BDW 5 «Мост 5: Пустота в повседневности», занятие 1

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Hello, everyone. Welcome. We are honored to begin class one with Geshe Michael Roach.

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Please settle in, keep your place quiet, if possible, and have your notebook ready. Let's listen with a good heart and clear attention. All right. 

Welcome, Geshe La. Good afternoon, everybody. I'm very honored to have you all here at this Five Houses event.

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You know, we're here in service of you, you know, on your path of transformation, in service of other people. And there are so many people that make this program possible, from the ACI staff to hundreds of volunteers online. And we're broadcasting in 12 languages around the world simultaneously.

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And this couldn't be possible without you, your support. And I'm speaking not just to your financial support, but also because you think this is important. What we're doing, I'm seeing the impact of what we're doing in this community around the world.

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And I know some of you have been expressing some concerns, you know, like, ooh, but what's going on? But we are making those changes, and I can see it happening. And I see that you have a deep, deep belief in sharing kindness with others. So I'd like to welcome you all to this wonderful event.

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And without further ado, I'd like to turn it over to Geshe Michael Roach. Thank you for teaching us. Thank you.

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Hi. Well, thanks for coming. I know for some of you, it's pretty far.

(3:16 - 3:39)
For some of you, it's across the street. But thank you for coming. And for me, being one of the first people who was here, along with my, I don't know, 80 friends from New York, it's very nice, right, to see such a beautiful place.

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And it's so wonderful, and it's grown so well. I'd like to thank Venerable Sunim. Where are you? Thank you.

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Please live a long life. It's really beautiful, and thank you. And this is the springtime at Diamond Mountain.

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It lasts for two days. And you were lucky to be here in the springtime. So enjoy, okay, before the wind and the heat comes.

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But it's a beautiful place, and thank you for that. I see more stupas crawling down the mountain. That's really nice. 

Cool, thank you. Today, well, my classes here, mainly I'll be, I think it's four days of classes. And then in the middle, we have the usual Saturday, right? Translator class and a meditation class.

(4:54 - 5:19)
And my classes are divided into one class on the angel debates, the devil debates with an angel. And then one class on the song of my spiritual life. And so I thought I'd start with the, we call it the angel-devil class, and it describes all the people in the room.

(5:20 - 5:41)
No, I'm just kidding. And we'll go through, angel-devil is kind of a beautiful way to get ready for the song of my spiritual life. So, this book is by His Holiness, the first Panchen Lama, Losang Chukyi Gyaltsen.

(5:41 - 5:55)
He is famous in Tibet for having lived almost a hundred years. And this is in a time when people, average age was 40. And so he was pretty strange.

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People, you know, thought he was very special. I think his long life came because he was so much against war. And he actually stopped the war by himself one time.

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He went onto the battlefield. He stood between the two armies and demanded that they stop. And he was smart enough to bring a lot of gold with him, and he bribed the two generals.

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And they gave up the war. They went home. So, I don't know if, you know, it'd be nice if we could do something like that.

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But he's a special ... I like it a lot. My teacher taught it for several years, and he never finished it. So, you know, I think he got him like a third of the way through it or something.

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And then, I thought it was a shame if we didn't translate it in this world, if people didn't have this wonderful book. So, I worked on it. I started teaching it.

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I started in the Botanical ... Desert Botanical Museum, which is basically a cactus museum. My wife drags me there, and I'm just like, okay. It's more fun to watch the kids there than the cactuses.

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But, you know, we started there in 2011, and so we've been working on this book for 15 years. Thank you. Thank you.

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And ... I don't know. I was going to ... To be honest, I was going to stop teaching it because it was taking so long. And I thought, I'll just translate the whole thing.

(7:44 - 8:06)
And, you know, get it done and just move on to something else because it seemed like it was taking so long. And it was hard to follow it because we just did it two or three times a year. And so, I worked really hard earlier this year, and I finished it, translating it.

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And then I thought it needs a commentary because it's ... It's a very ... It's a very mysterious book. It starts out with Mahamudra, and it goes all over the place. It's a very, very strange book.

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And it has many, many vignettes or small pieces of wisdom, stories, and then it just skips to another one. And so I thought it really needs a commentary. So I wrote a commentary to it, and I put it in the book after each verse.

(8:47 - 9:08)
And then I finished it about two months ago. And now it's a 600-page book, and I think we will put it out [?] in the summer? Right? She's still recovering from this book. Right? Summer? What's happening in summer, Tim? Malaysia.

(9:08 - 9:16)
Yeah, okay. And? Singapore. Yeah, so I'm thinking we'll release it there.

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And ... I ... Me and Rosa worked on the cover, and I would like to show you the cover, okay? Because I like the cover. Okay. Okay.

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So that's ... That's a painting of the First Panchen Lama. And then that's a dragon. That's a demon slayer next to him, an old Italian demon killer from 400 years ago.

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600 years ago. And to me, I like it. I like that.

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We chose the title A Struggle Against Our Tendency To Think That Things Are Coming At Us. Okay? So, we didn't call it The Devil ... Well, you can see the devil debates an angel, right? In Tibetan, it's called BDEN 'DZIN ZHAL 'DEBS. Say BDEN 'DZIN. BDEN 'DZIN means your tendency to think that you are coming from your own side, and that the world is coming from its side.

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ZHAL 'DEBS means a bitter argument between two people. So, it's a bitter argument between the angel and the tendency to think that things come from their own side. Okay? Which is being taught by two great scholars in the early afternoon nowadays.

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Right? How did it go? Was it all right? Yeah. They did a good job. That's Gibson's second book that he's published.

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And it's a beautiful book. The Other Side of Emptiness. Yay, Gibson! Yeah.

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That cover is a painting by Nancy Cairn's son, Ori Cairn [?]. And it was done for the book about the life of Tsongkapa, King of the Dharma book. And it's a painting of a dream that Tsongkapa's mother had when he was conceived.

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And she dreamt that she was standing in a long line of women and there were two angels, like a man and a woman, going down the line. And then the man would ask the woman angel, is that the one? And then she'd say, no. And then they went one by one through hundreds of women.

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And then when they got to Tsongkapa's mother, the guy asked the lady, is that the one? And she says, ah, now that's the one. And they say she conceived that night. That he was, he came into her womb that night.

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Okay? So, I thought it was good because this is about dependent origination, get it? Origination. so, I thought I'd better explain the cover. Yeah.

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It's about the birth of things, as opposed to its emptiness, as opposed to the emptiness of things. Okay? And, I'll talk more about that later. Okay? Yeah, so this, this book will be coming out in the next Five Houses program.

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And I decided to continue teaching it. And I think it'll take about another, I don't know, 10 years or something. And that's okay.

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It's very thick. It's very, very deep. And I can't speed it up because you would just get lost, and I would get lost, so.

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We just have to go at our, at our normal speed, okay? And just enjoy it. All right? Next picture, you guys. Yes.

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I had trouble organizing that book. It's, I don't know, 600 verses? And I just couldn't see any organization to it. It's the angel and the devil each talking for a while.

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And there doesn't seem to be, they just decide, that's cute, they just decide to start arguing about something else. And it's hard to see a pattern, so I worked really hard on it, and I broke it into, I call them cantos, cantos, which is like Italian for chapters, or songs. And that structure was kind of used heavily by Dante, the Italian poet Dante.

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And I thought his poem, The Inferno, is very similar in length, and very similar in content, this book, so I worked really hard and divided this book into cantos. And it's 25 cantos, which means like 25 themes. And then I, on your reading, which I hope you get someday, I didn't finish it till last night, so I don't know why they didn't print.

(14:46 - 15:06)
I suppose you'll get it sooner or later. But I put the name of the cantos in the back for you guys, so you could see the structure of the whole 25 cantos, okay? And we'll be working through those cantos, and then you can sort of get the flow of the book. It's a very difficult flow.

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The whole book is about emptiness, and it's very, very difficult and very deep. He was a great, great emptiness teacher. Next picture, you guys.

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There's a very, I'd say almost the core of this book that we're going to be studying together this time, is a section of 31 ways to meditate wrong. Okay? And it's kind of weird that this person would spend so many pages, like a hundred pages, telling you how to meditate wrong. If you would like to, you have 31 choices of lousy meditations you can do.

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You can hear most of them in yoga studios all over the United States. And I thought if I taught them one by one, it would be helpful. Because sooner or later, inside of those 31 meditations, you're going to find the one that you're doing right now.

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And I believe so. You know, many of us, I have found in their meditations I was doing, and I didn't realize why they were mistaken or why they weren't helpful. So, it's a very, very interesting approach of a teacher, a great teacher.

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And by the way, he was ... Yeah. To have such a great teacher teach you the wrong way to meditate. And I made a deal with Tim that I would record a video and sound of 101 meditations that I've been trained in.

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And I thought I would put the 31 inside of those. And then I always warn you at the beginning that this is a bad meditation. And I want to teach you why it's wrong.

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And then by learning how to meditate wrong, you can learn how to meditate correctly. Okay? And most of us, I don't know, I remember the first meditation I went to. I was still at university.

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I was probably 20. And somebody said, you want to go learn to meditate? And I'm like, I guess so. And they said, some guy's teaching meditation in a private house in town.

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So, it's a big deal at our university. You don't go to town. You hang out in the university.

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You just go to town to have ice cream or something. So, we didn't really go to houses in town. But I said, okay, I'll go.

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And we went. We had to walk a long way and we went into this house. And I remember I sat down and the guy taught a meditation.

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And it was one of those meditations where they teach you, they say don't think about anything and close your eyes and watch your breath and don't think about anything. And I tried really, I gave it a good chance. I did the best I could.

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I tried to follow the guy. That's my nature. If somebody's teaching me, I'll try to do it.

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And I tried really hard. Then when we finished and we were all walking home and people asked me, how was it? Did you see anything? Or did anything happen? And I said, nothing. And I said, I didn't understand it and I didn't gain anything from it.

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And I never went back. And every time someone offered to teach me to meditate after that, I was like, well, I did it already. And I avoided meditation for, I don't know, four or five years after that.

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It was so weird that I didn't want to meditate. So that was my experience. So I was trying to find a picture of somebody meditating wrong.

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What's wrong? What's wrong? His posture is wrong. If he's trying to reach some inner winds flowing up his central channel, they're going to get stuck somewhere around his back. I had a lot of choices with my AI.

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I said, show me some stupid meditation. They had some guy going like this. I thought, no, it's too tricky.

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There might be one like that. But this one, I'm pretty sure nobody would want to meditate with bad posture. So I used that one, okay? So I think, I call this the jewel of the First Panchen Lama's book.

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I think this 31 wrong meditations is like the most precious thing in the book. And I encourage you to go through it. This book will be published and distributed in Malaysia maybe, right? Om Mani Padme Hum? Okay, we'll see.

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It's done and I think we can publish it. We have a pretty good system going on. It took us a while to get a system going.

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Anatole's helping a lot by editing. You guys should give him a hand. You know? Thank you.

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We have a nice flow going. And I think this book will be published in seven days. Om Mani Padme Hum.

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So she's been working really hard. And I think we should give her a hand. She and her friend have a nice office space in Sedona.

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Right? Okay. Alright. We're going to start at verse 384.

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Okay? There are 600 verses total. We're, I don't know, almost two-thirds of the way through? Something like that. And I think what's interesting is that he's about two-thirds of the way finished with a book about emptiness.

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It's a whole book about emptiness. And he starts to talk about Diamond Wave. He starts to talk about tantric teachings in a book about emptiness.

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And I thought it was kind of auspicious that we could go through those verses since we are having also classes later in the day to prepare ourselves for Diamond Way empowerment. So I'll talk more about that in the evening. But I thought it was beautiful that he starts talking about Diamond Way just when we're ready to start thinking about it.

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And if you understand Diamond Way, you could say that is Diamond Way. When Diamond Way comes up, when you start your Diamond Way. Get it? Okay? Meaning there's no coincidences in your life.

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Once you start practicing Diamond Way, once you study Diamond Way, once someone gives you empowerment correctly into Diamond Way, then strange coincidences should start happening, and now they are pre-happening. Okay? So, the first Panchen Lama is starting to talk about Diamond Way in the middle of a book on emptiness where he's not supposed to be talking about Diamond Way, but he did it for you. He did it for you like, I don't know, hundreds of, many centuries ago.

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He wrote it for this class. Understand? Okay, so, what he says is very interesting. He says, if you can understand emptiness correctly, and if you can understand, it's really the other side of emptiness, right? Gibson paid me to put an advertisement in.

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So, the other side of emptiness, the other half of emptiness we call, it has been called, and I first heard this word in university when I took courses in Buddhism, and they called it dependent origination, and they gave us a whole book about dependent origination. My course in Mahayana Buddhism was a very poorly translated book about dependent origination and the Wheel of Life. Very, very badly translated, but I didn't know, and it was required in Princeton University.

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It must be pretty good. Now I look back and I look at it, and it was a disaster. The translation was a disaster.

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It was amazing that I was attracted to this terrible translation, dependent origination. I don't know, when's the last time you heard origination in normal English? I don't know. Tsongkapa had a dream, and Tsongkapa's mother had a dream about the origination of her son.

(25:45 - 26:11)
And, you know, and I struggled even up until recently to find a good translation. The problem is, as Gibson and Rob will point out, I'm sure, that what we call dependent origination, what we call cause and effect, also applies to things which don't start or grow. They start, but they don't grow.

(26:12 - 26:38)
So, it's not only cause and effect. When we say dependent origination, the word origination was meant, pratityasamutpada, was meant to avoid the word grow, because grow implies a cause and an effect, you see? And there's dependent things which don't start. They don't grow.

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They don't go through a process of growing. They don't have causes like that. They just come into being and they go out of being.

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For example, the emptiness of Michael came into being when I was born, and it will go out of being when I die, but it is not a thing that grows, and it's not a thing that comes to an end. You see what I mean? So, whatever word you use for dependent, whatever you're going to call it, it cannot imply only growing. It has to imply other kinds of dependence for things that don't change, okay? And mainly those things that don't change are two categories.

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Conditions, you know, universal truth, you know, like, I don't know, all pizza is good. That never changes, okay? General truths, universal truths don't change, okay? That's one thing that doesn't change. And, generally speaking, absences of things don't change, okay? So, you know, the absence of a purple elephant in this room cannot get bigger or less.

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It's just there. It's there when the room started, and it goes, it leaves when the room is destroyed. But it doesn't change, okay? So, you can't say, really, dependent origination.

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You can't, those are tricky words. You cannot say [?], technically. You cannot say cause and effect.

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Because there are things which dependent originate, but they are not cause and effect. They don't grow, and they don't come to a stop, okay? So, anyway, after much work, like, I don't know, I found my first translation recently. I taught it somewhere last week.

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Where is that? For DCI? [?] It was a translation from 49 years ago, from Russian, by a guy named Bubayev [?], about Buddhism in Buryatia. It was in the Tibet Journal.

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It was about the different categories of Buddhist studies, traditionally, in Buddhism. Which is what our translation team is based on. You know, 49 years later, our translation team is designed according to that article, actually.

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So, anyway, it took me like 48 years to, I call it dependent events now, okay? And the idea of the word event is that it happened, but not necessarily grew. Okay? Emptiness is an event, or the fact that there is no purple elephant in this room is an event. It happened.

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But when you say event, it doesn't have to imply growing. It doesn't have to imply starting small and getting bigger. Okay? So, anyway, Gibson, dependent events for now.

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I think it's good. I like it. And event is more common than origination, right? We can have an event at Diamond Mountain, but it didn't originate.

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Okay? No, I'm kidding. So here, if you come to, if you're sitting there meditating about what you learned in this angel-devil class and you start to understand a little bit about emptiness and the other, the flip side of emptiness, which is dependent events. Okay? If you start to understand that, then he says, here's the first Panchen Lama.

(30:47 - 31:20)
Okay? And by the way, they usually alternate with the Dalai Lamas. When the Dalai Lama is a kid, the Panchen Lama is older, and it used to go like that, you know? And they kind of took care of things. So, he says, if you have a good meditation on emptiness, where you understand correctly dependent events, that's the finest offering you could give to the gathering or the dzog of your diamond brothers and sisters.

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Oh, wow. You know? Like, he just throws it in. Like, are you going to dzog tonight? Yeah.

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What are you going to bring? Is it going to be Twinkies and, you know, Mexican Coke with real sugar? You know, what are you going to bring? Coca-Cola, I mean. You're bringing, you know, something. You want to bring something delicious to the gathering, to the diamond gathering of your diamond brothers and sisters.

(31:56 - 32:28)
So, diamond brother, diamond sister, it means anyone. On one level, it means anyone you got the empowerment with. Anybody who took the empowerment at the same time as you becomes family, okay? And technically, anyone who gets empowered by the same teacher is your diamond brother or sister, even if it was 20 years ago, it doesn't matter, okay? So, and then you have special connection with them.

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If you have been empowered by the same teacher, then you have a certain permanent connection with that person for many lifetimes, and for many lifetimes after that, even if you don't like them. And believe me, every diamond brother and sister has been through this, okay? And I'll just talk about it openly. Nobody else wants to, you know.

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Guess what? What if my diamond brother or sister is a real asshole? You know, like, do I still have to be nice to them? Yes. Do we still have a special relationship? Yes. Okay.

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Do I still have to treat them like family? We all used to argue with our brothers and sisters, right? Me and my brother, we used to break furniture on each other, but it's just a sign of love, okay? So, so, so anyway, don't get all weird about your diamond brothers and sisters. It's okay to say, he's my diamond brother, sort of, you know, I'm not crazy about him, you know. That's okay, be honest.

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It's okay. We can work on improving everybody in the family. There's probably some things about you that they would like to improve about you.

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But this idea that the greatest gift you can bring on the tenth, the offering of the tenth, Tsechu, the greatest offering you can bring is not some kind of tasty dessert or something special to drink or something like that. If you really want to make your diamond brothers and sisters happy, then walk into the room with a new understanding of emptiness. Okay? And that's the ultimate offering to everybody in the room.

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Okay? And by the way, a sign that you had a breakthrough with emptiness is that you're happy and you're relaxed and you're smiling and you're like, so, I mean, that's a sign. The more you understand emptiness, the more happy you will be all the time. Okay? So, that's a sign.

(34:48 - 35:00)
You're going to walk into the offering of the tenth twice. There's two tenths in a Buddhist month. Okay? Tenth day of the waxing of the moon, tenth day of the waning of the moon.

(35:00 - 35:18)
And then you're going to walk in with a big smile and an open heart. And that means you had some emptiness breakthroughs during the last two weeks. Okay? And he's saying that's the best gift to bring to the altar on Tsechu.

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Got it? It doesn't hurt to bring a good cake also. All right? I'm just saying, according to my experience, it's still a good gift to bring. Okay? I'm going to go to the next verse, 385.

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And he's talking a little bit about the conditions that can help you see emptiness directly. And in this verse, 385, he talks about the place of shamatha. Okay? Or a deep state of meditation.

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To be able to go into a deep state of meditation. He wants to emphasize it. And so I had an experience.

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I saw emptiness when I think I was 22. And I had been to study in Asia and I had studied pretty seriously for the year, I think. And then I came home.

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My ... One of my teachers, who's supposedly the highest teacher in our tradition, told me, you should go home and finish your degree. You don't finish 75% of a Princeton degree and just stay in a hut in India, you know? Although I wanted to. And they said, no, you go home and finish your degree.

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So I went back and I had a very unusual six months or something. I was telling some friends about it recently. I came back and I was broke.

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I was completely broke. And I didn't have a place to stay. I was already used up my four years of dormitory time.

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Because I missed a year. And all my friends graduated. Because I spent a year overseas.

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So I came back and I was flying in through Kennedy and I thought, I wonder where I'm going to sleep tonight. Because I don't know. All my friends graduated.

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And I didn't know anybody in the next class down. And I was thinking, the only person I knew was I was pretty active in the church, in the Christian church. And I grew up in a Christian church.

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And I had a good time in a Christian church. And I was an altar boy for like 12 years. I was in the choir for like 20 years.

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Like I was, I really, really had a good time. And I had a beautiful church, really beautiful church. So I went to church at Princeton.

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And I was pretty close to the priest. I was doing Episcopal church, which means the priest can get married and can have kids. So I was, and then they, Princeton used to be Episcopal or something.

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So they had a huge, comfortable house for the priest and his family next to Einstein's house. And it was a cool place. And I was thinking, boy, I wonder if I could get into that house.

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You know? They had two small kids and the priest and his wife. And then I thought, that's the only chance for me to not sleep on the street tonight. You know? And so I, you know, I got to Princeton.

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It was already dark. They had just built a student center for, you know, getting snacks and stuff late at night. And I thought, well, I'll just go there and see if I can get something to eat.

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And I used to drive a truck to deliver food for five years. So I knew how to get in the back. You understand? To get to the kitchen.

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So I went in and through the loading dock and, you know, I just got something to eat. And I went and sat down and the whole place was empty. But when I got into the place, there's the priest sitting by himself.

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And the whole place is empty. And I'm like, man! You know? And I, I like walked over him to him and I sat down and I said, I just got back from India, you know? And he said, good, good. And he says, do you have a place to sleep tonight? I'm like, whoa! I said, no, I don't.

(40:09 - 40:23)
And he said, you can sleep at our house. And then he's like, we also need a babysitter. And I'm like, what's that about? He says, we have a two year old and a four year old, two boys.

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And we need a babysitter. And a nanny. And I'm like, I don't know, you know.

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I actually, I babysat a lot when I was in high school for my teachers. In those days, the diapers used pins, not tape. You know, you had to be good with the pins.

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You put like six pins in your mouth. And once in a while, you stick the kid and they cry for, they cry for like two hours. But I knew how to do it.

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And I'm like, okay, I'll try, you know. And so, I was there for like six months and I was meditating really deeply and all my friends were gone except one. And so I was pretty much alone.

(41:14 - 41:28)
They gave me a floor, an empty floor. Because it was one of these houses, like these old eastern houses. And I had a beautiful room and my mother was dying.

(41:29 - 41:47)
She died while I was there. so I was deep into my meditations and and things were, strange things were happening to me. and I was in a deep state of meditation most of the time.

(41:47 - 42:01)
And it was very amazing, you know. And so I wanted to describe it. For the first time in my life, I failed a class purposely.

(42:02 - 42:12)
You know, I had never gotten less than an A except one B in in seventh grade or something. In shop. In woodworking.

(42:14 - 42:27)
And I said, I said, I have to maintain my meditation and I can't get too busy. I can't get sucked into this university state of mind, you know. I got to stay a little bit.

(42:28 - 42:41)
If I'm going to protect my meditation, I have to make sure I control how much I do. And so I I purposely failed the class. It was an Indian music class.

(42:43 - 42:50)
And I didn't need it to graduate. It was extra. And later I played a concert at Princeton.

(42:51 - 43:12)
And the music teacher came and he's like, you know, I'm a sitar. And he was kind of freaked out. But anyway, what I wanted to say was there was a sort of wisdom that I shouldn't try to do, I shouldn't overdo it.

(43:12 - 43:28)
I should I should maintain my shamatha at all cost. And if extra opportunities came up to do things but they pushed my shamatha out of my life, I should refuse. And I should just not do them, you know.

(43:28 - 43:43)
And so I was very I had a very clear mission that I should maintain my shamatha. And I lost that. After I started doing this, I lost that for some time.

(43:43 - 43:52)
I was serving my teacher for 25 years. And I was working hard for him. But I was too busy.

(43:52 - 44:11)
I think I was too busy. And then what I wanted to do was say that I have a way of keeping my shamatha nowadays that I developed over many years time. And I thought to share it when I taught you this verse.

(44:12 - 44:26)
Because he says, STONG NYID LA DMIGS SHES NAS GRUB [?] If you want to see emptiness, you have to maintain your shamatha. You have to maintain your meditative state of mind. It doesn't mean you have to do meditation for an hour a day.

(44:27 - 44:32)
Which by the way is minimum. If you want to see emptiness, you must meditate for an hour a day. Or you cannot.

(44:33 - 44:42)
So it's up to you. But I always had trouble finding the hour. And for years I had trouble finding time.

(44:43 - 45:00)
And something happened in the later part of my life that I think you should that I should share with you. And I encourage you to try to do it. Ta-da! Not that.

(45:01 - 45:10)
Oh, this is the offering to your diamond brothers and sisters, okay? Get it? That's my AI. Okay, here it is. We call it the Good Night Book Club.

(45:10 - 45:18)
You heard about it. We're not trying to advertise books. We're not trying to sell valises.

(45:19 - 45:48)
Those little briefcases. I've been desperately trying to sell the practice of getting a good night's sleep without your electronics, okay? And I believe personally that you cannot maintain shamatha if you don't have a regular bedtime and a regular getting up time. And I'm talking to the minute.

(45:48 - 46:05)
And I also believe you cannot maintain shamatha if you're if you cannot drop your electronics. If you cannot release your electronics once a day, I believe you cannot see emptiness. I believe that directly.

(46:05 - 46:19)
I believe you have to do this practice, okay? So, I'm gonna I try to sell it everywhere I go. I would say mixed results. You know, everybody is polite to me.

(46:19 - 46:32)
They're like, hmm, right. And then, you know, the next day I see them and they're like, I'm like, what's wrong? I stayed up till midnight. What happened? Well, first there was a great movie.

(46:32 - 46:43)
And then I had to finish my work, you know. And then I'm like, were you in the class yesterday? Oh, that was a great class, Geshe La. You know, and I'm like, thanks, you know.

(46:43 - 46:50)
So, I'm trying again, you know. Someday you'll thank me. That's what my mom would say.

(46:52 - 47:01)
You gotta try it. You gotta do it, okay? You can say, you can see emptiness directly if you follow this practice. I believe so.

(47:01 - 47:09)
You've got all the theoretical teachings. You know, you got 600 verses of Angel Devil. Lots of good teachings there for emptiness.

(47:09 - 47:22)
But you must maintain a meditative state of mind all day long. Okay? That doesn't mean you don't get busy. It doesn't mean you don't have to rush to get someplace.

(47:22 - 47:42)
It doesn't mean you don't have problems in your life, financial problems, stuff like that. You do, and they require your thought, and they cause wrinkles here. Or smooth places here, right John? Both of us.

(47:43 - 47:58)
But it doesn't mean you don't have other problems, okay? But here's my sales pitch, okay? And we'll see if it works. By the way, sooner or later you will do it. So, it's just up to you.

(47:58 - 48:19)
You can wait another few years, or another few deaths, but sooner or later you're going to have to do it. If you want to get out of samsara, if you want to see emptiness directly, which is the coolest thing in the universe, you're going to have to do this. Sooner or later you're going to have to do it.

(48:19 - 48:33)
And I encourage you to do it now, okay? It's not going to hurt you. Believe me. Okay? Why are these books coming out every day? You know, we got four or five books came out in the last two months or something.

(48:33 - 48:56)
Why can Geshe La do three times, four times more work than he overworked before? It's because I'm practicing the shamatha technique, okay? So, I really, really, really beg you to try it. Here's the system, okay? Very roughly. I was in ... you know, COVID came to Rimrock, Arizona.

(48:57 - 49:16)
I used to travel 182 days a year overseas. And 183 days a year I stayed home, so I could tell my wife I stay home more than I travel. One more day, one more day at home than I travel.

(49:16 - 49:27)
So, I told her, you know, I'm not traveling all the time. I'm less than half by one day. So, then COVID came and I was stuck at home.

(49:27 - 49:35)
And I started to lose it. I started to ... I started to get bad habits. I've never owned a TV in my life.

(49:36 - 49:57)
I almost never watched movies in my life. And I started to look at, you know, shows on my TV, on my computer like ... what is that? The Emperor's ... what's it called? The King's Affection. The Emperor's Affection.

(49:58 - 50:03)
The King's Affection. South Korean soap operas. Really good.

(50:04 - 50:16)
And then football. And then I graduated into movies. And then I went to the ... what do you call it? Advanced degree of war movies.

(50:16 - 50:24)
And more advanced, dirty movies, unclean things. And I was fascinated. I haven't seen them in my whole life.

(50:24 - 50:32)
And I'm like, wow, this is something, you know. And I was staying up later and later. And my shamatha was gone.

(50:34 - 50:42)
It's ironic, right? You have more time than ever before to stay home. And then you can't use it. You need to keep busy.

(50:44 - 50:57)
So, then I got to know my phone better and better. The hours got up to six or seven on the phone, right? Unasked for, my phone tells me every week or something. Six hours, seven hours.

(50:57 - 51:05)
I'm like, whoa, really? And so anyway, I was sitting there. Then I know the night it was. I can tell you the night it was.

(51:05 - 51:18)
And I'm sorry if you heard this talk before, and if you heard this talk before and you didn't do it, that's why I'm doing it again. So, it's not my fault, it's your fault. Okay? Which is the way I run everything in my life.

(51:18 - 51:40)
Everything is somebody else's fault. So anyway, I got to ... I remember the moment, it was 2 a.m. And this, I had gotten in the habit of waking up at 2 a.m. and just watching a little TV. And it was 2 a.m. and I woke up and I laid there, and I'm trying to decide if I can sneak out of bed and not bother my wife.

(51:41 - 52:13)
She sleeps very lightly, it's dangerous. And so I'm like ... Then I get this, this thought, this philosophical problem came to my head. You know? Your fingernails and your toenails, which one grows faster? You know? Like I was like, I wonder if it's the same, or your fingernails grow faster? Mine, the fingernails seem to grow faster.

(52:14 - 52:27)
Is that true? Lindsay probably looked it up. And the toenails seem to grow slower, but I also don't like to clip them because it's so much work. So I thought, I don't know, maybe I'm just prejudiced, like I should check.

(52:28 - 52:45)
I should ask my Gemini AI. You know? So I got, you know, I got my phone out and I was checking and I said, what the ... What are you doing? It's 2 a.m. You should be sleeping. You know, your wife's asleep.

(52:45 - 53:08)
You could be, even the cat's asleep with us. She sleeps here because it's so warm. And then I'm like, how bad are you going to get? How much of this stuff are you going to watch? So I decided, no, I'm going to ... I just chose a time, it was 10 p.m. I said at 10 p.m. I'm going to put my phone away and I'm going to put my computer away.

(53:08 - 53:17)
I heard from ... What's his name? Will Duncan, old friend, from the original Diamond Mountain. He did a three-year retreat. Yeah.

(53:18 - 53:43)
And he has a small retreat center and he turns off the internet at 10 p.m. and he turns it back on in the morning. So I thought, I'm going to do that, you know. So I'm going to turn ... I'm going to put my laptop and my phone in the drawer of my dresser at 10 p.m. and then I'm going to leave it there until I wake up.

(53:43 - 53:57)
So I did that and then ... At 2 a.m. I still wake up. I didn't decide about the fingernail thing. And then I went to the drawer and I got out the computer and the phone.

(53:57 - 54:06)
I started googling it, you know. And then I said, man, what's wrong with you, you know? You're really addicted. And I said, no, no, I'm not addicted.

(54:07 - 54:18)
This is the most ... This is a sign that you're addicted when you refuse that you're an addict. That's the typical sign that you're an addict. Addicts love to say they're not addicted, then that means they are.

(54:20 - 54:36)
So I'm like, oh man, what am I going to do now? And so ... Rosa ... I talked to Rosa at some point. We made this valise, a fancy name for a bag. When you call it a bag, you can charge $3.

(54:36 - 54:41)
When it's a valise, it's $17. Something like that. Or more.

(54:41 - 54:47)
Much more. Okay. But ... Where is that, Rob? There's mine.

(54:48 - 54:55)
Okay. I carry it everywhere now. We made the cloth bag to carry the valise over your shoulder.

(54:56 - 55:07)
So I carry it everywhere all the time. And I keep my computer in there, and it has a special zip and a lock. Okay? You can lock it.

(55:08 - 55:32)
And me and Rosa, we worked on it, and we came up with a time lock. So you can put a lock here on the zipper, and you can ... I set it for 10 p.m. to go to sleep, and then I set it for 6 a.m. to get up. Okay? And then ... I'm sorry if you heard this lecture before, but if you were doing it, I wouldn't have to keep repeating it.

(55:34 - 56:02)
So, anyway ... My teachers in grade school, and I remember, and I'm not betting anybody about the name of the 5th grade teacher anymore. I did a ... How many was ... $3,000? I said ... I made a $3,000 bet with my students that no one could tell me the name of my 5th grade teacher. Of course, Wordsmith [?] remembered and said, Mrs. Butts.

(56:03 - 56:12)
I was like, man, that's $3,000 down the drain. So, anyway, I'm not betting. And her name is Butts, and she was.

(56:13 - 56:36)
But, anyway ... She told me, among many other lies, she told me that kids have to sleep for 8 hours, or else you're stupid, and you fail, and you don't get into college, and everyone hates you. And she swore you had to sleep for 8 hours. And I didn't believe her.

(56:38 - 57:10)
And then suddenly, I don't know how many years later, many, many years later, I'm like, she was right. If you sleep for 8 hours, it's like magic, okay? Something happens. And you think ... And in Manhattan, when I was a corporate slave, I mean manager, we would work till 2 a.m. I remember demanding to go home at 2 a.m. and everyone said I was a deadbeat.

(57:11 - 57:16)
They said, you're not a real manager. And I'm like, I got to get home. I got to go home.

(57:16 - 57:25)
It's a 2 hour bus ride. I don't get home till 4. I sleep for 2 hours, I come back. And they said, you're a wimp.

(57:26 - 57:39)
You're just not strong. And it was a macho thing, right? Hustle? You have it in Mexico? I don't know. Yeah.

(57:40 - 57:51)
If you don't work like that, you're not a real man. So, I got this in my head. I thought I have to work hard to impress other people.

(57:51 - 58:01)
And I have to stay up late at night to show that I'm a tough guy. I'm devoted to the Dharma. Because I can work till 4 o'clock or something.

(58:01 - 58:10)
And then I tried it. I went to bed at 10. And the first night I got up at 3. Because I'm not used to sleeping for 8 hours.

(58:10 - 58:25)
And then I pushed it to 4. And then I pushed it to 5. And now it's amazing. At 10 o'clock, I get in the bed. I lock up my computer and my phone.

(58:25 - 58:33)
If I'm traveling, I give it to Rob. I ask someone to come and take it. The phone and the computer.

(58:34 - 58:38)
And they come at 10. They know, they come at 10. And they take it.

(58:38 - 58:44)
And I have to give it. And then I don't get it back till 6 o'clock. But it's a strange thing.

(58:45 - 58:55)
At 5.59 this morning, I just like, ding. And I feel super fresh. And I feel super charged.

(58:55 - 59:04)
And I'm just like, let me rip up that angel-devil thing. I don't see why it took so many years. I can finish this in two months.

(59:04 - 59:10)
And I did. After 15 years. I'm just like, I can knock this out.

(59:11 - 59:22)
And something about sleeping for that long, and your meditation goes off the charts. If you wake up at the same time. Animals do that.

(59:22 - 59:33)
When I was in three-year retreat, me and Christie had a, what do you call it, woodpecker. And we had a yurt. We were staying in a yurt.

(59:33 - 59:40)
Yurts don't have windows. They have flaps. And in the summer, the flap would be tied up.

(59:41 - 59:58)
And the woodpecker would come to sleep inside the roof. And he showed up every night at 7.00. Like, animals have this thing. My cat, you know, she's like, it's 6.05. It's breakfast time.

(59:58 - 1:00:15)
And they have this inner clock, you know. So, if you do this practice every day, you just wake up at 6.00. And like at 6.15, you're ready to meditate. And your mind is totally ready to meditate.

(1:00:16 - 1:00:26)
And I came back to my meditation. I started, as Geshe La says, I started with 10 minutes. And then I got up to 15 minutes.

(1:00:26 - 1:00:34)
I'm at 52 right now, you know. And I built it back up. And it feels really good.

(1:00:34 - 1:00:46)
So, what I'm saying is, if you care about all this stuff, you paid to come here, I guess. Or you hitchhiked. And you worked hard to get here.

(1:00:46 - 1:00:58)
And the most valuable thing you can learn here is this, okay? Then your shamatha will come. Your meditation will come. And it's unbelievable.

(1:00:59 - 1:01:07)
It's just unbelievable, you know. I'm like, I think I finished another book this morning. I'm 90% through another book this morning.

(1:01:08 - 1:01:24)
I think I can finish in two more days, something. A whole new book, which you don't get to see until in about two weeks, okay? But it took me two months to translate a major work. And a very old work, 2,000 years old.

(1:01:24 - 1:01:32)
And really hard. Very, very, very secret, very difficult. And you can do it, if you sleep.

(1:01:33 - 1:01:48)
If you get a good night's sleep. And you don't have your electronics on during that time. So, I beg you to try, okay? I know it doesn't sound like a Dharma teaching, but it's the best Dharma teaching I can give you, okay? Get enough sleep.

(1:01:49 - 1:01:56)
Get eight hours of sleep. Put the goddamn phone away. You know, declare independence from your phone.

(1:01:56 - 1:02:04)
You could do it on July 4th, you know. I declare independence from my phone, you know. And your computer.

(1:02:06 - 1:02:10)
Then your mind is so clear. That's shamatha, shamatha. You have shamatha.

(1:02:10 - 1:02:30)
And then emptiness is easy, okay? If you have shamatha, emptiness is easy. That's what he says here, okay? And I say don't wait till you're 72 or something to follow my advice, okay? Do it at 71. Right? Okay? Seriously.

(1:02:30 - 1:02:39)
People like Brady and Connie, they kept doing it all these years, but I lose it for time. I lose it for a year. I lose it for two years.

(1:02:40 - 1:02:47)
And then you have to come back. And you have to give up those things. And try it.

(1:02:48 - 1:02:55)
You'll be so happy. You're here to learn to see emptiness. And to get enlightened.

(1:02:56 - 1:03:08)
And that's the best advice I can give you. The rest is all just dharma, okay? Alright. Next picture.

(1:03:10 - 1:03:30)
So, Nagarjuna ... How much time I got, Tim? When do I have to stop? Okay, I can do it. I just do my usual technique, which is to don't do Q&A. Okay.

(1:03:30 - 1:03:55)
But I'll give you tomorrow, I promise. Okay? Which tomorrow? Okay. So anyway, at this point in the devil debates an angel, they talk about a thing called the seven part analysis of the pieces of a thing.

(1:03:56 - 1:04:06)
I like to use an automobile for this teaching. That's in fact, that helped me see emptiness. So, I'd like to teach that.

(1:04:07 - 1:04:34)
But first I wanted to give you a reference for it. This analysis that the first Panchen Lama goes through, it comes from ... you can find it in works by Chandrakirti in Prasannapada ... verses ... clarification of the verses, okay? And you can find it there. It's very, very beautiful.

(1:04:34 - 1:05:01)
I like the version that is found in an ancient Buddhist book called ... say Milinda? Panha. Milinda? Panha. So, 300 years before Jesus, 2,300 years ago, Alexander the Great conquered all the territory from Europe, Southern Europe up to India.

(1:05:02 - 1:05:16)
And he reached as far as India, his army refused to go further. Why? $100 question. Why? $100, $100 ... Wait, wait, wait, raise your hand, you don't get money without raising your hand.

(1:05:17 - 1:05:30)
How did he choose this person? Because if you go ... if you go further, there is the end of the earth. And? And you can fall down from there. You will fall off, $100, yeah.

(1:05:30 - 1:05:46)
Okay. So, Alexander's troops refused to go further. They beat the Indians in a big battle in West India, and then they refused to go further.

(1:05:46 - 1:06:05)
He had to turn around and go home. He sent half the men on ships from around Mumbai, and then he traced ... he tracked the ships on land. He went with his horse soldiers, and they went in ships, and they tried to make a new route from India to Europe.

(1:06:06 - 1:06:13)
And he reached Baghdad. He died in Baghdad. He got ... He died from diarrhea.

(1:06:14 - 1:06:20)
Okay. The whole world couldn't kill him. And samsara killed him.

(1:06:21 - 1:06:35)
Okay. So anyway, his generals became the kings of India. And so there were, I don't know, maybe 20 split up India, and they became the kings of India.

(1:06:36 - 1:07:02)
so generations later, there was a king named Menander, and he was a Greek overlord of Indian country. And and the the Greeks had a system of having an advisor of the king who was a philosopher. So, 100 bucks.

(1:07:03 - 1:07:17)
Who was Alexander's own advisor? 100 bucks. Not the same person, don't be greedy. Who was Alexander's ... Daniel was not, he was too young.

(1:07:27 - 1:07:31)
Aristotle? Yeah, Aristotle. Nice. Okay.

(1:07:36 - 1:08:10)
Before he went on his trip, he was, Aristotle was too old to go on the trip, so he assigned a tutor to to stand in for him, and Alexander murdered the tutor somewhere around Iran. So, anyway, it was a custom for great kings in those days. Leaders of countries had a spiritual philosopher teacher who guided them through their life.

(1:08:12 - 1:08:28)
the most famous, well, Nagasena was the one who taught Menander, and those conversations were made into a book called Milinda, Milinda Panha in Pali. Pali is a corrupt Sanskrit. Pali is a spoken Sanskrit.

(1:08:28 - 1:09:09)
Hey man, what's [?]? So, what's [?]? I don't know, what's [?]? But, it's that, it's that for Sanskrit, okay? And, so we have that book, and we have two letters from ... Arya Nagarjuna, Arya Nagarjuna? We never say Nagarjuna. Two letters from him to another king, who was, I think the grandson of Bimbisara, who made the first painting of the Wheel of Life, okay? So, he's a pretty good king. And, so there's a famous letter, two letters, we believe, I believe they're to the same king.

(1:09:09 - 1:09:27)
I believe the second letter is deeper. The second letter, Niklasa [?] is translating, it'll take him another three, four years, I think. And the first letter is called, a letter to a friend, say, Suhrillekha.

(1:09:29 - 1:09:46)
Suhrillekha. Yeah, suhril is a, the L comes from the next word, lekha, which means letter. And then suhril is, the original is suhrid, which means good heart.

(1:09:47 - 1:10:31)
And cardiac and heart comes from hrid, and the heart sutra is called Hridaya Sutra, the heart sutra, okay? So anyway, the book is called A Letter to a Heart Friend, Suhrillekha. And, then my teacher, Khen Rinpoche Geshe Lobsang Tharchin, when I was there with him in the early years, he had brought a handwritten manuscript of a commentary to this, to Nagarjuna's letter written by the teacher of Tsongkapa. And I thought, man, that's something, you know? Rendawa, his name is Jetsun Rendawa.

(1:10:31 - 1:10:50)
So, you know, I spent like a year typing out my teacher's translation. He had a, later he learned English, but he still used a translator who translated his English into English. Seriously.

(1:10:51 - 1:11:05)
It was so bad. So anyway, I typed this thing like for two years and it was bad. But I did it out of love for my teacher and we finished it and it was published.

(1:11:05 - 1:11:17)
But I always thought someday, if I can find a manuscript, I would like to re-translate it because it's very, very beautiful. It's stunning. The original work is stunning.

(1:11:17 - 1:11:29)
So I found a copy. John Brady found a copy. It was, it's a long story, but we got a copy and I translated it.

(1:11:30 - 1:11:53)
And, so we're going to discuss starting in the class tomorrow because I talk too much. We're going to go through the seven-part analysis that helps you see emptiness, okay? Seven-part analysis. It comes from, I'm going to teach it from you, to you, from this book by Nagarjuna and Tsongkapa's teacher.

(1:11:54 - 1:12:05)
And, I finished it in like, I don't know, record time. I don't know why. And it's damn good, I have to say.

(1:12:06 - 1:12:52)
And, so we printed it and then Sunim, Venerable Sunim, director of Diamond Mountain said, Diamond Mountain Geshe La would like to sponsor a copy for every person attending the retreat in person. You want to come? You want to come up and say something? Come on. Now, this is a black one.

(1:12:59 - 1:13:07)
Finally. All right. We're good.

(1:13:09 - 1:13:12)
Relax. You got three minutes. Three minutes.

(1:13:13 - 1:13:38)
Thank you so much for translating that beautiful book. I don't know about you guys, but, I don't know, I have the feeling I have a deep connection to Rendawa, to Sri Rendawa, and that's why I love this book so incredibly. And then, Geshe La, you also said that's more or less the book which we should teach because it's so practical advice.

(1:13:39 - 1:13:53)
I'm the person who is in their head a lot, and practical advice is always, always beautiful. So, you would make my heart smile if you take the practical advice. That was my intention.

(1:13:54 - 1:14:20)
Thank you so much. Can I shake? Can you hold it up? We have a good friend in Australia who is one of the early students at Diamond Mountain named Ben Christian, and he painted the cover for us. And you see the king here, and then we put Rendawa teaching the king by cosmic heart connection.

(1:14:21 - 1:14:31)
Okay, so we have this beautiful painting on the cover, and Ben Christian did it just for this book. Yay, thank you. Okay.

(1:14:37 - 1:15:11)
If you have to teach new people, if you're ever called upon to teach new people, by the way, if you sit in this class at Diamond Mountain, you are automatically agreeing to teach other people. That's a deal, that's a tradition. If you're sitting in this class, it means you agree to teach other people in your time, okay? My first class was in the back of a Volkswagen with one person, the postman.

(1:15:12 - 1:16:11)
Okay, so you can do it. And what I wanted to say, and then we'll break, in my opinion, this is the best possible book to teach a new person. Okay, so if you are called upon to teach a new person, I strongly recommend this book, okay? This is a wonderful explanation of the whole Dharma by Tsongkapa's teacher, and Nagarjuna, two of the greatest teachers in history, okay? So if you're going to teach new people, Jenny, you could have a course in Singapore and go through the book, okay? All right, Tim, anything? Where is Tim? Any announcements or anything? And thank you, Diamond Mountain.

(1:16:12 - 1:16:37)
Yay. So, in Rob and Gibson's class, which was amazing today, but if you missed it, you missed something great, and don't miss it tomorrow. Rob introduced this item here.

(1:16:38 - 1:16:48)
It's not just an item. It's a beautiful Buddha statue. It's a medicine Buddha statue that was made for when we did the medicine Buddha retreats here at Diamond Mountain.

(1:16:48 - 1:17:05)
So this statue hung out here for quite a while. And it's made by a group of people in Mexico outside of Guadalajara called the Huicholes. And we had these made several years ago and supported their center.

(1:17:06 - 1:17:22)
And as Rob announced, we are this close. Every retreat we say we're getting closer, so we're telling you we're getting closer to launching five houses. And I'm telling you we're very, very close.

(1:17:23 - 1:17:43)
And in that process, there's a lot to do that we didn't anticipate. And guess what? Yes. We're asking for your support. 

So to start, and there will be more. Do not worry. If you cannot do this first one, we have a second surprise later, so don't worry.

(1:17:44 - 1:17:58)
So the first, we have an auction here for this Buddha who's been around for several retreats. I'm sorry, it was made by the Huicholes as well. And we're starting the bid at $5,000 for this, and we will offer it to you here.

(1:17:59 - 1:18:57)
You can take it home, and if you're online, we will, of course, mail it to you. And we also want to say that each year we support Casa Huichol, which is a medical center for the Huicholes. We have a partnership with them. 

We've been supporting their operating expenses for many, many years. And it's not very much. It's about $200 to $300 a month, and we've been supporting them through that. 

And so part of the proceeds of whomever wins this auction is going to go to the five houses, but part of it will also go to Casa Huichol as well to continue supporting the medical needs of those people there, and they really need a lot of help. So QR codes are up, and over the next couple classes, we will inform you on how it's going. And when are we done, Pachi? So we have three days for this auction.

(1:18:58 - 1:19:08)
So if you can find it in your heart to help, this Buddha could be yours. So thank you all very much. We have a half-hour break.

(1:19:10 - 1:19:41)
And thank you for teaching. Thank you. Thank you, dear teacher. 

Thank you, Geshe Michael Roach. And thank you, everyone. We'll continue with class two from 5.30 till 6.30 pm.

(1:19:42 - 1:19:51)
Please take a short break, stretch, and return on time so we can begin [?]. See you soon. Goodbye.