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

(0:05 - 12:53)
Hello everyone, hello. My name is Nadiya, I'm from Ukraine. Welcome everyone to Geshe Michael Roach class 5. We are so happy to have you here for this next teaching session. 

It is a gift to gather together and continue receiving this practice teachings as a global community. Thank you for joining us at ACI Five Houses. Please settle in and let's begin class 5. So so Good morning everyone. 

Please hurry in and take your seats. I hope everybody feels well today. Thank you so much Geshe La for being here and for teaching us. 

Please do so forever. Ready? We'll start in about five minutes, so you're welcome to talk. Is there any way to show my screen? Too much trouble? Too late? Okay, just for one minute.

(13:34 - 13:41)
Recording in progress. And then you can just share your screen. He's going to share his screen.

(13:42 - 14:12)
Just for a few minutes. He's going to share his screen on Zoom. Two minutes.

(14:26 - 14:46)
When we have a translator class, we are broadcasting into many restricted countries also. We've been doing that for 10 years. I ask all the participants to wear a suit.

(14:48 - 15:14)
I think it helps on the other side to keep everybody safe. That's why we wear a suit in the middle of the desert. So far it's helped. 

It's helped a lot. It's okay. Tell me when.

(15:15 - 15:28)
Okay, you ready? Alright, hi. Okay, here we go. Welcome to our morning meditation and then we'll be going into a translator class with Gibson Chang working on his new book.

(15:29 - 15:37)
He's been ripping through those books. He's almost done with the third book. I wanted to ... we had a class this morning already.

(15:37 - 15:51)
These are advanced translation class for Diamond Way. We started it a couple months ago. They're learning some new things and I thought you might like to see what they worked on this morning.

(15:54 - 16:03)
How do I do that? I am sharing. Here. Yeah.

(16:04 - 16:22)
Here's one of the manuscripts they're working on. They're learning how to read the handwritten manuscripts. This one comes from ... This is a book that I found maybe 15 years ago.

(16:23 - 16:32)
I found pieces of it in St. Petersburg. I found pieces of it in India. I found pieces of it in Mongolia.

(16:33 - 16:49)
We put it back together. John Brady's project, ACIP, found a whole manuscript not too long ago in Mongolia. I just wanted to thank them again.

(16:49 - 17:00)
Where is the ... oh man. Yeah. Yeah.

(17:23 - 17:44)
Around 700 years ago the Mongolians took over the world, including Moscow and also Vienna. They killed 400,000 Austrians outside of Vienna in a single week. Then the Khan died, Genghis Khan died.

(17:45 - 17:56)
They got the message two years later and they turned around and went home. They took a lot of books back with them from many countries. We're very lucky to have those books.

(17:58 - 18:15)
Here's another version of it. This is a recent typing of the same book. ACIP project, John's project, invented the first computer typewriter many years ago.

(18:15 - 18:36)
That's one. Then I had another one for you. Where is that? Tim, help.

(18:40 - 18:53)
It's not quite ... okay, let's see. Yeah. Okay.

(18:54 - 19:11)
Well, anyway, they're also learning the handwritten script, which is very exotic and difficult to read. There's another text. Oh, that's something else.

(19:18 - 19:36)
We were, me and my wife, there's one other competitor coffee shop in Rembrandt [?] and we secretly helped them. That was a loan we made this week. Pretty big loan to our competitor coffee shop in Rembrandt.

(19:38 - 19:51)
We're trying to practice this thing called DCI. Anyway, she was happy that we have this system. We're going to go to this one.

(19:52 - 20:04)
Yeah, dang, what happened? I lost it. Okay. We're going to do ... we've been going through the Devil Debates an Angel.

(20:05 - 20:24)
There are 31 meditations, pretty early in the book. They are very subtle meditations and they are wrong. There's 31 mistaken meditations.

(20:24 - 20:31)
I've been going through them one by one every week. Each week I do a different one. We are on number 16.

(20:32 - 20:55)
We've gone through 15 wrong meditations. It's very helpful to learn a wrong meditation because then you can find out what's correct meditation by elimination. If you go through those 31 meditations, you will find one or two that you have been doing and you didn't know they were wrong.

(20:56 - 21:07)
Why they are wrong, what's wrong with them, he explains it very beautifully. The first Panchen Lama. We're going to go through one of those meditations today.

(21:08 - 21:18)
That's number 16. I call it a flaccid lack of an opinion. It means a wimpy lack of an opinion.

(21:19 - 21:45)
A meditation where you attempt to not take a position. There are emptiness meditators in history, in different countries, who thought that it would be helpful to try to do ... When you do an emptiness meditation, you should try to take no position at all about things. Are they real? I don't take a position.

(21:45 - 22:03)
Are they not real? I don't take a position. Are they real and not real? I don't have a position. Then you say, what kind of stupid position is that? Then they quote Chandrakirti, who's one of the great emptiness teachers of all time.

(22:04 - 22:38)
He wrote a book called Prasannapada, which means Clarification of the Words of Nagarjuna. Here's his quotation. ,'DIR MA BSTAN PA CING ZAD KYANG MI SRID BLO, ,THEG BA'ANG RGYUR BA LDOG PA'I DON DANG YANG, ,PHA ROL PA NYID BRAL BA YIN GYI, ,KHO BO CHAGS NI MA YIN TE, ,RANG LA DAM BYA BA MED PA'I PHYIR RO, KHO BO CHAGS MA YIN TE means don't look to us for an opinion about emptiness.

(22:38 - 23:14)
Why? ,RANG LA DAM BYA BA MED PA'I PHYIR RO, We have such an advanced position that we don't take any position. Nagarjuna said that sometimes and Chandrakirti said that sometimes. Then these people read those books and said, oh, if these really cool emptiness meditators, Nagarjuna and Chandrakirti, two of the greatest emptiness thinkers, if they say it's a good position to not take any position at all, then I should try to follow that.

(23:16 - 23:23)
Now, $300. Everybody woke up, Robert. It does work.

(23:25 - 23:49)
You ready? Okay, tell me if we run out, I'll slow down. What does it mean when Nagarjuna or Chandrakirti says, I don't take any position? Because obviously they wrote thousands of pages. Up to you, Mr. Hargudi.

(23:53 - 24:03)
It means that Arya Nagarjuna understood emptiness and understood that any position he would take would come from his seeds. Nice. $300.

(24:03 - 24:17)
$300. We don't take any position which does not come from our seeds. Okay, got it? That's okay.

(24:17 - 24:45)
Whatever position we take about emptiness, we say the microphone exists or the microphone doesn't exist. What position you take in your life depends on what seeds you planted in the past, which means how much did you help other people understand emptiness. Your emptiness understanding is coming from seeds, from how much you tried to help other people understand emptiness.

(24:46 - 25:10)
I think it's important to say that you should try to help other people understand emptiness even if you're not sure yet what to say. It's still, you are planting seeds to understand emptiness more. It is better to share what you understand than not to share.

(25:11 - 25:19)
Then be honest. It's very important to be honest. This is how much I understand about emptiness.

(25:20 - 25:32)
There's a lot I don't understand about emptiness. But here's what I understand so far. When you meet an irritating person, they are coming from you.

(25:33 - 25:50)
Somehow. I don't understand it exactly, but there's no irritating person that you ever met who was not a mirror of yourself. You can say that much, right? You can understand that much.

(25:50 - 25:58)
Then you can say, look, I'm still studying. There's many books about emptiness. You can study for 50 years emptiness.

(25:59 - 26:06)
You won't finish all the books. You can be honest. But it's a good seed to try.

(26:06 - 26:19)
To try to explain what you know so far. I always try to teach emptiness to the person next to me on the airplane. Okay? Just slowly.

(26:22 - 26:39)
First I spill coffee on them. Then I say, you know where that came from? It's a good conversation starter. You will take position on emptiness.

(26:40 - 26:57)
You have a position already. It may not be fully developed yet, but still, a baby position on emptiness from a correct source is much better than nothing. Okay? You can really help people.

(26:58 - 27:07)
And then that plants a seed and then your position gets clearer and clearer from your seed. So try. Try to share with other people.

(27:08 - 27:13)
Tell them, look, I'm not a big expert. I don't know everything. But this is how much I understand.

(27:13 - 27:26)
If you understand emptiness well, you will not get upset at people. That's a sign. You can say that much, right? So try.

(27:27 - 27:41)
And then you plant seeds. But you never take a position on emptiness which is not coming from your seeds. You will never take a position on emptiness which is not coming from your seeds.

(27:42 - 27:59)
So Arya Nagarjuna, Master Chandrakirti, to shock people, these great emptiness masters say, people say, what do you think about emptiness? They say, I have no opinion. I have no opinion. But they obviously didn't mean they had no position.

(28:00 - 28:24)
But some people, early in West China, when Buddhism first got there a thousand years ago, it came, pieces of Buddhism came from India. And then people heard pieces and then they started to come up with some really strange ideas. There were strange little Dharma centers.

(28:24 - 28:33)
There were no monasteries. There were little Dharma centers. Each one led by somebody who had been to India, maybe for a week.

(28:35 - 28:43)
Xuanzang for 17 years. Different quality. Some really amazing Dharma centers and some really bad ones.

(28:43 - 28:57)
But it happens when these teachings reach a new country or a new part of the world. Usually they're messed up for a while. Especially Diamond Way gets messed up for a while.

(28:58 - 29:12)
And then after a while other people come and say that's not what they mean. It doesn't mean you don't take any position. It means whatever position you take is going to come from helping other people understand emptiness.

(29:13 - 29:33)
You will only have ... how good your position is will depend on how much you try to help other people. The very easiest thing to say is somehow if you understand emptiness you won't get upset. And then they're going to check you and see if you get upset.

(29:35 - 29:51)
Which is the benefit of being a teacher. Trying to be a teacher. We're going to do this meditation and we're going to analyze what kind of position each of us has about emptiness.

(29:51 - 30:05)
What do I understand about emptiness? Then we're going to try to imagine how to plant the seeds to improve it. Even those understandings come from seeds. And those come from helping other people.

(30:07 - 30:20)
And that's meditation 16. We are recording the 31. Our goal is to reach 101 meditations for five houses.

(30:23 - 30:30)
Then they'll be online and you can use them whenever you want. It's going to take me ... I don't know how many we finished. 35 something.

(30:32 - 30:40)
We're about one third of the way through. So I'll continue for another year or two until we get to 101 meditations. That's the goal.

(30:41 - 30:48)
Alright. And there's some kind of scam. Dharma scam.

(30:50 - 31:06)
If you donate one dollar a day to five ... Five Houses needs money because they don't charge anything, technically. Some of the other organizations charge you. Five Houses doesn't charge you for teaching.

(31:06 - 31:15)
They charge you for food and for house and for travel and things like that. They don't charge you for teaching. So they need support for their teachers.

(31:15 - 31:36)
Their teachers are the skinniest of all the organizations because they don't get any payment. So we're always trying ... me and Tim are trying to find ways to help them, pay them some money. Every year we talk about, should we charge people? Because it's difficult.

(31:37 - 31:47)
It's very difficult to raise the money for these five houses, ACI. Then every year we decide the same thing that we don't want to charge. In the monastery you never get charged.

(31:48 - 32:03)
You finish the whole Geshe course 25 years, you never pay one dollar for a class. Somehow it works. So we would like to keep that going for free.

(32:04 - 32:15)
That's the way we've been so far for 35 years. 35 years we haven't charged. We'd like to keep it up.

(32:15 - 32:34)
That means we have to do all kinds of weird things like sell rocks from Diamond Mountain. You think I'm kidding. Where's that? In my bag? A blue bag? No, on the side.

(32:35 - 32:43)
If it's there, I don't know, I gave it away, maybe. No. No, maybe not.

(32:44 - 32:51)
Okay, later. I'll sell you rocks later. Okay, so let's meditate.

(32:51 - 33:11)
Get ready for meditation. It's somewhere, I don't know where it is. When we meditate in a group, it's important to try not to move around, try to be quiet.

(33:15 - 33:45)
It's more powerful, but we have to be more quiet. This will be about half an hour. So please relax your face.

(33:52 - 34:10)
Little smile, not crazy. I find it helpful to relax my eyelids and my forehead. Push your shoulders back slightly.

(34:14 - 34:42)
Tighten your lower abdomen, your tummy, a little bit. Mainly stay relaxed, stay happy, and stay sharp, stay aware. Try not to space out.

(34:48 - 35:16)
You're very, very lucky to have a chance to meditate. You can't see emptiness directly unless you meditate regularly for about an hour a day, and that's the only thing that's going to help you with death and what happens to you after you die. So you're so lucky to be able to meditate.

(35:16 - 35:26)
You're so lucky to have a chance. This country isn't at war locally. This country has enough food.

(35:28 - 35:55)
We're not in danger right now, direct danger. So we're lucky we have a chance to meditate. So I've meditated for many years, and I still like to do the breathing practice before.

(35:58 - 36:16)
Breathing practice is a famous preparation for meditation. It is not a meditation, but it's a famous preparation for meditation from the times of the Abhidharmakosha 2,000 years ago. I like to do a hundred breaths.

(36:16 - 36:38)
I know ten is kind of famous, but my mind, I cannot focus unless I do a hundred breaths first. So we're going to watch 100 breaths, and the out-breath is the first half. The in-breath is the second half.

(36:40 - 37:04)
Breathe in a relaxed way, and slowly, I don't think it works to fight with your mind and force it to watch your breath. I like to pretend my mind is like a bad dog, and I say, come on, let's meditate. Come over here.

(37:05 - 37:13)
Let's check out this breath. I like to go slow. I let my mind wander a little bit.

(37:14 - 37:35)
I don't try to lock him down right away, but within a hundred breaths, after going off the breath a couple of times, I will calm down. The mind will calm down, and I bring the mind to my breath. So we'll do a hundred breaths like that.

(37:40 - 37:44)
Keep your eye on your breath. You'll think about other stuff. Bring your mind back.

(37:46 - 47:05)
Estimate the number you think where you were, and come back. Okay, here we go. Then we'll start the preliminaries.

(47:07 - 47:25)
Please invite someone to meditate with you, across from you, facing you. Invite someone that you really respect for their understanding and for their kindness. It could be someone who's alive now.

(47:27 - 47:40)
It could be a historical person. It could be someone you dream about meeting. I like to say sit knee to knee with them.

(47:41 - 48:08)
Sit facing each other, almost touching knees, and let them bless your meditation. It's very, very good for your meditation to imagine that there's a very good person, someone that you really admire, sitting in front of you. A good example.

(48:10 - 48:30)
It could be anybody. Someone that means a lot to you, and ask them to bless you with their presence and their calmness during this meditation. They're a good example.

(48:34 - 48:52)
I like to spend about eight breaths on each step. There are seven classical steps in meditation preparation. Somehow ten breaths is a little bit too long for me, but a little bit less than that.

(49:04 - 50:12)
You don't want to get hung up on the preliminaries, but you also want to make sure you do each one carefully. Now offer them some small object that represents your respect for them, and your love for them. I like to use a flower, or maybe a small glass of water.

(50:13 - 51:35)
I like to use something simple. Small diamond. Now we try to remember something we did this week that hurt people, hurt somebody, and feel some sadness and regret for it.

(51:36 - 51:52)
When we think about the mistakes we made, it helps to remove that power during the meditation. It makes our mind more clear. It could be anything.

(51:52 - 52:00)
Maybe you said something to somebody. Maybe you gossiped about somebody. Maybe you were just jealous of somebody.

(52:06 - 52:27)
It's so healthy to admit the mistakes we make. I think the sign of a good person is not that they don't make mistakes. The sign of a good person is that they are willing to think about them, and talk about them, and clean them up.

(53:25 - 53:42)
And then equally, think about some good things you did this week. I think all of us here, if you're sitting here meditating, you're probably doing a lot of good things. Probably some of those good things became habit.

(53:44 - 54:14)
You just do this job to help five houses, or other organizations. You just have a job helping them, or you do things to help, and it became a habit. You don't really think about how lucky you are to have a chance to help, and how wonderful it is that you are helping.

(54:14 - 54:42)
That kind of proves, if you're here, and you're helping the work of these organizations, you have a tremendously good seed in your heart. Sometimes you should think about it and appreciate it in a way which is not proud, but which is sincere. Appreciate that you have the chance to do good things.

(54:43 - 54:53)
Appreciate that you took the chance. Appreciate how quickly it might end. Human life is so fragile.

(54:57 - 55:18)
Celebrate the good things you're doing. A lot of people think it's wrong to celebrate the good things you're doing. That's a mistake.

(55:20 - 56:26)
We have to reinforce our habits, the good habits we have. We have to celebrate. For me, the next preliminary is the most difficult.

(56:28 - 56:47)
We ask that during the rest of today, up to our meditation tomorrow, that somebody teaches us something. We learn something from other people. Sometimes it's a formal teaching.

(56:47 - 57:01)
Sometimes it's just by good example. Make a request to the universe. Today, may I learn something new that improves me.

(57:02 - 57:14)
We can all improve something. If we're lucky, we'll meet someone who helps us move further on. It could be a conversation.

(57:15 - 57:25)
It could be a class. It could be a book. But ask for teachings today, and be open to those teachings.

(57:25 - 57:33)
You can learn from everybody. Everybody has something to teach us. We can see something good in everyone.

(57:34 - 58:19)
That's a good example for us. Then pray for the long life of your good friends, Dharma friends, good people in the world, even if we don't know them personally. Pray for the long life and health of the people who ... There are bad people.

(58:19 - 58:30)
There are people who say and do bad things. They're sometimes famous. Then the quiet good people, sometimes they're not so famous.

(58:32 - 58:46)
I think there's more of the good people. It's good to give them some thought. Think about how lucky you are to have good people around you, and pray for their long life.

(58:46 - 59:36)
Actively pray that they should live a long life and influence us. Now we'll start the meditation. I'd like you to imagine that you're on the airplane.

(59:37 - 1:00:00)
Maybe if you flew here to this area, to the local city, imagine that you're on that plane again. In my life, that's when I meet people I don't know. Most often it's I have to travel on a plane or something, and I'm sitting next to somebody who I don't know.

(1:00:02 - 1:01:17)
Imagine that you're sitting next to someone on the way home from this program, and you start to have a conversation, and they come to know that you're interested in Buddhism, and they say, I heard about this idea called emptiness, and maybe you can tell me more about it. Then I imagine they pick up a glass of water that the airplane staff gave them, a glass of water. They pick it up and they say, what's your idea? What's your position? What's your opinion about this glass? Is it emptiness? Is there emptiness here? Then try to imagine what you would say to a stranger.

(1:01:33 - 1:01:56)
Yes, there's emptiness in your hand. There's emptiness of a glass. Then they say, does that mean you believe the glass is not here? Then you say, well, no, there is a glass there, but it's not the glass you thought was there.

(1:02:09 - 1:02:49)
Do you like this water? Is it a nice glass to you? Yes, I'm happy I have this glass of water. Well then, where does it come from? It's something you did to help other people. The reason this glass is in your hand is that you shared something with somebody in the past, and there's no glass in your hand that doesn't come that way, and that's the emptiness of the glass.

(1:02:59 - 1:03:48)
Then they go deeper and they say, well, what's the emptiness of your idea of emptiness? What's the emptiness of your idea of emptiness? And you say, it doesn't come from anywhere except the seeds that I put in my mind. By trying to help other people understand what's really happening in their life. My position about emptiness is that it doesn't come from its own side, and the position doesn't come from its own side.

(1:03:49 - 1:04:07)
I have this position because I tried to help other people in the past. Then they say, oh, so you don't really have any position. You say, no, no, that's not what I said.

(1:04:07 - 1:04:49)
I said, I don't have a position that didn't come from trying to help people understand emptiness in the past. Personally, I found that with this kind of conversation, you should make it short, and I try to change the subject. I always try to give the other person a chance to talk about something they'd like to talk about.

(1:04:50 - 1:05:19)
So I ask them about their family, or where they're going, or what kind of job do you have. I leave the emptiness thing alone, and I leave the Buddhism thing alone, and I just try to bring out the other person and listen to their life. I don't try to make them a Buddhist, or I don't try to lecture to them.

(1:05:19 - 1:06:10)
I just try to show some interest in their life. Then you're up there in the airplane, you're over the world, you can send down some rays of light from the airplane, try to touch the people on the ground, with what just happened in this five minute conversation with somebody on the airplane. There's a famous story that one teacher was trying to explain emptiness to somebody like on an airplane, but they wouldn't listen, and finally they just punched him in the head.

(1:06:12 - 1:06:38)
They say, well, at least I'll make an impression. They will remember me next life, and we can keep trying to have this conversation. You may not ever see this person again in this life, but you have just planted the seeds to serve them in the next life.

(1:06:49 - 1:07:20)
Then slowly open your eyes, take a stretch. I like to use, there's a meditation app, what's it called? Insight Meditation App. It's got, I'll be honest, and I'm not being critical, but most of the meditations are just a joke, and all this weird stuff.

(1:07:22 - 1:07:30)
Trust the process, everything's going to be alright. Rivers know what to do. Chakras 101.

(1:07:32 - 1:07:51)
You know, I personally, you know, because I had a chance to study with great teachers. I don't read any of that stuff. I just go to the timer, and the timer is quite good and quite useful, so I encourage you to check it out.

(1:07:53 - 1:08:07)
Every three years one of our organizations says they're going to make an app. It's been about 20 years now, and I'm still waiting. In the meantime, we can use this one if you want.

(1:08:09 - 1:08:29)
Alright. I'll see you, what time, Tim? So take a 20 minute break, and then we'll be having a translation class with Gibson Chang. People wince when I say there's a translation class.

(1:08:29 - 1:09:16)
They go ... It's difficult to follow the class, and I always tell the story that when I was in the Geshe course, and I was in, I was like in my 10th year of lower Middle Way, and the teacher forced us to go to an advanced class. So these people were maybe five, six years ahead of us, and he forced us to go to their class, and we sat there, and I had no idea what's going on. I had no idea what they're talking about, and I got impatient, and I got sort of pissed off, and I'm like, well, I have to sit through this.

(1:09:17 - 1:09:43)
I don't understand what they're talking about, and the teacher said, I asked him, why are you forcing me to go to this class? He said, come back to me in five years, and tell me what happens. Five years later, I was in the debate ground. That subject came up, and I had all these seeds in my mind, and I understood it immediately.

(1:09:44 - 1:09:58)
Then I realized it was because the teacher forced me to go to a class to put the seeds in there five years ago. Okay, so just relax. Sit in translation class.

(1:09:58 - 1:10:10)
You don't have to like it. You just have to be open and put the seeds in your mind, and they will grow, and you cannot stop them. Later you'll thank me.

(1:10:10 - 1:10:14)
That's what your parents say, right? You'll thank me later. Okay, pee pee break. See you later.

(1:10:35 - 1:11:29)
Thank you. Thank you, everyone, for joining Geshe Michael Roach Class 5. Thank you, everyone, for joining Geshe Michael Roach Class 5. We are deeply grateful for the opportunity to receive these teachings together, and we hope this session offered insight, inspiration, and something to carry into your practice. Thank you for being here with us at ACI Five Houses.

(1:11:30 - 1:11:32)
Thank you. Bye-bye.