<iframe src="https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rSbxuaV4X4aLJWuL3pWYvL7QQI2bH225/preview" width="100%" height="80" allow="autoplay"></iframe> So we talked a little bit last night about this holy mama who has come today to bless us with his presence. Kichila's full name is "Ceremonic Yisur Geshe Nonsanthandi" and 'Isura' means the former 'Ishura' ceremony. So one choice, and that's the vice-advict. It's a very high position in the monastery. So, Keshela was born in Nasa, and he was brought up there. And at a very young age, he went to live in the monastery with Ken Rinpoche. because it looks on her chin. And Ken Rinpoche was not only his uncle, he was his lama, his Lama. And he took him in at a very young age and they lived in the same room together and Kichilaw was a descendant in the monastery in Sibeth. I think, I don't know about 10 years years who were trying to figure it out without asking her. And then in 1959, just one day randomly, unexpectedly, shots were heard in the monastery and they were being invaded by the Chinese troops. And they had absolutely no warning, they had no time. I think Bichel and Rinpoche ran for their lives, they were only taking one towel in their hands. And But they took the clothes on their back and a towel, and they ran to the hills, to the cave. And then they knew that they had to go over the Himalayas. And so, but they didn't have any supplies. So Kishla, he went back to the monastery while it was being invaded. Underneath gunfire, he was like sneaking around to try and get supplies for him and Rikishet to escape to Nepal and India. And so he risked his life for his lama, in order for his lama to make it down to Nepal and India. He went back to the monastery, got supplies. There are all sorts of near-death experiences that he told us at Diamond Mountain when he was there at Diamond Mountain. But we don't have time to go into them now because I'm just dreaming of two questions. But very frightening times. And then while they were crossing the Himalayas, they were fired from the air, they were fired on the land, and they just narrowly escaped. Then Kishla was in the Maksa refugee camp in northern India for about 12 years with all sorts of other high lamas that managed to escape from Tibet. And they were trying to, you know, reboot themselves, and there was no place for them to go, and there was no food, and there was no, you know, very little shelter. And yet they still continued the tradition of teaching, you know, in this camp. And he was very famous for, you know, taking in the young monks and teaching them. Then they moved down to South India and they got a parcel of land, which we call a Saramee Monastery now. You know, it's the new Saramee. Now that the one in Tibet was destroyed, they made it again in South India. And at that point, it was just an empty space of land. And Gishalata was staying in one room with about 15 boys, little boys, and they were squished all in one room sleeping. And they only had one loaf of little flatbread, like about this big, about this thick, to eat per day. And so it was really trying times. and he took in every refugee that would come and he would, he just adopted them like his own child and said, okay, I will take care of your food, I will take care of your clothes, I will take care of your shelter. And so sometimes in the monastery they call him Amala, this means mother, you know, because he has such a big heart, taking care of these boys. And then he earned his Ketche degree during these turbulent times. And then his young monks, he trained each of the young monks to go on and become geshe's themselves. And his students are all over the world teaching now. You know, they've got the highest degree you can get in the monastery. And they're a wonderful teacher. And he trained Geshe Michael in the monastery. I guess Michael said he wouldn't have been able to function in the monastery without getting a little bit of help. Because, I don't know, you don't know about Tibetan Monastery as well as politics. And he showed us a way to go, you know, that don't piss off this mama, do this with this mama, you know. And there's no code, it's not like going to a regular university. There's all these strange customs very different there. And he just guided Geshe Michael the whole way, from first learning how to tie his nose all the way up to putting on his Geshe hat so it doesn't fall down. Then Ken Ricochet, his root mama, was in America teaching in the temple in New Jersey, some of you know, Rashi Kampamei Temple. and he invited Geshe Lofsankar to come. So, Geshe Lofsankar told you, he got a visa, he got a green card, to come to America. And he was here, and everything was comfortable. And then, Ken Rinpoche says, oh, you must go back to Sarame in India. You know, those terrible conditions, right? And he has a green card. I mean, who gives up a green card to go to, you know, in America? but he didn't, because that's what his mom had told him to do. He went back because Sarah needed him, and because his root mom had told him. He went back and reorganized something called the Sarah Made Food Fund, and he was in charge of it for many, many years. And so the kids didn't have just one little piece of bread to eat anymore. They had a decent meal, each one of them, and it was his effort. And slowly, he started to help build Ceramide Monastery. He helped to build a school for the young kids, and he helped to get a water system so that they were drinking pure water and not something that would poison their bodies. And he helped to get housing for the most so they didn't all have to sleep in one room anymore together. And a librarian helped with the library and helped with the ACIP project, helped get the input project in the monastery started. There were a lot of older monks in the monastery. They weren't quite sure they wanted this input project. They didn't quite understand computers and inputting, and they didn't know what we were doing. And he's a good politician as well as a good scholar, and so he helped with that a lot. He was also the very first person to introduce the idea of solar energy into the monastery. South India has a huge problem with, they don't have any trees because there's such a high population that they cut down all the trees and they don't have fuel enough to keep their water, you know, for food or for showers. And so he was the very first innovator, pioneer of solar energy and it works really wonderfully even when the electricity goes off in India, which is every day. So, and he's a wonderful scholar. He's an even better tantric yogi. He's a very high tantric yogi, but he won't tell you this because he has this humble manner. He presents himself as a very humble monk, but he's very realist. He was the head of Gyalong College, which is, they have little colleges in the monastery. So there's Sarah May Monastery, and then everybody belongs to a college. And that's where you live, and that's where you get your food, and that's the main teachers that you have there. So he was the head of Gyalong College, which is one of the main colleges in Sarah May for 20 years, I think. And then recently he started his own different college. Gyerong is a place in India, in Amiens, in Tibet. And they always name their college from a location. Then he started Ari Kamsen. And Ari is the American college of Sermay. So now he's the head of Ari Kamsen, which is our Kamsen, right? In tribute to his diploma. and I'm sure it should be a good answer. So with that small introduction, I will let and thank you so much on how to speak. Please come and teach us Siddharma. But before you teach Siddharma, I guess you have to sit down and think about one kind of Dhamma in the church. And I think I think perhaps we miss Eating the Dharma always implies some discomfort for the person teaching them. At least in the Dharma, the Dharma is a big one. and now this big responsibility, I have to treat him with certain things. Don't think like that. We're all just friends here. We're Donald friends. So just think, it's one of your Donald friends like in a coffee shop talking to you. But there's one teaching, there's one kind of spiritual teaching, which is completely unique and which is very special to the Buddhist tradition. So I thought tonight I would talk about this special process which is unique to our Buddhist tradition and it might happen. This presentation, these ideas that I'm about to present, they might sort of bang into your mind culturally. Don't mind anything. I mean, this is just something different. As you know, Buddhism came to Tibet from ancient India, It spread into that. And out of all those centuries of teaching, all that philosophy, all that knowledge, the core of the teaching is how you find and treat a spiritual teacher. Das ist das. But even this kind of belief is something you have to investigate and you have to learn how to develop it. If you understand the real teaching on how to take yourself properly to a teacher, there is like some kind of delicious spice that you can put on every kind of food, you see? You can mix it with any other thing you do and it's all delicious. If you have good food but you have no salt or other spices then the food is not so tasty, right? It's like that. This is the way it is with teachers also. that is what you can high spiritual qualities. And so a teacher is someone that you should find who understands or who embodies these high spiritual qualities. In Nika or Nyan in Tibetan it means a friend, spiritual friend. And a friend here means someone who would be able to communicate or to pass on those high qualities, to give you the qualities. That's what a teacher is for, that's what a spiritual friend is for. In Tibetan the word "guru yoga" is most often called "shin yin ten" "shin yin ten" the word "ten" means to rely upon this person, to take yourself to this person, to commit yourself to this person. So the study of how to behave in the teacher in Tibetan is called relying on or depending on your spiritual friend. When you have the teachers, you can't do it, but has four different categories. The first one is the benefits of finding a proper spiritual guide and then committing yourself to them. The second category is the problems that will arise if you don't know the proper behavior around your teacher, if you make mistakes in how you relate to your teacher, then that's a second problem. The third category is how How to relate to your spiritual guide mentally in your own mind? How do you think about your spiritual guide? And then number four is how do you actually physically carry out that in your behavior? Because the first is how you think about them. Number four is how you behave physically and spiritually. There are many ways to get a dava teacher, a spiritual teacher. You know, you could, for example, you could take a root text, like Hattu Yolta Deepaka, and then you go through verse by verse, and you explain the words, and you explain the lines, and you explain what somebody else wrote. And then there's a nyongki. Nyongki means you explain something from your own personal experience. You know, like, you try to do this practice of Guru Yoga, and then you give the teaching based on your own personal observations throughout your life of having tried to do this period. So for me, the way I'd like to teach it tonight and the way it's more than that for me is that if I could teach you my own personal experience of prayer. When you first get up in front of the audience and you're going to teach something about Dharma, then you try and get in the back of your mind thinking, what would help these people, what would be benefit to these people. There's no teaching which is of more benefit to people than to teach people how to find a teacher and how to rely on a teacher. There are many kinds of virus you can present and sometimes you get up and you see something Sometimes it's so extreme that no one can really follow it very well. And then sometimes you get logical and you go very logical, deep, deep, blah, blah, blah. And then it's kind of difficult for people to relate to. But tonight, we just strike to the court. The most important teacher in the all, and the most plain teacher, is how do you find a teacher, how do you relate to a teacher? Then I'm very not scared to do the other night. I'm not interested to, wouldn't I? I'm not interested to. I'm not interested tonight in giving you an elephant presentation, and I'm not interested in giving you, like, the most logically well presented presentation. I'm going to tell you from my heart about your teaching. In the time of the Buddha, teaching was so rather, teaching was considered so precious, that someone, for example, would approach Lord Buddha and say, will you teach me one verse of God? Will you teach me four lines of spiritual instruction? And then Lord Buddha would lean on and say, will you cut your hand off and offer it to me for this one verse? And there were people who did. Il y a des cas de la vie, et il y a des cas de la vie, et il y a des gens qui now that the verse wasn't really authentic, you know, that this teaching was not so authentic. And then you might go for years looking for an authentic teaching, and you might find a... So there's a difference between finding a teaching and finding an authentic teaching. And then people would find an authentic teaching and say, will you teach me? And then the teacher might say, I will if you jump in this bonfire first, and then I'll teach you about a single thing. that people were willing to do that in 18 years. Some of the disciples were sort of headed, and they said, "Well, you know, a dump in the fire might get killed." And then if you decide to teach me afterwards, I'll be dead. So I promise I'll jump in the fire, but teach me the best. You know, I'm trying to convey to you in ancient India what true disciples would do for a single minute of teaching, for one minute of teaching that they were willing to do. And I'm not just making this up or exaggerating. There are many actual accounts in the scriptures and the scriptures about people who actually paid this kind of thing to be a minute of teaching. I'm not trying to freak you out. You know, when you give a teaching about how to take yourself to a teacher, which incidentally is sometimes called daily showing, a spiritual friend who shows you the way of virtue. But there are also many daily shillings. There are also so-called spiritual friends who show you the way of evil, who teach you how to do wrong things. So first thing you have to realize that there are two kinds of teachers in the world, and it's very important for you to be able to distinguish between you two. There is a custom in ancient India that as you approach a creature it should be like a person buying a lump of gold in ancient India. You don't know if it's a piece of land that's being coated with some gold. So there's a tradition that you should cut the gold, you should file the gold, you should burn the gold. You should check the teacher, you should test the teacher, you should let them pass through certain hoops, mentally in your mind, to confirm that this person is worth jumping in a fight. What do you think about it? In the scriptures the example of a non-virtue spiritual teacher. A spiritual teacher is something wrong. In the scriptures often the example of a traitor in the military. And in the ancient times I guess you can now, as you enter the military, you take a vow to follow instructions, even if they involve feeling great destruction and hurting other people, you take an actual vow before this person or the book and this kind of commitment. So that would be an example in scripture of what you would call an evil teacher, a teacher of doubt which is not that good. If you have a police force, you have to get into the military, you will find that you have to do it. So, you have to be able to get into the military. There is a custom in some countries where people who enter the Military or enter the police force, they have to put their hand on a holy book and they have the raise their hand and they have to put a bow on it. If I see a person who is breaking the law, even if it's my mother and father, and if the government instructs me to kill them, even if it's my own mother and father, I swear I will do it. So someone who asks you to make that kind of commitment is in my mind an example of an evil spiritual person. That's great. "Generally the task of a true spiritual teacher is that they will be asking you to behave kindly towards other people. Don't kill other beings, don't steal things to other beings, don't lie to people, don't hurt other people. Generally speaking, this is a good test for whether this person is a wholesome teacher. We're looking, in our case, all of us here, we're interested in a spiritual friend who can teach us to get liberated. We are looking for a liberation trainer, a spiritual teacher. So what to be bad enough to know what liberation is, what does liberation mean? And liberation for us means breaking out of this cycle of violence and acceptance, breaking out of this habitual pattern of violence and pain in the world. In order to seek liberation, first you must be in pain. In order to want to be liberated, first you must suffer. And then you must reach a point of desperation in your personal life. you must reach a law and you have to say, "Now I'm mad at it. Now I need someone to help me. I need someone to shelter me. I need someone to take me in that care. I need someone to guide me." So really, in our tradition, the pursuit of liberation implies a great deal of personal pain first. So I think you could add to our definition of a true spiritual friend that they would understand the path of liberation, and they would be a person who is capable of saying So you take this step now. Oh no, switch over to this step. No, you must go on this path. They are capable of guiding you, Aradhat that takes you out of the downward cycle of violence and pain in this life. But if you are not When you lead me to Arizona, you should find a person who knows the way to Arizona. They know all the highways, they know all the turns, they know how to get there. You don't want to find someone who's never been there, doesn't have any idea how to get there, but who wants to teach you how to get there. There's a distinction to be made between someone who knows the way and someone who knows the way correctly. So it's one thing to find a person who's been to Arizona and who went on the way, right? But can they really tell you how to get there? Do they know the way properly or in detail? Because in the first place, there's a danger that you just wouldn't find a way at all. In the second case, there's almost a greater danger, which is the day with sidetracking and taking off all the world that goes completely somewhere else. So first it's very important to grasp, or to get in your mind, a clear picture. Because you know, there are two kinds of people presenting themselves as teachers in the world, and we have to avoid the ones who are teaching things which have hurt other people. and we have to try to follow the ones that are teaching us to honor and to protect and to act kindly to other people. It's one thing also to have a person who can tell you the way correct me, but are you a person who can follow the instructions? So there is this idea in Tibetan, "Shinyan ten" which means to take yourself to a spiritual teacher. What does it mean? It doesn't mean just to find them. It means can you follow the instructions which they really do understand a good teacher, kind of teacher, like are you capable of following the subjects that they do? Teaching about how to behave as a teacher is a difficult task because it's fraught with So just the fact of getting up to teach people how to honor a teacher, how to make office for a teacher, how to follow a teacher, how to do power for a teacher, to sit up here and teach that is a little bit dangerous. Therefore, normally a teacher who has a group of students or a group of followers is accustomed that they don't actually get up and get this teacher themselves because it reflects a lot dangerous stuff is there. So normally they, in front of your own disciples, you would get up and say, "There's this subject called finding a good teacher and then behaving properly with the teacher." And they would leave it at that and not ruin it anymore. But this one teaching. If you're the kind of person who is interested in spiritual life, if you're the kind of person who has experienced or encountered the pain of the world, and you truly want to liberate yourself and other people, right? Then you must find a person who can teach you the way, and teach it to you properly, right? But once you find them, you have to know how to treat them. You have to know how to relate to them properly. You must have this teacher on how to take yourself to a spiritual teacher properly. If you don't, it's like breaking your back. It's like having a broken back and trying to do something. What is the teaching of the teaching of the teaching of the teaching of the teaching of the teaching of the teaching of the teaching of the teaching 彼らは、彼 In the Buddhist tradition, it's very important to know how to relate to spiritual teaching. You have to relate to spiritual teaching in great honor, and this includes another teacher, with great honor, with great respect, with great reverence, with great humility. And then in the Buddhist tradition, there's a reason why, there's a specific reason why. In the time of Lord Buddha, two and a half thousand years ago, as the Buddha was pretending to go on, was pretending to start to pass on in his life, his disciples approached him and said, you know, what are we going to do? Who will we depend on in the future? Will you come again into this world? And then Lord Buddha, Lung Tamma. Lung Tamma means Lord Buddha made a prophecy. He said, I will come into this world. I will come again. then I will come in a form of a person who is similar to you. The reason I will have to come in the form of someone who is similar to you is that, obviously, if I came in the form I am now, which is Lord Buddha's special form, it has 112 special marks and signs on the body. If I came in this form again, obviously that would be good for you. You see someone show up in this special form, you respect them. You think, oh, Buddha has come again. But you're not good enough to see this form again. You don't have the goodness to see me come in this form again. If rather I come in a normal form of a human being, if I look like a normal human, I can be able to benefit to you in the future and to people who are making me. because you'll be able to relate to me, you'll be able to see me in the way I come. There's a story, a beautiful story of Aya Sangha, who lived about 18, 20 years ago. And for nine years, he stayed in a cave, and he did prayers to Naitreya, to the future Buddha. And he prayed and prayed and prayed to meet Naitreya. And he did his sadhana, he did his practice over and over again. And he almost removed all the obstacles in his heart that would prevent him from meeting Naitreya. Then he broke the retreat and ran out of the cave. He walked to the tower. Walking to the tower, he came across a dog. He still had a tiny bit of impurity in his heart. He couldn't recognize my child. My child was standing by the side of the road. But Arya Sangha, after nine years of intense practice, only saw a dog whose body had been run over by a cart, and the lower part of the body was rotting away. where the stone is not. It was made of lying, dying at the size of the world. He didn't have enough goodness in his heart to see myself. - - - - - The But the moment that he saw the dog laying on the world dying, with maggots in the Lord's body, then Arya-sama said, "I should help the dog. I should clean the maggots from the dog's body." But then it occurred to him that if he took them off the dog's flesh, the maggots would die from a lack of food. So he took a knife and he cut his own fire open. decided he would put the maggots in his own plan. And then he looked at the maggots, he reached out to the maggots and then he thought, if I try to pick them up with my fingers, I might hurt them, I might touch them. I have to do it with my tongue. So he leaned over and tried to pick the maggots with his tongue. And in the moment that he reached for the maggots with his tongue, the dog transformed him to the chest. Then Asaka is like, he's so happy, he's like, "Nine years I've been trying to see you, you know? Nine years! Where were you going to be?" I waited nine years, and I was like, "Oh, but it's so good to see you. I'm so happy. I love you so much." I'm going to get you up on my shoulders and dance around town with you on my shoulders. My friend says, "I was with you, I was sitting right next Look at nine years of snow in my clothes, you know. I was there, I can feel it. But she didn't have the goodness to see. So he got my chair off of his shoulders and he danced with the cow he rode and enjoyed. And then people looked at him and said, "He is crazy." Because nobody could see anything on his face. So he was dancing around and saying, "Look who I got on my shoulders!" Like no one could see anything. But there was one old lady who was very spiritual, very devoted, and she had enough karma to see him holding a belt and I just felt it. That was all. Bu da bir sani Because my student is good, because he has to be a good self-taught It's not an efficiency in the compassion or kindness or love of the enlightened beings. It's not only people. Satsang with Mooji: And so, once a person has taught you the Dharma, once a person has granted you this assistance and this help and this kindness of teaching you the Dharma, then regardless of their physical appearance, regardless of their race, their color, male or female, what they are, regardless of how you perceive them, it's crucial for us to honor them and respect them and pay high to God's Prayer? even like a yoga teacher, what is the point? What is the reason? It's not for them. It's for you. And you respect them as a Buddha, and you keep respecting them constantly, over and over, no matter what comes to you, you're treating them with high levels, you're treating them with high honor. Then the power, the energy, the direct transmission of the energy of all the light beings must come to them too. There are people who do sadhana, special spiritual practices, and when attempt to reach divine beings, They try to reach tempered dairies. They try to reach special angels. And there's a danger that if we don't carry out the practice properly, the power would be so intense that it would make it crazy. But to take your own direct spiritual teacher, the person who teaches you Dharma, personal teachers in yoga, you take this person and you make them your object of meditation, not some high invisible bear, you know? You take this person who is there by being, working with you, helping you, teaching you, and you concentrate, you fix your mind on them. Anything you ever wanted to happen in your life, everything you ever wish for in your life, everything will come from. If you do this practice, center your meditations on your direct teacher, even if you don't succeed to the extent to where some kind of incredible divine power comes to you, I'm not suggesting that you make me the opportunity to make it. It's one thing to learn how to properly mentally in meditation focus your heart on your teacher, your direct teacher. That's one thing. For them to go beyond that and learn how to behave properly when you're in their physical practice, that's even the highest thing. Now, there is and very high and very elegant and high spoken and any better. When we say take this Dr. Lama, it doesn't mean to try to find a Lama who is like the most perfect looking Lama in the place. If we brought into this room tonight some of the great spiritual teachers of the past, and he said, "This is the Lama who's going to teach you tonight." You got to go, "Oh, oh, ridiculous." This person is like a slobby, homeless person. Why are you bringing him in the dress tonight? In the case of Naropa and his holy teacher, Tinova, in our belief they still live in this world, they still walk this world, they attain the spiritual about death. Yes, people. You know, you can't any Raskaparian Indian yogi that the food is bad, and you wouldn't be able to even see the Raskaparaj. There is a story of these yogis in India, like the Raskaparaj, who His name means the fish gut, you know, man. And he'd reach into the Ganda River and pull out a lot of fish and rid his head off and shout, "Cheese." And that was just grossing off. And not just India, it was true of Japan. We have these others too. We have, for example, Miller Repa. How many people here have read this thing now for a hundred million years? I have read this thing. I have read this thing. Everybody would only have one reaction, which is like, "I'm just making a guy doing the grass." So we have to learn not to look at the animal food. We have to look at what's on the inside of this teacher, and the way to know what's on the inside is to come and listen to that speech. and then we might be able to recognize them. Otherwise, from external spirits, we wouldn't even be able to recognize them like we did. - - - - - - - and even number one took it into his head to emanate or to give the outer appearance of Lord Buddha Himself. So for years in ancient India there was this imposter, an actual demon, walking around with the outer physical appearance of Lord Buddha Himself. He was able to emanate, put on a glamour like an Irish glamour, and he was able to convince people that he would do everything that the Buddha could do. He had all the signs of an enlightened view on his body. He was a perfect imposter. He was able by outward appearances to look like the Buddha had checked perfectly. People got excited. They said, "No Buddha has come again. No Buddha has come back. No Buddha is in our mood." But there came a Yogi, there came a great Yogi, I think in the spiritual body, he came and he said, "This is an imposter." So he had a test to see if this was really... he wanted to show people that this is an imposter. So what did he do to, what do you call it, to reveal the impossible? He said, "Alt's furrow, let me do a test." And he split in front of this being, and he did an obeisance, he did a bow, he did a perfect bow. He chewed himself at the being's feet, and then he started to reach out to touch the being's feet with perfect reverence. and the demon couldn't bear the feeling of devotion. And he backed up and he couldn't keep the appearance anymore and he shut himself for what he wanted. To see this demon as it really was enough, that was scary. So once a person has granted you spiritual instruction, it doesn't matter how much, it doesn't matter if it's years of spiritual instruction or if it's a day of spiritual instruction or an hour. From your side, you must grant them high respect. You must pay them every kind of father that you can. "Because a teacher is empty, A teacher is empty. Their nature is empty. So, depending on how you treat them, you will get that kind of spiritual energy back from them. If you have a conception of your teacher as being a holy being, an enlightened being, and if you pay them that kind of honor, then the blessings of an enlightened being will pour back into you. If you treat them as a normal person, just as a... If you treat your Yomachim, for example, as a normal person, you will get only the kind of niceness that a normal person comes back to. And if you treat them as if they were the devil himself, the blessing or the curse of the devil himself will come back to. So it's up to you what comes down. So, we talked about how you think about your teacher and then we talked about how you act as your teacher. As far as how you think about your teacher, your motivation for meeting your teacher, What you think of when you think of your teacher is only this person is the enlightened being. This person has already reached enlightenment. I am going to surrender myself to this person because this person will be able to show me the path to the reality. And with this kind of state of mind, you will come to your teacher. We have in the monastery a custom of spiritual dance called "Tsang." And when we take different parts in the dance, we put on different masks. We play an evil character, we put on an evil mask, and we put on the black roles, you know. And then we play the king, we put on the crown, and we put on a king's mask, and we play the king's part. But if you think about it, there's all the different parts and all the different roles that one actor can play. In the end, it's only a single actor. What is the difference? Therefore your teacher is the same as this actress. The teachers that you meet through the length of your life will come in countless different forms, all different physical forms, completely different, some not looking like teachers at all. On the inside, they are all completely enlightened beings. And from your side, from our side, you have to think of them, you have to believe in them as an enlightened being. No matter what form a teacher comes to us in today, we have to believe that on the inside, all of our teachers are equal and completely, 100% enlightened beings. If you are able to achieve this conception of your future, you must get the power and energy of the enlightened being coming back to you. When we talk about a spiritual teacher, it doesn't just refer to a formal teaching of the Dharma, a formal Lama. It could be any teacher you've ever had in your life. It could be a teacher in school, it could be a parent's teaching you, it could be a member teacher. All of these are teachers. and from our side, we must think about thinking about the other way. There's a custom in Tibet that the word lama, and the idea of lama, doesn't just refer to a monk who gets up to teach as a dama. In Tibet, real spiritual practitioners treat everyone who has ever taught them anything as a lama. And they look upon them as a lama. And this is what lama, we don't know what lama means to a Tibetan, but that's what it means to us. He says there's a strange attitude going on in America nowadays. He has linked upward and he understands it now. And it's this idea that if you walk into like a yoga studio and you slap down your $10 or your $15, then the teacher is indebted to you. You see, the teacher is, now the teacher has an obligation, some kind of obligation to you. You set down the money, you put down the money, and now they have to do that. and that they are under obligation to do something for you. And in Tibetan, this is a very strange idea that people can have, that idea. It's a very improper idea. 我看见他 Look at every good quality you have been able to dissolve in this life. Look at every ability you have gained in this life. Look at anything you've trained yourself to do in this life. It all depends on the teacher. It all came from the teacher. Any good quality you have in this life, any skill you have, any ability you have, each one of us can trace back to the teacher who first taught us that skill, that ability. It's always like that. And that teacher took such great effort, such great pains to learn that skill themselves. You don't think about it sometimes, you know. teacher, I wouldn't have the five best qualities I have now if the teacher hadn't been kind enough to grant me best qualities and to work so hard to gain the qualities himself. So, from our side, when we think about ourselves, we have to think about that. What would you do? What would you like if you hadn't had this teacher to to grant me this prayer. The time is leaking on, it's been rain. I haven't had a lot of time to give you a detailed teaching about teachers, but I just wanted to put a scene in your mind. I wanted to give you just some idea in your mind of what it means to find that yourself. If they have a What I'd really like you to do is give it a month, you know, for the next 30 days. Try to treat your teachers special. Try to act tight with respect and with honor and give great gratitude towards all the people who are teaching you all day long. I'm not asking for anything for me. I'm asking that you, for the next 30 days, you make some kind of commitment, Special commitment to recognize all the teachers in your life, honor all the teachers in your life, continue to pay them, respect them if they are enlightened, and see if you don't get something coming back that's really cool. Maybe you will, but then you can just leave it. E se você quiser fazer isso So for the next 30 days, make it your practice, think about your teacher, put your teacher in front of you. And Geshe-la says, there's a word into that for statues or pictures of your teachers. They're called kunda. Kun means the holy body of your teacher, or the photo of your teacher. Da means the likeness of their body. Like it's one thing to put a picture of your teacher in your house and bow to the picture and pay honor to the picture. But it's another thing to hear people teaching you directly all day long. You are in classes with this holy being, your teacher. Okay, so maybe you are a tantricah, you know? Maybe you are meditating on some high tantric deities all the time. Maybe you have a mandala practice, you know, where you enter the secret world and you approach this angel who is in perfection and shining in red light and like that. I know there's people here who have a practice like that. Drop those. Forget those. Go stand in front of your real teacher. It's not a likeness of your teacher. It's your teacher and go stand in front of a real teacher. And if you need to prosper, prosper to them. You want to meditate, then meditate on them. You want to look upon their holy image, then open your eyes and gaze upon the beauty of your teacher. "Tamai chone Lama dhī yī kham, kevus khojone Lama dhī yī kham. "The picture is Even when your teacher is being hard on you, when you look at the teacher and you say, "This teacher, this is my teacher. This is the one I love, and I'm being hard on you to help me." And then when you're happy, obviously you can be also the boy into your teacher. And they're being nice to you, and you're like, "Oh, the nice teacher is nice." So whether the teacher is beating you up at a certain point, or whether the teacher is being sweet to you at a certain point, because all the time they're being one or the other, right? Then you just look at them and say, "Everything is my teacher. Everything they do, they're trying to help me. Think of your teacher this way." And I say that within a month, you will have some high speech on your teacher. "In Javad, there's an example that's given. The devotion of the disciple is like a metal ring and the compassion of the teacher, the kindness of the teacher is like a hook that reaches out for the ring and tries to grab the ring and bring in the defect. So if you don't have devotion from the teacher, if you don't have a love for them, good or There are no bad things going on at that moment. But if the ring is not there, and they take the hook of compassion and they reach out, there won't be anything to hook and you'll get lost. If you have the ring of compassion and you, devotion to them, then there will be something for them to put on to and then make them happy. If you have a good friend, you can't do it. You can't do it. You can't do it. Don t be like a basketball. Think about a basketball. This is round table, filled out the air. It doesn't mean any edges of it. And then Lord Buddha, your Lama, your teacher, your beloved teacher, they reach out with the hook of compassion and it's just bouncing around. They can't get a grip on it. Don't be like that. Don't be a basketball. "Oh, today, today, today, today, today, today, today, today, today, today, today, Your heart teacher and how to send your heart teacher is the very light of all spiritual teaching. But we have this resistance to the teaching. We have a resistance. If someone gets up and starts talking about how to behave towards your yoga teacher, how to honor them properly, how to really open yourself and surrender to them, then what's our natural reaction? We resist. And we think, oh, that's okay, but it's not for me. He's not talking to me. That's not something I have to do. We tend to avoid this instruction. In the Zibagalas call, "Amdo Domingdu." It means it doesn't get into your ears. Your ears shut it up. You don't want to listen to that teaching. So for one thing, it's hard to sit in an audience and to surrender to a teaching without surrender. It's very difficult. So, again, in the Svartas tradition in our lineage, it's not comfortable and it's not done that the teacher of a group of people should get up and give this. It wouldn't be appropriate for the teachers to agree with you, for example, to get up and speak to you, frankly, about the need for devotion from the teachers, because it would seem to be mixed up with some kind of self-interest. So what we try to do tonight is to try to come in and solidize outsiders and try to express something which they can't really get up and teach you, because that wouldn't really be popular. So we're coming in from the outside, and we're trying to give you this great holy power of understanding how important the teacher is. So, if you are not a teacher, you are not a teacher. You are a teacher, a teacher. I don't care. The important thing to mention in closing is the present Vysana says If they are enlightened beings, your immediate teachers, whether they are enlightened beings or they are not enlightened beings, what? It don't matter. It just don't matter. If you think of them as enlightened beings, if you behave around them as if they were enlightened beings, all the power, all the energy of every enlightened being will pass beyond you. We are going to have to go to How can you behave? So I've gotten up tonight, and I've tried to present a teacher on how to behave as a teacher, right? But there's a thing in our tradition, there's a thing in our lineage. Don't just buy whatever you hear. Don't go to a talk and somebody says something and then you just buy it. Don't do that, okay? Because you'll hear all kinds of weird stuff, you know? Don't do what everybody says. "My job was to teach tonight, but what's your job?" He said, "Check." You have to check. You have to check it out. So try. Try to treat your teacher differently for a couple of years. All your teachers, treat them as if they were in my ikanity. Check it out yourself. Don't believe what I said. Don't believe what everyone said. Check it out. and see if it doesn't get you some amazing results, some really big change in your life, just by a small change in how you think of your teacher. So it's getting laid and I just thought that was enough that we could talk about tonight. and again also consult your own teachers about this question talk to your teachers talk to those that you respect everyone who's in many different traditions here tonight many different kinds of teachers that you have talk with your teachers talk with them about the proper way you're after the teacher but most importantly try what I said just try to relate to your teacher at some time in the night you do and see if it's something cool So, again, in the Buddhist tradition there is this sort of progression that you go through, spiritual levels that you go through. And that would begin with finding a spiritual teacher. And then it would extend on to trying to find some kind of relief with all the pain in this life and the suffering in this life. And then that would lead you naturally to start to try to open your eyes and admit all the pain and darkness going on in this life. And if you got good enough at refusing to ignore death and violence and pain and war, then naturally you would seek a true spiritual. So there's a direct progression, there's an obvious progression between these things. You acknowledge the violence that's being done in the world. You have to. You must first, to be a spiritual person, you must acknowledge the pain and violence that's going on in the world. And that will push you to see someone who can help you about that kind of suffering. And then naturally you'd want to find one who is qualified or capable of helping you with the suffering of this life. So what I try to do tonight is try to give you a sense of this progression, admit the violence and pain in the world, let it overwhelm you, and then seek it to you. Geshe-la reminds us that the main violence and pain in the world is not being done in a mark or out of darkness. The principle of violence and suffering in the world is within our own mind. Our own hatred towards other people, our own ignorant desires, craving desires. the only lack, the lack of peace and comfort within our own minds is the greatest violence being done in the world. So this is the one we have to touch with. So that's all I have to say tonight, and I wish you a good night, and I hope I didn't bore you to death. We're going to do just some good luck. It's called satsang. It means you should just do a little bit of the teaching. So we'll just do 15-pound minutes. But it's just customised. Can Julia stand up? No, keep standing. This is Julia. She's in charge of a group of people that is preparing 3,800 CDs to go out free to the world. But they need someone to stick labels on the envelope. maybe thank you who can be here at 1 p.m. tomorrow Продолжение следует...