<iframe src="https://drive.google.com/file/d/1_IcY40GvXzvJ2jl8-2SbqnB6oSuEKi7z/preview" width="100%" height="80" allow="autoplay"></iframe> I think it's okay to go backwards today. So we're going to talk about another Maha Siddhi. So you have to go back to reading one again. And this Maha Siddhi's name is Kapala. And Kapala means a skull cup. So his name meant skull cup. And of course, there's a reason for that, and we'll talk about it. Kapala was the grandchild of Matsyendra. So he had a guru named Kampata, I think it was. And so Kampatha and Goraksha and Charangi were all peers. So that's how it fits in our lineage. So Kapala lived in a small town in India. And due to his amazing practice of patience in his past life, he was stunning looking. He was an incredibly gorgeous specimen of a person. And, you know, both like the physical body and his face and everything was just completely gorgeous. And because of that, he became the object of everybody's desire. And he was treated like an object. You know, he was just treated as something to be looked at. And it's a funny way to get renunciation, but that's what drove him away from his life, his normal life. That's what drove him away from society was that he was so damn good looking. He just couldn't stand it. You know, it doesn't matter what, you know, how you get on the path as long as you get there. So, you know, God bless. So he throws away all of his status in society. And he goes to a cremation ground. And basically, once you go to a cremation ground, it's like you're lower than the lowest caste in India. You're completely untouchable. You're just like a dog. And they say, they have this tradition. You're thrown from the ranks of men. You reach the ranks of the dogs. And you attain the ranks of God. So that's how to attain the ranks of God. to get to a point where you're thrown from the ranks of men, where you're totally despised by your own society, and you just go live with the dogs, you know, with the lowest drags of society. In ancient India, the cremation grounds were not a very pretty place. They were very dangerous. They burnt bodies there, and they left part of the bodies around for the wild animals to come and eat at night. So there were wild dogs and there were jackals and there were all sorts of creatures coming at night to feast on the dead bodies. And a very dangerous place for somebody who's not quite dead yet to hang out. And that was part of the whole yogi reason. You just face those things. you watch a wild animal ripping apart somebody's leg and eating it for lunch or for dinner. And you understand the impermanence of your own body, right? So Kapala stayed in the cremation ground for a while, and then a guru appeared to him and granted him initiation into Kala Chakra. And he was granted initiation and instruction in both the creation and completion stage practices of Kala Chakra. And we're not going to go into that in detail here. But he was practicing something called the body mandala, where he saw all of the parts of himself, like the organs of his inner body, and even his own thoughts, he saw his deities. He said, my thoughts are the retinue of the gods. that dissolve into the primordial awe. So this was part of what he was practicing. And one day something clicked with him, and he realized that the creation stage practices, which is like seeing the people around you as holy angels, And the completion stage practices, which is like yoga, which is like using the physical body to get the winds into the center channel. So those two practices were what he was mainly focusing on. And he had a revelation one day that they were one in the same practice. And on that day, he looked around and he realized that there was no difference between himself and the people around him. That there was no separation between himself and other people. Does that mean we're all one mind stream and we're all one? No. Everybody has different mind streams. But what it means is, practically speaking for us, if we want something good to happen to us, we have to do it to somebody else to get it. You know, I mean, it's all, everything depends on how we interact with other people. And we are not an island in and of ourselves, right? We are not separate from the world around us. We have created the world around us. Every single thing we see, every person we see, is because we've planted a seed in our minds to see these people. And we've planted a seed in our minds, the same kind of seed in our minds, to see ourselves as separate. But they are just seeds. Like we're all made of the same stuff. The karmic seed that produces my perception of myself and the karmic seed that produces my perception of the other person in front of me is the same stuff. It's the same kind of karmic seed, you see? It just ripens in a different way. And so he realized the malleability of that. He realized that the perception of a self is just a karmic seed ripening, right? It's another illusion. And because of that, he became completely uninhibited in his relationships with other people. And everybody thought he was crazy. He would, you know, I mean, I was trying to think of examples like, you know, just go up and hug someone randomly that he didn't even know. Or, you know, start to throw rocks at somebody, you know, who was like, you know, the town minister. And, you know, without any feeling that he was going to get in trouble for it. Or, you know, just completely unabashed whatever he, he lived truly without any kind of fear of moral customs. And without any fear of what other people would think of him. because he had broke through those boundaries of thinking that himself and other people were different. So he could be completely honest. And that's basically what he's famous for, is being completely honest. Again, in the materials we received last week from India, through John Brady. We found some lines by the Kapala, by Master Kapala. So I thought I would read them to you. They're very beautiful. Guru Kapadish Shemme means, One day Guru Kapala said, Muku Nime Dorje Dzin, Gienzo Tepa Bo Burwa. Take up in your hands the diamond of the indivisibility of every existing thing. Whatever falls into your hands, a skull perhaps? Let it be your jewelry. So this is a joke on his name, right? Then he says, We believe that I am me, a mistake that prevents us from finding suchness, however hard we seek it. Tonight is a special holiday. For those of you who know it's Szechu, It's the tenth day after the fifteenth of the month, after the full moon. And so the moon is on its way down. And in the next, starting around Sunday, you should start getting cranky at your friends and stuff. And unsure of yourself, and a little bit vaguely unhappy for reasons you don't know why. And that's the new moon sign. then early next week we'll reach the Newman which will be sort of a low and then we sort of schedule the teaching that we'll be on our way up by the time we finish and most times Lamas try to schedule it that way that we end on our rising moon so on this holiday the ancient Mahasiddhas of this lineage would have a special spiritual party together And one of the customs was to take meat. So they would normally not eat meat, but then on this special holiday, they would take a piece of meat. And it's a very serious thing for a yogi, because we spoke about the sacredness of life. The basis of our whole practice, the very first yama that we spoke about, is a hinca. So we can't take life, we can't take another being's life, especially for such a base or vulgar reason as wanting to eat their body, right? And so when you've practiced Ahimsa for a long period of time, then to touch a piece of meat, you get this reaction like you're touching your own mother's dead flesh, you see? a real yogi, after many years of practice, if they see a hamburger, they have this conception of it as being their mother's own flesh. And would you eat your mother's own flesh? So, they would avoid meat strictly. But on this holiday, we take a small piece of meat. And this is the point of his verse, what he calls the diamond of the indivisibility of every existing thing. Let anything that comes to you become your jewelry. And it means, if someone came to you and said, you know, my mother has died, so if someone came to me and offered me a small piece of meat and said, I got this from your mother's body in the cemetery, then I would be, normally I would be totally, it would be totally disgusting and disturbing to me. and it should be, you see? But when you touch it and when you take it, if something very, very disturbing to you, something you won't forget for weeks or months or years, someone offered you a piece of your mother's flesh, then you would touch it with some kind of awareness. You'd have a high degree of awareness of it when you touched it. And then at that moment, we try to bring to mind emptiness, the diamond. That's what the diamond represents. So at that moment in the ceremony where we touch flesh and take a small piece, then we try to think about the fact that people in my world are eating people's flesh is coming from me. You see? All the violence done in our world is coming from ourselves. You see? That's emptiness. Emptiness means the fact that you live in a country where people think that eating other people's bodies is acceptable is your fault. You see? It's my fault. That I was brought up in a country where it's acceptable to kill a creature and eat its body is because I was a violent person in my past life. So, one of the karmic results of violence is that violence is done to you. that we call like a return cost return karma in Sanskrit, Tibetan but there's another kind of karma called it's called like environmental karma where because you've been violent over many lifetimes then you are born in a country where people take this kind of violence as just normal life you know, like no one thinks about it when they order a hamburger and they just are eating the flesh of another. It'd be like killing the person sitting next to you right now. And we grew up in a country where that's just considered alright. So when you touch the meat on this ceremony today, you think about the indivisibility. Can I, through my yoga, create a society where people no longer eat meat? you see, can I, through my practice of Ahimsa make a change in this country you see, and we were we come to New York once or twice a year right, so we were going to see someone and we were standing outside McDonald's and there's a huge sign on the door, it said McVeggie you know, and we were like you know, and you know, and that means your own practice is having results it means you have created that sign you've created I remember when we went to Burger King in Arizona like before three year retreat and we rolled up to the the microphone driveway, driving and we said can we have veggie burgers do you have veggie burgers and they said yeah yeah, no problem and then we were like wow that's great in Arizona and we got the bag and we drove off towards Diamond Mountain and we're like 45 minutes drive, and we open up the veggie burger, and it's a hamburger without the hamburger. So it's just the lettuce and the tomato and french apple and mustard and two rolls, you know. And you're like, that's an Arizona veggie burger. So that's what they do, and that's why they take a skull cup and use it for a cup. It's not something disgusting or something bad or something like voodoo or cultish or like that. It's very, very much based in compassion. They are touching the meat with this true desire that they could live in a country where the sale of meat would be something totally illegal, totally wrong, totally looked down upon. You see? That's the indivisibility of things. It doesn't mean that we go out and kill animals. It doesn't mean that. It means until such time as meat is not available anymore, we touch it and take it on this holiday. In my monastery, Sarah, meat was banned last year. Yeah, yeah. Which is a big deal for Tibetans. See, that's just our karma, that we stopped being violent. We stopped being violent. and then we see changes like that. That's where those changes come from. Okay. Okay. So I believe we're still on the yamas, right? The ten yamas? And we only finished half of them? Four of them, good. Someone's paying attention. So, this is page one of reading three. He keeps telling me, oh, we'll catch up tonight. We'll catch up tonight. Oh, maybe tomorrow. Tomorrow's a short class. We'll catch up tomorrow. We'll see. We'll see if we catch up. So the fifth one is called Shama. Say Shama. Shama. And Kshama means, they translate it as patience normally, but what it really means is when someone is pushing your buttons, you hold yourself back from that incredibly powerful feeling of wanting to get angry at them and say something nasty, right? It's holding yourself back at the crucial point from being angry. And ksham, the root ksham, and I'm not going to write it because it's just shama, but with a little dash like this at the end of the M, which takes off the short A, and it means to endure. And we get the words calm and quiet from that. And this is one of the most difficult things. I mean, out of all ten of the yamas, I think it's probably the most difficult one. To hold yourself back from being angry at that very crucial moment when the person who knows you the best pushes your worst button and preys on your worst weakness. To be able to control yourself at that point And to be able to even remember that you're supposed to control yourself. You know what I mean? And we always say that there's like this time gap. The person that say you're in a relationship and the person, you know, they say something nasty to you about how much they don't like a certain thing that you're doing. And you respond with anger, right? And then about, I don't know, an hour later, you remember the Hatha Yoga Pradipika. You remember the verse, Kshama. Ah, damn. You know, I blew it, I blew it, I blew it, I blew it. And what we say is keep doing that in your mind because the time gap between getting angry at the person and then remembering it will get shorter and shorter and shorter. Next, it'll only be a half an hour until you remember that you weren't supposed to get angry. And then finally it'll only be like, you know, blah, and then, you know, it'll look like you're being schizophrenic because you'll do something and then you'll be like, I didn't mean that. I'll take that back. And then finally, you know, after years of practice, you'll actually be able to hold yourself back from even saying anything and eventually be able to not get angry at all. Right. How do we do that? How do we do that? We remember that whatever is coming towards us is coming from our own seeds in our mind. That is really the only way to stop anger. There's no other way. Any other way is, it doesn't work. It's sort of a band-aid method. Any other method is like a band-aid method. And if you're pushed too far, you'll break. This is remembering their emptiness. Remembering that they came from you. Remembering that they came from you yelling at somebody else in the past is the only way to break the cycle. So you get better and better at remembering that you created them. And that's the practice of patience. That's really the practice of Kshama, is getting better and better at remembering that the negative things that happen in your life are coming from something that you did. And the only way to stop it is to stop reacting. Because you know the terrible thing about being human is our natural reaction is the one thing that will make it perpetuate again and again. So if you don't like what you're seeing, hold back the natural reaction to respond to that person. Because responding to them will only make them happen in a more frequent, more intense way. right? So that's Shama. And they say the, the practice of not getting angry is as we learned from the story of the Mahasiddha Kapala, it's what creates beauty, physical beauty. That's the karmic correlation. I guess because you're not going, you know, you know, they always had that, that saying that, you know, if you put your face that way, it'll stick, you know, it's, I, it's, the old wives tale is based in truth. It's based in karmic truth. You know, um, you perpetuate, um, a negative, like you show somebody a negative, ugly side of yourself over and over, and you will start getting uglier to everybody around you and to yourself. And if you show the opposite of that, it will plant positive karmic seeds in your mind, and you will get more and more beautiful. Yeah? Dirty. It says in the verse, being dependable. But dirty is a really rich word. It has a lot to do with consistency or steadiness in your practice. So it's almost like being dependable to yourself. You know, not doing the three hours sadhana one day and then nothing the rest of the week. And it also has a sense of determination. A determination to reach your goal. And it's all the same effect, right? You will keep on plodding away at your practice day after day. then daya is another very important one yes dirty is oh it's not a keyword you're right but I'll tell you where it is in the verse it's the last word on the first line of the verse yeah so daya Dayam means love. It comes from a root da, which means to give, which I think is rather sweet. And we get the word donation from this, and endow, like endowing a three-year retreat. projects. Plant the seeds, plant the seeds. If anybody has anything. Okay. Was that manipulative? I don't know. All right. So Daya, Daya means love. In Tibetan, the Tibetan correlation for this word is Ningce. Say Ningce. And that means heart's love. It's a very sweet word in Tibetan. And the really interesting thing for me is that a lot of scholars, they tend to divide Hindu and Buddhist texts by this very thing, Daya. And they say that the Hindus, they don't have a tradition of love and compassion. And they say that's what makes the Buddhists different, is a tradition of love and compassion. And this is proof that that is not the case. This is proof that, you know, the lineages have both. You know, the Tibetan lineage has the physical practices. It's buried sometimes. And then the Indian lineages, they have Daya. They have Daya all the way up to the 1500s or something when this text was written. You know, and the lineage, they were going side by side for so long. And they weren't differentiated. So why we don't see it a lot of times in some of the texts is like why we don't see the need to find a guru in high tantric texts in Buddhism. Because it's ABC, you know? Like that's the very foundation that you need. And you're assumed, people assume that if you're reading some very high text that you know the basics. You already know about daya, so why would they have to write that? You know, daya is the basis of everything. It's the only reason that you would go into a matta in the first place. It's the only reason that you would go into retreat. And this brings up what daya actually means. What does love in this tradition actually mean? It's the kind of love that when you're looking at somebody and you're loving them, you're understanding that they are empty at the very same time. When you look at someone and you love them, you're understanding at the same time that they are coming from your karmic seeds. So, when you hear about some tragedy in the world, and your heart goes out to like stranded refugees who don't have any food or something like that, you have this sense, oh my God, I created that. You know, that came from me, that came from something negative that I did, and I need to help them, right? And what this does is it gives you all the power that you need to change everything about your world and to help them, to help everybody in your world and to really love people. If you understand that, for example, the war in Iraq comes from me, then I will consciously change my behavior of violence so that I see my world change. And that is the only way that I can actually help those people. So if I really love them, if I really open my heart to them, if I really understand where they're coming from, that is the one most important thing, the only thing that I can do to help them. So at a certain point, you start to realize that the most helpful thing that you could do for every single person that you love, and the most kind thing, is to throw yourself into your own practice and maybe go into a retreat. What happens to you if you develop this daya, if you cultivate the art of loving other people? You create the karmic seeds in your own mind to become a more capable person, to become somebody who can help more and more people. And that makes you happier and happier and happier. Until in the ultimate goal, you're like the mother of the whole world. and you're caring for all the beings that you can see. But in a practical way, in a step-by-step, progressional way in your own practice, what it means is that your capacity just gets bigger and bigger and bigger and you're able to help more and more people with less and less effort on your part. So it's not like you're able to help more and more people but you're totally exhausted. No, you become more capable, Which means it becomes easier for you. It becomes like water. Just to give to others this love. And this is what the city of reading other people's minds comes from. The more you open your heart to others, then the more you're able to hear the minds of others. Because, I don't know, Geshe Michael talks about it a lot. there's almost like a fail-safe in the minds of people who can't handle getting cities like that. It's like you wouldn't be able to read someone's mind until you were at a level where you could actually take it, where you actually had enough love that you could hear their pain and be okay and know what to do about it And say, yeah, I'll take that. I'll take that as part of my own pain. It's like kapala. Your line between yourself and others starts to divide. You start to hear other people's, you start to feel other people's pain around you. Everybody's had that feeling when they're in a close relationship with others. Where if somebody's hurt, it's like a mother and a child. If the child's hurt, it's like they feel it more than the child. And they're in different bodies, but you would never know they're in different bodies. Because the mother feels it so strongly when the child is hurt. And you can get that way with everybody around you. And it's a beautiful, sweet, happy place to be. Until, you know, at the end you become the angel mother of the world. Right? Yeah. I'm not going to go through the last... The... What is that? What number is that? Five, six, seven. Number eight, being trustworthy. This is like, another translation is like sincerity. And it comes from a word, Urju, which means straight. Using food and such in moderation we're going to talk about later, so we're going to skip it here. I'm still on the Yamas, page one of reading three. And I'm on Yama number nine. Now we're on Yama number 10 because I skipped Yama number 9. Yama number 10 is Xiaoccia. Say Xiaoccia. And Xiaoccia means being clean. And the only thing you have to know about this is there's two kinds of clean. One is the kind of cleanliness like keeping your apartment from being cluttered. And they say that your outer living situation reflects the state of your mind. So if you have a very cluttered apartment, probably means you have a very cluttered mind. And if you would clean up your apartment, it would help unclutter your mind. You know, it's like you could work from the outside in or you could work from the inside out. When you have a very clear, clean mind, you don't like clutter. It's like a natural thing to want to clean up the space around you because you want it to mirror your own mind. And when you walk into a person's place and it's beautiful, it's a very good sign that your friend has a very pure, clear mind. The second meaning of cleanliness is making yourself clean, making yourself pure. You know the word sangye in Tibetan? It means Buddha. The sang part of sangye means clean. Cleansed, you know? And that means cleansed of all of our negativities. Like cleansed of even our capacity to be angry. You know, not just the anger itself when it comes up, but even the seeds for anger. So cleansing ourselves of even the capacity to get jealous or angry or possessive or any of those negative things. We'll go to page three. of the third reading. tapasan tansha astikyam vatana mishvah kumjanam siddhanta vakyasavanam primatica javohutam just for people studying the Sanskrit this verse has some problems with it historically there are like 17 versions of the Hatayama Pidipika. And there are many, many different readings of the verses. And I would correct this one to Japo Khutam in the second line. From Tapo Khutam. And we have those versions. We worked with 17 different versions of the text. In Tibet, texts were carved. So there was less corruption. in India they never got to carving and carving wouldn't work in India because of the temperature wood didn't keep wood didn't stay so manuscripts were always copied by hand and then usually by people who couldn't read so it's very difficult Sanskrit is much more difficult so you'll see other readings and don't be surprised so we're going to talk about the term niyama, and again, over the centuries they have increased. The first one is called tapas. Say tapas. Tapas. It comes from a word tap, T-A-P, which means to heat, and there are two English cognates, for example, tepid, which means warm water, and then, I don't know how to pronounce it, Belton, the Celtic fire festival to the god Bel. The tan part comes from tap. So tapas normally means spiritual hardships. And you see in India there's a tradition, people will stand on one leg for three years or hold up their arm until it shrivels away. Things like that, sitting surrounded by fire for a month or something. And that kind of tapas is actually prohibited in the yogic tradition, in the true yogic tradition. Any tapas which would damage your body, your body is considered a very precious instrument with which you can reach enlightenment, right? They call it Khamdugten, Shat Dhatu. We have in the body six elements which allow us to turn into light if we practice properly. Like some forms of life don't have the six elements. A human body has all six elements. So to damage the foundation on which you could achieve a body of light and help all living creatures, is considered one of the most serious, what do you call it, breaking of the yogic code that there is. It's actually one of the vows that you take when you take a higher empowerment into the higher practices of yoga, Anuttara Yoga, is that you're not allowed to do any action which would damage your body or your mind. So to purposely damage your body is considered a grave mistake. So what is tapas? Tapas means putting up with hardships as you practice. So what does it mean in New York City? We all know. I mean, your family will bug you. You'll be trying to do your practice in the morning, and there'll be a phone call, or somebody will knock on the door, or it'll be too cold, or it'll be too hot, or there'll be something wrong with the floor at the yoga studio. You know, it's famous. you can always find a reason not to practice. Tapas means just every time something happens that would obstruct your practice, you just, Swami Sivananda call it asinine, donkey-like tapas. You're just like a donkey. And someone obstructs your practice and you just keep walking. You just keep going. And then another thing pops up. you catch a cold, you rip a muscle, you run out of money for your classes, and you're just like a donkey, you just keep walking, you just keep going. And nobody can really try to stop a donkey. We have them in the monastery, you can't stop them. And they just keep walking, and you just keep going. Tapas means there will always be problems, always something will happen. And a yogi just blows it away. A yogi just keeps going. You know, like, we had all of our tapes and books and, what do you call them? Bind. Oh, the whole archive just burned down. Whole thing. Every tape, every book, every record, everything just burned down last week. 20 years of work, you know? Okay. No, you just keep going. And tapas means don't get mad, don't get upset. Just whatever conditions come, then you take it. The highest form of tapas is very famous in the scriptures. Master Shantideva says it. It's to put up with other people when they bug you. So the highest form of spiritual hardship is not to put yourself into a cave and like that. That's not it. I did it once, just to see. I went to a cave in Arizona. This was about 10, 15 years ago. And I stayed in the cave for a month, you know. And it was just a waste of time. There were spiders everywhere. And I'd be trying to meditate, and there'd be a hundred spiders that would crawl all over me. And then at night, all these critters would walk into the cave. And it's just not practical. You know. And it doesn't count for anything. You should be comfortable. Your house should be comfortable. You should live well. You should have enough to eat. You should rest when you have to rest. And then when someone bugs you, you should not get angry at them. Okay. Easy to say. Hard to do. Next one is Santosha. Say Santosha. San means very much. It comes into English as C-O-M. Come. Like completely came from some. And then Tosha means to be satisfied or to be content. And there's a heaven called Tushida. I think some people know Tushida. It came to mean fat and happy. And then it morphs into the word butter and thigh and thick, meaning fat and happy. Tham comes from that. They're all from Tosh. I've checked about Tosh. I haven't been able to confirm it. Yeah, okay. But it sounds like it might be, right? In Tibetan, in the Buddhist lineages, Santosh has a very famous explanation. And this is how they translate it. Say, Duchung, Chokshay. Duchung, Chokshay. This goes back to about the time of Master Patanjali. A guru named Vasubandhu, Master Vasubandhu, Abhidharma Kosha. And he explains this. Döchung means, how to say, whatever you, what's that? You don't want a lot of things. Okay? Döchung means you don't want a lot of things. Like you're not thinking about getting more things. Like I think I, I worked in Manhattan for 15 years. I commuted every day from our, our little monastery in New Jersey. And I just got here, I worked and I went home. And I never went to a store. I don't think I ever went to a store to buy clothing or something like that. And it just didn't think of it. You see what I mean? It just didn't think about doing that. Because just happy with whatever you have. Do chung is like that. Do chung means it just doesn't occur to you to want something more. Possessions are obstacles. The more possessions you have, the more trouble. Every possession requires cataloging in your mind. And then the hard disk gets full. And then it doesn't do that zhut anymore. You know, it doesn't, it's like wukka, wukka, wukka. No, really, you know, when the disk starts to get full. And we had a class in Omega, you know. David and Sharon are over the place there with 400 yogis singing, you know. We did a class on simplicity. Six people showed up. And, really, there wasn't anything to say. And the first day, we told them, you know, you paid $100 to come to America. Well, look, throw out half your stuff. Go home and throw out half your stuff. Tomorrow, you know. They're like, okay, anything else? not really so we did some Tibet words with them but so go home tomorrow and try out half your stuff you won't mess it at all and then your mind is freer especially shoes there's something about shoes just throw them out they've been hiding there at first and you'll put them in the garbage can and then And then before the truck comes, you'll think about one pair that you really wanted. I've gone back to the garbage can, I know. And they'll try to sneak back into your house. And then you have to be firm. You have to close the door and say, that's it. You stayed in my closet for a year. You didn't get onto my feet. Now you have to stay out. And it's very... That's due to... The other side is chokshay. Say chokshay. Chokshay means really happy with whatever you have. See the difference? One is not wanting more stuff. And the second half is enjoying what you have. And I've known llamas. My llama had a tepcho. Tepchu. Is a thim... What do you use for sewing? Thimble. He had a thimble. He brought this thimble from Tibet. It was his favorite timbre. Like, this is one of the only things he got out of Tibet. But he had kept this for like 50 years. And it was functional. And he liked it, and he appreciated it, and he used it every day. He sewed my first set of ropes with his own hands. And this is a thing. This is a thing you should have. Something you use all the time. And then you appreciate it, and you have a relationship with it. and he wasn't chintzy about it, he would have given it away. But that's Duchung Chokshay, Santosha. Okay, Santosha. Next one is, Astikyam, we translate it as belief in higher things. At any given moment in your yoga practice, you can see your teacher as, you can see this yoga studio as, normal, and you can see it as something higher. You can see it as divine beings have come to help you, and they're taking care of you, and they're trying to urge you on to higher things. So at any given moment in our lives, there's an option between normal and divine. And the stuff remains the same. It's still Lafayette. It's still a building. And then you have a choice. Astekyam means you have a choice to think of it as something divine. And it's a struggle. It's a struggle. Because the mind wants things to be normal. The mind wants Sharon and David to be normal people. Lady Ruth shouldn't be Lady Ruth. She should just be Ruth. And she should just be the lady who teaches the class. because I pay. And the mind wants to drag things down to normal. And then you have to struggle. Asikyam means to struggle against it and let things be divine. My last one is dhanam. Dhanam, we had the root already in dhaya. Dhaya means love. Dhanam means to give. The capacity to give. I have a story about that you know, in Tibet they say this division between you and other people will start to collapse once you get smart meaning once you realize that karma is true the division between myself and you starts to crumble because I cannot get anything I want without first supplying it to you. I must first provide what I want or what I need to others in order to get it. This is just the, what do you call it? The force. This is the way the universe works. I cannot ever even have a bagel in the morning unless I have provided food for others. It's impossible. So I must give, to continue to have breakfasts, I must take an interest in the poor. It's just like that. If you continue to eat breakfast, without taking interest in poverty, the result is that you will get older and die. And in that way the breakfasts will run out. You see? If you continue to eat a bagel every day, which seems so easy to get in New York, not in Arizona. We just have frozen bagels, okay? Every time you eat a bagel, you use up some of the karma that you collected by serving the poor. So if you continue to eat bagels, you must get older, unless you actively take an interest in poor people in the world. So, you know, someone asked me recently, so giving to the poor and there's lots of poor if you don't know any poor, let me know you know in the world we know many many projects to try to help them and someone came to me and said it just occurred to me that by giving away things I'm serving myself and now I feel bad you know and you don't have to think like that. People think, oh, it's selfish. Actually, Michael's onto this trip where they're giving away money to fund their university. You see? It seems selfish. They're not doing it because it's noble. They're doing it because they want to get more money. But think of what happens when you do it. Okay? If I give a bagel to you because I want more bagels tomorrow, then two people got bagels. you see what I mean? no, and we are so selfish that we can't conceive that that's a beautiful thing we are so selfish that we jump on it right away and think there's something wrong there it's no it is the beauty of spiritual practice it is the I don't know it's the key to make the world work properly that you can only get what you give away And once you start buying into that, then it just makes everybody happier. And there's no problem. Okay? No problem. Does it work for making donuts? I don't know. Lady Sharon said, does it work for making donuts? Maple donuts. Maple donuts. I guess if your partner's not I guess maple donuts now it works he gets them anyway he finds ways look over there if you get me one hand it to me secretly I'm just putting fun on her Oh, it's a hard job. All right. Someone be on my side, you know? Like strawberries and, you know. Healthy snacks. Mm. All right. So, let's see. which we're on Nehemiah 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Isvara pujana. Say Isvara. Isvara. Pujana. Pujana. Isvara. Isvara. Pujana. Pujana. So Ishvara means Lord or Master. And it came into the later lineages as meaning, like an epithet for Shiva, Lord Shiva. But in the traditional ancient meaning, it was your own Lord and Master, which means your root Lama or your root Guru. Your Lord and Master. The one that we were talking about yesterday, we create all the most powerful karma from. Yeah? So, worshipping our Lord means, first of all, honoring and respecting them. Pujana. Pujana has a special meaning, which is to please them. Anything which pleases your guru. So this is the practice of figuring out what's going to make your teacher the most happy and then going and doing it. What would that most likely be? Would it be chocolate? No. No, it wouldn't. It would be your own practice. your own practice that is what they want the most from us is to do our practice sweetly and well every single day that is the thing that our gurus are praying that we will do because it's the it's the only way that we're going to get to the goal that they want they want us so badly to reach it They want all of us to get to that ultimate place of happiness. And we keep blocking them at every turn. And all we need to do is follow the instructions that our teachers give us. And that makes them the most happy. Although there's also a tradition of honoring your teacher by giving them gifts. Cheerios. Cheerios is good. Safe. Legal for both parties. Almond milk. Okay, anyway. So, just to go back over why it's so important, because we were talking about this and we said, you know, this is pretty much the most important of the Niyamas, is this one about honoring your teacher, and paying respect to your teacher. And why is that? Because we talked about yesterday, the karma is so heavy. They are guru. They are heavy. They are heavy, heavy karma for us. Something about them, you know, when we bounce something off them, it comes right back to us, and it comes back in full force. They say, once you take someone as your guru, they immediately become the channel for every enlightened being. So whenever you do something to your teacher, because you have called them your teacher, right? It was all up to you. Because you have called this person your teacher, You are doing this same action, in effect, to every single enlightened being that there is. Right? And that's how you can think of it. That's how you can think of the way that the karma is magnified. And the more you understand that principle, the more powerfully it will work for you. And that's the reason why our gurus can get us enlightened. It's not up to the guru. It's up to us utilizing our gurus. It's up to us understanding our relationship with them. The more we understand that this person is every single enlightened being embodied in one form, And then we do an action towards them, even if it's a small action, like just, you know, giving them a sip of tea or something. You're creating your enlightenment with this sip of tea that you just gave them. Because all enlightened beings, they don't taste just tea, you know. It's like total bliss combined with the direct perception of emptiness in that one single sip of tea. And you're giving it to every single enlightened being that there is. See, it's not just tea. So when you interact with your lamas, your teachers, your gurus, whatever you want to call them, do it with mindfulness of who you're actually interacting with. And then see what kind of results happen from that. The next one, say Siddhanta. Siddhanta. Siddhanta means comparative study of different schools of philosophy. So this is a tradition that goes all the way back to ancient India, where people get together and they debate certain questions that they have, And they go at it until they reach the truth. And people come at the same kind of, I don't know, they come at something like emptiness, for example. This is typically related to emptiness. They'll come at it from several different directions, with several different ways of describing it. And you have to know all the different ways of understanding emptiness. You have to know even ones that might not be correct. Because your mind might fall into the incorrect ones at one point or another. And you have to know that your mind has slipped into a lower school. So it's a tradition to study all the different schools and all the different philosophies. And to know where you're at in your level. Right? Then say Vakya. Vakya. Vakya Shravana. Say Vakya Shravana. Vakya Shravana means listening to the teachings. What we're doing right now. Take yourself to somebody who you think is an authoritative source and listen to what they have to say and learn it in your mind and become a master of it yourself. It's this whole process of passing on the lineage. And then you have to skip two of them and then say japo or japa. And that's recitation and memorization. So they have three levels of study in ancient India. They've got comparative study of the different schools of philosophy. They have going to teachings and listening to them and learning them well. And then they have memorizing the ancient books and putting them into your mind, putting them into your mind stream so that you can carry them with you. And this is a practice that's not so popular in the West. We were not raised to do a lot of memorization and recitation. In the old days, people could listen to a teaching once and recite it verbatim. That's how sharp their minds were. That's how good they were at memorizing and reciting. You know, Ema Maya Shrutam is the beginning of the Harat Sutra. It means once I heard this teaching. It means the guy heard it once and he memorized it and he wrote it down like 100 years later. You know, it's luckily for us, we've got video cameras and blah, blah, blah. But we're not going to be able to take those with us. You know, if you want to take something with you, you have to put it in your heart. You have to you have to really learn it. So, you know, we made a practice of, and Lady Ruth is also doing this, of, you know, we memorized the Yoga Sutra, and then we memorized three out of the four chapters, two and a half. Okay, I don't think I quite got through three, to be honest. It's a really long chapter. But you put it into your mind, and you can take it with you wherever you go. And you don't have to rely on mp3 players and all that stuff. And that takes, it has to be a practice and it takes 10 minutes a day, 15 minutes a day. It's not some big deal. And I'm not very good at it, but I just keep doing it. So you can do it. And it's very, very helpful for your mind. Master Patanjali is whispering in your mind all day long. At a subconscious level, he's whispering all day long. And after a few years of Him whispering in your head, it's just your life changes, your mind changes. It's very beautiful. And people in the monastery started when they were small children. It's very wonderful. So try just one verse. Pick a verse that you like and try to learn it. And say it when you're walking around New York. Two more and then we'll take a break. Say, Shri Mati. Shri Mati. Shri Mati. Shri Mati. Shri Mati is a very, very, very common word. And then I've seen translations that they made a mistake and they split it into two words, Shri and Mati, which would mean that it's a niyama to be smart. I don't think so. Okay? Shri Mati is very, very common. And Shri Mati means, in Tibetan they call it Monsa Shepa. And again this occurs in Master Vasubandhu's Abhidharma Kosha from about 18 centuries ago. And there are two states of mind which if we can maintain them during the day, we can become good people. One is called Shri Mati. And so it implies both of them. Shri Mati means, I don't know how to say it. I'll describe it to you. You tell me what it is. it's very difficult in English. It means you have a chance to do something that's not quite right. Right? Like, I don't know, you make an agreement to meet somebody at a certain time, and then it feels inconvenient to you, or something like that. And you have a chance to just sort of not call them, just not show up. You know? And in these two states of mind, Shri Mati and Pahya, they prevent you from not showing up. The first one, Shri Mati, means this is not who I am. You see, I don't know how you want to translate that. But Shri Mati means you avoid doing something that would hurt someone because that's not how you think of yourself. that's not Michael that wouldn't be Michael Michael's not like that so for purposes of how you feel about yourself you avoid a negative action that's the definition of Srimati it always comes with another one and it's assumed here which is called Bhayyobha and it means how to say it how would people feel how hurt would people feel if they found out that Michael did this you see well I don't know how you would call those two but it's like you have a chance to do something wrong and then you stop because you think how would the people at Jiva Mukti if they found out that Geshe Michael had done this how would they feel And then you stop. So both of these states of mind, one you stop because of how you think of yourself, and one you stop because of how others will feel about you. So how to translate those is difficult. I have translated them in the past as shame and consideration, or self-image and consideration for how others feel. But it's very difficult in English. I don't know if we have exactly those ideas. It's like honor, yeah. Or integrity. It's like that. Integrity. Okay, last one. You get to have a refreshment. Say huta. Sometimes homa. Say homa. Homa and huta both mean Jinsek in Tibetan. It means a sacred fire, an offering of fire. And we had an opportunity during the last two years in India to attend and to sponsor some sacred fires. And, you know, the priests allowed us to participate. And it was very beautiful. And also in Tibetan tradition, we are trained to do this. It's a very long process. It takes a long time. And we are trained how to do them properly. And first you draw a special mandala, you make a special platform, you get special substances, and then you do a long ceremony. And we did, in the three-year retreat, we did 12 of them. It was very beautiful. It took, I don't know, each one took four days or five days. It's very, very beautiful. That's another thing you can do if you go into retreat, okay? You have time to do these things, you see. And I thought it was important just to tell you the primary purpose of a homa, of a fire. So why is it a niyama? Why is it a commitment to do a sacred fire? And one of the major reasons for doing homa is that if we really try to do our yoga, and we really try to practice, even if it's coming to Jiva Mukti a couple of times a week, then when you come you will make certain spiritual errors you know like we were talking about one that I did recently you will make spiritual errors the Mongolian Buddhists they have a saying kudmushu ga nana uga if you never do any spiritual work you'll never make any spiritual work errors but people who are trying to do spiritual work you will make errors you will make a slip with your teacher you will think about your teacher in a bad way or say something to your teacher or omit something that you should have done so everybody who is seriously practicing a sadhana has to have a powerful method to remove these karmas that we collect with high beings our teachers, for example. So the primary purpose in our tradition of a fire offering is to remove those mistakes during our spiritual practice. Like if our mind was impure, if we were worrying about how good we look in the headstand, and not thinking that maybe that will help turn my body into light so I can help people, that's a spiritual error. And then it's a negative karma. And so every once in a while we do a fire offering. And then you imagine that the karma is thrown into the fire. Oftentimes you use sesame seeds or mustard seeds. And each seed contains one of those negative thoughts during your asana practice. And then, you know, you just keep throwing in seeds, like whole big boxes of seeds. And then each one is some negative thing you did during your asana practice. And then at the end of the fire offering, it's like four in the morning, and you break out maple-covered donuts, and you just party, and you enjoy, and you celebrate that the karma is finished. And then it's really gone. So that's the real traditional use of a homa. Homas have four traditional uses. That's one of them. That's the main one that is useful for you guys right now. Do you have anything Are they overheads? Is it totally ready to go on and pushing a button? Is it just the three-year-old? Or is it DM also? There's pictures of DM. In the context of the three-year-old. Okay. I'm going to show some pictures just before we take a break. This is Diamond Mountain Universe. I haven't seen these pictures. I hope they... Good as well. But this is another invitation. So last night you got invited to come to India. You just get there, we'll take care of the rest. I mean, of course you have to buy your own food and stuff, but no charge, just free income and give the teachings from this great mama. Tonight we want to welcome you and invite you. if you have any inkling to try, in 2010, we will start a three-year retreat. And it will take a lot of training. And I can't say more than it changed our lives drastically and put us up on a much different level. And what I wanted to say right off is that this three-year retreat we're doing different. there will be three zones. So the people in the back zone, we're in the back of the back zone, those people aren't coming out for three years. It's, you know? And then the middle zone is like people who can't really live in the desert for three years, but they want to stay around for six months at a time, something like that. And then the front zone is like yours. And stop in for a week, or stop in for a month, or something like that. And there'll be proper training what to do. I think a lot of people, sometimes they hear about retreat, and they just take off and they start doing it. And it takes about a year or two to train somebody how to do a retreat before you start. So we just wanted to invite you to come. It'll start in 2010. We'll be gone for three years. We'll do a lot of teaching in Spharm retreat, I think. More than before, maybe. But we won't come out. And if you'd like to come, just we want to plant a seed in your mind. It can be from one week, it can be one month. You can come every couple of months, something like that, okay? And just to put a seed in your mind. You could really learn some deep practices and how to practice. I didn't see all these. You missed the deal. Oh yeah. Just eat up. I agree. We all set the world up. Those rock formations, people are digging caves into them and then putting a front end on it. That's definitely... And the retreat huts are going to be made out of earth and made from the earth that's there. And it's a lot of fun to help build them. so, you know. We have a CD. We'll play it for you later. We have a rap CD. We'll play it for you. You can also come and help build your own little house. Okay, like that. Just out of birth. And they're very beautiful. They're very nice. So I think we'll just let that go, okay? And do you? Anything else? Oh, I think you're the best person. Okay, so anyway, a bit about Ellie who's right here. Raise your hand. she's the director of the retreat site of Dhanam so so if you'd like to just she has stuff but if you'd like more information about it but you're very welcome to come or just start thinking about it so we'll take there's a handout too so feel free to ask feel free to come. We'll take a break. If you Can I just say Is it okay if I mentioned a retreat? I just had a very brief little story I wanted to share. Can you hear me? Just about the three year retreat. I've been wanting to do this retreat. She did a three year and so I had this plan to spend the next you know six months or so in New York and try to get you know a couple jobs and save as much money as I could so I could build a little house and Gesheh was like oh that's a good idea and then yesterday he grabbed me and said no a better idea is don't stay here and work go back to Arizona and try to think of different ideas of how you can raise money so everyone can do the retreat so go and try to raise like you know two million dollars and build retreat place for everyone so they can do it for the next 500 years. And I've just been inspired by that idea. And I just thought this is such a great group of people. So not, you know, not to ask for money, but if anyone is inspired by this idea and would like to try to make it happen for other people so it can be something that you could do as well, maybe I'll put my email up or you could come and talk to me. And, you know, we can explore that over the next year or so and come up with ideas of how we could make this a reality for other people. Thank you. Have a nice break. Here I am starting again. We're on verse 17. page 5 of reading 3. Although we're, as far as I know, we're on day 4. It's alright. Pratashya pratamangat vad asanam purvam vuchate Kuryatadasanam stairyam Arogyam chagmgalagvam Here begins the section on the poses. Of all the initial steps of the yoga of sun and moon, the poses are said to come first. If a person practices these poses steadily, they become free of illness and feel light in their body. So, the first key word here is asana. Say asana. There's a word, as means to sit. And it comes into English. Okay. And this is connected to a more basic root, us, with a short A, which means to be. And we get the words is and essence. So asana literally means a seat, a foundation. In the Tibetan it's den. Say den. Den. And den can mean a seat like I'm sitting on here, or it can also mean a seat of learning. Like the three great monastic institutions are called dens. It's densasum, the three great places of learning, seats of learning. And then we've got Dorje Den, of course, which is Vajrasana, which is the seed of the diamond, which is where Lord Buddha got enlightened. And it's like he planted a foundation of emptiness in this world. And that's why it's a holy place. So our asana practice becomes this foundation, becomes this root. But we just had the yamas and niyamas, and wasn't that the root of all our practice? What do you think? Is it the asanas, or is it the yamas and niyamas that are the root of all our practice? Yamas and niyamas. It depends on whether you're working from the outside or the inside, right? And we were talking about that in the very beginning, in the very first day. The asanas, doing a regular asana practice will help us keep our commitments. Keeping our commitments will feed our pure and progressive asana practice. They balance each other out because of what we were talking about earlier, about how the inner winds and the thoughts run together in the body, in the inner body. The asanas affect the physical body. It affects the outer physical body, which affects the subtle physical body, which is the inner winds and channels. Then the inner winds and channels, they affect our thoughts. If our thoughts are affected, we are naturally inclined towards goodness and purity. We are naturally inclined towards good things. Like, I can give you an example. When we were in three-year retreat, we started having these incredible cravings for spinach. Now, it wasn't like cakes and cookies or anything. Geshe Michael had a craving for spinach. His asana practice was going really well. And, you know, our practice was pure. And we were... If your practice, if your physical practice is pure, you naturally start to crave good things around you. You naturally start to crave to be a good person inside. And it's because the winds are getting into their proper place. But you have to work on the inside and the outside together. Because it's not necessarily the case that just doing a physical pose is going to affect you in the proper way. Why is that? You could be, for instance, doing a headstand the way that Keshe Michael was talking about, thinking about, oh, I look so great, and having a lot of pride or something. And in that case, you're not putting the winds in the proper place. You're putting the winds in the wrong place in your body. So your physical practice would actually be harming your spiritual practice. You'd actually be going backwards by doing a physical pose. So it all depends on your motivation, your internal motivation for doing your practice. And I know the lamas here at this place are very, very strong about that. They say, you know, don't even do the practice unless you have the proper motivation because it can be binding rather than liberating, is how they put it, you know. And it's true. It's true for that very reason because the winds are connected to the thoughts. And if you have a negative thought when you're doing your practice, the winds are going to go in the wrong place and you're going to hurt yourself and you're going to damage your mind. so the poses come first with the proper motivation they go together, whoever said it was right the yamas and niyamas they have to go hand in hand your motivation for doing your practice has to go hand in hand with your practice and I think you can say that that is the asana practice that it would not be a spiritual practice if you didn't have that motivation, it would be the floor below us. Just going to the gym, right? You know, it wouldn't be an asana practice. It wouldn't be a practice for spiritual fulfillment if we didn't have the right motivation. So, then it says, if we practice the poses steadily, we become free of illness and light in the body. they say in Tibet that our bodies are just an accident waiting to happen there are so many things that can go wrong there are so many things that can go out of balance that the state of health is actually an irregular quality of a human body you know it's very rare to not have anything at all wrong with your body is very rare There's always some little thing or a big thing that's going wrong somewhere at some time, at any given time. And the asanas help to balance out what they call the doshas, the three doshas in the body. You know, there's wind, there's bile, there's phlegm. And these are different kinds of energies in the body. And if any one of them is out of balance, if there's an over amount of any one of them, you are going to fall sick or ill. Something is going to be wrong. You're going to get a crick in your neck. Anything, any kind of physical ailment can be traced back to these imbalances. And the asana practice balances these out. The karmic connection is that you are purifying the, because the winds and the thoughts go together, and because your asana practice makes you a better person, in the sense of it leads you naturally to be inclined towards doing goodness to other people. That will create less sickness in the body. It's the inclination towards goodness that our asanas bring us towards that creates the lack of sickness in our body. It's not the physical poses. The physical poses are a manifestation of our inner goodness. Yeah? Coming out. And then the lightness. the more you do your asana practices, the more you start to feel your subtle body. Like you start to be aware of your inner winds and your channels. And it's like a subtle shift in your mind from one body to the other. And that body doesn't have any weight to it. It's not bound by gravity. And so you start to take on this feeling of lightness, like you're not even touching the ground or something when you walk. And I think people, after a really nice, beautiful, long asana practice, will walk out the doors of jiva mukti kind of floating on air. And then it goes away after like an hour or something. And that's the reason that you have to practice it steadily. Because these results, they don't last. The physical practices have to be maintained daily because the winds will go closer to the center, right? You will start to fix the winds during your practice, but then because we're so habituated to things, they will naturally fall back to their original state as the day progresses. And so it's a constant process of retraining the winds until they get to that state naturally. and it's this is the part about the asanas and it's it's really hard to talk about the asanas when you know the teachers that taught us the asanas are right in front of us and it's sort of embarrassing and humbling and I'm sure they're doing it for a reason anyway it's only the first verse it's actually kind of ridiculous for us to teach it with them here so just come to Jeeva and move in they'll teach you how to do it we'll talk about it but there's no one better in the world I don't think if you don't Avail yourselves of it. You're crazy. Okay? But we'll talk about it. And I'm not kidding. And I'm not just flattering that. We haven't found such a great asana practice as it is here. And we've been all over everywhere. We go to asana classes everywhere we go. We travel constantly. We worked really hard in India. But to find anyone with such devotion to the practice, you know, you can go to India, you're going to go, right? And on your way you can chat. And you won't find such devoted practice, or such intelligent practice, or such morally grounded practice, as you do right here. Oftentimes my students go to India, I send them to the monastery for summer programs, and then they run back and say, it's better at Dhyam Mountain, isn't it? See? So, you know, the Sakya Pandita said 700 years ago that the people who live in the same village as a wise man never appreciate them. Alright. Jesus said that too. They kicked him out of his hometown. They tried to kill him. Okay, anyway. Yeah. Okay. we'll do one more verse in Muslum because it's getting late Vashischa Dyaishya Munibhir Matsyendra Dyaishya Yogi Angi Kirtanya Salani Kadyante Kani Kani Chinmaya Kani Chinmaya He's about to start the asanas and this is the classic source of all asana practices So it doesn't matter what lineage of modern asanas you do, I'm not aware of any lineage that doesn't eventually trace itself back to the Hatha Yoga Padipika. So this is the source of all of the great asana, modern asanas. And first he says there are three sources from which he will take his asanas. Two sources he mentions here, and then another source he mentions later on. The first source is Vashishta and the other Munis. Muni is a very common word in Buddhism. The Tibetans translate it as Tupa, which means one who is capable or who has the power. But then, oftentimes, the Tibetan scripture will give the ancient meaning of muni, which means to be silent and not talk much. So, chachok meva is sometimes how they translate it, which is, doesn't do blah blah. A muni is someone who doesn't blah blah. And still in India, mauna, for example, means to keep silence. So we do mauna when we're in India. And we go around, you know, writing mauna on our hands to people. and the reaction in India is oh cool, my grandpa used to do that you know, and it's a much different thing so Muni means one who is silent and it refers to an ancient group of six or seven sages of whom Bhashistha is the most famous and Bhashistha wrote famous texts on yoga, there's a shorter version of his text and then a much longer version and they're both very beautiful, someday maybe we could do that I don't know, I know I know Sharon and David are doing it. You should try to talk them into doing Klasanda here. Then Matsyendra and the rest of the Mahasiddhas, the yogis, that's his second source. And then later when he gets to the last four asanas, he will say that these are the cream of the 84,000 asanas taught by Shiva. So divine sources. So you have sort of high human sources, very high ancient human sources, and then you have divine sources of the asanas. There are only 15 asanas taught in the Hatha Yoga Padipika. Only 15. A typical hour's worth of asana practice at a modern yoga studio is maybe 30 asanas. And in Tibetan practice, when we were first taught the asanas, we were taught six. When you're taught Naropa's system of physical yoga, you begin with six asanas, and that's it, you see. And what it means is, there was a basic structure for a series around which the larger series was built. So there are six basic generic asanas. And then the teacher, your individual teacher, will build on it for your needs. So I think the end of the Jivamupti book was very interesting this way, because it was classifications of asanas, and the advice about how you could build your own series. As long as you got one of category one, two of category two, three of category three, and that's exactly the tradition of ancient India. So there would be certain categories of asanas. There'd be a back bend, there'd be a forward bend, there'd be a twist, there'd be an inverted pose, there'd be a balanced pose, there'd be a strength pose, like that. And then your teacher, watching you do your asanas, would adjust it. So a book like the Hatha Yoga Padipika will have 15 different asanas in categories like that. And so we'll be talking about, this is a generic series of categories, and then your teacher would build on it for your own needs. One important asana that's assumed, and the basis of all the asanas we'll be talking about, all of the 15 asanas in the Hatha Yoga Pradipika are aimed at getting into a good seated meditation posture. So that's the ultimate asana. Whether you consider that to be Siddhasana or Padmasana, lotus posture or Siddhas posture, is something we'll talk about. But the goal of yoga, especially the way we were trained in Tibet, after the lineage broke off in 1000 AD and went to Tibet and up to the present day, the whole function of the physical asanas is that you should be able to sit for long periods of meditation and have the channel straight and flowing properly. So it all goes back to the basic asana of meditation. so we'll be talking about about those let me see oh one more thing we've over the years now we've been to many asana schools in India we've been to Karvalya Dham we spent two months there it's a little town it's the first modern school of yoga in India down near Pune then we went to visit Master Yangas we went to visit Guruji's place we went to Yoga Institute in Bombay for a while many places in Varanasi and we watched we studied, we learned and the one thing is all the schools argue about which are the 15 poses in Mahatayama Pradipika people don't even agree about which pose is being described so in a lot of the poses like when we get to Dhanarasana even if you follow the Sanskrit carefully and the traditions in India you can come out with two completely different poses one you're pulling you're sitting and you're pulling one leg up to your ear, one foot up to your ear and the other foot out straight and the other you're on your belly and you're holding your ankles behind, right? and they both fit the description in the Sanskrit you see? so what's happened in India is that also the names are totally mixed up You know, like Vajrasana in Tibet is a lotus post. And that's not at all what it is in the modern Indian traditions. And you'll find huge differences between South India and North India, for example. So it's all very confusing. And I just want to say now that what we did, we checked many, many texts. We translated many texts. We worked with Indian masters. We worked with the greatest Western masters. And we worked on the Sanskrit very hard. But I think the most important thing is we went into three-year retreat and we just tried them all. And then we did, like Gandhi, would do an experiment on himself. And just, we tried, like, Bihar School Yoga, Swami Vishnadevananda, Master Yangar, Sri Patavi Joyce, and the text, how do they all describe this asana? And it's all different, you see? And so we're like, well, let's try all of them and see what they do to us. So we would try it for three, four months in the series, and then we would see, what's it do to your channels? What does it do to your mind? And then this is something indispensable. So what I wanted to say is, we don't claim to have found a true interpretation. I don't think there is one. I think you could spend years... Scholars will argue after we're done. Someone will come up with a new idea about what each pose is described. We don't claim that we know the final pose that was meant to be. I don't think you can. But what we did do was in three-year retreat, we worked really hard on these poses. And we tried each one for months and many hours each day. And then we're going to share with you in the next three classes, I think, the variations on the 15 classical asanas from all the ancient texts. We'll tell you this is what the Mysore school says. This is what the Mysore palace manuscript says. You know, we'll go through all that. And I think most important, we'll be going through, we'll show you the asanas that work the best for us in our real practice. and based on the asanas that we were taught in the monastery, by living teachers of this tradition. But we don't claim that it's the final... You know, it's just something that we think would be very helpful for your life, and that we found to be... that worked for us. And everything that is being taught at Jiva Mukti is exactly that. It's perfect. So again, it's one thing to go to a class and read all the Sanskrit verses about the 15 poses. In practice, it's foolish for us to sit up here when you have, honestly, the greatest masters around who have themselves experimented on their bodies since long before we ever heard of yoga. this is where the difference between theory and practice becomes almost ridiculous. You know, like, you have the real thing, and you just have to come and do it every day. Still, it's fun to go through the text. And we'll do it, because we really love it. And we'll give you our insights. But I think, in practice, it's infinitely better just to drink up the water that you're sitting next to the river. we're selling water at the river that's the old saying in India okay so let's dedicate the good karma that we have to have these teachers with us okay Thank you. And thank you for letting us teach. Is it ready? James, is it ready? Oh, can I do it? Yeah, go announce it first. Just sit for one second. You won't regret it, I promise. I'll regret it. This is a story that was put together by a student of ours in Vancouver. Do you know this story? And it's about your retreat cabin. So listen, it's a very sensitive, classical song. We canceled something. We're just going to stand there. She's stocked Adobe Bricks. Sie hat eine Stoffe She's stacked in W. And I think later, years from now, there'll be lots of students there. People will be very grateful. You can say, I was there. I laid the first bunch of bricks. You cut that out of a talk we were giving one day. Thank you.