<iframe src="https://drive.google.com/file/d/1abj1LYHHGnVPs6YjQm_TiO4VhImTPLvP/preview" width="100%" height="80" allow="autoplay"></iframe> So, here I am again going first. Some sort of strange karma ripening. I say I don't like it, and then the Lama says, you must go first. It's the Lama's narrative to do these things. So, we're going back a little bit to reading one. I don't know if everybody has their reading one, But each day we were going to tell you a story of one of the lineage lamas. So today is a story of Master Charongi. And it should be in your keywords, one of those four pages that we had all the lineage lamas. Page six of reading one. Chaurangi mean Agoraka Chaurangi means thief And Angi means It's like Ashtanga Do you remember what Angra means? Lin, right So, but in that sense, Ashtanga is like eight branches or eight parts. Here, it's actually limb. It's actually physical limb. And we'll figure out why because of the story. So, Chow Runge is the next person in the lineage. And he was a prince. And his father was a king. And his mother was a very beautiful spiritual practitioner. And she taught him from when he was very young that little Chao Rungi, although he probably wasn't called that in those days, Every pain and every happiness that ever comes to you comes from your own actions. Comes from some negative action or some positive action that you did in your own lifetime. So, even at the risk of your life, avoid doing negative actions. And that was her advice to him right before she died. And she passed away, and both he and his father were very torn. But because his father had a kingdom to raise, and the political situation being as it was, he was pressured to take another wife as queen, so that there would be a queen. So he took a foreign wife as queen, and then he left the kingdom for a period of mourning himself. So the king was away, and there was this new queen in the kingdom. And she took a liking to Charongi. Charongi was like, just in his youth, and he was a very attractive person. And the queen started having these infatuations about him. And so she was trying to get him to do, you know, wrong things with her. You know, he was trying to convince her, or she was trying to convince him to come with her and do sexual misconduct with, you know, his father's new wife. And he's like, no way, uh-uh, you know. And he avoided her, and he avoided her to such an extent that he insulted her and humiliated her. And she was completely devastated and embarrassed, and she said, this is my mortal enemy now. I must kill him. So she requested that her attendants murder the prince, but they were so fond of him, and they said, he's such an innocent child, we can't do that, and they refused her. So she, knowing that the king was about, just about to come back that day, she tore all her clothes, and she cut herself, and she just laid on the bed right before the king walked in, and then when he walked in, she said, your son, look what he's done to me. And she accused him of having his way with her. She accused the son of raping her, basically. And she lied. And the king believed her and was outraged at his son. And he ordered his son to be put to death. Now the, the attendants of the king were so fond of Chao Rongi because he was such a pure soul. They said, um, holy prince, I will offer my own son to die instead of you. You know, you shouldn't be, you're innocent. You shouldn't be, um, killed this way. And, um, we will take someone's place and we will, um, cause his father, he, he said, you will cut off all four of his limbs and you will bring his limbs to me as proof that you have killed him because he knew, you know, he could escape. And Tarabi said, no, you cannot use anybody else's cut limbs as my own because my mother has spoken to me even at the risk of my own life. I should never do a non-virtuous action. I should never cause somebody else pain and I couldn't have anybody take my suffering. This is my own karma and this is my own suffering and I will be the one. And so he ordered the attendants to take him. He ordered the attendants to carry him out into the forest and he had to force them to cut off each one of his limbs and take them back to his father. And then he had to force them again to leave because they wouldn't leave him alone in the woods to die. So you would think that this was the end of the prince, but just at that moment, Matsyendra shows up, right? And you remember Matsyendra's story, right? He was the guy in the fish. He was the guy in the belly of the whale. This was after he came out of the whale. Now he's a great yogi. And he says, I have a practice for you. He initiates him, and he gives them a practice of kumbhakar, which is a pranayama practice of holding the breath in a vase inside your body. And he says, when you master this practice, your limbs will be restored. Then he gets a cow herd just over the hill, which is Gauraksha, right? to go and tend him every day, right? So this is the person that Gauraksha was tending to. And Gauraksha was washing his body, Gauraksha was feeding him, Gauraksha made a little house for him, Gauraksha cleaned up his pupo and peepee when he needed to. So that was Gauraksha's practice. At the same time, Chaurangi was doing his own sadhana and his own practice in his own mind. And after the magical 12 years had passed, right? It's always 12 years. Some ministers to the king were coming from one kingdom back to their own kingdom. And they were carrying for the king a good substantial amount of treasure. That was an offering from another kingdom to their king. And they had to camp out in the forest because they couldn't make it to their own house by nightfall. So it was dark, and they were out in the forest, and they happened to camp right by where Chaurangi was staying. And Chaurangi heard them, and he said, who's there? And the merchants, they were like, oh my God, I camp near a thief. And so they said, let's just lie. Let's just tell them we're charcoal makers. We're charcoal makers, because they didn't want them to get the treasure. They had this huge amount of gold and not a lot of protection. and Shaorongi, he said, so be it. So then the night passed and they rode in the daytime back to their kingdom and when they opened up their bag, the treasure had turned into a pile of charcoal. So then they had to go back. They said, this must be a great yogi that we heard in the night and we must find him because he has reached a Siddha where everything he says must be the truth, where he can speak no wrong. Everything he says, he speaks the truth. So it just becomes that way. So they go back and they explain what happened. They find him. And, you know, he's still sitting there with all his limbs cut off, and he's just meditating. That's all he's done for the past 12 years. And he hears their story and he says, well, I don't know if I was the cause of that. But if I was, then let your treasure be restored to its normal form. And then they go back and their treasure is completely restored. And then Chow Rungi realizes that he has this power to make things happen by the holy words that he speaks. And so he prays, let my limbs be restored. And they are. In that moment. And that's when Gauraksha comes back and he finds him levitating in the air. You know? It's a beautiful story. He understood that his body, after 12 years, he understands that his body is illusory, you know. And he recreates this body of life. You know, he understands now, he has this city where he can recreate himself in any form that he wants to. He can recreate his limbs. And they say this is because he was practicing the disillusion of the elements. This is your favorite topic, right? Yeah. Understanding that the elements that make up our body and the elements that make up the world itself, the physical world, are empty. You know, there is a connection here between thought and word and the thing. Right. And it echoes back to like in the book of John in the Bible where it says in the beginning was the word. And there's this power of the word. There's this power of the idea creating the thing. The thing doesn't come first. It's the idea of the thing, and that's how we change our world. If the idea of the thing didn't come first, there would be no hope for us, because things would be fixed. But things are not fixed. And that's the reason why things like mantras work. That's the reason why words can have so much power, even power enough to restore someone's severed limbs back whole again. the metaphorical implications of cutting off our limbs in order to go into retreat and do our sadhana is like cutting off our senses, right? withdrawing from the world and the Nath yogis had a branch in ancient India called Ananga which means the limbless ones so this was a common theme in the old days of India to disassociate ourselves from our physical body in that sense to just sit rooted here in one place with our minds fixed on our torso area in the area of the central channel and not be going out to the extremities so Chaorangi can mean his limbs were stolen, right? Chaurangi can just mean thief in the terms of the story about the minister's gold and how he he he stole it and Geshe-la has more I don't have time. I think we have time. No. The two pages that we think about. Again, we got from John Brady's project, last week we got, we get every couple of months, we get maybe another ten books on disc that the Tibetan refugees have typed in from ancient manuscripts. So this just came in, I got it last week. And then I found these beautiful songs of the yogis here. And it just happens to be, came last week, you know. So we just translated this this afternoon. This is, no, this is the wrong one. I need charangis. Charangis? Yeah, sorry. So this is called a meditation on the pranic void. And this was written by Chaurangi. So this is what he was singing. They have songs. Each of the Mahasiddhas has their songs. So this is a song by Chaurangi that we found today. Lama Namla Chaksa. And it's translated into Tibetan and the Sanskrit is lost. Which happened to many, about 4,000 texts were lost. So all we have is the Tibetan now. I bow down to all my teachers. Join inseparable with the lady of the burial grounds. Go deep inside, subtle, thinking of nothing. She is lovely beyond words because she was never there. Play in every way within the lotus bloom. Time will tell, the warriors were never tuned. They fill the sky itself, then sink into empty space and finally are not. joined in bliss and realizations for a single instant, and then the universe jolts. This for anyone who understands the worldview of bliss, and joins then, following the instructions of their nama. This is all about yogic practice with a partner. So, it's one thing to work on your channels by doing asanas, doing pranayama, doing kumbhakas, doing mudras. And then in an advanced practice, then you would be encouraged to practice with a partner. And you would live with your partner, you would practice with your partner, you do your yoga with your partner, you do your pranayama with your partner, you breathe at the same rate. Everything is done with a partner. And it takes a very... They don't allow it unless you have purified your heart first. So they're very strict about teaching this particular practice. And I don't have much to say about it. It's very advanced. You need preparation to talk about it. But I would say one thing. In my experience, the people in the monastery who are allowed to practice with a partner, It's because they've spent many years without a partner and keeping their morality very sweetly. You know, they have proven their chastity over a long period of time. And I think it's interesting that Chaorangi was chastened, right, by the queen. And he proved himself. And then he didn't try to defend himself. He was attacked, he was blamed. And I think it's a lesson. He didn't try to discredit the queen. He just gracefully took his punishment, you know, and left. And this is a very beautiful test for a yogi, that they are pure enough. And then obviously from these lines, he was trained later in practice with his spiritual partner. So in the end, it's a high yogic practice to have a partner and to do your yoga together and to practice this way. So maybe someday you can learn those things. Okay, we'll go on. We have a little bit left over from yesterday and we're going to do page 7. Okay. Of yesterday, right? Yes. This is describing how your retreat heart should be. and you know out in Arizona we've had a special class going on for over a year called the Perfect Retreat Hut Perfect Retreat Cottage and there's a group of people that are working on different designs and this is the list of things you should have in your retreat hut if you're going to build a retreat hut these are the things you need and we'll talk about them because we did the three year retreat and we learned the same things in a harder way. So here we go. There should be a small shaded porch. Although the retreat hut is normally closed and you don't look out the windows, people in deep retreat tend to get a condition which in Tibet is called Lung. And it's a disorder of the prana vayu. It's not prana, it's one of the five winds, Pranavayu. Center it at your heart. And it's very, very common for people who meditate too much, too deeply to get Pranavayu conditioned. And also people who do yoga, maybe a little bit over their head. I'll give you signs of it, okay? You get irritable. You get cranky. Like your yoga doesn't make you relaxed, it makes you a little cranky, hyped up. your hands might start shaking a little bit. Sometimes you might feel constriction here in the forehead, on either side of the forehead. You might find yourself short of breath sometimes, or panting, sort of, during the day, as you work and things like that. And then it starts, over a long period of time, it starts to affect your digestion and your sleep, you don't sleep well, and things like that. So that means, a llama would say you're doing yoga, probably without enough, what Sharon and David taught us, dedication or motivation for others, you see? Because that opens the channels and prevents blockages. And in Japanese I heard recently, it's okatsu, and it means some kind of a blockage, and the free flow is not there. And if you get that, it's good to be more careful to dedicate your practice to others. And then it would open it up and prevent that. But also, by tradition, in the Tibetan medical tantras, they'll say, go outside and look at the sky. You know, just sit in a rocking chair on your porch in retreat and look at the sky and just enjoy the sky. And at night, we found it very useful at night to go out and look at the stars. So we had a yurt, and the roof wasn't that steep. And we found out we could climb up on the roof and lay down on it. And it was very nice. And then we would just watch the stars for an hour and do mantras, and watch the satellites go across the sky. It was really beautiful. And this is supposed to be very good for this prana-bayo condition. It prevents this condition. So it's important to have a porch. It's important to be able to grow out and rock on the porch. And anybody in India or Arizona can tell you it should be shaded porch. Okay. Especially if you're bald. Okay. And ruchira kupa means a well, a good well. And we're going to be talking next week from the text recommendations about the diet for a yogi. You know, what things you should avoid and what things you should eat. And all of this neat stuff is proof that the author really did retreats. And the author really was doing yoga. Because somebody who's just doing book, scholarly yoga book, wouldn't talk about, you know, don't eat this and do eat this and watch out for this and make sure your porch is shaded. And we know from all these clues that he was a very great retreat master himself. So the water is the most important element of your food, right? The water is the most important element of your food. The water is so much a part of your food and of your body that you have to really take special interest and care in what kind of water you're putting into your body, right? So he's saying that a yogi should choose a place that has a good, well, clean water. If you've been in India and tried to practice in India, it's very difficult because the water is so polluted in many places. So you have to be careful with the water. Try to find a place with... And there's five qualities of water and we won't go into it. The grounds should be pretty and nice. This means the grounds inside your fence, okay? which we're going to get to. Or I'll talk about the fence. You should have a high fence around your retreat cabin. I recommend seven feet. Because that's pretty much, you can't look over it, but you can see the sky. So you get the full benefit of the sky. But you can't see what's going on around you. This also prevents people from approaching the retreat cabin. Almost anywhere where you ever put one, people will wander by. And this prevents people. We have cows, deer, wild pigs, mountain lions, rattlesnakes. It kind of keeps everybody out, or at least keeps the bigger ones out. So offense is important. Keeps cowboys out. Cowboys. I've had cowboys. Two or three. Yeah, we had a couple. We have some keywords. I'm not going to go much into them, but the one that's here that you know is aphyasa. Say aphyasa. Aphyasa. Famous word in the Yoga Sutra, right? Aphyasa means practice, daily practice. You have to practice daily. And so for all of us, aphyasa is... He'll keep using the word aphyasa. For him, it's just a given. And again, David and Sharon used to say to us, when we were just starting out in this form of yoga, they would tell us, your daily yoga practice should become like brushing your teeth. And you don't notice it, you just do it every day, and you don't think about it, and it should become just a habit. Even if it's not a very long practice every day, your yoga practice should become a phyasa. Just something like, we don't eat, we don't go out, we don't call anybody, we don't see anybody, we don't talk until yoga's finished. And that's just the way it should be. Even if we stay up till three, finishing the reading, and then get up at eleven, we still don't go anywhere or talk to anybody until we've done our yoga. So it should be like that. Okay. Stay in a hermitage like this one and give up all thoughts of other things. Follow the path that your teacher shows you. This is the kind of yoga that you should devote yourself to. So we have to talk about two things. The first one is giving up all thoughts of other things. And the word here for thoughts is chinta. Say chinta. Chinta. Chinta comes from a word, a root chit, which means to be bright. Can everybody see this board here, or was it better on the wall? For people who are on the ends, can you all see it? Awesome, okay. So the other definition here is to perceive or to know. And we get the word scintillate from this. And this word is thoughts almost in the sense of worries or cares or like that kind of thoughts, right? Oh, the word bodhicitta comes from this also. For those of you who know that word, the citt part is the same, to be bright or to perceive or to know. And that's like the wish in your heart or the thought in your heart for enlightenment, right? So, give up all thoughts of other things. There are sort of three categories that this is talking about. The first one is when you get into your retreat cabin, you know, say you go to the desert in Arizona on the top of this hill where ours is, and you get in your adobe cabin, and everything's all quiet, and maybe you only hear a couple bird noises all day, and everything else is totally silent, but your mind, it's wandering back to your apartment in New York. It's wandering back to those coffee shops. It's wandering back to all the friends. I wonder what so-and-so is doing right now. Or, gosh, I should have called so-and-so before I left. Or, oh, when I get out, this is what I'm going to do with so-and-so. We've got so much experience in Chinta. We're experts in wandering thoughts, wandering away from where you are now. Wandering away from your retreat cabin. You finally got the karma to get into a cabin and to be alone with your thoughts. And what are you doing? They're everywhere. You know, everywhere but where you are now. So that's kind of the most gross form of chinta. The second form of chinta would be a more subtle form. You're in a state of meditation. You're trying really hard to meditate. But instead of thinking about your holy, virtuous object of your central channel, right? You're supposed to be thinking about your central channel and getting the winds into your central channel. But instead, you're thinking about, how much longer do I meditate? You know, and you're looking at your clock. Or, God, my knee hurts. Or your mind, it just goes off. You know, you try to pull the mind back to the object. But the mind flies off the object. Now, this is not as gross as making huge elaborate plans of getting out of retreat. It happens in a more subtler way. And it's much harder to control. It's very, very hard to get the mind single-pointed. It's very, very hard to not think about your knee when it hurts, when you're in meditation. It's very hard to... It's a training. It's all about a Vyasa. it's a training just like learning how to run a marathon you know when I um I don't know the first time I ever ran it was in freshman year of high school and they said I joined track for the very first time in my life and and they said okay you're gonna run a mile the first day they just like shoved us out and all by ourselves we're gonna run a mile and I was I'd never run a mile before I was like scared to death. And, um, it was really hard. It was really hard, especially that last fourth part, you know, but, um, but by the end we were running like seven miles, you know, they had just trained us day after day. They kind of pushed us a little bit farther and a little bit farther. And like, after a while, mile was nothing, you know, cause they were, they were having us run seven, eight miles a day. And, um, and I never thought that I could get there on the first day. If you had told me I was going to run eight miles a day, I would have just thought you were crazy or laughed at you. And I think that's what you have to, you have to come into your, your meditation like that. You know, your mind is going to be all over the place and it's going to be really hard at the beginning to focus because we're babies at this. Let's face it. Our culture didn't raise us to have single pointed concentration. I mean, it's like everything, but I, we have these like web things that go like this. It's like almost encouraging the opposite kind of state of mind. It's this boom, boom, boom, boom. You watch, what is that, like MTV or something like that, and there's like not even two seconds between each different frame of picture. I get dizzy. You get nauseous. So you have to cultivate the opposite in your mind. You have to cultivate holding one thing in your mind. steadily over a period of time. First you start for five minutes. And then you take a rest, you know? Then you move up to seven minutes. I remember during retreat, I remember the day that I got up to, like, 12 and a half minutes of solid concentration without losing my object at all. And it was a huge attainment for me. It was huge. I was so excited. You know, without varying even a little bit. Without thinking anything else but my object. So that's the second type of thoughts that you have to give up. Viparjita. Give it up. Just give it up. And then the third type of chinta here is like... When you get into a deep state of meditation, you're no longer thinking in pictures or words. And they call it conceptual thought or discursive thought when you think in terms of words or pictures. And it takes a really long time, deep in a state. This is one of the reasons why you have to go into retreat for an extended period of time. Because you can't do it in a month. And you can't do it in six months. You know, it takes like a year to get to the point where you're starting to lose that discursive thought. And just be in the object. Without talking to yourself about being in the object. And that's the third kind of Shinta that you have to give up. And that's the most subtle kind. And that only shows itself to you when you've been trying to meditate for a time. And you get certain, if you have a steady meditation practice, you start to get glimpses of what it would be like if you didn't have this discursive thought. If you could completely just melt yourself into the object itself and be the object, and not be yourself looking at the object. because to tell you the truth, that's two objects. That's you and the object. You know? And until you don't have you looking at the object, your mind, what it's doing, it's subtly toggling between the two. It's like me, object, me, object, me, object. It's not still. So that's the third kind of chinta. And I'm sure when all of you come out to Diamond Mountains to get trained for your three-year retreat, We'll talk a lot more about the third kind of chintang. Okay, maybe not all of you. Maybe half of you? I don't know. Okay. So, we have another word to talk about. Which is guru. Say guru. Guru. We can just say it over and over. Guru. Guru. Comes from a root, which means to bear. And it comes in Indo-European as queer. with an H. Where. Which means to be heavy. And we get the word burden from this. We get the word gravity or grave from this. we get the word grief from this because it's like a heavy burden so this word guru is very interesting guru gurus are heavy seriously They're the heaviest karmic objects. Meaning what? Meaning, if you do something good to a normal person, just any old person that you meet on the street, you collect a certain amount of good karma. If you do that same action to your guru, you collect a billion times more good karma. It's the same with negative things. If you do something negative to any old person on the street, you collect a certain amount of bad karma. If you do something negative to your guru, it's very serious, right? Why is that? Why are they such powerful karmic objects for us? Because they can get us enlightened. Once you take somebody as your teacher, Now, it's all up to you. See, this whole guru-student relationship, it's all the student. It's all for the benefit of the student. It's all the student's responsibility. It's all the student's choice. What is happening between them and their guru? So the student decides, okay, this person is my teacher. They make that commitment. As soon as they make that commitment in their mind, this person changes for them into a heavy karmic object. This person changes for them into somebody that can take them to enlightenment. Because that's what you're saying when you take somebody as your teacher. I believe that you can take me to enlightenment. That's what you're saying when you say, be my teacher. So it's a very serious matter to take somebody as one's teacher. Because they're very heavy karmic objects. And they can get you enlightened. Because they're heavy karmic objects, they can get you enlightened. They have phrases in both the Indian and Tibetan scriptures like, Use your guru. Use your guru. Meaning, what? Meaning, take advantage of the fact that they are heavy karmic objects and manipulate that to your advantage. Know, understand the seeds that you plant in your mind. when you are in the presence of your guru, and then use that. Remember that you are planting karmic seeds when you're in their presence, and then because they're such heavy karmic objects, you can do something to them that will ripen within a week, within a couple days. It depends on how strong your relationship with this person is. And that is how you change your reality quickly. Very, very quickly. Like in this lifetime. That is how you change your... And that's the whole reason why so many of these Mahasiddha stories are based on their relationship with their guru. Like, Gauraksha cleaned up somebody else's poopoo for 12 years because his guru told him to. And when he was offered initiation by the person who's levitating in the air, he said, no. No, that's not what my guru told me to do. And that's how he attained greatness. And that's how he became a Maha Siddhi. Not because he practiced some breathing thing over and over, but because he did what his guru said to do. And he knew that in his mind. It's very powerful. So, the guru, like, the reason why this book is not detailed, you know, it says, follow the path that your teacher shows you. It's not, it doesn't have a path in here. It says, follow the path that your teacher tells you to do. It's, it's because you can't get this knowledge from a book. you have to find a teacher you're stuck now you can't learn these high practices by yourself you need somebody somebody who knows you better than you know yourself to guide you right like somebody who can tell you don't hold your like you're going to do that where you inhale here and you exhale here and you inhale here and you exhale here and you're supposed to hold your breath will don't. Like the girl will tell you that and you'll be like, but I can do it. I can do it for like 50 breaths. And, and they'll be like, no, don't, don't do it. You shouldn't do it, you know? And, and you'll want to do it, you know? You'll want to, because you can. But, um, but they know you and they know your body and they know your mind better than you do. So it's best if we just listen to them and, um, you know, do what they say. One thing To clarify The group They can test you And tell you to do something That you feel is morally not right They're expecting you That what they say in the Tibetan scriptures clear. Either you do what your guru asks, or you respectfully decline, saying, I'm sorry, I can't do that. You know, so there's an option to do that. It's not like you're just, once you enter into this relationship, you have to do everything that the guru says, because I can tell you, for one, that's impossible, because my guru, he'll say two exactly opposite things to do at the very same time, and I have to choose one of them, you know, I mean, or I have to come up with a third option, right? I mean, sometimes you get into these situations where you just physically can't do what the guru asks you to do or where you feel like it's not right to do what the guru asks you to do. And what they say is you never lose your view of your guru trying to get you to enlightenment. They are testing you to see what you will say. when they ask you to do these things. And sometimes they want you to say no. Sometimes they want you to say, I'm sorry, you taught me that was morally wrong and I can't do that. And then they'll say, oh, good, you've passed the test. So I think it's very, I have to be very careful in the West not to be like, oh, just blindly follow what somebody tells you to do. Because no, our own karmic seeds are our own responsibility. But you never lose that view. Once you have entered into a relationship with a guru, you never lose the view that this person is guiding you. Right? Okay. Okay. Atiyahara, payasascha, pajampa, liyamagraha, janasangrascha, lauliamcha, shampir yoga, vinasyati. There are six things that will make your practice of yoga deteriorate. She made me do this one, I don't know why. The first one is Atiyahara. I made a song to Adyahara in honor of Adyahara but Adyahara means to eat too much or to eat mindlessly next week we'll talk about specific foods that you should eat and foods you shouldn't eat but definitely for a yogi it's very difficult to do any of the practices if you're overeating, if you're eating too much so for example we don't need until after we finished our yoga. So we don't need for about, I don't know, 12 hours or something. Make sure your stomach is... And I know that Swami Sivananda used to tell his disciples to... He would just say, learn to control your pupu and pupu before you do your asanas. You know, like learn to do it when you want and do it before you do your asanas. And you can pretty much regulate it if you're doing yoga every day. So it's good to have your body empty. I know of times when we've been in India and we got really sick for maybe three weeks or four weeks. We can't eat for three, four weeks. You're having diarrhea. You get really skinny and the asanas take on a different... They're better in a way. You know, like you're very light. and the asanas are somehow more horrified, I don't know. But obviously a yogi should... You have to eat... Well, we'll talk about it next week. You have to eat responsibly, is what it's saying. To the level of eating that you need personally. That's a very, very difficult thing to judge. In Tibet they call it Sekitse Sekitse Chepa. It's the first instruction in all retreat manuals. Learn what's the line for you on your intake of food. Learn to judge your intake of food carefully. So atyahara is the first thing mentioned by Yogi Swatmarama that could impede your progress. If you don't know how to eat properly, a lot of people overeat and a good number of people undereat. And you have to learn to make it right. And it's one of the things you'll learn if you devote yourself to a yogic practice. especially in retreat is you'll you get to the point where you divide a plate of food into like 10 parts and you and you'll say two more bites would be too much and you're like counting the bites almost and you feel it and you get very sensitive to that the next one is called making trips outside I can give an example from two year retreat we had I think how many we had five, six retreatants and one retreat we told We told our caretakers, who are here, very great, amazing caretakers, for three years. And our instructions to them were, if the world blows up, if my dad dies, if my mom dies, if my lama dies, I don't want to know. I don't want to know anything. Don't tell us anything. And they didn't. We didn't know about 9-11. The papers interviewed us afterwards. You're the only people in the world that don't know about 9-11. Four years later. We didn't hear anything. But one girl who was in retreat, she sort of slipped, and she found out that her father was dying. So she left retreat to take care of him. And then she just had a long string of weird things happen. Like she was bitten by a ralusnick, the only person who's been bitten by a ralusnick in the whole time we've been in Arizona. And then she just had a tremendously difficult time getting back into retreat. And so it's tremendously attractive. Like you try to talk yourself into why you have to go out. You know, the minute you're in retreat, like you spend years preparing the place and getting the food and getting the money and getting a caretaker. And then once you're in for six months, you're starting to tell yourself why you should leave for a week, you know. And then it would just destroy it. It just destroys the power. So, he's obviously done it, right? Meaningless talk. I mean, generally, in deep retreat, you shouldn't talk at all. Just keep silence. That in itself is a very beautiful practice. In our vows, Buddhist vows, we have three levels of vows, like monks and lay persons vows. Then we have bodhisattva vows. Then we have tantric vows, secret vows. But in the bodhisattva vows, there's a vow that says, You break the style if you engage in meaningless talk, because you want to. The vow goes like that. Meaning, as a kind person, as a bodhisattva, there are many occasions during the day, if your mom wants to chit-chat with you, if you're a bodhisattva, you should chit-chat with your mom. Then you're obeying your vows. Controlled chit-chat. Chit-chat, we went to Christmas with the family, and we chit-chatted. because you're supposed to chit-chat at Christmas, you know. But then the minute you get out of the house, you're supposed to be quiet again. You see, I mean, be silent. So what you say should have meaning. And when you can be silent, you should be silent. And we keep silence for up till one o'clock. And in the evening, again, mostly we keep silence. And it's a very healthy thing. It's a very nice thing. And in the yogic tradition, saves a lot of prana. This is interesting. Those of you who know Sanskrit, the end of the first line is niyamā graha. Niyamā graha. So the negative A, it could either be not keeping your commitments, or keeping your commitments. Some people, if it's a long A here, niyamagraha, it means not keeping your commitments. It's niyamagraha. And I've seen translations where they completely screwed it up and they said, you shouldn't keep your commitments during retreat. During retreat, you shouldn't keep your commitments. And that's just probably the most ignorant thing you could say. of all. Your commitments like not taking life, respecting other people's things, maintaining sexual purity, never lying to other people, things like that. Those are the yama and niyama. These commitments are especially important during your heavy yogic practice. And we'll get that. And it's coming in the text. This is the foundation of all yogic practice. You don't get anywhere unless you have commitments and you keep them. We just finished a course out in Arizona. I think it was five weeks, right? And it took five weeks to go through, I think, 80? 80 new commitments that people had because they took one initiation. So 80 new codes of morality that they had to keep because they took one initiation. and it's considered the highest empowerment of all to give someone an extended moral code. You know, now you're fit. Now you are worthy, yogi, to give a more extensive moral code to. You see, so it's an honor. It's a great thing in your life if you are granted. People give initiations, right? Empowerments. The essence of an empowerment is to give the person an extended moral code, a stricter moral code than they had before, as a vow, to grant them these higher vows. And that's the power of yoga. The power of yoga comes from being trained in a more subtle morality, a much more fine, increasingly subtle forms of morality. Like, should you kill a person? No. Should you kill an animal? No. Should you contribute to the pain of an animal? No. Should you lay a pen on the floor and not pick it up? You know? Someone might trip on it. So when you get to be a really high yogi, you're taking these vows. I won't lay pens on the floor. You know what I mean? And it gets more and more subtle, more and more power. So obviously the text says, not keeping your commitments would be a great mistake. That's what this is saying. Being around groups of people, we in retreat, we did this retreat and we got together I think once every six months three or four months every fourth month we would the five or six retreatants would meet together in a yurt and we still tried not to talk but the note writing got really out of hand and you know giggling and we decided that way because we didn't want people to go crazy, we were afraid people would go crazy and for three years they didn't see anybody. Oh yeah, all these moves. And then we'd go home after one of those meetings and we'd collapse in the bed and for 24 hours you couldn't move. It's really ideally in a deep retreat you should avoid groups of people. And restlessness or inconsistency in your practice. the Sanskrit word can mean either thing Christy last is going to talk more about this one so I think I'll just leave it yeah okay okay I'll talk about it this is just a normal thing people do it all the time it happens to all of us you get inspired by some teaching you go home you start doing yoga two or three hours a day, and it lasts for about a week, and then you cut down to zero. And then, what this last one means is that a yogi, especially in deep retreat, do everything modestly and regularly. Modestly and regularly. If it's half an hour yoga a day, that's fine. If it's 15 minutes a day of meditation, that's okay. If that's all you can do every day, just do that. Just do what you can do every day. We met a guy. He's a businessman. And he says, Hi, yogi. And we went out to dinner with him. And you don't know he's a yogi. He's just a businessman, right? And we went out with him for dinner one night. And we said, how did you get interested in this stuff? You know, he was coming to all our lectures and stuff. And we couldn't figure out why he was coming, you know. And then he said, in 1970, I did a short trip to India, and this guru gave me a 10-minute meditation to do every day. And I've been doing it for 30 years. And I have never stopped, and I have never told anybody. You know? And his business is this huge millions-of-dollar business, and his mind is so beautiful. And it's just 10 minutes a day. And he didn't tell anybody. Bhavet Guri Avati Gupta Nirviyatu Vrakashita It will be powerful if you keep it secret. It loses its power when you tell people. So it's really beautiful. So just a small practice every day. But if you keep it up every day. And yoga also, half hour, whatever you can do every day, do that much. And don't do this thing, where you're going up and down and up and down like that. Okay? There are six things that will bring you wild success in your practice of yoga. Joy in the hard work, a firm resolve to do it, consistency in your practice, seeking to understand suchness, steering clear of doubts, and completely avoiding groups of people. So, this is like the opposite of what he said, you know. Obviously, we talked about completely avoiding groups of people. It expends prana. It loses your... When you go into retreat, it's like you're building up all this energy inside your body. It's like your body is this storehouse of... Like you're a battery and you're being recharged. And all this energy is coming up. And then if you hang out with people, it just dissipates. you know so that's the reason for that and we talked about already consistency in your practice Geshe Michael just talked about that don't do three hours one day and zero the next right so Utsaha is a really beautiful word that means joy or joy in doing your practice you have to get to this point where you have convinced yourself that you're completely in love with your practice, right? That it becomes the most favorite thing for you to do. Um, how do we do this? You know, most people, it's like, you look at the cushion, you're like, I don't want to do it today. You know, I mean, it's, we have to fight to get ourselves on the mat. We have to fight to get ourselves on the cushion. The reason that the yoga studios are so popular is because it's so much easier to have someone else telling you to do the pose than it is for you to go home and do it in your own living room. It's so hard. It's so hard to do our practice. Why is it so hard to do our practice every day? Because we don't have the sense of joy about it. We have an opposite field. We have a sense of, ugh. No, I don't want to do that today. I'm too or anything, any excuse. It's too hot, it's too cold. I slept too late, I didn't sleep enough. Like, we'll give any excuse not to do our practice, and it's ridiculous. You get into a retreat, it's really funny, because you're still doing those excuses. And you have all the time in the world. And you're like, you're still coming up with excuses, like, I stepped my toe, like, I mean, anything, anything at all. The mind is amazing. So what you have to do you have to work from the mind. You have to lure yourself into love with your practice. How do we do that? We have to remind ourselves of the goal over and over again. Like, what are we doing it for? Constantly be thinking about these Maha cities that are levitating in the air over their cushion. Constantly be thinking about the day when we can Actually, someone will come to us and they'll be in pain and we'll be able to look into their heart and actually see what they need to do to rid themselves of pain. And you can actually help them. You know, the day when you can actually help somebody else because you can actually see into their heart. That's a really good thing to think about when you're not wanting to do your practice. I need to get there. I need to get to that point where my loved ones and my friends come to me with sorrows and pains, and I can tell them exactly what they need to do to feel happy. I can give people happiness. The day I can give people happiness, because that's our goal, right? The reason we want to become these Maha cities is not really so that we can float above here, although that would be really cool. The reason is we want to help people. We want to get to the point where we have ultimate happiness ourselves, and we can give it away to others. So over and over again, like Kishimaika always says, like thinking about a cute guy or girl that you want to ask out. You dwell on them. You know, you're thinking about them at work all the time. Like, when am I going to see them again? I only have four and a half hours, you know, until I actually get to cross their paths. If I cross their paths, what am I going to say? Am I going to say anything? Am I just going to look at them? And then you have all these plans. Over and over in your mind, we have to do that. We have to lure ourselves like that in our practice. We're like, what's it going to be like when I'm enlightened? You know? Oh, I'll be able to do this. You have to fantasize, basically. You have to fantasize about what it's going to be like. What are you doing in this room? You know? Like we're all here because we want something else. We want something higher. We want a spiritual goal. What is your goal? Do you really know what your goal is? You have to be so clear. You have to be so driven. And it's all this beautiful process of just fantasizing about what you really want. And don't stop at what you think is reasonable, because anything is possible. Anything and everything is possible. We can become what we ultimately dream of in our deepest of hearts. We can become this. I mean, if someone can grow their limbs back on their body when they've been severed, then we can reach our ultimate goal. So that's a utzaha. I like that word. It's a funny word. A firm resolve to do it. I think this is just the same as keeping your commitments, right? And keeping your commitment to yourself to do your practice. Keeping your commitment to yourself to do your practice creates the karmic seed to see the fruits of your labor. Right? Like it plants a karmic seed in your mind. If you're wondering why, like if you're one of those people that like you do things and the desired results never come about. It's because of this problem of not keeping commitments, not following things through. If you follow things through, you create the karma to see the things that you try succeed. Seeking to understand suchness. This is the word, the second key word here, Tatva is jnana. Tatva is suchness. The word tat is just a... It's like a pronoun. It means that. But when you add the va to it, it's like thatness or suchness. And it's a code word for emptiness or ultimate reality. The better we understand how things work in our world, the faster we will go. The more powerful our seeds will be that we plant in our mind. And the last one that we haven't talked about yet is steering clear of doubts. And this is like, this is not, I mean, it's okay to have a doubt about something. Like when you hear a teaching and you're not quite sure if that's right or not. They say in the scriptures, they say, oh, just shelve it, you know, and think about it later, or hash it out in your mind and try and figure out logically whether you agree or disagree. What they're talking about in this case is what they call lazy doubt or unresolved doubt. It's when you have a doubt just because you don't feel like doing something. like you just don't feel like doing the practice that your your llama tells you to so you think i don't really think that that's right but you don't really think about it you know like you you you put off thinking about it because if you thought about it logically you'd have to do it so this is the doubt that they're talking about it's um using doubt as an excuse not to do what you should do Using doubt as an excuse not to do your practice. This is, we're going to take a break, but I want to invite you somewhere. I studied in the monastery, you know, 25 years or something. I had 12 great lamas, 12 great teachers. One day, one of my classmates invited me to Geshe Jukten Renchen's class. And I sat there in the back, you know, I just listened in. And then the next morning I went to all my other teachers and I said, you know, I found the Word, you know, and I love you and I think you're great, but, you know, and I just went to his classes. After that, for 15 years or something. And he's just this unbelievable master. He's the real thing. He's like Gauraksha or Matsyendra. He's a really high yogi. He's just extraordinary. And his teachings on emptiness just blew my mind. Then I finally got it after all those years. He just spoke a few times and I was like, I get it. Just extraordinary man. Extraordinary, extraordinary lama. So, I don't know, about nine years ago? Eight years ago, I invited some friends to come hear him teach emptiness. Ninety-eight. Fifteen people came. Fifteen of us went. And we sat in his room, and he talked. And then I translated as he spoke. And then the next time we went, it was a couple of years later, next year, the following year, a hundred people came. And Sarah Monastery gave us the main temple. And they put him up on this throne, and he refused to sit on the throne. He got off. He sat down on the floor, and he taught. And it just blew our minds. It was like two weeks long. And he just, he teaches 300 students a day. You know? He doesn't stop. He goes like 10, 12 hours. And then he does this yoga, and he's a very high master. And then he taught us privately, Christina. And so he was teaching a special book on emptiness. And so we called him after three-year retreat, and we said, look, Geshe-la, can we finish the book? Because he has reached the final part. The final part is the highest teaching on emptiness. That's it. He did what's called the mind-only teaching, and he finished it in two years. So the final part is called middle way. It's the highest teaching on emptiness. by the greatest lama ever in Tibet, who was the first Dari Lama's teacher, Jansu Kapva. Lived about 600 years ago. So, we said, look, Geshla, a lot of people want to come. Just come to America. Because if we have to go there, it's going to be, you know, you add up everyone's airfare. It's ridiculous. You just come, and whatever cost will bring you. And he never charges anything. He refuses. Totally refuses. One day he got TB. Because in the monastery, they don't get enough food. They get tuberculosis. He got put in an Indian hospital in Mysore. And he had tuberculosis. And I sent him like $100. He sent it back to me. He said, I don't take anyone's money. He's just like that. He's unbelievable. He just gives. He just keeps giving. He just keeps giving. So he said, please come. And he said, and he implied that he had had some kind of vision that if he ever tried to leave India, he might die or something. So, so we said, can we come to you? You know, and we're free in the summer. We have some time in the summer. He said, that's my yogi time. I go up to the Himalayas. I, I don't teach, you know. And, so we kept calling him. And then after the third time, when you ask three times, Like you ask a teacher to do a book with you or something. And then the third time they're supposed to say yes. So he finally agreed and we said, well, where are we going to have it? And he said, there's a monastery near here. It was just built like two years ago by a very high lama in France. If you know Pabongka Rinpoche, this lama was his teacher in his last life. So he's like our great-grandfather in our lineage. and he's in France, and he has built the beautiful monastery you see there. So it's just below the Himalayas, and it's in Manali. Manali is like the honeymoon capital of India. It's where you go. It's like one of the nicest places in India, these green hills. And so they've agreed to let us have the teaching there, and Geshe-Lah has agreed to teach. So the last conversation we had was a couple of weeks ago, and I said, well, where are you going to be? And he said, wandering. I said, do you have a phone? He says, I have my ears. And I said, well, will you be there on June 26th? Yeah, yeah, I'll be there. Can we get a hold of you? No. So I'm assuming he'll be there. And we'd like to invite everyone to come. And you just have to get there. There's no charge. He won't charge anybody. We always give him, we always, you know, take up a collection at the end. But he won't take any money. And people have, the monastery is cool. They don't need anything. Although, of course, we'll offer whatever we can. So it's just free. You don't have any, there's no charge anything. You don't have to think about anything. You just have to get there. Okay? So we'd like to invite everyone who wants to come. It'll be 12 days long, very heavy schedule, beautiful teaching. And I don't know of a greater teacher of emptiness in the world. So, and I don't think he'll do it again. So, if you can get there, you should really, I strongly urge you to get there. Okay. And so there's a website. Yeah. There's a website. Is Christine here? Is Ben Gomi here? That's Ben Gomi from Paris. That's Christine from Booy, Arizona. No, Two-seven, formerly of New York. But they're in charge of arranging the teaching. So if you have any questions, talk to them. One thing, they have travel information on the website. And I told her not to put my mom. But she put my mom. So my mom's a travel agent. So I think it's a conflict of interest for my mom to be doing the travel agency. So I'd ask them to put, you know, you can get there any way you want, ship, boat, donkey. You decide. So although they've put my mom, I want to make it clear that that's not part of the deal. You get there anywhere you can. Find any kind of travel arrangement you can. They're trying to get chartered airplanes and hotels. So if you can tell them fairly soon. It's at the end of June. And it will be 12 days. I hope he comes. No, he said he would. He's a yogi. So, it's amazing. If there's any way you can get there, we'll just have a big party. It'll be a big party. He's just, he's like the Baptist minister of Buddhism. And you'll love it. You'll just love him. He's like jumping up and down in his seat. He's roaring with laughter and he's the most accurate and most beautiful teacher emptiness. And yoga, really. So, if you can, please, you're just welcome to come. So, we'll take a break. I have to talk to Nancy Kahn and what's that's her name? Ratesh, Chikki, and Jamie and Orta. Okay, and that's it. The next day, we'll catch up the next day. I'd like to talk to you. What was it tomorrow? Yeah, what was it tomorrow? Like, first. Okay. Okay. Thank you. Hi. Apparently tonight the Sanskrit superbrains class at 7pm got diverted to Starbucks. But just to let you know, it'll be here tomorrow and no problem. So please comment if you really want to delve into the Sanskrit deeper. I just wanted to make a small pitch. When we studied this book, we studied it word for word. You know, each separate Sanskrit word, translating it ourselves into English. And it was so deep and beautiful and rich. And we really would love to give you that, but we don't have two years to spend in New York. We have to go back to Diamond Mountain and we have to travel to some other places. And we only have two weeks. And I really encourage anybody who has the time to spend that time with these holy words and delving into them a little bit deeper. because what happens is when you look at the original Sanskrit, you get a deeper meaning of what the verse would mean for you. The people who teach Sanskrit here are nodding their heads. And we worked very hard on breaking out all the important Sanskrit words for you before we came here. And it would be a shame if we worked all that time and, you know, you didn't take the jewels that were presented to you. So, anyway. Okay, we'll go on. Now we're on today's reading. We'll do it for 20 minutes and we'll finish tomorrow. I keep telling her there'll be lighter days and we'll catch up. So, we're on page one of reading three. And I'll read. These are the ten yama. We translated it in other places as self-control. The literal meaning of yama is a vow, to take a vow. And these are ten. Now in the Yoga Sutra we had yamas and niyamas. and I think there were five and five or something like that. So, you know, they tend to pile up over the centuries. And this is another 1500 years later, right? And also they tend to morph a little bit. Also the distinction between a yama and a niyama gets lost a little bit. There's not much difference by the time of the Hathayama for Deepika. And even some of the yamas get stuck in the niyamas and like that. So don't stress what's the difference between the yama and the yama. By this time, it's a little fuzzy. And there are more. So we're going to do what I'd like to do. I'll do the first four with you. And then we'll go on to the rest. The first four are called, say, Tzawa. Tzawa. Tzawa. Tzawa. Tzawa. Tzawa. Tzawa. Very, very famous. Very, very famous. later because of the four corners. So these four are the basis of all success in yoga. You know, we talked, we were going to talk for two years about technique. You know, just how do you hold your nose if you have a boogie in there and you know, how do you twist to the left and which ankle goes on top and you know, how do you do a bandha, you know, and what igmudra should you be in and how are you kumbakuing, kumbakai and we're going to cover all that, right? And then some people will say, I can't get this, you know, Sharon and David taught us this thing, Nedi, right? And they took us through it and they were very careful, you know? And then, you know, we did it every day for two years and to get the water to go to the right place and not, you know, go into your ears and to come out one nostril and go to the other, But, you know, it was very... Some people catch on in a few minutes. Some people it takes a year. You know? So why is that? You know? Why is that? Some people are choking and sputtering for a year. And then one day they get in there. Ah! You know? And then other people, they just, oh, like that. And it goes, and it comes out. What's the difference? It's yama and niyama. Okay? you know, you'll be called upon to do some exotic yogic practice. Whether you can do it or not, whether you succeed or not, has nothing to do with that practice. You know, whether or not you can hold a certain asana, whether or not the asana works on you, whether or not you break your neck, you know, has nothing to do with the asana. It has nothing to do with your body. It has everything to do with how are you treating other people at this time? You see? So you're about to get, I don't know, a hundred different great yogic practices which can turn your body into light. Whether they work or not for you, whether you get it, has nothing to do with the practices. It's just, are you following these yamas and niyamas? So even a klutz like me, You know, if I do basic yama work, if I concentrate on the yama work first, then I can touch my toes. You see, that's the whole thing. Get it? It's very difficult for us. We think, oh, I have to turn up the temperature in my apartment. I can't touch my toes, you know? It's got nothing to do with the temperature. It's got nothing to do with your hamstrings. Nothing to do with what kind of yoga pants you've got on. Although color doneness are better. It's everything to do with, are you keeping your yama or niyama? So like, you have a problem getting into a pose, you can't do your yoga regularly, the stuff just won't come out your left nostril no matter what you do. Concentrate on your yamas and niyamas. So tonight is like a very special night, and tomorrow you get the key to everything. You know, and the rest is just details. This is the key to everything. It's not a sideline. It's not an incidental thing. It's the main thing. This is the main thing. And these four are the main thing within the main thing. So first one, Ahinsa. I don't know if I'll do all these words. They're on the homework. Oh, they're on the homework. Okay. I think we can only do these four, don't we? Or do you want to? Can we start tomorrow? You'll start tomorrow. Okay, good. The first one is Ahinsa. Say Ahinsa. When you write it in Western... What do you call it? Transliteration. It's an M. But when you speak it, it's an N. Required before an S sound. by Sanskrit rules. So it's Ahinsa. Say Ahinsa. Yeah, and it comes from a root, Han, H-A-N, which means to smite somebody. And in English, Kavnet is gun. The word gun comes directly from this root. A is the negative like in Greek, apathetic, atheistic, apolitical, meaning not. So Ahinsa means not to gun somebody. And it means non-violence. Of course, all the Yamas are non-violence. All forms of morality are based on not hurting other people. The first one refers specifically to taking life. So your first commitment you make, the first Yama, is to respect all forms of life. Respect all forms of life. And Diva Mukti is premier among all the yoga centers in the world that I've been to. And it's a relief to get here and be back in that culture in which the founders are just adamant about a hidden cell, especially towards helpless creatures like animals. So it's a very fine culture to be in here. And we have to respect all kinds of lives. So protecting all kinds of lives, respecting all kinds of light. And it should get more and more subtle as you move on. Without a hinca, without honoring all forms of light, protecting all forms of light, it's useless to do the rest of the Hatha Yoga Padipika. It won't work for you. Something will go wrong. You'll hurt yourself. You must have this karma. You must have this karmic basis of protecting life, honoring light, all forms of light. Because they all feel things, right? I mean, people say, I don't eat red meat. I've been in a restaurant. My Tibetan friend, Geshe Lothar, he worked in a restaurant for a while. And he said, he came home one day, he said, I don't know what's going on. I said, what? He said, people said they're vegetarian, and then they order fish, you know? And he said, what, they think fish don't hurt? They think, you know, when you're pulling on the rod, and they're going, and they're trying to get away, and that hook doesn't hurt them in their mouth? He was like all upset, you know? I said, I don't get this thing. They say they're vegetarian, and they start, he was being a waiter for a day, and it was like, he couldn't get it, you know. So, even worms try to avoid pain, right? And they have pain. So we have, in as far as we can, we have to, there's that story, the Dalai Lama, Henry Carrier, the German, was stuck in Tibet during World War II, he couldn't get out, and the Dalai Lama hired him to make a water project for the Potala Palace, but he said, you can't dig up the bugs, You can't hurt the worms. So there's a scene in the movie, and it really happened. Heinrich Harrier goes to the Daya Lama. The Daya Lama was, he was 12 or 13 at the time, right? And the Daya Lama says to Heinrich Harrier, you know, you can't hurt the worms, you know? He says, what do you expect me to, we got to dig this pipe, you know? We got to get this pipe in here. He says, you figured it out. You're a smart guy. You know, this is the Daya Lama's answer to Heinrich Harrier. If you really wanted to do it, you could do it. It's just a question of how bad do you want to do it? How bad do you want to protect other forms of life? So, we can. Second one is, oh, I always speak here about abortion. I was involved in an abortion when I was young, and it was a very bad deed. I didn't know it at the time. I was brought up that it was okay. And then when I got to Tibet and I became a monk, I studied with the lamas. They taught me that consciousness enters the womb at the moment of conception. At the moment that the egg meets the sperm, a living being enters. The preta, the yidat, the bardo being enters the womb at that time. So according to yogic philosophy, according to Indian teachings, after that point we can't kill. The word for killing in the scriptures is miyam mirchapa sepa. It means to kill a human or a fetus. And they never use any other word. It's always to kill a human who's come out of the womb or a human who's still in the womb. That's just the way they say it. And the word person applies to animals. When they say kansat or purusha, it always applies to animals. When they say, this person I know at home, and they say, I thought you lived alone, except your dog. And they say, yeah, it's a person. So the word for person in their languages covers animals. So it's just a warning to be careful about that. And when we came out of the three-year retreat, a woman came to me, And I told this story, but it makes me cry every time. This beautiful Chinese girl was outside running around with this beautiful pink dress on. She's so beautiful, you know. And then we gave the first teaching in New York after a three-year retreat. And the woman comes up to me and she says, do you remember me? And I said, yeah, you look familiar. And she says, yeah, I was your student before the three-year retreat. And I just want to thank you, you know. And I said, for what? She says, I was going to have an abortion, but I remembered your teaching. And this is the most precious thing in my life. And her daughter was there. It's so beautiful. So I don't know any woman who's had an abortion who didn't regret it later. I don't know any woman like that. And I've been to many, I've been to call them to, what do you call it, council women who have gone a little crazy after an abortion. Seriously. Seriously crazy. So just from a yogic point of view, don't do it. If you have done it, you have to learn how to purify the karma. Second one. Not lying. It's called satya, right? Truth. And it comes from the root as, from which is and essence come. And it means to be. Asana means to be on your seat. Okay? We'll get to that later. But as means to be. A-S. And satya comes from that. Which means only to speak what is. And don't speak what is not. You see? Just here to say the most serious karmic form of lying is to lie about your own spiritual life. to make claims, oh, I've seen deities, or, you know, I've reached some high meditation state, or, you know, you are all teachers. We are asking you, we are begging you. The purpose of these talks is that you learn to teach this subject to other people. And especially teachers must speak truly. Which means you have to work really, really hard to make sure you know all this stuff before you teach it. And then you can't... What do you call it? You can't adjust it. You speak only what you know to be true. And as a teacher, there's even more serious responsibility to speak only the truth. Anyone can smell the truth. People are like dogs. You walk into a room, if you love dogs, and there's a dog there, they'll run up to you, and they'll lick your face. It doesn't matter how mean the dog is. And if you don't like dogs, you can be, you know, we had a dog that would bite anyone who didn't like dogs at our first place in New York. And he would bite normally special people. And people are the same. They smell the truth. If you know what you're talking about, if you've done your work, If you've really tried to practice these things, they smell it, and they appreciate it. And then if you try to BS, or if you don't really know what you're talking about, they can smell that too. So you have to work hard. You have to really, really work hard, and learn these things well. Work hard these two weeks, and then you can speak with truth. Third one, honoring other people's things. My only comment here, we're not stealing things. The people in this room, we had a laptop missing from Diamond Mountain. It happened. And we were sitting around and we're like, we've never locked anything here. We've never ever locked anything. There's money just laying out on the tables in Diamond Mountain. And we're like, oh my gosh, it didn't occur to us that now we have to lock things. And it was a big shock. And then the next day, some sheepish person came and said, this laptop was on the table, I thought it was mine, and I took it home last night. And then we realized that just yogis never think about taking something of someone else's. It would be totally out of a yogi's mind to ever think about taking anything that didn't belong to them. Or damaging property which is held in common. so Jiva Mukti is owned by all of you if you come here as a student Sangha property we call Sangha property is much karmically much more serious and you're not going to come here and purposely break something or purposely steal something but you might leave the toilet dirty or you might leave paper towel all over the place or you might forget to take your shoes off and check muck and then somebody has to clean it up and then you're stealing time and money from them. You see, you're stealing their lifetime. So yogis are much more careful about property which we all own together, which is your studio. And the place where you practice is especially powerful karma. So be very careful how you treat the place where you do your yoga. And I'll do a pitch here and they don't know I'm doing it and I asked them if they wanted me to do it and they said no. So I'm going to do it. Jiva Mukti is is this public knowledge? yeah is it ok? Jiva Mukti is moving to a larger space I think by April and in the old days if you're attending a teaching like this and if you have any kind of skill that would be useful to your teacher then you offer it to donate it you ask to volunteer Like, I don't know, I can carry stuff. Or I'm good with advertising, I can help you get an ad out about the move. Or I happen to be a carpenter, I can help you make a cabinet or something. So they didn't ask me to do this and I'm probably going to get in trouble later for them. But in my mind, we all must offer whatever skill we have to help with the move. This is just a guru protocol. This is just disciple. This is normal. You have to do that. So, if you really have a skill at something, think. And then make an offering of your time and help with this move. Help in some way. It's a very powerful karma. Zedai tui geva in the scriptures. It's a special karma to serve your teachers and serve the physical place, especially when the place is moving or being... Then when it's built and you've offered something, then you go there to do yoga. The yoga works on you. See? Then the yoga is more powerful. Then you could actually do Virkshasana. You know, I'm telling you, that's why people can do it. That's the only reason you'll be able to... Maybe I'll be able to do... What's that one? Word for Danarasana finally. If I can think of some nice gift for the new place. I'm sure I'll be able to do it after that. Okay. The last thing is sexual purity, then we'll talk tonight. In this country, in our country, it's weird. We put sex up on a pedestal. I mean, drive to New York. It's like, we've been out in Bowie, Arizona, where the billboard out of the town that says, eat beef. I'm not kidding. I'm not kidding. It's the Schlump brothers or something. They still walk around with guns. Like we met them in the 31 Flavors and we're like, are you going to shoot us around these guys? They still walk around with pistols. But here it's all women in various forms. And we put it up on a pedestal and it's considered romantic. oh, this married guy met his new girlfriend, and then he cheated on his wife, but it was very beautiful, and they went to a nice, they went out in the forest, and there were nice trees there, and then they did adultery, and then, and they never mentioned that the children grew up for 20 years without a dad, and their minds are all twisted from pain of it, and, you know, and then he divorced her anyway after six months, because that's what happens when you do that kind of thing. As a yogi, a true yogi, respects other people's relationships like gold. It's such a beautiful thing that my friend has a partner. To see them together and to know that maybe they are practicing their yoga together and that they are united as one yogi. This is the goal. This is a very high goal of yoga, that you have your partner, and you commit to them, and then once you've made that commitment, you don't break it. And then when you're looking at people in that commitment, you must honor it as something beautiful, stunning, astounding. Practice for both of them to go to heaven, you know? And it should be this beauty thing, and you just love it, and you see them together. And you would never think to do something improper with one of the partners. It's just, no high yogi would ever even imagine doing that. And the karma of that is that you meet your yoga partner. You meet some high spiritual partner. And you develop this really extraordinary relationship with a high partner. So each of these has a different karma. And they all, together, they create your success in yoga. Yoga has nothing to do with how your body is formed, or what the temperature is. And even your teacher is created by your own actions. So these are the root four. Understand these four. Honor these four. Live by this code. And then your practice of yoga will be something extraordinary. You will meet angels in this black time. If you keep these four. Extraordinary things will happen to you. Okay? Cool? Alright. They have to write these things. You have to rile and stuff. Sta means to be stealthy. English cognates are stealing stuff. Burkh means to be great. And it came into Brahma. And Brahmaacharya means sexual purity. Brahma means pure one. And Acharya means to act. with purity. So it means, the most basic meaning is to respect other people's relationships very carefully. Cool? Okay. So we'll dedicate the karma and then we'll see you tomorrow. And you're doing good and keep it up and we'll go late and you'll be all exhausted and you'll be grumpy during the day and then it'll be over in two weeks and just stick it out. Okay. Thank you. Satsang with Mooji I I Yodhya Purnamda Shimajupasho Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for the chance to teach.