<iframe src="https://drive.google.com/file/d/1m-AkzQWaD4assGgoCW3chMDHBj5ygo03/preview" width="100%" height="80" allow="autoplay"></iframe> Yeah, hi, good morning. Thank you, Lydia. Nice job. Good morning, everybody, or good evening, wherever you are. Good morning, all the kids. John, I heard you had a good class yesterday. people were happy. We got to play a video of his new student. Anyway, here we go. So we started to talk about his story yesterday, and we didn't have time to do the details of it. But it's, you know, personally, I think stories help you remember things. So I was in Toronto, I remember that much, I don't know, 100 years ago. and I was giving a talk and there's this thing in Canada Connie what's the best coffee shop in Canada? Tim Horton yeah Tim Horton was a famous hockey player and for Canada if you don't know what that's a boot you can ask Connie or Earl so anyway And I guess after he retired or something, he started a coffee shop and it got really, really popular. And they have the best hot chocolate in the universe. I think they maybe sneak some, what do you call it, maple syrup into it? And then they have the best maple-covered donuts in the universe because maple syrup comes from Canada. And there's one in Toronto. So it was across the street from where I was speaking. And so I don't know about you, John, but before I teach a class, I check out where I'm going to eat dinner at 11 o'clock at night. And I saw this place, and I'm like, yeah, I'll go there. And they close at 10 or something like that. So I thought, okay, I can make it. And I gave this class, and I don't remember what it was about. But I remember Sade was there, a woman that I met in Toronto. And she gave me the hardest time at the end of the class. And I never met her. And she was in the back, I remember. And she was like, well, what about this? What about this? What about this? And I was like, God, who is this lady? And she really was very, I don't know, forceful in her questioning. And so I was trying to be nice and, you know, but I was actually thinking about Tim Horton. And she kept going and I kept answering and she kept going and I kept answering. Then finally, you know, I said, you know, guys, I'm getting kind of tired. I got to end the class. And I, you know, I got to end the class, run across the street. The guy's starting to lock the door of the Tim Horton. I run in. And just as I go in the door, I'm looking across the coffee shop to the donut display, because that's why I went there. And I can see that they have one donut left of maple-covered donut, you know. And I'm like, ah. And I made it through the door. And all I have to do is walk across the coffee shop and take it. And then I'm finished, you know. And then I can relax. By the way, Sade later, she showed up in Arizona without any notice. She just showed up. And I said, what? What are you doing here? She said, I'm moving here. And I said, what? And she said, yeah, I'm going to move to Arizona. And I said, why? And she said, I never had anyone answer my questions before. And you did. And so I'm moving here. And she spent a lot of time here. She had to spend a couple years here. Anyway, so I'm in the door, Tim Horton. And then I hear this commotion behind me. And I'm headed across the floor. And I turn around, and there's this old lady with a walker. Not the wheel kind, the pickup kind. And she's banging the door, and her elderly husband's trying to help her to open the door. And they're, like, smashing the door in the glass, and they're banging in. And the guy's trying to lock the door. And she's like, no, no, you know, I need to get in. And then I'm headed towards this door, and I'm just listening with half my mind. And I hear her say, I hope they have maple covered. I hope they have maple covered. It's my favorite. And then, really, this thought came in my mind. I said, I have to speed up. But she can't walk very fast, so I don't have to run. But I have to walk kind of fast. Because who knows? Maybe she's good at the walker. I don't know. And I actually was calculating, could I get the donut, buy it, get it into the bag, and close the bag before she saw what it was. and I had all this calculation in my mind and then I'm running across the floor and then I got to the counter and the Buddhism hit me and I was like wait a minute I just finished the two and a half hour with the question talk about how to be compassionate and kind to other people and you know, here's this old lady who wants this donut and I bought it and I turned around and I said here you go, you know, this is the last one. And that's actually a deep story because Abhinivesha comes there, okay? So we said Raga Dvesha Abhinivesha, okay? Avidya Asmitar Raga Dvesha Abhinivesha. So there were five kleshas, right? We talked about kleshas yesterday. And the first one was what? What's avidya? But what is it really? Yes, seeds you brought from your last life into the womb, right? Then avidya asmitas. Asmitas, kind of subject object in the womb, right? Quick question. He says that, He says that, but what's he mean? That you think the other thing is coming from its side. So it's not wrong to see objects. It's not wrong to think you're separate from objects, because you are. But if you think they're not coming from you, if you think you're separate from them in that way, then that's the cause of all pain. That's the cause of all trouble in the world. the things you, the donut you want to buy is not, it is separate from you. You are not the donut. No, I mean, it's not some spiritual goal that the object melts into the subject, at least until I eat it. You know, but it's supposed to be, it is separate from me, you know, it's not Geshe Michael. Otherwise you can say the old lady ate Geshe Maiko, you know, it's not like that. So in that moment of subject-object, what's the classic example in the husband sutra? The husband, you know, where you think he's, "I didn't do anything," right? That's object, subject-object dichotomy, wrong dichotomy, that's the wrong one. You think he's not coming from you, okay? What would it be with the donut? I didn't do anything with the donut. Just taking it without giving it away, thinking that it just didn't appear. Where did it come from? The donut you gave last life. The donut I gave my last life. No, but where do we usually think the donut comes from? We tried to buy a donut this morning. Yeah, no, you have this whole... You write a story in your mind, and it's a big story. It's like some guy woke up early. He drove a truck. He brought the flour. Jigmei, the flour was a big shipment. They had to break it down into containers and write the used part. We're taking a food management course for the cafe. They had to break it out. They had to move it. Nobody touched it. change the gloves between the flour. And then somebody added milk, which was also dated. Because that's, what are dairy products, a particular bacteria? Get out of here. We're taking our test on Monday. OK, anyway, you strongly believe that you get the donut by giving the money, and that it comes from somebody baking it with the flour and the water and the milk and the sugar that came from different places in the world. And you strongly believe that that's where it came from. But may I point out that you could get popcorn for free just by coming to Geshe Michael's house last night. And you see what I mean? you didn't pay for it. I mean, sometimes you have money and there's no doughnuts left, and sometimes you don't got money and you get a doughnut anyway. Duh! You know, you didn't buy a doughnut. That's not how you got a doughnut. It's obvious, you know. I'll say it again. Sometimes you don't have money and you go to someone's house and they say, "Hey, I got a fresh doughnut. Have a donut, you know. And then sometimes you do have money and you go to Tim Horton and you're much slower than the old lady and you don't get the last donut and it don't matter that you have money. So therefore, I hate to state the obvious, the money is not the cause of the donut. But you think so and you still think so. You still believe that. You strongly believe that. And that's ignorance in the moment which is abhinivetha, that's what we call grasping, okay, abhinivetha, okay. Then what does that trigger? What does that misunderstanding trigger? You speed up, you try to walk fast across the floor, yeah, and then it's a karma, you make a karma, okay, yeah. And then you actually deny yourself a future donut by taking the donut from the old lady, okay. It's very interesting, And the donut is not a stupid example, it's a very profound example, okay? It's easy to remember. So the text says: Your Abhinivesha grows basically because of the raga and dvesha. wanting the donut and not wanting to not get the donut. Liking and disliking. So therefore liking and disliking are wrong, right? No. That's not true. That's also not true. It's a dumb idea. If you think that, then send me all your money right now. And all your donuts and eat rocks. It's not like that. You can enjoy things, and you should enjoy things, and you shouldn't eat, I don't know, things you don't like. You should like things, and you should dislike things intelligently, okay? What's it mean to enjoy a maple-covered Tim Horton donut intelligently? What's it mean? Yeah, now listen. Try to understand. if you really have raga, if you really love the donut, then prove it. Okay? I'm not talking morality. And I'm not talking compassion. And I'm not talking trying to put your heart in her heart and see what she wants. I'm not talking about anything. I'm just saying, if you're the only person in the world and you like donuts, then there's only one course of action. which is what? Give it away. Give it to her. Okay? If you don't give it to her, you don't really like it. Okay? And some people say, why are you selfish? Because I want this stuff. No, you don't. You don't want it bad enough to not be selfish. Got it? It's a funny thing. People are asked backwards. That's what he said, right? Totally backwards. Prove you like it. Okay, how? Should I eat it fast? No. Give it to somebody if you like it, because then you'll get another one. But you get more than one. By the way, it's important to say that, right? You can't say, give away the donuts so you can get one. That'd be stupid. Give $10 so you can get $10. No, give $10 so you can get $1,000. Give one donut so you can have an uninterrupted Tim Hortons supply. You know Tim Hortons is in some airports that I go to. he has spread because I'm giving away those donuts they have spread to American airports it's amazing got it? it's cool again if you like something prove it how? give it away because then you'll have more and if you don't give it away you won't get more and that implies that you don't like it okay, it's interesting if you're not generous it means you don't enjoy your life actually, you're not enjoying your life it's a very sad thing okay alright, so it is okay to like the donut it is okay to dislike missing out on the donut or having someone keep you in the class too late it's okay to dislike that I say it's okay to end the class early if you've got to get the donut. No, I shouldn't do that. But there's Abhinivesha in the moment. You are grasping to the donut, okay? Now, listen. We translate it as grasping, but it doesn't mean that you're attached to the donut. It doesn't mean that. Abhinivesha doesn't mean that. We call it grasping. But it doesn't mean you really like the donut. It means you think it was bought with money and made by a baker. If you believe those two things, if you believe you get it because you have money, and if you believe it was created by the baker in the back of the donut shop, that's grasping. It's not being attached to a donut. That's not what Abhinavishya means. That's not what grasping means here. Grasping means to misunderstand the donut in the moment. So really, it's just another form of avidya and asmitah, which we already talked about. Okay, got it? Okay, so grasping, you know, don't be grabby about the donut. Does that mean you shouldn't grab it? No, you should grab it and give it to somebody. But grasping doesn't mean that you're attached to a donut. It does not mean that. In the yoga sutra, it does not mean that. It means you don't understand where it comes from. And then you take the wrong action. You make karma. And then if you add Maitreya's two steps, you spin the wheel. Next time they close half an hour earlier, they make less maple-covered donuts. Less to show. Okay, I got a photo here, Tim, of the old lady and her husband. I just want to show off that I actually found the photo. Okay, I don't see the donut. Probably she ate it really fast because she didn't study the Yoga Sutra. All right, okay. Now we're going to go to the next verse, okay, which is verse 10 and 11 of chapter 2. te pratiprasava heya sukshmach dhyana heya stadvartayach These ways of the mind turning around, there's vartih, okay, that we had in the second verse of the first chapter. What's the famous verse? Yogesh citta vartih nirodhah. Okay, say Yogesh citta vartih nirodhah. Not nirodaha, okay? That's a mistake. Okay. So here he repeats it. Now if you want to cut off the flow of problems, don't add shortages, okay? Then you're going to have to take some subtle steps. You're going to have to stop how the mind turns things around. So here it is. Here's your chance to stop the vrti, okay? you eliminate, heya means to throw away. Heya means to toss it out in the garbage. And what you heya here is virti, okay? And there's, I think, John, it's the first time virti's mentioned again since the first chapter, I'm not sure. But you want donuts in the future, then you gotta heya the virtis. You gotta get rid of the virtis. You gotta get rid of how your mind turns. and again you know obviously i mean it takes about two minutes to figure it out the goal of yoga is not to stop thinking okay otherwise you wouldn't put your left foot when when the teacher told you to put your left foot because you're not thinking anymore and you couldn't do asanas and you'd have to retire from yoga class you know it's a silly idea that you should stop your mind or something like that okay all right we're going to go on to the second homework question, which comes from this verse, okay, the next verse, and I combined verses, actually because the publisher refused to print more pages, so sorry about that, but they can be combined responsibly, and I did, so anyway, klesha mula karma asayo, Say klesha, mula, karma, asaya. Klesha mula means negative thoughts. What's mula? Root. Word thinks it's a reward you get for answering questions. Yeah, mula means root. Klesha mula. Klesha's negative emotions are the root of karma, asaya. And here's the first time it occurs. which means a storehouse of karma, so important like in the mind only school. The fourth chapter will talk about the kaivalya bada, that will talk about the storehouse more. But here we get some mention of it, okay? So it's kleshas are the instrument which puts seeds in your mind, karmic seeds in your mind, okay? Here it's called karma, right? And, you know, I should be talking more about how to teach this stuff because this is really a teacher training also. And I actually went and gave a talk to a bunch of executives in China, in Shenzhen. And there are some big ones. One is from Huawei, helped to found Huawei. which is probably going to be the largest telephone equipment supplier 5G is basically Huawei and then paying on insurance and the person in the class was in charge of 1.5 million employees and I was like wow that's a bit of a company and I asked them, I gave them some choices about how to translate this word karma and zhongzi, it means seed, right? And then yali is karma. And I gave them some choices and then we voted. And these are not stupid people. These are leaders of China. And they said, we prefer seeds. We prefer the word seeds because the word karma, especially in Asia, is too loaded with weird ideas. Too many weird ideas have grown up around the word karma. And they said, "We really enjoy that you don't use the word karma." And it's a lot clearer to understand what you're talking about when you use the word seeds, okay? So think about it here. If you're a teacher, which you guys are, or this is a teacher training, consider not even mentioning the word karma, because there's so many misunderstandings about it. So karmarshai here means the storehouse of the seeds. Where do you keep the seeds? Kleshamula, getting seeds into your storehouse is motivated by negative emotions. Okay, getting seeds into your karmic, oops, seed storehouse is motivated by Kleshas. Okay, now I have a question for you. Are good seeds motivated by Kleshas? Yes. The word says yes. Tim says? Depends. that you're both right. So I won't give anybody any money. Yeah, you can say there's a huge debate whether misunderstanding is a klesha. Avidya, you know. And by the way, there's a big opinion that it's karmically neutral. That avidya is not a bad thing. Misunderstanding the donut is not a sin. It's just an unfortunate human thing of your mind, but it's not hurting someone directly. There's a big debate about it. The first link of the Wheel of Life is considered karmically neutral. Luungma ten. So here he says, "Kleshamulakarmashaya." And then he says, "Durshta, Durshta Janma Vedanya." Okay? Very, very famous. Say durshta, adurshta, janma, vedaniya. Durshta means seen and adurshta means not seen. And by the way, if you say drishti, to teach people where to put their gaze during a yoga class, it's wrong. That's a different spelling and that's a different word. It's durshti. It's not drishti. There's not a word. Here it is here. Okay. Dershta, adershta. What's it mean here word? Tong, tong chuh, and matong. This slide? Good. Fevious slides? Yeah. Or future life. To be, vedaniya. To be experienced, future partisan. To be experienced, seen or unseen. Okay. And you get this distinction also in the ancient literature that we study here. in fact word for a hundred dollars, okay, so don't say I didn't offer you any money today. There's actually, in Patanjali, he divides it into durshta and adurshta. Then together it's durshta-adurshta, right, which means seen and not seen. The results of karma, your actions, the results of your actions, when the seeds open, It'll either be dursta or adursta, meaning you'll see it in this life or you won't see it in this life, implying that you'll see it in your future lives. So Patanjali only has two divisions. For a hundred dollars worth, what are the divisions that, what's a further division you can make? From Buddha scripture to divide into three. Yeah. Yeah, but can't you give me the words? Oh. No. $33 a word. Your name is the word. You thought I was just saying your name? No, okay, I'll give you $50. Tong. Tong chu. Kene Nyong Gyurkele and Shen Lan Nyong Gyurkele. That's the confusing one. Any other one. Yeah, any other one, meaning after your next life, second life and beyond. So they would call Adursta, not seen, okay? So for Patanjali, either you see it in this life or you see it in a future life, okay? Okay. And he calls it Vipaka, right? And Vipaka means what? Deeply cooked. Yeah. People say karma maturing or something like that. Ripening. Ripening is okay. And pak comes from pac, which means to cook. Right, paci? And it came into kuchina and kitchen and cooking. The word pac. It used to be kvac. Originally it was kvac, which came into kitchen. Probably Peachtree Cafe. I don't know. All right. Okay. The next homework question is, you know, this is maybe the first time we meet the word karma. But it's important here for the first time. So I'm going to ask you for the root. That's a very simple question. What's that? Kerr. Tim, we have a photograph. Yeah. I like cereal. you know, this is cereal and it comes from K-R. It comes from the same root as karma. That's why the English word cereal is spelled with a C. That until just before the time of Shakespeare, I believe, or Chaucer, was a K sound and then it changed. And why those things happen, people don't know, but you know, in our time, words have changed. So anyway, serial used to be kereal, and create also has CR, and crescent moon comes from that because it's growing. And the word, the Hindu word, Krishna, right? Because the black part is growing during the crescent moon, something like that and his skin is dark. Say again? To drag in. Yeah but it comes from because of the opposite of the crescent moon. During the crescent moon part of the moon is black. Something like that. You can explain it that way. Okay so that's where the word comes from and those are English words that are related to it. Okay. All right. There's a question here on your homework and it's basically how is an imprint and here again I tested these executives I was teaching. I I said, "Do you prefer imprint?" You know, "Do you prefer I go like this?" Or, you know, "Do you prefer that I say seed?" And that's another choice I gave them. I said, "You can choose karma, you can choose imprint, or you can choose seed." And then we had kind of a discussion. That discussion was a little more extended. Some people preferred imprint. But seed, if you're a teacher, I encourage you to use seed more frequently. then you can say imprint and it's similar, similar meaning. And then some guy from Romania, I forgot his name, Florin Passat, he gave me a piece of clay in a, in a diamond shaped carved wood thing. And you take the lid off and you can, you can teach the imprint and then you put it back and you carry it around in your pocket and that's how he teaches imprints. He's a very good public speaker. He's a coach of many people. So anyway, how does it leave a seed in your mind? How is the seed imprinted in your mind? And the classic answer is in the kitchen story. And I'll give $300 if you can tell me where it is. When you see yourself doing a deed? Try to be specific. I mean, I'm not going to offer $300 for a general answer. When she doesn't yell back. She's pretty close. So she puts it in her mind when she yells at the kids, first of all, right? But how? Why she reports herself. She sees it and you sees herself. Good. Say it again. To make the money, you've got to really say it clearly. She plants the seed to see her husband call her stupid. When she yells at the kids and she sees herself. Yeah. Now listen. By her awareness of her doing the action, she imprints. So $2.50 for Connie. Okay. By, by. So there's three members of the audience in the kids' bedroom on Wednesday night when she yells. and calls them stupidest kids in. And then when you're teaching it, you feel in the city that you're standing in. If you can't remember the city you're standing in, fake it. Okay, big important thing for a teacher. When you get up in a city and say, I'm very happy to be in, right, John? You better know what city you're in. Okay, I'm very happy to be with everybody. Did you ever do that? Were you ever so tired from the flight that you forgot which city you're in? I just don't say it. You just don't say it? He does like 80 cities a year. He does more than I do, I think. Anyway, so, yeah. Always try to look at the ticket when you get off the plane. So you know what, you know, you say, I really enjoy being here. in people sense that hesitation, slight hesitation. Okay. I get that hesitation at the customs, at the passport place, because they say, where are you from? And I forget sometimes, because I'm never here, at least except for the virus. Okay. So it's by your awareness of you doing something that plants a seed. That implies that if you're not aware you wouldn't plant much of a seed. Okay, all right, so that's why we say that intention is like 90 percent, okay, uh, you know. And then the classic example of not being so aware, or the debate comes up about uh what do you call it yeah Hey I can't read your mind when I ask you a question. Now why does the argument of awareness of your actions come up in the discussion, in the vinaya? Because you're walking on the road. Yeah, the reason monks and nuns are encouraged to do a summer retreat is because of the monsoon. And during the monsoon the insect population booms. which if you've ever been in India, you can appreciate. The bed bug population booms suddenly. And they're all over the walls. They drink your blood at night. Then they park on the wall. And you wake up and you look at them. And they have their big red rubies all over the wall. And then you start scratching yourself. Why am I talking about that? I'm not just rambling. awareness awareness not being aware yeah there's a big debate how you know why do the monks and nuns do a summer retreat just because when they are unaware of an insect they might crush one by walking too much outside walking around outside on the grass okay and then is there any awareness that's my question well you have the awareness it's a possibility good yeah good we can say a peripheral awareness, okay? So peripheral awareness counts as enough to print an imprint. Did you drive here in a car this morning, Connie? Is it possible you killed some bugs on the windshield? Yes. Yeah, no, you live with that awareness. It's part of your mind. The fact that you could give me an quickly when I asked you means it's in your mind, it's in your awareness, it's enough to create a karma. Okay, so you are, now what if there was some theoretical case where you're totally unaware that you did something? Like some of my students who asked for my time. I had one hour of sleep last night. No, just Just kidding, alright, I won't rub it in. Okay, so basically your mind is recording 24/7, okay, all the time. There's a debate about how much awareness do you have in a dream, how intentional is it? And the answer is that karmic imprints of a dream are almost zero, they're considered almost zero. You do have some awareness. You remember part of the dream sometimes, but the intention factor is so low that if you kill somebody in a dream, you don't collect the karma by killing somebody. Or if a monk has sex in a dream, they don't break their vows. Okay? It's not great, but it's not breaking a vow. Okay. All right. Oh, you didn't even tell me we have transverse. All right. Okay. Next is probably one of the most important verses of the whole Yoga Sutra. And as you notice, you guys, the second chapter is providing you an opportunity to teach karma. Okay? In the Abhidharma, for example, you have to wait to the fourth chapter to study what you'd study right away in the Yoga Sutra. Okay? And here's a very important Okay, you ready? Te slada? Not prada, slada. Te slada? Paritapa? Pala? Punya? Apunya? Hetudwad. Okay, good. Alright, let's talk about it. Slada, okay? H-L-A-D-A, slada. And cold comes from that. The K comes from the H, but the Russian is, as usual, the Russian is more clear, which is cholidna. So chlad means cold, cool, okay? Pleasantly cool, chlada, in Russian. You know, prahlada, pleasantly cool, okay? Here it's chlada, which means cool, okay? Then paritapa has tap in the middle, which is? Heat. Heat, like tepid comes from that. Tapas comes from that, so hot. Pala. A fruit. Yeah, a fruit. And that's a whole big bunch of words that mean ball. Okay? And growth. And poor comes from that, Singapore. Poor comes from that. All of these L and R are basically interchangeable linguistically. I opened an office in Thailand for my diamond company in Bangkok. I didn't know a single person in the country, and later it was doing $30 million a year. But I had a problem with the receptionist because for Thai people, R and L are truly interchangeable. And we had three suppliers. One was rare gems. One was rare gems. Rare, leer, and real. So she said, Lo is here. And I said, what? She said, Lo is here. And I said, real, leer, or rare? And she said, Lo. I said, Lo. Anyway, Sanskrit is also R&Ls that are interchangeable. Okay. Why are we talking about that? I forgot. Oh, pala. Yeah. So pal can mean ball. Ball comes from that. Things that expand and blow up. Poor means full of people. Poor, pura, paripurna, completely full. Okay. They're all related. Okay. So pala, think of a ball. Think of a fruit. Okay. so you get pleasantly cool results and you get hot results meaning bitter results from what puna and a puna okay say puna a puna okay so there's the negative a right you wouldn't want say Apunya which would mean very good okay but here Apunya is bad deed okay so Punya means a good deed and Apunya is a bad deed okay then Hetu is very very important we just talked about Heya you were supposed to meditate and that would Heya your kleshas but here it's to throw it's not to throw out is to throw an implication. So Hetu means cause or a reason, a logical reason is called a Hetu. And then Thuat is the Abhutu from the Hetu. So it means good and bad karmic results come from the cause of good deeds and bad deeds. That's all. Now that sounds kind of obvious, you know, and I feel like, I get this weird sense that you teachers in this class might feel like some chapter, some verses of the Yoga Sutra are too ridiculously easy to even, why are we sitting through this Geshe-la, we know all this stuff, you know. But I challenge you, and by the way I'm trying to pause more, okay, I challenge you as a teacher to understand that this little tiny sentence is earth-shaking. It's the most important sentence you ever heard in your life. Okay, and it's, you got to keep remembering that, you know. There are billions of people who don't understand this sentence, you know. If you hurt somebody, something bad will happen to you, and if you're nice to people, something good will happen to you. There are literally billions of people who don't understand it, and because of that, They suffer. And the reason to become a Yoga Sutra teacher is to help those people, okay? So really this little verse, that little piece is the most important words that some of your students will ever hear in their life, okay? And it's that, look, the problems in your life are coming from hurting people. Everything, every problem in your life, every doubt you ever had, every wrinkle on your forehead, every financial problem you ever had, every little hard word you exchanged with your partner, your wife or your husband, they all come from saying something usually bad to somebody else. All your financial troubles have nothing to do with the economy, nothing to do with the virus, nothing to do with your business. They're only related to how you treated other people. And by the way, at that point, I would go, and that's where we went in the commentary, okay? I would go to trying to impress on people how important this sentence is for your view of the world, worldview, for your worldview. And that's why we call all these organizations as a group, we call them worldview, okay? So your worldview is crucial. And there are three basic worldviews. You have a choice. Every human being on this planet has a choice between three different explanations of why stuff is happening to them. And some people just suffer and they don't think about why. They just struggle through life and then die. Their life is depressing and difficult and then they die. And they don't even, they don't have much, they don't see it as an option that they could look into how they're looking at the world. You see what I mean? They just suffer and then they die. And so you have three choices. And I think as a teacher, it's extremely important that you teach this part carefully. And you are basically trying to sell the idea that you should think about why stuff happens. That's all. And it seems simple and it seems almost, what do you call it, insultingly simple. But it's an extremely serious question. And people's lives will hinge on how well you explain it. So no pressure. How well you explain this little thing. Tehlada paritapa pala. Say it. Tehlada. Tehlada. Paritapa. Pala, Puna Puna, Hetutvat. How well you explain that little piece could mean the difference between them living a sad life and dying or not dying and living a great life. So how you explain this simple little idea, it's not a simple little idea. So I think it's important to get ready, gear yourself up, and when you hit this line, then be ready to give people three options for how they're gonna look at life from now on. Okay? And let's make it more conscious. You know, decide how you're gonna decide how you're gonna look at life. Okay, from today, from te lato paritapa pala puñya puñya heti, but from that moment these are, make a decision. What? You got three choices about where this stuff is coming from, okay? Okay, what are the three? Number one, it's just random. Stuff happens, you know, to put it politely. And that's the Big Bang Theory. That's the Big Bang Theory. Just something blew up. And seriously, consider it. And this is what science says. And don't think that religion has died in this world. Don't think that Christianity is dying. Buddhism is dead already. And Hinduism is struggling. Don't think like that. There is a religion in this world, and it's called science. The one that made the phone. You do believe. You really believe. Everyone believes it. I don't care what mosque, church, temple you go to. You're really a sciencer, not a Buddhist or Hindu. You're a scientist? Scientist? Anyway, that's your religion. That's what you believe in. And you strongly believe it. And the god of it is Elon Musk. Seriously. And I'm not criticizing Elon Musk. I like him. I've never met him and I never will, I guess. But that's his viewpoint. And it's that somewhere, somehow, there was nothing. And then there was an explosion. and stuff blew up. And by the way, you can confirm that there was an explosion. Objects are moving on a certain velocity from a single point. It's provable. It's true. The idea that there was no explosion just before that is silly and stupid. But okay, but there was an explosion. But, you know, the first one out of how many, you know, it's like thinking the Earth is the center of the universe or something. It's just not true. It's just a weird idea, okay? So anyway, is it that there was an explosion and atoms bumped into each other? They just banged into each other. And then a bunch of them banged into one side and they got heavier. and then oxygen was formed, and then this planet was formed, and then a meteor hit the Earth, and then the moon broke off, and because of the moon, we have tides, and that allows algae, and that allows life, and if the moon hadn't broken off the Earth, if the city-sized asteroid had not hit the Earth and pushed off the moon, we wouldn't have tides, and there would be no life on this planet. You see what I mean? Like, okay, everything's just a grand, random, amazingly good luck thing. And then look into the eyes of your child, Maitri or whoever it is, Amelie, Ava, we got a bunch. It's a new virus. I like it. Look into the eyes of your child and say, he's just a mistake. He or she is just a grand, you know. I spent the evening two nights ago with an astronomer. I was out for a walk. He was my neighbor. And he grabbed me and Veronica and dragged us into his observatory. He said, you've got to see the moon tonight. And we're like hungry. We didn't need dinner. It's getting late. It was getting dark already. He said, you've got to see the moon. And he's a very quiet man. He ran the Lowell Observatory for 45 years. They discovered Pluto there. And he discovered the atmosphere of Pluto 100 years later. And he said, you've got to look at the moon. And he did this whole thing for an hour. And we were spellbound. He showed us the moon. And then we were trying to politely leave. And we kept edging towards the door. And then he paused and he grabbed our hands. And he said, listen, I'm not religious. I'm really not religious. But how could you think this is a mistake? Or how could you think this is random? How could you believe that? He said, I don't understand how anybody could believe that. And he just, he's a very quiet man. And he doesn't talk about religion ever. But he said, how can people say it's just random? And he's a scientist. So anyway, that's your first choice. Everything's a big boo-boo. Second choice, someone's running the show. And they're all powerful and all loving. Someone is running the show. Someone is running the show. And they are... Things happen because they want it. They want them to. They are in charge, and we can't see them. We can sense them from time to time, and they make decisions. But then you'd have to say, and this is just my own feeling, okay? And it's just my opinion. But you'd have to say that they killed children, they burned them, they sliced them up, they smashed them. My friend's baby's nose was torn off by a dog recently. And just for a second, she left the baby and the dog came up and just tore off the baby's nose. So you'd have to say that this person in charge felt it was useful to tear off the child's nose. And whatever intention they had couldn't be fulfilled some other way. Only by tearing off a child's nose could something be accomplished. and I personally have trouble with that. Okay. Third choice is Everything makes sense. Everything makes sense. Okay, so that's where you're going to pull this verse. As a teacher, you're going to pull out this verse as choice number three and you're going to say, you deserve everything that happens to you. 100%. Exactly. You get exactly what you deserve. And everyone gets exactly what they deserve. And there's a law of the universe as much as gravity and motion and electromagnetism. And it's just called karma. And if you hurt people, then you're going to get paritapa. Oh, sorry. Apunya. then you're going to get paritapa. And if you punya, you're going to get lhara. You will get refreshingly pleasant results if you're good to other people. And you will suffer if you hurt other people. And that's your third choice, that the whole universe is running on a universal truth that you get what you deserve. And that implies that you could create the world that you want. Okay, got it? So I think that's a big deal to talk about with people, these three choices. There's a homework question. What's the most important law of karma? It's related to that last... It's related to that last lines, which is what? What's the first law of karma? What's the picture, Tim? Yeah, watermelon. Sorry. You get what you give. Yeah. Now, take it to the Peachtree Cafe. $100. Tell me the famous Geshe Michael story at the Peachtree Cafe that relates to the first love comer. Come on. $100. $90. $80. $70. $60. $50. $40. $30. $20. $10. $0. So two farmers are sitting at the Peachtree Cafe, which happens because they're all cowboys and farmers there. And they say, hey, Jed, you know, how you doing? I said, I'm fine. Oh, yeah, well, did you harvest your crops this year? Yeah, I did. Oh, what'd you plant? I planted corn. And what'd you get? I got mangoes. Oh, that's too bad. Yeah, they just rotted in the field. I was expecting corn. I got all the machines for corn, and I planted corn seed, and I got mangoes. Goddamn, you know, I lost out again, you know. And that's a conversation you never hear because the nature of nature is, what's that in Prakurti? What's the other one? Purusha. Prakurti is nature. The nature of nature is that it produces... If you take the seed out of a watermelon and you plant it, you're going to get a watermelon every time. That's just the nature of nature, okay? And that's the nature of karma, okay? That's the first law of karma. Tim, I know I have one minute and I'm almost there. That's correct, I can slow down. Dang! Okay, good. All right. We're gonna go to the next verse, okay? The translation says that the torment of change, it talks about the torment of change. Parinamathapa. And this gets into shanti, shanti, shanti. Okay? Yay! So, it's from an Upanishad. Which one, do you know? I don't know. I think it goes with most of them. Yeah, okay. All right. So anyway, it's traditional at the end of a yoga class to chant shanti, shanti, shanti. Some people. There's many teachers. And it means peace, peace, peace. But even in that Upanishad, which it is some Upanishad, someone taught me that in the Bahamas, I forget which one it is, but... It relates to the three kinds of suffering. The reason you repeat shanti three times, after a yoga class, if you do that, is that there's, you want to shanti each one of the three different kinds of suffering. And so the ones that are taught traditionally are already taught in those books. So let's talk about the three kinds of suffering and then it'll make sense when we say shanti, shanti, shanti at the end of yoga class. So it's not just that you want more shanti. What's shanti mean? Peace, yeah. By the way the root is kusham. And oftentimes the K will drop off, you know, so it'll just become sham. But, and then kusha, the sound kusha becomes q-u in English. Qua. Quell. Quell, yeah, quiet comes from shanti. And calm comes from shanti and quell comes from shanti. It's very beautiful. Okay, so those beautiful words like quiet comes from shanti, the same root. Okay, it's kind of cool. I like Sanskrit. Professor Campbell likes Sanskrit. People say your class is really fun and you obviously enjoy it. Okay, so what are the three kinds of suffering that we're trying to avoid and which he refers to here? Okay. First one? Yeah, word in Tibetan? Dungya ki Dungya. Dungya ki Dungya. Say Dungya ki Dungya. Yeah, it means the suffering of suffering. What's the classic example? So what's the sen shi? Backache. Backache or headache. In the ancient books, outright suffering. Sometimes I like to call it outright suffering. Sometimes I like to call it obvious suffering. that's just pain, like a headache or a backache, you know, if you've had a bad back, or bad knees or bad feet, or, you know headaches, you know that's, you live with it some people have it their whole life you know, that's the pain of pain, okay, the suffering of suffering, what's the second one? yeah, and that's what he's talking about here okay, parinamattapa His, what's it in Tibetan? Gyorway Dunya. Yeah, Gyorway Dunya. Now, this example is more difficult. What is it? A nice dinner. The scriptural example is a good dinner at Kuchina Rustica, okay, down the street. An expensive, pleasant dinner with your friends is the second kind of suffering. which he refers to here, okay, parinama, change, okay, the suffering of change. It never happens after any meal that you don't get hungry unless you die, okay? All right? It never happens after any meal that you don't suffer hunger unless you die, okay? So, and that's true of all pleasant things in this world, okay? Sooner or later, they change. And we're going to talk about that. And by the way, that's an important place to go after you finish the three kinds of suffering as a teacher. It's important that then you go to explaining why things fall apart. Why is it that you get hungry? And we'll talk about it. What's the third kind of suffering? For word. 30 bucks. It's a difficult... Khyabaduce of having a body and it falls apart, you know, of having a life which will die, you know. The innate human suffering of falling apart and dying is called kebhati chikidunga. It's kind of like an over-suffering, you know, super-suffering, you know, that even if you eat well, like Bob Sereno, or you exercise like John Foley, and you keep your weight well, like Pachi, Coquette, but still your body's going to fall apart. And the famous story, which I like to tell, which you've heard me tell before, but I'll repeat it for the new guys, just trying to appreciate that I'm trying to teach Earl, And I'm trying to teach... Ellie heard me teach all this 25, 30 years ago. And then some people are hearing it for the first time today. Yeah, and, you know, it's kind of hard to keep everyone, you know, enjoying the class when you have about 25 or 30 years apart of training. But what was the example I was going to talk about? - Number class? - Yeah, I was, so here's the story. And I think stories help, okay? I personally believe stories help. So in my monastery, which is near Mysore, and John spent time in Mysore, and during the monsoons, it's just a big mud field. And we're not talking an American mud. we're talking, you step into it and you lose your sandals and you cannot find them. Seriously, your foot comes out with a. And then you cannot, you might as well just go buy some new ones 'cause you will not find it. And it's very bad. And the roads, when I was there, the roads were all mud and you just literally couldn't get to your house. What you do is you take your sandals off and you suck through the mud, and then you put them on when you get home. And it's kind of weird to take your shoes off, to put your shoes on when you get home, and walk across the... So anyway, I was sucking along the street, and I ran into my yoga, one of my teachers, and he said, "Where have you been?" "What are you up to?" And I said, "Well, I just had a yoga class." And I was trying to impress him because he was one of my teachers who taught me some asana. He taught me some kaphas version of the asanas and Naropa and by extension, Niguma. But so I was happy because I could tell him I just went to yoga class, you know. So I'm like, he said, "Where are you coming from?" I said, "I'm coming from a yoga session, secret yoga session. You can't, you won't see people in the monastery doing yoga. It's secret." So anyway, I was, I said, "I'm coming home." And I said, "I did two hours." I did a full two hours. And he's like, "Ha ha!" He goes, "Ha ha!" And he says, God damn, you're two hours closer to your death. You know, I'm like, you know, I thought he was going to be happy that I did two hours of yoga. He says, yeah, now you're two hours closer to your death, you know. So I was kind of frustrated with the mud and with the yoga that was killing me. And, you know, of course it's not killing you, it's helping you still alive. But the idea is things fall apart, your body falls apart. That's the third kind of suffering. Khyabha du-chigit du-nya. Okay? All right. Mmm. And that's why we say, chant shanti three times. You know, number one, may I not get headaches and backaches. Number two, may I enjoy a meal and never get hungry again. Number three, may I live forever and may the people I teach live forever. Okay. So remember that the word shanti, as it does in Tibetan shiwa, doesn't just mean quiet or peace. It means to put something to rest or to stop something. Okay. So don't forget. In English, we say put to rest. And it means to stop something or rest in peace, right? It means to stop something. So don't forget that the Asian language words for peace also mean shut something down, shut a process down. It's called peace or put it to rest. Stop it. It means to stop something. Shanti here means stop, stop, stop. It doesn't mean peace, peace, peace. It means stop, stop, stop. It's not some cute little thing where you know, "Santi, Santi, Santi." Okay, got it. Okay, so we covered, by the way the root is sham, which means to be peaceful. And ultimately that's related to ksham, which means to stay peaceful and we have an in words for patience. What is Sipa? John? Kshama? Kshama? Kshama. Kshama. And then that's one of those KSHs that becomes Q-U-I. Quiet. So the word for patience is calm. Calm comes from Ksham. Okay? All right. Cool. All right. Last question on your homework. Inside that first idea of suffering and the flow of this second chapter, why does he jump from karma-ishaya? What's that? Karma-ishaya. The residence of the karma-ishaya. The storehouse. Yeah, the karmic storehouse. Why does he jump from karma-ishaya to shanti-shanti-shanti, you know, the suffering of change, actually, parinamah, tapa. why does he jump from one to the other where's the flow here and by the way when you talked about as Errol was asking me about translating this book you have to think about why does one verse follow the other and then you can translate better right they are not independent isolated verses there's a flow you know Patanjali has something in mind hopefully one verse is meant to follow another verse "What's he talking about here?" 「You're trying to eliminate what's going in the storehouse with money」 Yeah and he, yeah, he's trying to, we're trying to mess with the storehouse. We're trying to mess with the storehouse and I like that expression. "We're trying to mess with the storehouse." And through meditation, hei ya, hei ya, We're trying to eliminate seeds through, he says, dhyana in the previous class. That meditation is going to mess with the deep seeds in the mind. Meditate, the act of meditating is going to mess with, it's going to eliminate karmic seeds altogether. Okay? So that's, We're going to get to that later. But I think when you teach the suffering of change, it's important to talk about relationships. And again, there's a personal story here. I had a famous relationship in the fifth grade. I think that was the first one. I don't know. Fourth grade, I was thinking about girls. I don't know. It was coming, you know. I mean, I noticed they were different. you know but by fifth grade I was like yeah I want a girlfriend I don't know about you guys so in America I was 11 I think I was a little slow and I remember in sixth seventh grade seventh grade sorry I missed the first day of school which is a big deal and I guess it was just the pressure I felt sick or something. And, you know, and I rarely missed a day of school in my whole life, but I missed the first day of school. And I remember coming to the second day of school and I felt weird, you know, and everybody was staring at me. And this one girl is like, hi. And I'm like, hi. And she's like interested in me. And I wasn't interested in her at all, But it was nice that someone was interested. And I was like, wow, she likes me. And then in the seventh grade, you don't tell someone you like them. You tell your friend to tell them. You tell your friend to tell their friend that they like you. I don't know how it is in Mexico or wherever you guys grew up. But that's what happens in elementary school in America. so she told her friend and I'm not going to name names because I think they're still alive in Arizona she told her friend and her friend told my friend which was Scott, you know him and then he told me that she likes you and I'm like okay, that's cool and then she would send a note she would write a note, give it to her friend her friend would give it to my friend and my friend would give it to me you're not supposed to pass notes in the class So it was all under the table, under the desk. And she said, now today I love you. Let's go steady. So in America, steady means you have to give the girl a ring. And then we call it steady. It's like now we have a relationship. Do you call steady in wherever you grew up, John? I don't know. Yeah. So anyway, she said, let's go steady. I'm like, okay. And she says, you have to give me a ring. And I didn't have any money. And I didn't have any sorts of money. I used to mow lawns or something. And that was the one time in my life I stole something. I remember. I'll never forget it. I stole $5 from my mother's birth. I think it's the only time I ever stole something. Really stole. Consciously stole something. I stole $5. And I bought a cheap little ring. Then I remember. By the way, it's all relevant. I'm not just telling stories, and I know it's question and answer time, but you can't stop halfway through the girlfriend story. So I didn't – she said, meet me at the bleachers. So the bleachers is the farthest point in the playground from the teachers. This is where you do all the stuff you're not supposed to do. You go to the bleachers, which is baseball seats to watch baseball games. And you can hide behind the bleachers and the teachers can't see you. So she said, meet me at the bleachers. So I'm saying, okay. So she sat on a higher row and I sat on a lower row. I was so shy. And I said, I heard you want to go steady with me. And she's like, yeah. And I said, I heard you want to ring. And she's like, yeah. I said, I got one for you. And I threw it to her because I was too shy to touch her hand. And I just tossed it to her. And then she grabbed it. She said, thanks, you know, and she put it on. And then I said, now we're going to study. I said, yes, I got to go back to class. OK, bye. And that was the whole relationship. And then I guess about, I don't know, a month later, I get a note from her friends to my friend. And it's in class where you're not supposed to read notes. And I open up the paper, and the ring falls out. And the ring rolls down the row, the aisle to the feet of the teacher. Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. And he's like, and the whole class is looking at this ring. And I'm like, he's like, what's going on, Michael? And I'm like, I don't know. I don't know. And I read the note, it says, I'm breaking up with you. Here's your ring back. And everybody in the class knew before me. And then I thought, well, okay, that didn't work out. And then I tried again. And then I tried again. And then I tried again. And then I tried again. I don't know how many times you tried. And each time I thought I was doing something wrong. And actually, when I became a monk, it was partly because I said this this thing doesn't work you know let's might as well just cancel this thing this relationship thing just doesn't work and it was only many years later that I figured out and this is I think important to teach your students at this point in the yoga sutra that relationships go bad because karmic seeds wear out and that's all you're not a bad person. You're not a mean person. You are not the worst person in the seventh grade, or the eighth grade, or the ninth grade, or college, or, you know, whatever you did after your job. There's not something wrong with you. Yay! It's just karma shaya. It's the storehouse. The stuff wears out. It's just the law of karma. Stuff wears out. If you don't consciously replace a seed for a relationship, it has to break down. It has to break. You have to lose the relationship. You have to. There's no choice. It's the suffering of change. Okay? So I think that's useful to say to people. And I think, you know, when I finally figured it out, A, I didn't hate myself or think there was something wrong with me. And then B, I could have a successful relationship because then I knew how to refresh the seeds. Okay? So I think it's useful to tell people that things wear out. And if you don't consciously replace seeds, every relationship you try to have will break down. That's the nature of seeds. Okay? So don't beat yourself up. Don't hate yourself. Don't think you're a bad person. You just didn't know about karma. All right. That's the last homework item. Tim, questions? Thank you very much, Geshe-la. You're welcome. Oops, what about the echo, Tim? Are we good? Hi, Adriana. Good to see you. Okay, I will go ahead and start with the question. If it's too much echo, just let me know. um we spoke today about dreaming and lucid dreaming and there was a few questions in the chat and they would like to know if you're in a lucid dream and you do yoga asana is that considered an outer practice i yeah i actually uh we were talking we this this came up last night we were talking about something but I'll tell you something about this interesting thing about dreams okay it's an interesting thing about karma okay it comes up with the monks it comes up with monks vows it comes up in the Vinaya so the first vow of a monk is not to have any sexual activity at all not just intercourse but any kind of sexual activity is breaking the first vow of a monk. And then young monks have a wet dream. They release semen in their sleep. And then they think, oh my God, now they wake up and they say, I'm not a monk anymore. I just broke my monk's vow, my number one, my first monk's vow of the 253 vows. And then they go to their teacher and they say, what can I do? I broke, these are non, what do you call, confessible in a way. And you're like, well, what do I do? And then they say, you didn't break your vow. The Vinaya says, you don't break your vow. And then you say, why? And they say, it's not real. It's a dream. It's a dream. It's not real. You did not break your vow. You didn't have sex. You dreamt about having sex. And that's not having sex. Then the next question that people ask is, but the sex in the dream and the sex in real life are both coming from the karma shaya. They're both coming from the same storehouse. The woman that I meet on the bus and take to bed and break my vows is coming from seeds. And the woman I dream about in a dream is also coming from seeds. So their reality, bahya, Mr. John, bahya, bahya, their outside-ness is the same. Their degree of outside-ness, bahya, as opposed to antara, inside-ness, okay, the words in Sanskrit are bahya and antara, the degree of outside-ness is the same. They're both coming from karmic seeds. So didn't I break my vows? And they have a cute answer. And you got to understand it, okay? And it's not just philosophy. It's a serious answer. The woman in a dream was created by your seeds for a dream. As an unreal person. Your seeds created an unreal person. in a dream and if you broke your vows during the day with the lady you met on the bus well then then you're breaking your vows with a woman who's coming from seeds which create reality so seeds create reality and seeds create illusion but that doesn't make the illusion real got it okay they're both coming from seeds that's true but the illusion is coming from seeds as an illusion and the reality is coming from seeds as reality and and that's that's the way it is okay and that's proof hundred dollars word a famous question i got from china i knew you couldn't do it tim got it right somebody in china asked me uh if i if i'm if my girlfriend's coming from my karmic seeds then is it the case that i'm kissing myself when i kiss my girlfriend and that's a little weird and the answer is and don't forget the answer because it is important the girlfriend is come is coming from your seeds as a bhaya as an outer person as a separate person and it's not coming from your seeds as an antara in here meaning internal person it's not coming from your seeds as internal okay so uh so that's the answer to the question yeah uh the dream is coming from your sins as an unreal thing okay so just because it's coming from seeds doesn't mean it's not doesn't mean it's necessarily real and you do not break your mouth okay all right thank you so much our next question it says thank you geshella very much for the teachings i very much enjoyed the practical answer to the question about the yoga mat yesterday Going a little further into the same idea, how should a yogi practice in a way that avoids the two extremes? I struggle between thinking I have to be perfect in every asana and maybe even worse feeling disappointed if I don't see some improvement every day. And doing my practice in a very rote way, like it doesn't matter, like it's something I'm supposed to do and I feel I should get on the mat and do it. Thank you very much. I appreciate your practical wisdom. You know, I'm not a great yogi. Earl's a much better yogi than me. There's a lot of people who are better than yogis than me. John is a great yogi. I'm not a great physical practitioner of yoga, but I do it. And I keep doing it. My relationship with yoga asana is, I think, different from the people I grew up with doing yoga asanas, you know, in the last 22, 23 years. My goal of doing yoga was always just to stay healthy. I wasn't trying to get my foot behind my head in a certain way. I kind of understood very early on, especially since I couldn't do most of those, that that's not why I'm doing yoga. And I didn't see any big reason to put my foot behind my head. It didn't seem like it's going to help me live longer or something. And I avoided a lot of poses. In fact, David Swenson, who taught me Ashtanga, who's the, at the time he was the only person who had done level three video or something in the world. And, you know, he was teaching me and I said, can I ask you a personal question? He said, yeah. And I said, you're the only person in the world who's done a video of level three, Sri Patabi Juresh in level three. And he said, yeah, I am. And I said, what do you do when you practice? He said, oh, my God, I would never do those poses. Are you kidding? And I'm like, what? And he said, no, no, that's crazy. Those are crazy. And I said, but you're the only person in the world who did the video. He said, yeah, but that doesn't mean I would do them. You know, I just did it for the video, you know. And he said, I do level one. I do the first series. He said, you're not going to hurt yourself. You know, the purpose of yoga is to have a long-term health. And I have to say that a number of people I know who tried to do radical poses have had operations recently to fix their legs or their arms or, you know, you hurt yourself. You do long-term damage to your butt. And then when you get to 60, 50, 60, you got to go have an operation. One of my friends is in their 40s and they had to have an operation. So I would really encourage you to see your practice as long-term and do a modest daily practice that doesn't hurt your body and doesn't have a likelihood of hurting your body. That doesn't mean that you shouldn't learn difficult poses, which are good for you, like a headstand, you know, or a shoulder stand. You should. You should learn them. And you should do them safely. And you can do a headstand safely for the rest of your life. I'm still doing them. You know, I'm very comfortable to stay in 50 breaths every day. And I just do it and it's comfortable and I'm not hurting anything. So I think, you know, your relationship with your practice doesn't have to be that you can do something strange that you couldn't do last year. Because you can't keep that up. You know, you can't keep doing more and more exotic poses. At some point, you will hurt your body. You will break something. Or you will damage your body and you will have to go get a hip operation or a knee operation. And you really will. It really will. So when a teacher in a yoga class asks me to do something, it's not safe or it's not appropriate for me, I don't do it. You know, and my ballet teacher taught me that. She said, if you're in a ballet class and somebody asks you to do something that you feel might be dangerous, then don't do it. Then I'm like, okay, then I won't practice that, you know, pirouette. And she said, no, no, I didn't say that. She said, those are good for you. You know, those are good for your balance and good for your strength and good for your alignment. Very, very good. Your pirouettes are very necessary. And they're not going to hurt your body. so I think you've got to distinguish between exotic poses that could hurt your body I've had friends who've had now knee operations because they tried to stay in full lotus too long they couldn't do it their legs were not their legs were not prepared for full lotus but they forced it and now they're having knee operations so I would really encourage you a modest daily practice remember that thing of tearing out one page of a book and going down that much more and the human body in my experience is obdurate it's a stubborn and it doesn't change an eighth of an inch is a lot for the human body So don't think you're going to, in two years, you're going to be able to do something you can't do. The progress in physical asana is very, very slow because you can't change. David Swenson told me another thing. I was in a class in Hong Kong. And he got up and he said the most kind thing I ever heard a yoga teacher say. He said, there are some poses you will never do. And there was this feeling in the room. everybody went, David Swenson says, there's poses you will never do. And, and he said, that's funny. You know, everybody's body is different. You know, God gave everybody two poses. I'm telling you that other people can't normally do. You've got to God gave you to, you have to find them so you can impress people. Minus I have skinny legs. I got me skinny legs. I can sit in a pole letters for five hours, but you know, but it's just because God gave me skinny legs. It's not that I'm a yogi or something. So anyway, short answer, don't hurt your body and don't try to impress people. And that's not yoga. Yoga is a long-term thing. Do be gentle, get on the mat. I've only had one day when I got on the mat and then took my clothes off and didn't do yoga in 22 years only once did i get on change clothes get on the mat and decide not to do yoga so just get on the mat and the rest will take care of itself don't try to show off and don't try to do weird things and you're going to have operations and it's not it's not at the point of yoga it can be uh if you find it's boring then change up the music or do a different series you know have some fun I weight lift now uh in between and uh John uh what Bob was going to teach me kettle balls or something you know spice it up do something different and uh don't just sit there and do the same thing it is boring it is boring and don't get bored that I change the music or I go outside and do yoga under a tree or I change something so So yeah, don't get bored. Make it, do it with your friends. It also helps a lot. Do it with other people. It's a lot of fun, okay? All right, I talked too much. Sorry. I think that's the end of the class, right? Thank you so much, Geshe-la. It was a beautiful teaching today. I don't know if they give you the chat, but everyone in the chat is just really happy and saying thank you very much for all of your time and sharing the lessons with us. We will see you tomorrow.