BDW 5 «Мост 5: Пустота в повседневности», занятие 3

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Oh, we're supposed to get serious. Welcome, everyone. Welcome, Geshe Michael.

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We're so happy to have you here for Geshe Michael Roach Lecture 3. It is a way of special opportunity to receive teaching from Geshe Michael. And we are grateful to gather together for this session. As we continue through the program, maybe listen to it with open mind and hearts and looking for the way the teaching can become something living and transformative in our daily life.

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Thank you for joining with us here at ACI. Image. Dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun.

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Today. Okay, well, I'll talk in the meantime. I promised you guys, they mention in the book the seven-part analysis.

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And so, it's my job to tell you about it. And this is mainly, I think the most important thing here, and I have to slow down and not talk so fast. Say, rikpa.

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Thayepa. Rikpa. Thayepa.

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Yeah, and this is a very interesting thing in the Madhyamaka, in the Middle Way books. They're trying to define a high quality student, a very intelligent student. And they say, for this tradition, Buddhism, the one who is interested in rikpa thayepa, rikpa means reason, and thayepa means infinite.

(2:10 - 2:41)
And it means someone who enjoys hearing a new reason why things are empty. You see what I mean? And I've had many people come to class and say, this is too complicated, can you keep it simple? Or something like that. It's not our tradition, our tradition is ... In our tradition, the high quality student wants more reasons why things are empty.

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And it is possible to give one reason which is correct, and the person will understand it, that's okay. It is possible, but it's not likely. Usually they need ... You know, the teacher has to present like a hundred different reasons why things are empty, and then the student will ... they'll finally get it on the fifth one, or the 500th one.

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They will say, oh I get it, you know, okay, I got it, I got it, you know. So, it's a tradition to keep talking about more reasons. Now, if you want to earn $100 [?].

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What's IBAI [?]? $100. Ah ... I forgot the question over here. Yeah, what would be the second reason to try to learn more proofs for emptiness? You two.

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One is so that you could learn it more clearly, and more strongly. So, you could teach more efficient to other people. Okay, yeah. 

We say ... toolkit, your toolkit, you know. And like when you're ... This guy comes to my house every day to fix my house, which is never-ending job, Mark Solustro. And he's got these big toolkits, and he's got everything in there, okay? So, if you're going to be a teacher, you have to have a big toolkit.

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You should have many kinds of emptiness in your pocket. And some is going to fit the person, and some is not going to fit the person. So, you got to have many kinds of emptiness.

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You got to have many ways of explaining it. Even if you don't like them so much, you need to have those tools, okay? So, you have to listen to all the tools. Here's seven more, okay? Here we go.

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And I had trouble with this one. I remember I had trouble with this one. And my teacher liked to use a car.

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And that's kind of my generation, you know, in America, is that we ... We had car, you know, car is pretty much the definition of America, right? And we, I don't know, we built race cars when I was a kid. I met my wife when I was building a race car. So, that's a long story.

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I was under the car building it, and she came to my house, and I couldn't see her, but I saw her leg go out of the car, like that, and I was like, hmm. Don't tell her, okay? So anyway, we use cars a lot in America, to explain these things. Car.

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And we talk about chi che dak a lot. And to me, my teacher, just before I saw emptiness, my teacher was teaching me logic, and I had a lot of trouble with it, and I didn't like it. And he also couldn't speak English very well.

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He's like, chi, big, many, thing, go, parts, no under, no, no, empty. You know? And I just, I couldn't understand him, and he was trying to explain logic. And he had been, he was 65 at that time, and he had been learning, 55, sorry, and he had been learning English for like two weeks, and it was terrible.

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And I remember, I couldn't understand why he was teaching logic. I didn't like it. And in my university at Princeton, my department is a religion department, but there are so few students interested in religion that we have to share the department building with the other department, which is philosophy.

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They are worse. And they're always walking around like this. You know? And you can tell a philosophy major, he's like, you know, and you say, hi, good morning, and they say, maybe, I'm not sure.

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They always think too much, you know? Then I didn't, they were studying logic, and I was like, I don't want to do that, you know? And then my teacher forced me over and over, and then I was living in a garage. I was living in an old car repair garage, like 50 years old, and it was broken. All the windows, the doors are broken, and I sleep on the floor, on the cement.

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And there was one drunk Mongolian old man with me. We sleep together. I mean, on the same floor.

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And then one night he went out and walked into a car and killed him. He got killed. And he was very drunk all the time, you know? Then I remember I was walking home to my garage.

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I looked it up online, it's still there. It's leaning now. The whole garage is leaning over.

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We should make a temple there or something. The leaning tower or something. Anyway, I remember, I was kind of upset, and he was trying to teach me logic, and I remember there was a tree between the garage and his house.

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And I stopped under the tree, and I leaned against the tree. I remember, and I said, you know, either I quit and go home, or I stay here. If I stay here, I have to learn logic.

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So I decided, you know, I will learn it. I will learn it. And I worked really hard.

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I killed myself. And it's beautiful. It's fantastic for emptiness.

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And that's, I think, helped me to see emptiness. Because he was trying to teach me chi che dak. Chi che dak means, what do we call that? Quality and characteristic, okay? And that's a deep subject.

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It's a difficult subject. I'm not going to try to teach it today, right? I'll teach a little bit, okay? But I think it helped me to see emptiness. I believe that.

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And it's difficult. So, people who study ACI, you heard it a couple times, in level seven. And we'll teach it in Xi'an.

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And again, I wanted to mention Xi'an, the old capital of China. And it is a, I believe it's a holy place. I believe if you go there, and you see those buildings where the ancient translators worked, and, you know, I believe it's a big blessing.

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So, and I was wondering to myself why foreigners don't go there so much. I think they should. I think it would be a big experience, you know? So, if you have time, you should come.

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Try to come. Who do you talk to? It's already sold out the first day. Just go there and crash it.

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I would go if I was you. DCI online. But just go and we'll figure it out.

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If you get there, I'll figure it out, okay? Okay, so anyway. In general, there's different kinds of chi. Chi means general.

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Che dak means specific case. Usually like set and subset, like all the chairs in the universe. And then these are one kind of chair.

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So, all the chairs. Chair is chi, and che dak is the one that your pigu is on. Okay? That's a specific chair.

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And then there's the category called chair. Okay? And to make it simple, you can't sit on the category chair. Right? That's just the idea.

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All the chairs in the universe, right? There's a thing called all the chairs in the universe, and it's a big ... In mathematics you call it a set, and it has members, you know. So, big chair. Chair as a category, chair as a word also, is a big thing.

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And it just means all the chairs in the universe. By the way, you can say that that chair is a name, right? And you don't use a or the in English. You don't say, about all chairs in the universe, you don't say a chair, or you just say chairs.

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You never use the or like that. You just say chairs. Chairs means all the chairs in the universe, and listen, that's an idea.

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Okay? That's actually an idea. It's not really, you know, anyone can go see all the chairs in the universe. It would take a little bit of time.

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You know? It's just an idea of chair. You can say chair, and in English, when you put quotation mark on it, it means the idea of chair, you know? And then this is a chair. This is one chair, okay? And this is not an idea.

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This is a real chair. This is the one you put your butt on. Okay? And what Buddhism says is, it is an idea, okay? And that if you think this chair, a chair, is different from chair, then you don't understand emptiness.

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It's very interesting, okay? And you got to cook it. When we look like that at my teacher, he say, you cook it. You have to pachitte [?], pachitte [?].

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You have to cook it. You know? I'll say it again. We tend to think that all the chairs in the universe is an idea, or a word.

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You can say chair like that. Okay? Concept. And then these are a chair.

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This chair is a real chair. You can say real chair. It's the real thing.

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That's the concrete. That's the real thing. And what Buddhism says, what Nagarjuna says, is that this is also a concept.

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You're sitting on a concept. Okay? It's the same as a ... It's not much different from the big chair. Okay? And you can think about it, okay? If you want countless ways to think about emptiness, thayepa gone, rikpa thayepa, think about that sometime.

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Okay? And I used to have my students, I remember in Germany one time, I don't know who was there, we went out and looked. We drove a car, we asked permission from the hotel, and we drove a car across this beautiful lawn and parked it in front of the class. And they let us.

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I don't know why they let us. And then I was trying to convince the students that this was an idea. And it was very helpful, I think.

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Okay? There's a big difference between your car and car, or cars, right? But there's not. Okay? Your car is an idea that's coming out of your seeds, in your mind, according to $100, according to, according to ... Arya Nagarjuna. No.

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I mean, that's also true. How you treat other people. Yeah, how you treat other people.

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And that's a very, very, very, very important thing. All Buddhist philosophy is based on ethics, how you treat other people. Okay? The existence of a car is based on how you treat other people.

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And I don't think there's any, I don't think there's any system that really says that so clearly, right? I mean, there are many systems that say you should be nice to other people, you should give away the things that you have, you should share what you have with other people, right? But to say your world is coming from that is kind of radical, you know? And by the way, if it's true, then the only choice you have is to take care of other people. You don't have any other choice. It's not a question of philosophy.

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It's a question of whether you want to eat tomorrow. You know? It's very interesting, okay? It's your life. Or your life will stop.

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So, anyway, this mind has seeds in it. The seeds open. They create pictures.

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The pictures come out of your mind and they create the car. The car that you see, the car that you drive, is not so different from car. You know, all the cars in the universe, okay? It's not so different, okay? No, Geshe La, you can sit in it.

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It can break your leg if you stand in front of it. Yeah. You will get an idea.

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Luminous images of a broken leg. Really. The car didn't break your leg.

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The luminous images broke your leg. Got it? One came before the other, but they were not causing a thing. They were not causing ... The car didn't break your leg.

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Your luminous images broke your leg. Because you heard something before. You heard somebody else.

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Okay? Lots of people get hit by a car and the car breaks. Okay. Anyway, here we go to the seven, alright? Number one.

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Is a car not its parts? Okay? Can ... These are the seven choices. These are classical. These are from Chandrakirti, okay? Is a car not its parts? Then, I don't know, you could take off some of the parts and see if it still goes.

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Okay? You know the old story. My teacher ... This is a fun story. When you study with a grandpa, they're always telling stories.

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Because the grandpa is old and understands you only remember the stories. He came to me and he said, my watch broke. And I said, I'm sorry.

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And he said, you fix it. And I'm like, I'm Rinpoche [?]. I don't know anything about fixing a watch.

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He said, you read the back. And it said, made in the USA. And he said, you from the USA? Yeah, you fix.

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I'm like ... That was his theory. Then his car broke one day. He's like, this car, you fix.

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You know, so I tried. I really tried hard to fix it. I bought a book, How to Fix Cars.

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I worked on it for six months. I took it all apart. Anyway, that's another story.

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So, it seems like all the parts are the car together. And Nagarjuna says, no, the car is ... Maybe you can say it's all the parts together, but you can't say it's something else, right? It's not something else. All the parts together, the car.

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Number two. Is it the same thing as all the parts together? Is the car the same thing as all the parts together? And if you're not talking about ... Listen, okay? This one doesn't make sense. Okay? Normally.

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It doesn't make sense. If you don't know about luminous images coming out of seeds that are planted by how you treat other people, which is your next mantra you should do at Dharma retreat, you know, if you don't know about that, the second one is, it's correct. The car is all of its parts together.

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And I broke one part, and the car didn't work. I can tell you. Then the real mechanic had came and fixed the one part.

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And then it worked. All the parts are there. So, the second one is difficult.

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All the parts together are not the car. Okay? That's difficult. That's disturbing to me.

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You know, when I heard it, when he taught it to me, I was uncomfortable. You know, he's like, I was waiting for something mystical. Like, he goes, ooooh, emptiness.

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And I go, wow, you know. He says, the car's ... He said, I'll teach you emptiness. Yeah.

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Okay, number one. Is the car not all its parts together? I'm like, no. Then he says, is the car all the parts together? I said, yeah.

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And he says, no. And I'm like, I don't get it, you know. I just couldn't get it, you know.

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Then I said, well, let's skip to number three. Number three. Does the car itself have the parts of a car? Itself.

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Is the car itself different from the car? Is the car itself different from the car? I don't think so. Personally, I don't think so. It's not a tree, you know.

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When you say itself, I mean, I'm not talking self-nature or all that. I'm not talking Buddhism. Just, can you say the car is itself? Yeah, it's not a fish.

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It's not a lobster. It's not a pizza. It's a car.

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Okay, so that one's trouble. Number four. Can you say the car depends on its parts? Does it rest on its parts? I think you can say that, you know.

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That implies that the car is different from its parts though. You got to be careful, right? Do you depend on your parts? Yeah, so you're not your parts. I didn't say that.

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I depend on my parts, but I am also my parts, okay? I mean, normally we say that, okay? Normally we say Michael depends on Michael's parts. Michael is all of Michael's parts put together. I don't have a problem with that.

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I don't know what these emptiness guys are trying to prove, you know. It doesn't make sense. Is Michael all the parts that Michael put together? Yes.

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I lose some parts, but I'm still Michael, okay? It's alright. I don't have a problem with it. Number five.

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Do the parts depend on Michael? In a way, I mean, if Michael wasn't in the room, my finger wouldn't be here, right? My parts kind of depend on me. I think so, you know. If I'm not here, my feet don't get to come here, right? That's okay.

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I don't have a problem with that. And then, six and seven get weird, okay? More weird. Did we do six? We didn't do six.

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Michael cannot be all of Michael's parts together. Then that one really doesn't make sense. Of course I'm all my parts together.

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Once in a while, a doctor pulls out parts and changes them and stuff. I'm still here, though. The main thing, the main car is still there, okay? Last one I really don't like.

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When you put all the pieces of Michael together, is Michael the outline of Michael? Like the general shape. Is that Michael? They threw this one in, number seven. Somebody threw it in a long time ago.

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It makes some sense, you know. You see an outline of Michael. You see a light in the dark.

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There's a light. And then someone comes in the door and it's a certain shape. And you can say Michael came.

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You can say that. Is it Michael? Is the outline Michael? I don't think so. But it's part of Michael.

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And it's an identifying part of Michael. My outline has a certain shape and a certain, you know. My Chinese friends say I have a big nose.

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Okay. It's true. Irish, okay.

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In Ireland it's very good. Okay. Those are the seven.

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And you, and I, maybe I was lucky that my teacher didn't speak very good English. So I couldn't ask him many questions about it. You know, I was like, I don't get it.

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He's like, work harder. I'm like, can we talk about this? He says, I don't know how to talk. I was his translator also.

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People ask me, did you ever translate for a teacher? I did. I always translated for him when he had, when he saw people with problems. He forced me to sit there.

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And then he'd say, what are you saying? And I'd say, he has a problem with his girlfriend. I don't want to talk about the details. He's like, oh okay, I get it.

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So I would translate his English for them and translate their English to him. And like that, okay. But I couldn't ask him more.

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I had to fight, I had to struggle with those ideas. And to be honest, it was during that time that I saw emptiness. Because I understood there was something important there.

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Okay, so I, you know, I don't like logic any more than you do, Ben Kramer. It's hard, it's difficult. When you come to a translation class, two of our translators, two out of the twelve are working on logic texts.

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I mean, it puts everybody to sleep. If you have trouble sleeping, come to the class. Okay? But it's very, very, very important, okay? And there's a reason why it's important in Buddhism.

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There's a reason why we spend so much time on it, okay? It's the only topic that in the Geshe course for 25 years, you study it for three months every year. It's the only topic you study every year, okay? One quarter of the year you spend on logic, for 25 years. And it's beautiful, it's very beautiful.

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Okay, I'm going to go through the list again, and I want you to, and can I afford to give a hundred, seven times? I lost a lot of my income this month. I lost over half my income this month. Something happened.

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But I'll do it anyway. Okay, some trouble happened. Okay, explain it to me with, explain it to me with luminous images, okay? That's, I'll give you a clue, alright? So, I'm saying I'll give you a hundred dollars.

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I'll give you one of the seven. I'll go through the seven in order. And then you tell me how you think we could explain it using luminous images, okay? And why it makes sense if it's referring to luminous images, okay? You ready? I hate people who raise their hand before I ask a question.

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Okay, number one. Let's do it easy way. Is the car, all of its parts together, yes or no? No, if there is no luminous images, which are coming from your mind.

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Hundred dollars, okay. Is a car all of its parts together? And then the trick, okay? What you have to say is what she said, Khanden [?] said. Excuse me, you're asking me is the car, all the parts of the car together? Yes, that's what I'm asking you.

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Oh, are you talking about parts that come from me? Or are you talking about parts that come from the factory? Oh, I'm talking about parts that come from the factory. No, the car is not. The car is not a collection of parts, okay? That's a Buddhist answer.

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I'll say it again. Someone comes up to you on the street. You meet somebody on an airplane.

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Handsome guy. And he says, I have a question for you. And you're like, yes? And he says, is a car made of all its parts? And you say, well, you have to tell me what you mean by parts.

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Do you mean parts that don't come from you? Or do you mean parts that do come from you? And he says, I don't know, just parts. Then you have to say, no, a car is not its parts. Okay, all right? If he said, is a car all the parts together of parts that are coming from you, can you say yes or no? Yeah, then you can say yes.

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It is. The car is all the parts of the car together if you're talking about parts that come from me. By how I gave rides to other people who had to go to Tucson and buy their kind of popcorn for our trip.

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Okay? By the way, I'm not saying that's a virtue. All right? But I'm saying, that's the trick here, okay? Then you don't get a headache. Is a car, you ready? $100 again? Does a car have its parts? Yes or no? $100.

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Yes, the car does have its parts if the parts are my luminous images coming from how I treated people in the past. Who said that? Now, listen. Sometimes a person gives a $200 answer.

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I asked Rob, how's your class going? And he says, well, they were kind of sleepy to start. And then what happened? Then I started handing out $100 bills and they all woke up. I'm like, see? That's teaching.

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All right. Could the parts be there without the car? By the way, still you can answer it with the same way. Can the parts be there without the car? Up to you Rob.

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Yes, they can exist without a car if those parts are coming from my luminous images of how I treated people in the past. Okay. I guess you could say is there such a thing as an auto parts store? And there is such a thing, okay? Okay, you get the point.

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I'm not going to invest more money in this one. You get the point, okay? And listen, if someone doesn't tell you that we're talking about luminous images, you can study that for 10 years and it won't help you at all. Because it doesn't make sense.

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It's just crazy. A car is not made of all its parts, you know? And there have been whole countries of Buddhism who never heard about the luminous image thing. And the poor guys sat generation after generation staring at the wall trying to figure it out.

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There's no answer. They were right, not the teacher. Okay? They're like, it doesn't make sense.

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And the teacher's like, no it does. But the students were incorrect. It didn't make sense.

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If you don't mention luminous images coming from how you treat other people, all those Buddhist arguments don't make any sense at all. And somebody should stand up and say that doesn't make sense. Because it doesn't make sense.

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Okay, got it? Alright. Next picture. How'd you find that car picture? Yeah, I love this picture.

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A couple weeks ago we had the 10th anniversary of the translation team. Okay? And in 1975 I wrote a proposal for the Library of Congress, for the American Library to translate the great books of Buddhism with 12 people. Each one doing a different dialect of Buddhism.

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Different century. And they said no. But I kept the dream.

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I kept it for almost 50 years. And I started it. I tried again 10 years ago.

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And I collected 12 fools, I mean scholars. And, right Tim? And, you know. And I tried again.

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And we did it. We finally did it. And it's very slow and it's very difficult.

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But now all the books are coming out. A lot of those books took 5 years, 10 years. Tim's book, if we go on schedule, which we're not, will take 52 years? Something like that.

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He's going to be an old fart by the time I finish. Okay, so. The bottom picture was the original classes we had 10 years ago.

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Like Stanley looks young, right? And then up above is grandpa has gray hair, lots of gray hair. Who gave me the gray hair? It's the people standing around me. And that's Shenzong's [?] Tower modeled in the front of myself and Veronica.

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Okay, that's what it looks like. It's very beautiful. You should go sometime.

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Did I ever say that? By the way, I won't go there very often, so it's a good chance to go. Then before you come home, go see Dunhuang. How many hours? Hour and a half? Yeah, it's just a little flight from Dunhuang, which 700 caves where people meditated 1,400 years ago and wrote 60,000 books.

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Okay? And they were hidden in a secret cave and it was found, those books were found. We're using one of them for the empowerment this month. We're using one of those texts.

(36:49 - 37:17)
Okay? It's very exciting. Okay, so anyway, the next verse by Lobsang Chukyi Gyaltsen, he says you should honor the people who are supporting you. Okay? And in Buddhism for many, many years it's been based on support.

(37:18 - 37:46)
In fact, when they make a list of the requirements of a good retreat place, right? The last one is you better find someone to pay for the groceries. Like you can't do a retreat, you can't have Dunhuang caves, you cannot have 700 caves. When I look at those 700 caves, I think about all the people dragging groceries up there, you know? And it's hard and it costs a lot of money.

(37:46 - 38:07)
It's expensive to be a Buddhist. Just to do retreat here, you know, it's cheap, we don't charge much for the place, but you still have to buy groceries, you still have to get here, you cannot work during that time, you know, it's hard. Kind of we depend on sponsors.

(38:09 - 38:25)
And this, in my country, we never had any tradition of Buddhism. So there's nobody, you say, would you like to sponsor a retreat for me? What's that? Oh, you just buy my groceries for three months. They're like, nah.

(38:27 - 38:46)
So there's no custom here, there's no tradition here. It was very hard when we started this place, it was really hard. It's better now, but it's still, the custom doesn't exist here, okay? So, anyway, the translators, it's expensive.

(38:46 - 39:00)
I told them, if you join, I will pay you a salary. I will pay you to sit in the room and I will teach you. And we paid a good salary.

(39:01 - 39:22)
And that budget is about a million dollars a year, okay? The budget is 880,000 before the little costs, like lawyers and stuff like that. So, anyway, it's about a million dollars. And what he's talking about here is very interesting.

(39:23 - 39:59)
He says, as a practitioner, as a meditator, your responsibility is to work hard. Because every hour you meditate, someone else is growing food, working in the field, driving the truck to the store, unloading the truck at the store, checking you out at the store, throwing away the garbage after you leave. There's hundreds of people who have to work for you to sit here.

(40:01 - 40:20)
Every person here, even if you have financial independence, still you eat, still you travel here. Somebody built the car, somebody made the road, and they gave their life for that. They got old, they died, and the road is there.

(40:21 - 40:34)
And they gave that for you. They gave it for you to practice. So, he says, you have to be, you have to pay them back.

(40:34 - 40:44)
Okay? How? Study emptiness. Cheap. No.

(40:45 - 40:54)
Oh, it's just think about nothing, Geshe La. That's a good deal. They give me groceries, I think about nothing.

(40:55 - 41:32)
I could just watch Netflix and do the same thing. So, it's an interesting concept that in this book, The Devil Debates with the Angel, he says, if you are studying emptiness, if you are thinking about emptiness, if you're sitting in a class on emptiness, there's a big network of other people feeding you, putting clothes on you, driving the airplanes. Don't worry, Geshe La, I paid them.

(41:32 - 41:49)
I know how much you pay a person for their life. How much you pay for an hour of life. Can you buy back the hour, the pilot on the plane, from Singapore? I don't know, it's like 48 hours.

(41:50 - 42:00)
Are you going to give him back 48 hours? You cannot. He gave you his life. The pilot, he or she gave you their life.

(42:01 - 42:14)
And then, when you get to Diamond Mountain, you better do something, because you owe them. That's a very interesting emptiness meditation. Somebody said, everybody wants an emptiness meditation.

(42:14 - 42:22)
Yeah, I want an emptiness meditation. Okay, you got to hold your fingers right. The channels don't work unless you do.

(42:26 - 42:36)
And then, think about the pilot who drove the airplane. Wait, I'm supposed to be meditating about emptiness. No, he's allowed you to think about emptiness.

(42:36 - 42:56)
You have to pay him back with a good emptiness meditation, okay? That's the only thing valuable enough to pay back the pilot for his life. And I always say Warren Buffett cannot, you know, Warren Buffett bought my company. And I think about him a lot.

(42:57 - 43:07)
81 billion dollars, I think. 181, something like that. And he cannot, he had to retire this year, poor guy.

(43:08 - 43:23)
He's 90 something, 91? 94. And he had to retire. Why? With 81 billion or 181 billion, he couldn't buy one more hour.

(43:24 - 43:30)
He couldn't buy one more hour. You know, you cannot. There's no price.

(43:30 - 43:44)
That pilot's life has no price. Warren Buffett cannot buy him another hour, okay, of his life. So, you have to meditate seriously.

(43:44 - 43:59)
When you're here, you have to use the time, okay? Oh, Geshe La, does that mean I can't watch football? Well, I watched some yesterday. No, I mean, you got to have, you got to relax sometimes. You got to learn how to relax.

(43:59 - 44:08)
You got to goof off sometimes. That's Buddhist practice. Certain TV shows are Buddhist practice.

(44:11 - 44:21)
No, I mean you have to know how to relax. I can't count how many students I met who didn't know how to relax and they quit. They got all nervous and they quit.

(44:22 - 44:29)
Don't be like that. Have fun, goof off, overeat sometimes. It's okay.

(44:30 - 44:47)
And then come back to your study and work hard, okay? You got to have some fun time. You have to, okay? Otherwise you'll break. Right, Xiaoping? And later you'll get grumpy.

(44:47 - 44:56)
Later you'll get grumpy, because you overwork all the time. Then you're like, I got to go, I got to go. I just want to ask you, did you enjoy your ... No, I don't have time.

(45:00 - 45:16)
So, he says, when you are trying to do a retreat, when you're trying to meditate about emptiness, dedicate it to your sponsor. Dedicate it to the pilot. Dedicate it to the people who brought the groceries.

(45:17 - 45:47)
Dedicate it to the Joes and the other people who worked so hard to build this place. And ... Yeah, this place is like a secret atomic bomb, you know? No, it's like the most viable place in the United States. Nobody knows it's here, right? Okay.

(45:49 - 46:02)
Then he says, when you do your emptiness meditation, remember the people who put you here. Okay. Just always think about them, you know? You say, I don't know, today I don't feel like it.

(46:03 - 46:20)
Do it for Joe, you know? Do it for whoever's working, you know? And do it for them. Okay, got it? One more thing about that next picture. Many years ago, like five years ago, I made a mind map.

(46:21 - 46:25)
Unfortunately, I learned how to use it. It was very, very simple. Even I could use it.

(46:26 - 46:37)
And I was so proud of myself. And ... this is a mind map of our organization. Okay? This is what we look like around the world.

(46:38 - 46:46)
That's how many organizations we have. Okay? If you count all of them. And this is their interconnection.

(46:47 - 47:04)
They all interconnect, you see? There's only one thing that is the same for all of them. Somebody has to take responsibility to pay for it. You know, in the end, the bills come to me.

(47:05 - 47:09)
Okay? Seriously. And I'm not complaining. I signed up for that.

(47:09 - 47:13)
And I'm proud of it. I'm happy to do it. It's my job.

(47:15 - 47:28)
But it's a lot of money. You have no idea. And ... what I'm asking is ... cooperate with each other.

(47:29 - 47:46)
When you fundraise, cooperate with each other. Okay? If Emily figures out how to steal half of Stanley's funding, then guess where Stanley goes to get the other half. No, it always comes on me.

(47:46 - 47:51)
It always comes back to me. And it's very hard. It's really, really hard.

(47:51 - 47:59)
Imagine this many organizations. And if one of them ... What do you call it? There's a word. Poaching.

(48:00 - 48:17)
Yeah, like you just go and ... and you go, oh, this is Xiaoping's sponsor. Oh, really? You know? And you just take him out for dinner. And then suddenly, they tell Xiaoping, oh, I gave half the money to somebody else.

(48:18 - 48:24)
It always comes back to my head. It always comes back to me. And it's hard.

(48:25 - 48:43)
It's really, really hard. Okay? What I'm saying is, if it's one family, and one person takes from another person, and dad has to come and take from another person and get back to that one, it's just a waste of time. And it's a waste of my life.

(48:43 - 48:48)
And I don't have lifetime. I do not have lifetime. I know I don't have lifetime.

(48:48 - 48:56)
I mean, I have 30 doctors telling me, you don't have lifetime. So, I got to use it wisely. I have to use every hour wisely.

(48:56 - 49:10)
I don't have time to go find out who stole this person's sponsor, or like that. That's your job. Okay? All right? Understand? Okay? And I will do it happily.

(49:10 - 49:14)
I will do it. I swear I will do it. But it's just a lot of trouble.

(49:14 - 49:27)
It costs me a lot of late nights and I lose my lifetime. I lose the time to do the things I want to do. So, anyway, talk to each other.

(49:27 - 49:33)
The easiest thing is to talk to each other. Say, Oh, Xiaoping, I met this lady. She's your sponsor.

(49:34 - 49:41)
Can I take this? Is it okay? And then she says, Yeah, that's fine. That's no problem. Then that's cool.

(49:42 - 49:53)
You see what I mean? What do you call? That's good manners. And, then I don't have to get involved. Understand? All right? Then I can translate more books, then.

(49:53 - 50:00)
Make more mind maps. Okay. This also has to do with security.

(50:01 - 50:11)
Okay? There's customs in every country. There's laws in every country. You know, I was in Uzbekistan.

(50:11 - 50:23)
I was asked to talk in Uzbekistan by, what's his name? Mirza Karim Norbekov. Mirza Karim Norbekov. Very nice guy.

(50:24 - 50:33)
He said, Come to my house. We'll make a barbecue, and we'll eat all night, and dance. Uzbek dances, and, you know.

(50:33 - 50:52)
And I went, you know, and I was supposed to give a talk. And, I got up in my robe, and suddenly there's 50 policemen there, you know, around the audience, and they all got guns and stuff. And I'm like, and he said, Well, maybe you take the robe off, Geshe La.

(50:54 - 51:01)
And I'm like, nobody told me, you know. I didn't know, you know. I didn't know this is the rule here, you know.

(51:01 - 51:18)
So, every country has their own rules. And, what happens is, people want to teach, they go someplace, they break the rules, and guess who the police come to. It's always me.

(51:18 - 51:32)
In the end, it's always me. And it happens about every three months, you know. And it's frightening to have a policeman in a foreign country come to your door, bang on the door.

(51:32 - 51:38)
It happened. It happened many, me and Veronica went to the police station. Here's my wife.

(51:38 - 51:48)
I'm like, here, come see this beautiful country. We spent the afternoon, we spent the whole half a day being interrogated by the police. And it's very, very frightening.

(51:49 - 51:56)
And it's very difficult, okay. And the thing is, you don't know the rules. A lot of people don't know the rules.

(51:56 - 52:04)
You don't know what's the rules in other countries. But they always come back to me. Dads come to me, and policemen come to me.

(52:04 - 52:07)
Okay. And I don't like them. Okay.

(52:07 - 52:15)
And it's stressful. You know, it's very difficult for me. So, I ask you, respectfully, you know, talk to each other.

(52:15 - 52:29)
Just talk to each other. You know, hi, you know, I got a, can I ask one of your people to help me pay for my Mexican project? And Jenny Wong said, yeah, sure. She's like the one always saying, yeah, sure, go ahead.

(52:30 - 52:36)
You know, but you have to ask, okay. Number one. Number two, find out the rules.

(52:36 - 52:42)
Please, please, please. If you don't know the rules, then don't do it. Find out the rules first.

(52:42 - 52:48)
Okay. And as a Buddhist, you must respect the laws of your country. Okay.

(52:48 - 52:54)
As a Buddhist, respect the laws of your country. If you don't like them, move someplace else. You can.

(52:55 - 52:59)
You've got two legs. You know, just go. Okay.

(53:00 - 53:11)
But in general, I warn you, you will find out that your own country is the best place to be. And you won't be so happy in another country. I predict, you know.

(53:11 - 53:18)
Your country has laws. They come from the customs of your people. They come from the ancient times.

(53:18 - 53:26)
And they fit your people. And so, you know, when you go to another person's country, follow their laws. Okay.

(53:26 - 53:46)
You don't have the right to tell other people's country, I don't have to follow your laws. Why? It's not the same as mine. Well, then you go back, okay? That's correct, right? You don't go to someone else's house and say, I don't like spaghetti.

(53:47 - 54:01)
You know, you should make pizza. You know, you don't do that. It's bad manners, right? Okay? If you choose to go to another person's house, then my teacher ... When I was going to go to India, I went to my anthropology professor.

(54:02 - 54:12)
He spent a long time there. I never went there. And I said, do you have any advice for me? And he said, you sit down, and I'll give you advice.

(54:12 - 54:23)
He was like famous. He was Geertz, Clifford Geertz, very famous anthropologist. And he said, I'll tell you the anthropology golden rule.

(54:24 - 54:37)
I'm like, yeah. He says, eat whatever they put in front of you. Whatever country you go to, whatever culture you go to, whatever they put in front of you, go, mmm, this is delicious.

(54:37 - 54:47)
And then you can spit it out afterwards. Okay? Like, to respect other people's country. And they cook for you, and they offer you something.

(54:48 - 54:55)
You know, you should try Mongolian dinners. Oh, man. 25 years.

(54:56 - 55:10)
And I'm like, mmm, yeah, I love, I love that stuff. And you got to respect other people's country. Okay? And that's what the greatest, one of the greatest anthropologists in history told me.

(55:11 - 55:27)
Then I said, okay, what else? He said, that's it. When you go to someone else's country, follow their customs, and don't piss them off, and don't think you know better. Okay? Alright? Got it? Then I don't have to get involved.

(55:27 - 55:35)
Then I can relax, translate more books. Okay? Deal? Okay. Thank you.

(55:35 - 55:41)
I appreciate it. And I'm not angry, and I'm not upset. I just, I don't have time.

(55:41 - 55:48)
It's just mathematics. I don't have time. If I had time, I would definitely talk to the police for you.

(55:49 - 55:56)
But I don't have time. Or the other person's sponsor. I can get involved.

(55:56 - 56:01)
I can make peace. But I don't have time. You got to respect my time.

(56:01 - 56:12)
Okay? Alright. Next picture. We are moving on to a new ... How am I doing on time? Five minutes? Oh.

(56:13 - 56:19)
Let's do Q&A. Is that okay? Alright, let's do Q&A. I'm on Canto 15.

(56:20 - 56:31)
Okay? We have 25 cantos. Okay? We'll make it in 10 more years. And by the way, my rule about question and answer, any question you want, I don't mind.

(56:32 - 56:41)
Okay? It doesn't have to be about emptiness. You can ask me about ... your dog. Although I'm better at cats.

(56:43 - 56:50)
Okay? But I'm happy to answer any question you have. Hi Geshe La. I have a question.

(56:51 - 56:58)
You said ... I do always have a question. Actually, my husband has the same question. He's always got more questions.

(57:00 - 57:30)
So, you said that when Choo Chok [?] happens, within two hours, a person sees emptiness directly? Yeah. And cannot die, more or less, within this period of time? I would say cannot. What could be a karmic cause if the second event didn't happen? Like, after the first one, somebody has seen the dependent event, but the second part doesn't happen.

(57:31 - 57:47)
Could it be that something is missing, like shamatha or something? Yeah, okay. Good question. Just because things come from your seeds does not mean everything can happen.

(57:48 - 58:13)
Okay? And it would seem to mean that. If I say that what happens to you in your life is coming from your seeds, then it should be that almost anything is possible. You could find ... what's that green thing you eat? You could find an avocado that tastes good to Geshe Michael.

(58:15 - 58:26)
But, I mean, in theory, if everything is created by seeds, then everything should be possible. But, there are patterns. There are patterns of reality.

(58:26 - 58:53)
You know, given the patterns of reality, for example, an orange tree will grow from an orange seed, and that's not because the seed has any power in it. It means that the karma which creates that orange seed normally follows a pattern of creating an orange fruit. Not necessarily, but normally.

(58:54 - 59:16)
So, but I would assert, and I don't have a lot of, you know, it's something that I say from my own experience. It's not something I read in a book, okay? I don't believe it's possible to see the pot on the stove and not see emptiness directly within two or three hours. I don't think it's possible.

(59:16 - 59:28)
I think it's not allowed by the patterns of seeds, okay? I don't think it's possible. I would say it's not possible. That's my own experience.

(59:29 - 59:50)
So, a lot of the experiences I had that day, I found them later in books, and I was so happy about the books. I was like, yeah, they got it right. One was that I would have seven more lifetimes, and to you it sounds weird, you know? Look, I'm a seven lifer.

(59:52 - 1:00:10)
What's a seven lifer? I will be a Buddha in seven lifetimes, and I know it, and I know where and everything. So, you say, I don't know Geshe La, it doesn't sound so fun to die seven times. But I'm like, that's because you don't know how many billions of times you died already.

(1:00:11 - 1:00:33)
Seven is nothing. Seven is like, you have to work overtime at work for 30 seconds or something. Like, everybody can do that, you know? So, I saw seven, the number seven, and then I would go around, you know, I wonder why it has to be seven, and then one day I found it in the Abhidharmakosha.

(1:00:34 - 1:00:49)
It's called Sipa Lendunpa. Say Sipa? Sipa Lendunpa. Sipa means samsara, like Sipa Korlo, Wheel of Life, Bhava Chakra, and then Lend means times, and Dun means seven.

(1:00:49 - 1:01:01)
Sipa Lendunpa is called a seven timer. It's a kind of Arya. It's one kind of Arya, okay? So, I haven't found that one yet, about not dying in between.

(1:01:01 - 1:01:06)
I haven't found it yet, but I bet I'll find it. I don't know. Maybe I'll make it.

(1:01:08 - 1:01:25)
Okay, other question. Okay, good. Am I going to pay for Ben's next vacation? Probably.

(1:01:29 - 1:02:24)
You guys have any ... Go ahead. We can't hear you, but ... Come closer. Ben, calories [?] speed up a little bit.

(1:02:40 - 1:03:16)
We cannot hear the online translator, so I'll just translate in English. So, as we're learning the seed system, as the technology and also the health technology are developing, we're noticing the nutritious balance, especially, and my question is, after we learn the seed system, do we still have to worry about nutritious balance? And also, how can we eat more nutritious and more healthy? How can we eat more healthy? How can we eat healthier? Oh, eat healthier, yes. You're asking me.

(1:03:18 - 1:03:32)
Okay, no. My wife said, are you going to eat cornflakes for the rest of your life? And I'm like, probably. You know.

(1:03:35 - 1:03:52)
It should be at a certain point if your karma is good enough. Well, I'll tell you an experience. These are all experiences I had around the time I saw emptiness, and I've told it to you before, but I want you to hear it many times, and I don't care if ... if you say you heard it before, just take a nap.

(1:03:54 - 1:04:51)
So anyway, I was meditating very well, I think I ... well, I did reach shamatha, and then I was in the library at Princeton, and it's a beautiful library. You know, it's ... I think it's 250 million books or something, it's crazy. It goes underground for seven, eight stories, and the reading room was built in the ... I don't know, a hundred years ago, and it's all nice wood, and beautiful windows, and I was sitting there working on my class work, and then I realized I had not breathed for about ten minutes, you know, and I was like, huh, you know, I wasn't doing it on purpose, I was just focusing on something, and then I realized I didn't breathe for like ten minutes, and then I spent many years thinking about that.

(1:04:52 - 1:05:24)
I spent years thinking about it, that if ... if the luminous images coming out of seeds are sufficient, you don't need oxygen to live. It's not true. You can live without oxygen, you can live without breathing, you know, and I've experienced it directly myself, which is why I support eating only cornflakes, you know.

(1:05:24 - 1:05:29)
No, I'm just kidding. Just kidding. My wife's going to kill me.

(1:05:30 - 1:05:54)
You don't tell her, okay? Gibson, don't get me in trouble. But in general I would say inside of the fact of seeds, you are in a certain pattern. For example, there's only five different ways you can take rebirth.

(1:05:55 - 1:06:10)
Okay? There's five or six. There's only ... every person who dies will become an animal, or a human, or a hungry ghost, like that. There's only ... there's patterns to reality that are not broken.

(1:06:12 - 1:06:39)
Okay? In theory you could become a piece of wood, or you could become a rock, and there are stories like that, but in general there are certain patterns. Once you're into a certain life type, human, then in general the pattern for humans is you have to eat well, and you have to exercise, and you have to take care of yourself. You have to do yoga, and you know, you have to take care of your body.

(1:06:39 - 1:06:52)
So I would say ... I would say it's a wise thing. We all know people who are too worried about their body. They want to have muscles.

(1:06:52 - 1:07:04)
They want to look nice. You know, they spend all day picking out ... what do you call that stuff? Hair conditioner? And stuff like that. I mean, you went too far.

(1:07:04 - 1:07:10)
You can go too far. You know? I only eat macadamia nuts. I don't eat peanuts.

(1:07:10 - 1:07:24)
You know? And like that, I think that you can go too far. But, in general, I think eating wisely, not overeating. And generally, I think the three things are fat, sugar, and carbohydrates.

(1:07:25 - 1:07:31)
Fat, sugar, and carbohydrates. We had a discussion the other day. I have a friend who bought me groceries.

(1:07:31 - 1:07:37)
I said, pick me up some cereal. And they brought this stuff. It's called frosted flakes.

(1:07:37 - 1:07:46)
And it has a real nice tiger on the front. And kids love it. And I said, no, no, no, I can't eat that.

(1:07:47 - 1:07:53)
And they're like, Geshe La, you said to buy cereal. This is cereal. I said, I got my cornflakes box.

(1:07:54 - 1:08:04)
And I said, okay, let's compare the numbers. The Cheerios is 10 grams of sugar in a bowl. It's unsweetened.

(1:08:04 - 1:08:10)
The one we got was 30 or 40 or 50. I don't remember. Huh? Yeah, something like that.

(1:08:10 - 1:08:18)
It's three times more sugar. And same with the carbohydrates, like double, double the carbohydrates. That's what kills people.

(1:08:19 - 1:08:42)
Normally, in this human body, created by certain patterns of karma, with exceptions for people with extraordinary karma, who don't have to eat, but normal people with normal karma who had the karma to come here, you have to eat healthy food. You will live longer. And it's not from the food side.

(1:08:42 - 1:08:55)
It's from your seed side. The seeds that have the pattern to create a human body normally need certain kind of healthy food to run better. And that I can say is true.

(1:08:55 - 1:09:24)
If you eat well. And when I became a monk, in 1982, I think, 83, they said, you can, option, there's an option. I said, what's the option? You can, you can tell us the day you get your robes that you're going to keep the monk's commitment not to eat after 12.

(1:09:25 - 1:09:34)
For three weeks. Or something like that. You can, you can vote for that, but if it's too difficult, you don't have to do it.

(1:09:35 - 1:09:45)
And I said, well, it sounds interesting. I'd like to try. So I kept it for, I kept that for 16 years or something.

(1:09:45 - 1:09:56)
I didn't eat after 12. And that was my corporate lifetime. That was the time I was building the company.

(1:09:57 - 1:10:14)
And I think it helped me build the company. I think it, it was healthier that I didn't eat solid food. You can have a smoothie, healthy smoothie in the morning, but you can't eat solid food until, I mean, you eat solid food at noon and then you don't eat again.

(1:10:16 - 1:10:26)
And I think it was extremely healthy. And it gives your body a chance to rest for half the day. I still, then when I started to do yoga in the morning, I had to eat in the afternoon.

(1:10:27 - 1:10:32)
So then I didn't eat in the morning. And I got that habit. I still normally don't eat in the morning.

(1:10:33 - 1:10:39)
Normally I don't eat until noon. And I think that's healthy. I think it gives your body a break.

(1:10:39 - 1:10:56)
I have a smoothie at 9.00. And I start craving a smoothie at 8.58. Okay, so, I think that's okay. But it does make a big difference. Again, there are yogis who don't have to eat.

(1:10:57 - 1:11:04)
And there's yogis who eat terribly and are fine. Like those guys on the subway in New York who live on candy bars. I hate them.

(1:11:05 - 1:11:18)
They're all muscles, and they look healthy, and they're eating a candy bar. Right in the subway you meet these guys. But it's just karma.

(1:11:18 - 1:11:31)
It's mostly karma. But our general karma is that if you eat poorly, you will die earlier. And when you, as you go through life, you realize how rare it is to stay alive.

(1:11:31 - 1:11:38)
How difficult it is. People will start dying around you. People will start dropping out.

(1:11:38 - 1:12:00)
And you say, where's that person who used to come to class? Oh, guess what, you didn't hear? They got in an accident, or they got cancer, or ... As you go through life, more and more of your friends will disappear. And then you realize your life is very valuable, very precious. You have to take care of it, okay? Take good care of it.

(1:12:00 - 1:12:04)
And it's fun. You can have more fun. All right.

(1:12:04 - 1:12:17)
Don't tell my wife I gave you this lecture. Okay, next one. Thank you, Geshe La.

(1:12:19 - 1:12:41)
My question is about the diamond way that we're all developing to enter. What is your advice on how we should think and how we should engage with this new diamond way that you're doing, if you're halfway through or starting the old diamond way or finished it? Finished it, meaning the study part. Yeah, okay, good.

(1:12:42 - 1:13:01)
That's a good question. So, I taught diamond way ... My teacher taught it to me early. I think the second year I was there, like 1977 or something, he started teaching us the lamrim to prepare for diamond way.

(1:13:01 - 1:13:20)
And he said he was preparing us for diamond way. And then he started giving us empowerments after two more years. And then I had to do more empowerments because I had to ... I was one of the clergy at the church.

(1:13:20 - 1:13:28)
I was one of the monks at the temple. And every morning we had to do the prayers. And a lot of them are diamond way prayers.

(1:13:29 - 1:14:00)
So I had to learn it, I had to ... I had to learn it early. SDUG GIS LANGS RGA LA MA'I DGOS LO SDOG PA'I YA YIN LA RTZA GYI RGYIS LA MA'I YID BLO MCHOG SU GANG NAS ZIN PA'I RDZOGS KYI KHO NA'I RGYUR BA'I RGYUR BA'I RGYUR BA'I BDA' DANG DRO NANGS RGYI BDA' DANG NYON PA'I ZIN PA'I RGYUR BA'I RGYUR BA'I SDUG GIS LANGS RGA LA MA'I DGOS LO MCHOG SU GANG NAS ZIN PA'I RGYUR BA'I RGYUR BA'I RGYUR BA'I RGYUR BA'I You can get so good at memorizing the sadhana that you can recite the whole thing without thinking about it once. So anyway, I had to go through all that.

(1:14:00 - 1:14:21)
And then during my three-year retreat, I thought ... I had taught seven years of ACI courses. And that was basically ... I got my Geshe during that time. And I wanted Westerners to learn the Geshe course.

(1:14:22 - 1:15:11)
And I wanted people who were not monks to learn the Geshe course, which was never done before. And so I created ACI to teach the Geshe course to normal people. And I had a feeling that normal family people, working people, that I knew, the ones I knew were so capable, the ones in New York for example, most of them, yeah, they're so sharp, and they have so much energy, I thought, wow, if they could practice the classics, the Geshe course, during their working life, you'd have an explosion.

(1:15:12 - 1:15:22)
It would be the first time in history, I think. Maybe during the Tang Dynasty, there were some lay people like that, I don't know. But I thought it would be incredible.

(1:15:23 - 1:15:49)
So I worked really hard to choose the most important parts of the Geshe course and put it into those courses. And my teacher had, he taught for 25 years, he did not have any requirements. You just come to class, you sit there, he finish, you go home.

(1:15:50 - 1:16:30)
There's no homework, there's no exams, there's no review, and then I thought if someday I teach, I would like to teach with homework and exams, and I would like people to take it more seriously. Only two of his students, or three, took it seriously, I would say, who came to all the classes and really learned everything he had to teach. I'd say there was only three, out of hundreds of people, only three people really worked hard and learned it well.

(1:16:30 - 1:16:59)
So I decided if I do this, I'm going to have more tough. And I remember, I can talk about Michael Wick, right? I said, no more coming to class late, if you miss more than two classes in a course, you are out. And if you come more than, I will lock the door at three minutes after the hour, and I will not open it, and I don't care who's out there.

(1:17:00 - 1:17:19)
So this is, we were down in Hell's Kitchen, and I locked the door. Michael Wick was outside, and he started banging on the door, and he was very angry. A dear friend of mine, and then he said, he yelled through the door, you're just a goddamn Dharma Hitler.

(1:17:21 - 1:17:35)
And I'm like, I'm sorry, I'm trying to get people to take it seriously. And I have to say, it turned out well. And the students responded.

(1:17:35 - 1:17:53)
They didn't drop out, they actually, every six months we had to move to a bigger place. And it was hard in Manhattan to find a bigger place. But it just grew and grew and grew, because people also appreciated that they had to follow some rules, and they were learning something.

(1:17:53 - 1:18:07)
And so we finished the 18 courses. Then I did three-year retreat. One of the deals I think I made was, if you, you know, I have to do a three-year retreat, but if you come back after three years, I'll teach you Diamond Way.

(1:18:09 - 1:18:25)
And so during the three years, I had a lot of ideas about Diamond Way, how to teach Diamond Way. And then I wrote the outline for the Diamond Way course. It was going to be a six-year course, 18 courses.

(1:18:26 - 1:18:34)
And I wrote it during my retreat. And then when I came out, I went on a tour around the United States. I don't know if you remember that.

(1:18:34 - 1:18:40)
We didn't have any money. We had some old cars, kept breaking down. We stayed in terrible motels.

(1:18:41 - 1:18:51)
I remember one in Texas, I almost got killed. It was right next to the highway, like two feet away from the highway. And a car came and hit the hotel.

(1:18:52 - 1:19:01)
And it was very frightening. But then I went around the United States and I said, I'm going to teach Diamond Way. And here's the outline.

(1:19:01 - 1:19:14)
Here's the 18 courses. And that's how I met Ben Kramer, I think, in Indiana or something like that. But I met people like that.

(1:19:15 - 1:19:28)
And so then I did that. And I went purposely counterclockwise around the United States. So I went to Florida first, New York, and then Washington State, and back to Arizona.

(1:19:29 - 1:19:39)
So I went Vajrayogini Way around the country. So anyway, I came back. Then here, we started the courses.

(1:19:41 - 1:19:58)
And I think a hundred and something people, 120 something, 139 people finished. Mostly we were pretty strict. There were a few exceptions, but mostly they passed the 18 courses.

(1:19:59 - 1:20:06)
I didn't finish all the courses because I was stressed out. There was a lot of work. They were very, very long courses.

(1:20:07 - 1:20:21)
And it took me a lot of time to translate them. And I was exhausted. I remember one homework I did in the car on the way from Tucson to Bisbee.

(1:20:25 - 1:20:39)
Tombstone. And I was so exhausted. We got a ticket. 

It was midnight. We got a ticket in the middle of nowhere. And the cops stopped us, and I was still working.

(1:20:39 - 1:20:51)
I was not driving. And I still, he said, that guy okay? Yeah, he's okay. And then I got there, and I looked at the homework.

(1:20:51 - 1:21:03)
It was 83 questions or so. And I'm like, nah, I'm going to cut that down. Anyway, I was so tired that I I went overboard on the questions.

(1:21:03 - 1:21:15)
And then, I observed people after I finished the course. It is the best Diamond Way course ever created in history. I can say that easily.

(1:21:15 - 1:21:47)
It is the most complete course in Diamond Way ever created. And I studied briefly at the tantric colleges. I've been there. 

I debated there. So I know what they study, and I know how they study. It's better. 

It's much better. It's more thorough, and it's more complete. So anyway, I finished that 18 courses. 

It took six years. That's seven years. And then I I don't know, I challenged the students.

(1:21:47 - 1:21:54)
I said, now I'll make you a deal. I will not teach Diamond Way again. And then you guys teach it.

(1:21:55 - 1:22:05)
And I kind of made a decision that I would force them to teach it. So I said, I'm not going to teach it again. And you guys have to teach it.

(1:22:06 - 1:22:31)
And then, to be honest, as I remember it, not many people taught. Maybe 5% something started teaching, and I was really kind of surprised. But anyway, then many years later, I guess, 7 plus 3, 10, 15 years later.

(1:22:31 - 1:22:41)
Oh no, how many years ago? The Kyoto ambush [?]. Four years ago. So, I don't know.

(1:22:42 - 1:22:52)
After many years, someone asked me very sincerely. A small group of people asked me very sincerely. And I just agreed right away.

(1:22:52 - 1:23:10)
And I did it. And then I was faced with, you see, when I taught Diamond Way here, the students were, by the way, I can go over time, it's alright? Okay. I'll take it out of your next class.

(1:23:12 - 1:23:55)
So, when I was here, it was pretty much a full-time thing. People either lived here, or they commuted here. And, but, then I was faced with, how do you teach Diamond Way to normal people? How do you teach Diamond Way to people who have families, people who have jobs? And the contradiction is that people who have good jobs, and people who build their own business, which is, these people are mostly business owners, and people who have healthy families are better students.

(1:23:56 - 1:24:23)
They learn faster, they're responsible. You know, if you bring up a couple kids, right? Vivian, a kid, then you have to be responsible. And so what I discovered was that these normal working people, many who built their own companies, they're really good at learning Diamond Way.

(1:24:24 - 1:24:42)
And I'm like, hmm. You know, so, so I have over the last, how many years? No, like, since, since we finished here, it's about 20 years. It's about 20 years.

(1:24:42 - 1:24:55)
I have 20 years more experience in my life. I've been teaching for 20 years more. I've been teaching groups of normal people, you know, who are not monks in the monastery.

(1:24:56 - 1:25:20)
And by the way, in my opinion, in my tradition, in my lineage, the Diamond Way teachings in the Diamond Way monasteries are, are not very helpful. And the requirements are very strange nowadays. If you memorize Guhyasamaja, sadhana, you graduate.

(1:25:22 - 1:25:31)
You're done. You know. And, and I'm like, well, what if you're just a bad person? You know, like, I mean, you know, it's weird.

(1:25:31 - 1:25:41)
It's a little unusual. It's a little strange. There is a three-year retreat custom, and there's a small house in the middle of the monastery.

(1:25:42 - 1:25:53)
And you go, and you do three years there. But you're around, surrounded by a normal monastery. Monastery is the last place in the world you want to go if you want to meditate.

(1:25:54 - 1:26:08)
Because it's noisy, and it's crazy, and it's very political. You can't, you never understand it. So, you know, I, I just thought we could do better than that.

(1:26:09 - 1:26:29)
And I thought that there should be a special Diamond Way for normal people in the world who have their own work. They have their own families. And the, many of the original Diamond Way teachings were designed for business people.

(1:26:30 - 1:26:41)
The Kalachakra, for example, was first taught to kings. And it was designed for people who didn't have time to live in a monastery. And, and it was very successful.

(1:26:42 - 1:27:09)
They taught it in a certain style that was very fun, and very mellow, and very beautiful, and very happy, and very, very much you could have a normal life and be very successful at Diamond Way at the same time. And that's kind of my dream. You know, that's kind of my my dream for Diamond Way.

(1:27:09 - 1:27:16)
So, that's the kind of thing I would like to teach. And that's what I'm trying to teach. Now, I didn't answer the question.

(1:27:19 - 1:27:27)
There's people halfway through the old course. You know, the old course. So, what should they do? I don't know.

(1:27:29 - 1:27:43)
I would say, I would say that if you're halfway through it, it must mean that you're supposed to, it's bad luck not to finish something that you start. I think it's really bad luck. And it's bad for your character.

(1:27:44 - 1:28:03)
It's bad for your life to start something serious, make a commitment, and then break it halfway through. It's just a bad habit. So, I would say, I mean, I haven't given it a lot of thought, but when I think about it, I think, I think normally you should finish what you start.

(1:28:05 - 1:28:13)
And you should do the new one also. That would be my advice. And you're going to be a little stressed out.

(1:28:14 - 1:28:30)
But you will have the background of the original courses, which is, I don't know, it's ten or fifteen thousand pages of translation. And it's good stuff. And I will use most of it, but in a different way.

(1:28:31 - 1:28:44)
And it will be more to fit your normal life. And so, I guess I would say, if you're halfway through it, it's a bad habit not to finish what you start. And you should finish.

(1:28:45 - 1:28:56)
And then, you know. And I do think the new approach will be very helpful. And maybe together it will be very interesting.

(1:28:57 - 1:29:08)
It could be, I think it will be very useful. So, that's a long answer to a short question. But that's my hope, you know.

(1:29:08 - 1:29:21)
And I'm very excited about the new Diamond Way. I call it Clear Diamond. And just the empowerment, I've been working on it really hard.

(1:29:21 - 1:29:40)
And it's amazing. It's really, really beautiful. Okay? And I think, my idea is that when I ... So, I'll do one empowerment this month for a small group that asked me in the first place.

(1:29:40 - 1:30:07)
And then we'll do another empowerment for the larger group in October. And, my idea is if you take the empowerment, this is my own thought, okay? And it's not interesting to you. And it might happen, okay? And I'm not going to let you take the vows until you take the empowerment.

(1:30:08 - 1:30:39)
And then you will learn the vows after the empowerment. But my deal that I'd like to offer is if you take the empowerment and it doesn't fit you, and you feel like, this is not going to work for me, then, you know, I don't see any reason to force you to keep going. If you say, Geshe La, you know, it was really interesting culturally, but it's not something I want to do, then God bless you, you know.

(1:30:39 - 1:30:46)
Then go do some other course. I have countless courses. Or do something else.

(1:30:46 - 1:31:04)
I don't mind at all. I'm happy, okay? If it doesn't fit you, I told you about my wife when she went to the cowboy store and she tried on, how many? Forty-something pairs of jeans and she didn't buy any of them. And, don't tell her.

(1:31:05 - 1:31:15)
But I sat there the whole time, except there was no chairs in the store. Anyway, if it doesn't fit you, don't go crazy. Just do something else.

(1:31:15 - 1:31:23)
There's so many choices. And I can see a different diamond way for each organization. I can see a diamond way for YSI [?].

(1:31:24 - 1:31:31)
Different diamond way. I can see a different diamond way for the translators. I can see a different diamond way for the business people.

(1:31:32 - 1:31:44)
And, you know, five houses, different. And I can see how we can fit it to different kinds of people. Okay? And that's what I would like to do.

(1:31:45 - 1:32:03)
Okay? And then if it's not interesting, just, you know, be happy. And don't get all stressed out. Alright? And it'll be designed to put into your normal life.

(1:32:04 - 1:32:19)
And the best diamond way practitioners in history didn't look like diamond way practitioners. They just looked like normal people. They just looked like normal business people or normal family people.

(1:32:20 - 1:32:27)
My ... Okay, last thing. Sometimes my teacher calls me Mr. Last Thing. Ultima cosa.

(1:32:30 - 1:32:46)
You know. I forgot. No, I just mean if you're really successful at diamond way, maybe nobody would know you were doing it at all.

(1:32:47 - 1:32:57)
And it would be totally internal. And everything around you would be amazing. Nobody would know that you had studied diamond way.

(1:32:57 - 1:33:17)
That's kind of what I dream ... Oh, I remember. Last thing. My teacher told me we're going to ... We have to go to South India, to the monastery.

(1:33:18 - 1:33:32)
But we're going to stop in North India first. And I'm like, why? And he said, we're going to go to Darjeeling. Darjeeling is a tea, right? But the real name is Dorjeling, which means diamond world.

(1:33:34 - 1:33:48)
And, okay, the word Darjeeling is the British corruption of Dorjeling. And so there's a small town called Darjeeling in North India. And my Lama's sister lived there.

(1:33:49 - 1:33:56)
And I met her when she was about 60 or something. And he said, we're going to pick her up. We're going to bring her with us for fun.

(1:33:56 - 1:34:02)
She's going to take a break. And we brought her on the plane. She had never been on a plane before.

(1:34:02 - 1:34:09)
And she was screaming the whole way. And she was holding onto the seat. And the plane was going like this.

(1:34:09 - 1:34:21)
And she was like ... You know? And I was like, oh man. This guy's got to do this for three weeks. And we got her there.

(1:34:21 - 1:34:34)
She's old. And then ... He sent me to her room to give her something or something. I walk in.

(1:34:34 - 1:34:45)
She's in the middle of Vajrayogini Sadhana. With everything. And she's like ... She's doing all this stuff.

(1:34:45 - 1:34:52)
And I'm like, whoa. You know? I'm like, I'm sorry. I thought you were an old lady.

(1:34:53 - 1:35:02)
And she's like, whoa. And I'm like, whoa. And then I went to my teacher.

(1:35:02 - 1:35:13)
I said, you didn't tell me who's your sister. This is Geshe Lothar's mom. You know? Okay? He's his nephew.

(1:35:14 - 1:35:28)
And I'm like, you didn't tell me who's your sister. And he says, oh, I forgot. You know? And she's the head of a secret Vajrayogini club in Darjeeling.

(1:35:28 - 1:35:35)
And it's all old ladies. And they know everything perfectly. They know the teachings perfectly.

(1:35:36 - 1:35:44)
They study them like crazy. They get together for tea. And they're all gossiping about Vajrayogini all the time.

(1:35:45 - 1:36:08)
And I said, that's so cool. Is there such a thing in Tantra? Is there such a thing in the Diamond Way? He said, that is the Diamond Way. The old ladies get together and they have tea and they plan their Vajrayogini sadhana and they talk about all the cool stuff they're doing and the secret stuff they're doing and how they're helping people secretly.

(1:36:08 - 1:36:15)
And nobody knows. And he said, he's like that. And I never forgot it.

(1:36:16 - 1:36:24)
It's very beautiful. If you look at her, she's an old lady screaming on a plane. But she's like heavy, heavy Vajrayogini.

(1:36:24 - 1:36:28)
Okay, cool. That's my dream. Okay, thank you.

(1:36:37 - 1:36:45)
Thank you. Go see the secret bathroom. Yeah, 25-minute break.

(1:36:45 - 1:37:27)
Come back at 5.45. Okay? Thank you, everyone, for joining Geshe Michael Roach's Lectures. We're deeply grateful for the teachings shared in this session and for the opportunity to receive them together at a global community. We hope this lecture offers insight, inspiration, and something valuable to carry into both reflection and practice.

(1:37:28 - 1:37:43)
Thank you for being here with us at ACI Five Houses. Please take a short break. And we're looking forward to seeing you for the next session, Geshe Michael Roach's Lectures.

(1:37:44 - 1:37:45)
Thank you.