who have lifetime layman's vows, these are Sangha, technically. But Sangha Jewel is completely different. You can be a businessman in a DCI group in Kazakhstan, or it doesn't matter. If you see emptiness directly, then you are a Sangha jewel. And again, you can be.. and by the way, we have great groups in Kazakhstan, for example. So you're in a Muslim country, everyone's Muslim, they are studying DCI; if someone understands emptiness correctly, they are the Sangha jewel and every Buddhist in the world is praying to them, a Muslim person who saw emptiness directly. Got it? It's cool, right? So it's important to know what is the Three Jewels. If you think they can help you, you are a Buddhist, that's all. That's all. You're not a Buddhist just to go in a Buddhist temple. You're not a Buddhist just to grow up with Buddhist parents. You're not a Buddhist to offer incense in a temple. You are a Buddhist if you understand emptiness. That's pretty cool.

All right. Why? Because that can protect you. That will protect you. Why does it protect you? Emptiness means there's nothing in the world that doesn't come from how you treat other people. That's all. That's the ultimate protection. When you understand that there's nothing in the world [that is] good that doesn't come from helping other people, then you're protected. Then you're a Buddhist. Then you have umbrella over your head. Nagarjuna’s lucky. Why? He's got these dragon [unclear], right? They have these hoods, they look like cobras and they cover him on sunny days in India. Me and John Brady are praying to have a relationship with those dragons. Okay.

I put the picture here. This is Rendawa, this is Jetsun Rendawa. This is Tsongkapa's teacher. He has a different kind of hat. It's actually round on the top, it looks like a skull cap and that's a Sakya custom. Sakya was a great religion in Tibet, a great kind of Buddhism before Tsongkapa. That monastery, big monastery, southwest of Lhasa, it's in a strange valley and the dirt is all whitish. Dirt in Tibetan is ‘sa’, whitish is ‘kya’, so they became called Sakya, Sakya. So he was a Sakya scholar, he was a Sakya teacher. He doesn't have the deep, deep, subtle presentation of emptiness that Je Tosngkapa does. He does not have that. He has a good, solid understanding of Chandrakirti and Aryadeva and Nagarjuna. But he was not.. when you read his books, he doesn't have the detail that you will learn from Je Tsongkpa, but in my opinion, it's a great introduction to Buddhism. It's a great, great introduction to Buddhism. Tsongkapa didn't have Tsongkapa to learn from. Tsongkapa learned from Rendawa. So apparently it works. Okay, understand? So in my opinion, his commentary on Nagarjuna, which is what we just finished translating, it's a very, very good introduction to Buddhism. And I hope the five houses will use it, I hope the five houses will use that book a lot. I think Stanley and Xiaoping are using it already in some of their classes, they're already using it. But that book will be a wonderful book if you want to teach your friends Buddhism, or you have a new person that you want to help that new book will be amazing. That will be a great book to start with. Okay, I'm sure it'll be translated into Ukrainian and Russian. [Geshehla speaking in Ukrainian or Russian] My wife says, anytime I get a chance to show off, I show off. I'm just kidding, she doesn't say that, I just say she says that. Actually, she only says sweet things to me.

What is the Best Thing I Can Practice Now?

Okay. Next picture. That book by Jetsun Randhawa, Tsongkapa's teacher.. By the way, you can call him Rendawa, but it's a little bit impolite. It's like saying, ‘hey, Kapa’. In Buddhism, we try to refer to a teacher with a nice, sweet name, Jetsun. Jetsun means high and holy. Je-tsun. Okay, his name is Jetsun Rendawa. He has a big theme in his book, and I think it's good. We cover it now in the Song of My Spiritual Life. We reached.. in Gibson's book, we reached this part about black and white karma. Okay, black and white karma. It means good karma, bad karma. And there's a very, very interesting thing. When Rendawa teaches it, and who's he teaching? He's teaching a king. We believe, I mean, tradition says it was Udayabhadra. So if you know the story of the Wheel of Life, two kings were giving each other gifts back and forth. And finally.. when you give a gift back to a person in Buddhism or ancient times, it should be better than the gift which they gave you. So there was an escalation of gifts, more and more precious, more and more precious. Finally, one king gave, Udayana gave Bimbisara a special coat that could protect him from all weapons. And then Bimbisara was like, I don't know, what's better than that? And he had trouble to find a gift that was better. And then one of his ministers said, hey, you got Lord Buddha, he's hanging out in the forest in our country. Let's go ask him what's more valuable than this weapon coat. And they go and ask Lord Buddha and he says, the most precious thing you can send Udayana is my picture. And then Bimbisara assigned a bunch of artists, he hired a bunch of artists and said, go to the forest, find Lord Buddha, paint him. And then they all left and they didn't come back. Nobody came back. And Bimbisara's getting irritated. And he's like, I told you, I want the painting of Lord Buddha, go find out what happened to the artist. And they went to the forest, there's Buddha sitting there and all the artists are sitting there and they have their canvas and they have their paint and they're like [sitting still with mouth open]. And they say he's so beautiful, they couldn't paint him. They couldn't stop looking at him. And they're like [staring at him with mouth open], it's like your high school girlfriend. Okay? So anyway, Buddha said, I have a solution - take a white sheet and wait till evening and build a fire behind me and my shadow will be cast onto the sheet and tell the artist to sit on the other side and copy the outline, and this way they can paint it without going crazy. So he finished the painting. Buddha said, just one more thing; add this wheel with 12 parts to it on this painting. Let's send it together. Udayana got the painting, he opened it up and they say he saw emptiness on the same day because of the power of the Wheel of Life painting, okay? And it's kind of cool. Then, Udayana was murdered by his son, and Bimbisara was murdered by his son. Bimbisara's son was called Ajatasattru, which means even in the womb, some fortune teller said that he will kill his father and he was given the name ‘unborn enemy’, Ajatasattru. So he grew up to be a king. He killed his father. After he killed his father, he regretted it and he became a good Buddhist and he followed Lord Buddha. Ajatasattru had a son named Udayabaddha and Nagarjuna wrote the letter to him. Okay, got it? This letter that we're studying was written by the grandson of the person who painted the first painting of Lord Buddha. Okay, got it? Now, it doesn't quite work out time-wise. If you follow Western scholars, how many centuries and stuff like that, but don't worry about it. Anyway, the point is, before Grandpa told another story, the person who's getting this letter from Nagarjuna is a king. The book I'm suggesting that you read as soon as Rosa gets it out, which is going to be half-an-hour or something, when you read it, Rendawa has a very interesting argument for why you should learn about good karma and why you should learn about bad karma and why you should follow the ten good deeds. And his argument is very interesting. He tells the king.. and I don't know, I don't think he says it directly, he does not say it directly, but he says, look, the odds are that you're not going to become a Buddha in this life. Like he doesn't teach Tantra at this point to the king. By the way, Rendawa was a great Tantric master, Guhyasamaja, and that's why Tsongkhapa emphasizes Guhyasamaja. So he's like, if you really want to become a Buddha, you're probably not going to make it in this life. So Rendawa says you better learn good karma and bad karma, you better become a master at what's good karma and what's bad karma, you should become a karma expert. So Tsongkapa is Rendawa’s student.. is saying, in these verses, he's saying, in Gibson's book, he's saying, you guys should learn karma. You guys have to learn karma. Rendawa would say what? Tsongkapa says, you guys have to learn about karma. Rendawa would say why? Yeah, you probably cannot make it in this life. So just in case, why not set up a good body and mind for your next life? Which means be kind to people, never hurt people, do the best thing you can for other people. It's just smart. If you practice Vajrayogini, if JB teaches you Vajrayogini, and you reach Buddhahood in one lifetime, okay, you can skip all the karma stuff. But just in case, it doesn't hurt to have a good bank account in case you die suddenly. It's better to prepare. Rendawa would say, about this part of the text, learn what's good karma, learn what's bad karma, and use it to create an insurance policy for your next life. Okay? So your next life is intelligent and healthy. In order to have an intelligent, healthy next life, be a nice person now. Learn what's good karma, learn the ten good karmas, don't hurt people. Because you have to think who's going to be studying in your next life. You want to have a good body and mind. You don't want to be a red ant. They can't even pick up the Diamond Cutter Sutra. Okay? Got it?

You all right? Go like this [nod head]. The ultimate Buddhist student in the modern world. Now, step one - learn to sleep with your eyes open. If you're advanced, learn to sleep with your eyes open and nod every two minutes. Then be sure to wake up at the end of class.

All right. Next picture. I like to use a person with an umbrella to represent someone who is taking refuge. Who is smart, they don't want to get wet, they don't want to ruin their clothes so they get an umbrella and they walk around with an umbrella. Okay, $100. You ready? $100. What's a good way to take refuge? I'll give $200. What's a good way to take refuge? And you want a clue?

[Student: To understand the Three Jewels.]

I mean, that's a classical answer, but I want something that proves you were listening in the last 10 minutes.

[Student: Emptiness. To understand that the Jewels are not the item, but how the item relates to emptiness.]

That's a $100 answer. You get $100. He gets $100. Especially if he buys coffee beans and roasts them for grandpa. But I want a really smart answer that proves you've been listening for the last five minutes. What was the question? What would be a good way to take refuge?

[Student: A good way to take refuge is knowing you're going to die.]

I mean, that's true, but it's not what I'm looking for. Stanley just figured it out. When Stanley's hungry, and when he figures out something, it's the same sound. He goes, oh.

[Student: It's understanding the pain, where everything comes from.]

Come on, you guys. One more chance.

[Student: Be nice to people. Be kind.]

Cancel the bet, we don't have time. Cancel the bet, cancel the bet. If you are planning ahead to your next life, just in case you don't reach it this life, it's a good idea to be nice to other people, help other people, so you have a human body in your next life who can read, who can go to class, who can think. Okay? That's actually an ultimate act of refuge. To plan your next life wisely is taking refuge. Okay, got it? It's very sexy. Okay. Got it? You all right?

Okay. That last thing we were talking about, we did refuge as the three kinds of emptiness, then we talked about Rendawa’s advising you to get a good body and mind just in case you don't finish this lifetime. Then he says, by the way, that is taking refuge. To plan your next life is taking refuge. Okay. We have one minute left.

If you remember this time that we had together, if you think about these days that we had together, I think the one thing you'll remember is when the microphone broke during the music concert. No, I'm kidding. If you have to remember one thing about this time together, which for me, it's been very beautiful and very cool. And it's a beautiful place and I'm very grateful to Tim. Yay! And Pachi, and Pao, and Ale, Gina, all the tech team, Mr. Shanti. I had a really good time. But if you think about this time that we had together in the future.. and by the way, we never know if we will have another one. We were in Guadalajara, Aldo was there, we were all saying goodbye. This is like five years ago, Pao, I don't know if you remember. It was near Chalapa, Chalapa. And I remember Aldo. Where is Aldo? Nila's father, Aldo. We asked everyone if they want to stand up and say something at the end of the program. And Aldo stood up and said, I have something I want to say, Geshehla. I said, what? And he said, I want to say I love each one of you. He said, I want to say I love each one of you. And we're like, wow. He says, because I don't know if we will meet again. And he said, at the time, I don't know if you remember, probably, but he said, anytime you say goodbye to somebody and you say, ‘I'll see you tomorrow’, ‘I'll see you next week’, you don't really know if you will see them again. We don't know, it's a crazy world. Strange things happen, and anything can happen. So I like that advice. When you finish a program, tell each other you love each other, just in case you don't see each other again. And then remember the 16 steps, okay? So if you go home and your wife or your husband says, what did they teach you there? And you can say, look, we got this paper with the 16 steps on it. So if you remember anything from these classes, besides the great rock and roll, and John Brady [singing], then please remember, please study the 16 steps, please learn them. Some of them you can do now, and some of them you have to do as you die, and some of them you have to do after that. So I don't want you to pick and choose. I don't want you to pick and choose. I want you to do all 16. I want you to have a good childhood, I want you to pick some good parents, I want you to die with style, and I want you to master the wisdom before that. In other words, don't say, ‘Geshehla, I'm only doing 10 to 12’. I want you to do.. take all 16 steps seriously. If you do that, you made your teacher happy. No matter who's your teacher, it's a powerful karma, okay? Cool? Okay, thank you.

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