BDW 6 «Алмазный Путь Арьи», занятие 3

Autotranscript · BDW6, Malaysia, Meditation 3

03.08.2026 / processed with Claude (AI) for Irra / Dharma · Malaysia · BDW6

Date: 10 July 2026 · Malacca, Malaysia · duration 1 h 09 min

Teacher: Geshe Michael Roach

Translation into Chinese: Stanley (consecutive; the Chinese translation is omitted from this transcript)

Source audio: ENG/CH Arya's Diamond Way with Geshe Michael Roach - Meditation 3 (July 10, 2026)

⚠ Warning

This is an automatic transcript of the audio recording, roughly processed with Claude on 3 August 2026 by Irra Dzhabali. It is not an authorised record of the teaching. Speech recognition and speaker attribution may contain errors. Please check against the original recording.

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Host: I'm sorry, welcome everyone. Meditation number three is going to start, so sit down comfortably, find a nice place and quiet place, and let's prepare for meditation. Thank you.

Geshe Michael Roach: Very quiet meditation. Sorry, Jasmine, I woke up Jasmine. I'm sorry. Gina, Francisco, did you get my email this morning? I sent you some six images for the first philosophy class, by email.

You want to check? You okay? Alright, good. Alright, here we go. Okay, so please close your eyes, and make a small smile.

It's good to start your meditation with a smile. Pull in your tummy a little bit. Relax your fingers. And your feet are flat on the floor. If there's a room, which there is not today, I like to do a half lotus in a chair.

Check the corners of your mouth. Check the eyelids are soft. There's a thing in yoga you know, called drishti, and it means where do you focus your eyes. And I think most of us, when we close our eyes, we look down behind the eyelids. And when you do yoga, you'll find that it really helps to keep your eyes open and focused just over the horizon.

So, I encourage you today, during this meditation, try putting your eyes in different positions, and see if it affects how you meditate. Most of us, when we close our eyes, we look down behind the eyelids. And then the neck tends to bend down, and that kind of makes you, after a while, it makes you a little sleepy. Then you can experiment with keeping your eyes just over the horizon, like a yoga drishti. And that brings your neck straighter, and it brings your head up straighter, and I think it helps you concentrate better.

Then there's another tradition that says, when you meditate with your eyes closed, you can focus on, what's it called, bhruvar madhya, bhruvar madhya means between your eyebrows. And a little bit higher, it's called between your eyebrows, but it's a little bit higher than that spot. And I think it's not comfortable and not healthy to hold that very long. But it can help you concentrate very deeply. So, your eyes are closed, and you're looking up as if you were looking at a spot above the line between your eyebrows, and then go into the skull slightly.

And personally, I've done that my whole life, and I think it can be very helpful for a few minutes, and then bring your eyes back to the drishti, to the horizon. Then remember, if you had a bad sleep last night, or you stayed up late, And the extra light coming in can help you stay bright, and then when you feel bright enough, you can close your eyes again. All this time while you're checking how your eyes are doing, make sure your mouth doesn't start to scowl, because when people are thinking deeply, they tend to scowl. Then we'll start the preliminaries. Please invite the holy being to sit with you in this meditation, knee to knee.

We all made a lot of effort to get here, especially the organizers, Tim, Jasmine. We all worked really hard to get here. We're not perfect, but we're trying really hard. You can make this as an offering to your teacher. And let's check in if we have done any negative deeds, said something negative or thought something negative in the last few days, and let's tell our teacher about it.

Then, this Sangha, as I talk to people here, I realize this community around the world is growing much, much bigger than I knew. And I think we can make a prayer that all of those people in this community should have a long and healthy life so they can continue their practice. And today's meditation is called Not a Mistake. Sorry? And in this life, each one of us had a very special karma to meet the Dharma and to study with other good people.

I call it like diamond way suspicious (?). It seems like possible that there are Buddhas all around us who are helping us to learn and to develop ourselves in this lifetime. Seeing emptiness directly is not an event which happens at some time in your life. It's more like a wave that started a long time ago far away in the ocean. The power of that wave started many lifetimes ago.

That wave has been building up lifetime after lifetime, getting stronger and stronger. What we are trying to do in this program and these studies is we are trying to help the wave to break in this lifetime. So if we are going to see emptiness in this lifetime, it means that there were people trying to help us to see it for many lifetimes. In the monastery we have special kids, they are called chukku (?). These are teachers who died and they were reborn as children who came to our monastery.

I have seen many chukkus come to the monastery. It's very interesting how people help them to develop from a very young age, sometimes two or three years old. And kind of every older monk in the monastery is trying to, secretly trying to train these baby monks. I went to Ganden Monastery for winter debating, and I stayed at the house of my teacher's teacher. He is Chukwu (?).

Then one day, his assistant, who was his assistant in the past life, when he was the great writer, he wrote down Pabongka's Lamrim. And they purposely said things to you to prepare you, and they purposely did things to you to prepare you, and I would say especially they shared books with you to prepare you.

Stanley (translator): For example, if we should do the practice of not staying in anything, not staying in signs, then why should we have a specific visualization in our meditation? Isn't that a sign? Or when we do giving, if we should practice the giving of not staying in things, then why should we try to remember what we did good in giving? The last part she mentioned is when she's doing some design work, drawing things, sometimes she feels like she falls into a state where, she calls it the no self state, where nothing really exists around her. Is that a kind of meditation too?

That's it.

Geshe Michael Roach: Yeah. I'll give you an example. My suggestion is when you are studying, when you are designing new jewelry, when you are meditating, when you are meditating, never have a banana in your ear. Okay, that's the worst thing. You cannot become Buddha if you have a banana in your ear.

Then you will smile and say, Geshe-la, no problem. I never put a banana in my ear. That's exactly the same as not staying in the jewelry business, or not staying in your house. That's the meaning of not staying. Don't stay in a place you could never go anyway.

Okay? So, remember, never work on jewelry with a banana in your ear. It means the jewelry you are working on, and I, my god, my job for 19 years was counting diamonds. It's not some kind of sexy James Bond diamonds. It's counting tiny little diamonds.

And that was my main job. And I never tell people, but I was counting diamonds for 19 years. But those diamonds that I'm counting, the ones that don't come from me, is zero. And that's what it means, don't stay in the diamonds. That's what don't stay means.

And you cannot stay there anyway. Counting the diamonds or designing jewelry with diamonds that did not come from you, is impossible.

From the audience: To put it positive way, cause and effect way, all the diamonds you ever touched in your jewelry business were coming from you.

Geshe Michael Roach: There is no diamond you ever touched in your jewelry business which didn't come from you. And I have a new word for you guys. The way the pictures come out of your mind, I was trying to make a picture of those pictures coming out of your mind. And what does it feel like when you're making a cup of tea and the pot is coming out of your mind? And I have a new word for our vocabulary.

It's a cascade. In English we say cascade. It comes like a waterfall.

From the audience: How do you spell that?

Geshe Michael Roach: C-A-S-C-A-D Like this, it goes like this.

From the audience: I got it.

Geshe Michael Roach: It's, I don't know, 65 pictures per second, but they are cascading one by one. It's a waterfall of pictures coming out of your seeds.

From the audience: Waterfall? Not waterfall. But they are coming out like that. And someday you will feel.

Geshe Michael Roach: Yeah, that's pretty good.

From the audience: Someday you will see it.

Geshe Michael Roach: You never worked on a ring or a diamond for that ring that was not cascading out of your seeds, out of your mind. And when we say don't stay there, it means don't think there's any jewelry you are working on which is not cascading from your seeds. And it's funny because you can't stay there anyway. It's like Buddha said, don't sit on a chair made of oxygen.

From the audience: You can't do it anyway.

Geshe Michael Roach: There's no such chair. That's what it means. There's nothing around you and there's nobody you ever meet. Who is not cascading from your own seeds. And that's all the poo-poo truth.

Okay, we're going to take a poo-poo break. And we'll see you in about 15 minutes.

Host: Thank you, thank you. So now it's a break time because next class will start at like 8.15. So if you don't need to go to the restroom, you can just keep in the seat quietly and waiting for our teacher, okay?

From the audience: Okay.

Host: Enjoy the break. We have a break like 7, 8 minutes. So do what you need to do. Maybe and come back in 7 minutes. Thank you.