<iframe src="https://drive.google.com/file/d/1L-NzAvVawQhgpzQZ4zAU_CksVKVBodx5/preview" width="100%" height="80" allow="autoplay"></iframe> Hi, welcome back. Hi, Earl. Uta, you've got to open your eyes when you wake up in the morning. All right. I'm going to try to go slower so the translators don't get mad at me. But sometimes I get excited and I can't slow down. All right, welcome Marjorie Meyer and Jacqueline to the class and usual suspects. All right, we talked about, okay, for $2, karma asaya. The place where karma stays. Yay, $2. Thank you. $1 for karma, $1 for asaya, okay, asaya. So asaya means to stay, storehouse, we can call it storehouse, right? And we talked about the karma storehouse because we were talking about kleshamula karma asaya. What's that mean? Kleshamula. As long as the root is there. Yeah, good. The root of klesha. Yeah, negative emotions, then you will collect karma. And that all came after yoga's chitavirti nirodaha. which means yoga consists of... Yoga stops the twisting of your mind. Yeah. Don't forget that the root is vert. And remember the English cognate for $50? Weird. Damn. Weird. Yeah, good. So it's so easy to remember that the most important line of the sutra defines yoga as stopping your weirdness. Chitta vrti, okay? Seriously. All right. And, you know, very famously, it has been misunderstood as stopping all functioning of the mind, which is not the goal. It's just a natural thing if you don't sleep at night. All right. You don't have to do yoga. I can tell you. All right. So we covered karma asaya. And now it's time to talk about some different details about karma. This is the place where you guys are teaching that you have to bring up what you know about how karma behaves because this is where you're going to teach your students how, you know, this is the right place to do it. And Master Patanjali, you know, he refers to it obliquely but he doesn't cover all the points directly. So you're going to have to dig it out for your students, okay? And we got the first one, the first law of karma, which is described by a certain fruit. Watermelons. I like to just think of it as watermelons. And I like to use watermelons because it's so clear that the next season's watermelons come from this year's watermelons because you spit them out. You spit out next year's watermelons when you eat this year's watermelon. So it's an obvious connection between this year's watermelon and next year's watermelon. Okay? It's so obvious. And the example of a fruit, which in Sanskrit is? Pala. Pala. Okay. What is Pala? What if you say a P and you don't say a P? Dharma Pala? Protector, right? So you've got to aspirate it. Pala, that's a fruit, right? A ball, a ball shape. All right. So we're going to talk about the different laws of how the Pala comes out of the sea. And so the example, the metaphor of a fruit is actually extremely useful and extremely common. It's so common that karmic results are called fruits. And there was a... Oh, I'll give you an image tomorrow. But we've been working on a book about karmic correlations. We've been working on two books, which were commissioned by two Austrians, named Norbert and Renate, and Norbert's wife, Jennifer. We translated, with our Chinese team, we translated an ancient sutra called Karma Vibhanga, which is all the divisions of karma, how karma behaves. And we discovered that a monument that we had visited called Borobudur in Indonesia, in the central island of Java, there are 2,700 carvings there, about the size of this wall. And we found another whole set had been buried. The first level of carvings had been buried, like in 1890 or something, because the pyramid was falling down. It's like over a million blocks of stone, and it was falling down. In fact, I have a structural engineer working on the question of which panels would have gone down first. Why am I talking about that? Sometimes I forget. The panels are long. They are long and kind of thin, relatively. And they always have the result, karmic result, on the left. And the karmic cause on the right. It's very interesting, okay? and I'll give you $100 if you can tell me why. Yeah, Jiggy got it. You're walking around the stupa clockwise, which means you see the right side of the panel first, and then you see the left side of the panel. So, you know, whereas everything that we do is left to right, because that's how our language goes, the panels there go right to left. And it took me like two years to figure it out. I started working on this 30 years ago, but I didn't figure it out until... Why am I talking about all this? They put a fruit tree between the karmic cause and the karmic result. They always put a fruit tree. And somebody noticed that, and I did not notice it. Somebody else noticed it, and it's a beautiful metaphor. So the "pala" -- that's a way to remember "pala". Almost all the fruit trees in those carvings have breadfruit hanging from them, big pineapple-shaped things, okay? And it represents the transition from cause to result, which is backwards according to us. And I never figured it out because you are walking around the stupa in a clockwise position. So you see the right side of the panel first, and then you see the left side of the panel. We even considered reversing them in the book. We have a book coming out, but we thought it would be kind of weird, because sometimes they're facing the other way. Anyway, let's do Four Laws of Karma, because they come up here, because watermelons were covered, but the other three were not so clearly covered. And this is a great place for you guys as teachers to make sure your students know, or they've heard, the Four Laws, the Four Laws of Karma. If they've gone to DCI, they know them. But they may, you know, maybe they didn't go to DCI. And YSI's function is to reach more people. So we're kind of hoping there'll be a lot of people who have not been to DCI. Okay. All right. What's the second law of karma? Things. Yeah, things expand exponentially. It's always good to say exponentially. Okay. I have a roach problem. one roach got into my house and then, I don't know, they became five and that became 25 and that became 125. The second law of karma answers the question of exactly, good answer. Yeah, why bother giving someone $100 just to get $100 back? What's the point? Why am I supposed to be generous if I just get $100 back? I should keep the $100. Many people have told me that. Let's just keep the $100 and don't do this extra work. But the idea is you're going to get $1,000 back, right? Or $10,000, right? Because they're like roaches. Karma's like, my lama called them my people. He said, tell your people to leave the house. I'm working on it, okay? All right, so karma is like roaches. It multiplies wildly. All right, second law. Third law is... Now, I usually have trouble remembering, is the third law positive or negative? And I'll give you a clue when you teach it. The third law is negative, okay? So you wouldn't expect to do the negative first, normally. I think logically you wouldn't expect to do the negative one first. but we do. Traditionally, you do. So number three is, yeah, if you don't do something, you shouldn't expect a result. And that's supposed to stop whining. People whining. People say, I don't know, I didn't get any money. And they say, well, you didn't give any money. Duh. My ballet teacher used to say, she taught me, duh, duh. You didn't give anything. Why are you worried? Why are you upset that you didn't get anything? If you didn't get anything, it proves that you didn't get anything. So for some reason, the guys who invented the four laws of karma, they encourage us to go negative first. You would expect it to be less, but... So then what's the fourth one? That's easy. Yeah, now if you do do something, chu-mi-sawa, say chu-mi-sawa. Chu-mi-sawa. Extremely important verb. Extremely important. It means it won't just go away. It won't just go away. In American English, we say it won't just go away. Don't think you can outweigh karma. It doesn't matter how long you wait. It won't just go away. It will give its result, even if it takes 10 million years. It will give its corresponding result. Don't think you can... What do you call it? What's that impolite word for delay? You don't do this work because you have... Procrastinate. Procrastinate. Yeah, don't think that if you procrastinate, bad karma is going to fade away. And it's an interesting thing because we're about to study why all changing things, all things with a cause, must change and must fall apart, degenerate. They must. We talked about it yesterday with relationships. Without any new input into a relationship, it will fail. Same as your body. Same as your body. Without any new yoga exercises, your body will fall apart by itself. Because that's its nature. But interestingly, karmic seeds are kind of the opposite. Don't expect them to wear out on their own because they're not going to. That's the fourth law of karma. Now, if you notice the Essential Yoga Sutra, and there's three resources you should be using, if you're going to teach this text that we're going through. Number one, you could use the Essential Yoga Sutra. I would wager that every single word in the Sanskrit is covered in a single page in the Essential Yoga Sutta, because that was the challenge that my publisher gave me. And I'm looking at it, and I'm like, wow, it's all there. You just have to dig it out. Every word in the Sanskrit is covered somehow in three quarters of a page of commentaire. for two verses normally. Okay? So that's the first thing you should be using. If you're going to teach it, you know, like pretty much memorize the essential yoga sutra. And then read how yoga works. Almost a great number of the verses are covered directly in how yoga works. So what I like to do when I'm going to teach a chapter or something, I'll search for the verse in how yoga works because they're not in order. They're not in order. They come up according to the needs of the student, which is the captain of the police station. And that's a real police station that I used to go to to pay my bribes for permission to stay at the monastery. Oops, I shouldn't mention it, maybe. But it's probably still there. It's a little two-room jail. It's really funny, and it's for real. We're thinking to make a movie of that book, but we're thinking a play would be easy because it's all two rooms. The whole play takes place basically in two rooms. Okay, so you should go next to what would make a karma ripen faster. Okay, I mean, if you're going to teach somebody that everything they've been doing to make things happen in their life is wrong, then at least give them some options about the new system, okay? And I think it's important. If you talk to somebody, and by the way, yesterday's most sexy idea for $200, $300. Word's not here. I'm pretty sick. What was the sexiest idea from yesterday? It's a unique idea. You can change the storehouse of your karma through meditation. And yoga. Nah, cancel that. I think the sexiest idea from yesterday was that if you don't give the last donut to the old lady, it proves you don't like donuts. Okay? If you don't give the donut to the old lady, it proves you don't want more donuts, okay? You don't like donuts. You keep saying you want to make more money. You keep saying you want to be more healthy with your asana practice. And then you keep not doing the cause of it, which is helping other people make money. You see what I mean? If you don't serve other people donuts or croissants, right? Thank you, Christina. You can, I think it's an effective thing to accuse your student of not enjoying donuts. If you refuse to share the things you have, that's dead proof that you don't like those things. If you refuse to share your money, it means you don't want money. You specifically don't want money, and you don't like it enough to make it. Because the only way you can make it is to give it away. Okay, got it? It's very interesting. It's interesting you could accuse somebody. I mean, one yoga practitioner can accuse another yoga practitioner. You don't want to be healthy, right? Like you do asana, but you don't want to be healthy. You want to break down. You want to get sick, right? And the other person says, no, I keep doing the stupid yoga poses all day. And you say, well, yeah, but you're not helping. I haven't seen you go to the hospital once this year to visit somebody. And that's how you get healthy. You've been doing yoga every single day. And I haven't heard that you went to the hospital to visit somebody. And that's how you, you know, okay. All right. So it means that apparently you don't care about your health. You can accuse somebody. Apparently you don't care, you know, whether you get overweight or not, you know. Apparently you don't care. Why? Well, I haven't heard that you went to the hospital this year, you know. You did your yoga every day, but that doesn't have anything to do with getting healthy, right? All right. Interesting. All right. All right. Here we go. Somebody's clacking. All right. So I thought it would be useful to talk about, I think this is the perfect place to provide your students with some ways to pep up their karma. Okay. So we did the four laws and then this is the perfect place to teach them how to supercharge their karma they call that what in in a jet airplane afterburner afterburner how many pounds of thrust 32 000 how much is the normal thrust anyway really oh no no 12 okay so you start with 12 000 pounds of thrust of pushing power in a jet airplane i have an expert here and then you can add four times more 400 percent by turning a button or something but make sure your neck is against the chair okay let's see okay anyway here's how to boost your karma how to get more buck more bang for your butt yeah here we go okay and these are called the four priorities okay and these are a little confusing because they are presented backwards normally and where they come from is a very interesting uh extremely interesting topic if you care uh and that's a complicated thing but anyway jetson kappa teaches them in his famous illumination of the path illumination of the true thought of the Buddha all right so here it is and he quotes people quote the Abhidharma Kosha but it's not the Abhidharma Kosha it's the Basha it's the auto-commentary here it is so it's always presented as a contest between two karmas if two karmas uh i've done it you know if if you help the lady if you give the donut to the lady okay but you also uh i don't know didn't share your scrambled eggs with somebody i don't know you know if if a bad karma is competing with a good karma which one opens first which one gets priority And there's a list, and the list is backwards. So I'm going to go to the end of the list. The first one is, whichever action was done. Okay. I'm testing Venmo Jigme, who has to take a cafe management exam in the next few days. We both do. What is FIFO? in food management first in first off yeah okay what's that have to do with karma what's it have to do with karma oh the first thing that you the first action that you do yeah in general uh whatever you did earlier in your life it's going to open before what you did later in your life in general okay in general means there are exceptions okay but in general whatever you did earlier is going to open earlier. First in, first out. That's an accounting and a food management principle. How many days? Seven. Good. All right. Does that include the date of first preparation? Dang. Okay. We're taking an exam this week. We're both like, ah. It's much harder than I thought. I think a geshe is easier than a counting food exam. Okay. Now, unless you do the later one. Huh? Over and over again. Habitually. Okay. Okay. So I don't know if you kill roaches in your house and then you lie to your mom uh the killing karma should open before the lying karma but if you lie habitually to your mom then that prioritizes it and it goes first okay so something done later if you do it as a habit will ripen first which gives us hope right for our good karmas okay if you make a habit of good karmas it will push an old karma an old bad karma away in the priority system okay unless okay this when you teach the four priorities you say unless three times got it so what's the first statement generally whatever you did first opens first unless the one you did later was habitual. You did it over and over again as a habit. Unless you are near, near death. Okay? In the two weeks or three weeks before death, the proximity to changing realms has some kind of gravitational force. like a black hole or something all right like you're going to get sucked into the bottle right and then suddenly gravitation changes around the black hole things change the rules change the rules of physics change near near the high gravity of a black hole so if you are within two or three weeks of death you can affect your old karmas and and that's one of the principles of the medicine buddha practice is that you know even as you enter the bardo according to that sutra if you know the methods taught in the sutra you can affect how it's going to go down even after you lose your gross consciousness okay so you can come back up to 49 days is the claim okay you can come back to your body and keep going, keep living. So karmas are particularly powerful as gravity increases as you go into the bar door. It's like a black hole and all the rules of physics tend to break. By the way, that's a special machine used to blow the leaves away from the parking lot. And they always wait till we start the class. It's once a week and it's amazing. Okay, unless, one more unless, right? Three unlesses, right? Unless, unless, yeah, unless the action is inherently more serious, okay? So for example, if you have killed later and lied earlier, the killing will ripen first, even if you're close to death and even if it was habitual even if the lying was habitual and even if lying was involved with being close to death by by the way which is why it's such a good custom in catholic christian countries that you do a confession as you get close to death because that can overcome the rules of karma when you're close to dying. Okay. The gravity of the black hole starts to act strange. Okay. Mask gets compressed, right? Okay. All right. So let's do it over again. There's going to be three unlesses, right? But first you start by saying, okay, between two actions, the one which is done earlier will ripen first. Pala. Give its pala. The pachete. It'll pachi earlier. okay it'll cook ripen earlier unless the later one was habitual unless you're in the area of the black hole okay unless you're close to your death unless it was just an inherently more serious deed like killing as opposed to lying okay got it What's the most serious of the 10? Bad dudes. Huh? Viewpoints, worldview. Wrong worldview. Number 10 is a zillion times worse than killing because it'll make you kill thousands of times. All right. The killing, basically it goes important, very important, less important, less important, less important, less important, most important. Tenth one. because if you don't understand how the world works, you'll be more likely to do bad things. All right. I tend to interrupt people, and that's why they are blowing leaves. Therefore, we shouldn't be upset at the leaf blower guy. He's just doing what I ordered. Right? All right. Now, the next natural topic about the loss of karma that you would normally want to teach someone is to answer the question of, why do, in the Bible, very famous question, why do the wicked prosper? I remember sitting in church and I'm like, mom, what's wicked? What's prosper? You know, they're giving sermon after sermon. Why do the wicked prosper? proof. Why do bad people get more famous? And I was actually, I remember I was teaching in the Ukraine. And we did the public talk in the city, Kiev, at the, I think it's the Presidential Palace Hotel or something, Nice Hotel. That's where the eight levels of the lion's dance come from. because they have a great breakfast place on the ninth floor. And they don't count the first floor as the first floor, just like the lion's dance. But outside of the city, there's a place called Irpin out in the countryside, and it's extremely beautiful. And I always remember it because two things happened. One, somebody showed up from Hong Kong. I saw them get out of a cab in the middle of the forest in Ukraine. I said, what are you doing here? And they said it's cheaper to fly from Hong Kong to here and take the course than it is to take it in Hong Kong. So that was kind of funny. And then secondly, a guy from the mafia brought like 20 people to the class. and it was so funny and that's a long story that I'm not going to talk about yet but I remember that class because the question came up about the mafia by the way it wasn't from Ukraine mafia it was from another place which I won't say where and the question came up in the class naturally the question came up well why do people It was specifically, why do people who bribe government people constantly, why do they seem to get more successful? And by the way, and I can say in the Ukraine, there's one good highway that I saw. And it was the road from the airport to the downtown. And the rest is all one lane, badly managed highway, roads. There's no highways. And I asked them. We were late to Irpin, and we drove across a cornfield to get there on time. Because the road was worse than the cornfield. And 500 other cars were just driving across this guy's corn. And I said, well, why don't they just build some roads? And they said, no, no, no. I mean, that's all bribes. You get the money for the road and you don't build it. And you kick it back to the guy who gave you the contract. And I'm like, OK. And then they said, Geshe-la, why does that work? And should I do it? I had people in the class asking me, should I bribe people or not? Because it seems like those guys make money. It seems like the guys who give the bribes to people make more money. And I said, and then I started banging on them. I guess it'll work, right, Tim? Well, I'm getting back at all the translators. Okay. Well, I'm hitting the microphone. Okay. And I was, you know, somebody asked me this question about, And it's an important question about karma shaya, right? The karmic storehouse. Why do bad people get good results? And I started banging on the mic. I had this inspiration to start banging on the mic. And I don't know if you were, were you there? I don't remember. I started banging on the mic and it was very irritating, just like it is now for the translators. It's like when Geshe-la blows his nose in the mic, and all translators are like, oh. And finally, actually, it was the mafia group. They're like, why are you doing that? They're reaching into their coats and stuff. And I was like, no, no, I have to do this. Excuse me. You know. Why you got to do that? And I said, hey, man, I'm making the sun come up in the morning. And they're like, what? I said, yeah, I got to do this. Every day I give a talk, I have to bang on the microphone. I have to. And they're like, but would you move? Why? Why? And I said, come on. You want the sun to come up tomorrow or not? I got to remember to, you know, it's hard to remember to bang on the microphone every day. But I do it, you know. And then the sun comes up the next day. You can see yourself. You know, don't say I'm weird. You know, did the sun come up this morning? Yes. Did Gesh-Law bang on the microphone yesterday? Yes. Okay, well, why are you complaining? If I don't do it, all the farmers are going to fail. You know, the sun will come up. It'll be like, who was that? Mr. Bad Eye. Bad Eyes. Virupa. Virupaksha. Virupaksha, the great yogi Virupaksha. By the way, you want to talk about great yogis in John Brady's database. We should study Virupaksha. Virupa. Virupa. who, he had a bed while he was, he had a bed in a bar while he was drinking in a bar. And he pinned the sun to the sky and it didn't go down or come up for like a month. And then all the farmers came and begged him to let, you know, take his dagger out of the sun so that the cops wouldn't fail. Okay. So I have to bang on the microphone. or the crops will fail okay then the guess you know somebody will say to geshla that's stupid geshla just because just because something happens before something else doesn't mean there's a connection and you know you think i'm making a joke and you think i'm just saying something stupid because i'm trying to spend the time so i can go home in sleep. But I'm not. This story with the microphone, and you can use it, okay? It's not copyrighted. You can use it because it's extremely important. And it's extremely correct. It's perfect. It's absolutely perfect. Because your goal as a teacher is to get your students to object mentally to the idea that just because something happened before something else there's a connection there's necessarily a connection if you can through your words if you can bring your students to a place where their heart objects to an idea you succeeded as a teacher you see what I mean so it's very important that you do this microphone thing very convincingly. Like bang on it and really get them irritated. You know, seriously, John can try it. Get that audience irritated. Get them, you know, ready to throw things at you. And just before they throw things at you, then you give them the punchline, you know. Guess what? This has nothing to do with the sun coming up. Oh, but it came before. It came before. What are you talking about that, Geshe-la? We were talking about highway bribes. Did you forget already? They came before, and those guys got rich. The bribers got rich. But duh, there's no connection at all. At all. There's nothing about the sun which is connected to the tip of this microphone, generally speaking. Nothing. No connection at all. And there's absolutely no relationship between giving a bribe to a government official and becoming rich later. There's no relationship at all. But there's a highway. There's a highway that's not there. That's a connection. Yeah, I know. I know there's no highway in there, okay? But that's not a common condition, okay? Got it? It is true that the money never went to the highway. And it is true that the bribe went from the business person to the government official. It is true. That's true. But that's not why you don't have a highway. And that's not why the guy is rich. Okay, got it? Because of the first law. of karma. You cannot plant a lemon and get a watermelon. Geshe-la, can you just say something normally? Why do you keep saying weird stuff? But it's true, you know. If you say a bride could get somebody rich, then I say a lemon can produce a watermelon. It's the same logic. It's exactly the same logic. It's just as impossible. So until your heart objects to the idea that a bribe could produce money, you have to keep thinking about it. Because it's as impossible as planting a lemon and getting a watermelon. How did Jesus say it? Fig from funds. Fig from justice. Yeah. You don't get fig fruits. from thorn trees they're just not similar they don't there's no connection okay got it so anyway this is a great place you're basically introducing here master patanjali is giving a course in the second chapter what is karma and what are the rules around karma you know he's talking about that he's giving you all the rules about karma okay and he just gave you now now listen please repeat heyam do come anagatum heyam do come do come it's for this right disrespect the s becomes the h okay and that's the whole verse if you're going to memorize a verse go for that one it's like okay John Foley I'm not even going to bet you money anyway if you're going to memorize a sutra you should memorize yoga no there's a sutra called ah. And the Buddha sat down and went ah, just like Maitri in his recent performance. Did you guys see the video? Noor was in John Campbell's Sanskrit, excellent Sanskrit class. And she's trying to teach her four-month-old son that ah. And she started filming and then she went ah. And Maitri goes, and then she goes, ah. And he goes, it looks like he's remembering something, you know. And then she goes, ah. And he goes, ah. It's the first thing you ever learn to say. It's cool. Anyway, yeah, that's the suture you should memorize if you want to. The Buddha sat down and said, ah, and then he went home. He probably didn't get any sleep either. All right. so here it comes heyam say heyam doh come anagatum okay heyam means we had it yesterday with hetu meaning to throw something toss toss something in the garbage okay heya heyam means what are you going to get rid of what do you want to get rid of heyam hey what do you want to get rid of doh suffering okay but which suffering are you going to get rid of if you practice which suffering you're going to get rid of an agatam an means an means not god god means to go buddham saranam gachami i go for refuge to the buddha if you've ever been to St. Sri Lanka, okay, gacha, ga, ga, ga, go, right, ga, the ancient root, okay, why are we talking about that, anagata, like ananda, it means very much, yeah, okay, so what's the karma that you're going to get rid of, what karma do you seek to get rid of, It's the anagata, the far future, the far future. Okay. The only karma you can get rid of is far future karma, is future karma. And this goes back to an experience I had. I used to translate for my teacher. One of my jobs, my job, my main job was to, the kitchen for eight years. I was to cook for eight years and the toilet cleaner and everything else. Okay. and it was hard work it was all day work you know so anyway and then part of the kitchen bosses responsibilities is to serve refreshments to people who come to talk to my teacher which is you know a long line of people all day standing outside the little house waiting to talk to Rinpoche and ask him questions, you know, then I would have to feed them and make them tea and then wash up all their messes. Buddhists are somehow messier than other people. I don't know why. So anyway, Sechi, forget it. That was a four hour cleanup. So anyway, why am I talking about that? I do remember. I remember one guy came and he was depressed. And so Rinpoche would be trying to prepare for classes, but people would be constantly interrupting him with silly questions that he had answered 20 years earlier and every six weeks since then. So anyway, he's trying to, he would actually prepare for his classes while he's listening to people whine about their life, you know. And I was his translator. From what to what? To English. From Rinpoche's English to understandable English. He insisted on speaking English. And for many years, he didn't know English. So I would actually translate him, you know. I would sit there. I always sat there. And then some guy came in and said, Rinpoche, you know, and he started talking, long story, in fact, I know the person, he's still alive, and you guys know him, but I'm not going to say his name, so he told Rinpoche for like an hour about how depressed he was, and how his life wasn't working out, and then Rinpoche's studying for his next class, but he's listening with one ear, you know, and then finally he looks up, And I'm all ready to translate, you know, and I have anticipatory translation. What's that? I pretty much know what he's going to tell the guy. So I'm already ready in my mind to translate his bad English. I know what he's going to say. He's going to talk about the laws of karma and, you know, blah, blah, blah. And he looks up and I'm ready to translate, you know, and he says, be happy. And then he starts reading his book again. And then the guy's like, and I'm also. And he just ignored us for like a very tense three or four minutes. He just ignored us. And then he looks up and he says, you know, you can go now. And I'm like, and me and the other guy are like, you know, he says, you can go now. Please close the door on your way out. This is called Rinpoche's Bum's Rush. You know Bum's Rush? That's called throwing somebody out of a restaurant. So anyway, then after the guy left, I ran upstairs. I'm Rinpoche. This is serious. I mean, this guy might kill himself or something. He's depressed. You know, he's really depressed. You can't just tell him to be happy, you know. And he looks at me like I'm insane, you know. And he says, well, what else are you going to tell him? And I said, well, there's a thousand things you could tell him, you know. And he said, no, he wants to stop being depressed today. And it's not going to happen. It cannot happen. It's too late. And I like to call it, okay, Tim, picture time. Wet cement, okay? Somebody explain. And it relates to heyam dukam anagatam. It relates to heyam dukam anagatam. What does wet cement have to do with heyam dukam anagatam? You can change something. All you can change is anagatam. That which has not yet come. All you can change with your four powers and your confessions is karma, which is an aggatam. It hasn't arrived yet. Okay? You can only affect karma, which hasn't arrived yet. Okay? So this idea explains the microphone and the sun. But it also explains how much leeway you have to change your circumstances. You cannot be undepressed on the same day that you learn about karma. It's not possible. That cement has hardened, that you're going to be depressed. No Buddhist teacher can sit down and make you undepressed in the same morning that you asked them about karma, because it's already hard. The cement has already pretty much hardened. It's too late because of the time gap. The time gap not only explains why some people seem to get rich when they're actually hurting people, right? That karma is going to go off later, right? The bribing karma. And by the way, I was in the diamond business for 19 years. every buyer of jewelry for every major user of jewelry in the United States was corrupt. They all had houses in Switzerland. The question was, do we give them a swimming pool or not? And I should say there were a few notable exceptions and we refused to give bribes. That was one of the, it was one of the principles of our company that we didn't give bribes. So, you know, it led to some interesting strategies. So that's gonna, you know, just because something comes before something doesn't mean it's the cause. If you bribe, you will lose money later, but it takes time. There's a time gap. Anagatam, say anagatam. It hasn't arrived yet. It hasn't arrived yet. Okay, and they emphasize the super arrived. Super hasn't arrived yet. Anagatam. It's super hasn't arrived yet. Okay, but that also implies that karma hardens like cement. And if you've ever built something and use cement, it's an interesting process. Why, do you know? Cement hardens for 20 years. cement hardens for 20 years it gets harder every year there's chemical processes going on in the cement the calcium that keep going for 20 years like if you try to break an old foundation with a sledgehammer it's much more difficult than a five-year-old's foundation because it keeps getting harder and harder inside. It cooks from the inside. Why are we talking about that? Why is Geshe-la talking about somebody? Karma is the same. Karma is the same. Once you have done something, it takes time for it to harden and it keeps hardening. It keeps getting stronger and stronger okay so the time gap anagatam the time gap means you have less chance to affect things that are going to happen this evening than you do to change things for next week because the cement next the cement's harder the cement's harder now it's kind of opposite okay the cement's harder right after you cannot affect things if something's supposed to ripen today it's too late if something is supposed to ripen this afternoon it's too late and probably a buddhist teacher cannot make you happy by the evening if you are depressed in the morning it's too late okay maybe they can help you for next week or next month but there's no magic solution because it's a time gap it takes time okay it takes time for good karma to write penosa okay so mainly mainly okay this is a difficult truth to share with a student because of heyam dukam and now gatham mainly it's very difficult to help a person in the next week or something. Their life is not going to change on the day that they get teaching from a Buddhist teacher or any teacher. Even if they put it into practice, it's going to take time because it has to ripen. It's like cement. You can't, by the way, you can't put anything on cement for the first four or five days. It'll just break. And you have to pour water on it all day because it'll slow down. If it heats too fast, it'll crack. You have to keep pouring water. It's weird. You have to water cement for four or five days, twice a day, three times a day. What I'm trying to say is if you really understand the laws of karma, You won't foolishly expect things to change on the morning that you learned about karma. It's not going to happen. You're not going to get a teaching in the morning that's going to make you undepressed by the evening. Because that karma is hard. It takes time. The antidote takes time. And people don't like that. It's against human nature. People want instant solutions to their problems. But if things are coming from karma, you can't have an instant solution. You can learn all the tricks about prioritization, but there's no instant solutions because it takes time for the fruit to ripen. That's all. If you apply an antidote to your depression, which is, by the way, paying attention to other people's problems, which depressed people never do, so they tend to multiply their depression. Even if you apply the antidote this morning, don't expect to be undepressed by tonight. It's not going to happen. Oh, Geshe-la, so I'm not going to apply the antidote because I can't be undepressed by tonight. I'll take oxycodone or something. That's also coming from before. All right, got it. It works because it's something he did last year. If it works, right? It doesn't work. Sometimes it just gives you constipation, right? And you don't get any out of it. Somebody has to help you with something. I have had to do that. It's unpleasant. All right. So remember the cooking time thing. remember the cement thing we have a picture of cement guy tim just so you guys can remember okay remember that things take time to ripen all right you got the cement guy there he is me and Rinpoche poured a big platform for our fire office and the truck came and you know i had studied it in the library which is now called online and uh and the guy said where's your board you know i'm like what he said you gotta grab a board you can't do this without a board i'm like i didn't read that in the book you know uh anyway you gotta have this board and you gotta screed it's called screening you go like this very slow and that's another story all right here we go so please memorize that line it solves a hundred problems what is it hey hey hey young do come and i got them and i got them hasn't come yet okay okay all right uh the pain you are ridding yourself of is the pain that would have come to you in the future okay when you apply an antidote to a karma don't expect instant results okay it's anagakum it's the it's the pain you you are when you practice when you are kind to people you are taking care of next year you and that's a hard thing for people people don't like that okay you are taking care of next year's you when you don't overeat and you do your yoga exercises every day, you are taking care of yourself in five years that you don't get diabetes and heart problems. Okay. That's hard for human beings to, to look ahead for five years, stuff like that. People don't do that. All right, here we go. Next verse. By the way, in the context of the four Arya truths, we have finished the truth of suffering, and we have finished the truth of the cause of suffering, which is klesha, is mula, karma, shayu. Your negativities are the root of your problems, okay? We covered the first two truths right there, Okay, Klesha's getting upset at people is what is causing you trouble. All right, we covered that. And now we're on to the third higher truth, which is it is possible to end your trouble. Okay, it is possible to end your trouble. And then they start talking about that. Then they're getting into that. Okay, and it gets a little complex. Okay, it gets a little complex. And he starts to go, okay. What's that mean, 10 minutes, five minutes? Oh, it means 10 nimpah. Okay. All right, got it. Anagato. It's anagato. All right. So in the next section, we have to learn about the mega divisions of reality. We are going to look at two ways of splitting up reality. And that's going to help us to stop our suffering. Okay. In order to deal with this time lapse suffering. Anagato. this time gap problem. We're going to have to understand what makes the world go round. In English, there's an idiom. We have to understand what makes suffering happen, and then we can stop it. So we have to learn two things about the structure of the whole universe. And it's very important in the ancient literature. And I think it's underappreciated. You must understand that the whole universe has two kinds of stuff. That's all. And there's two divisions like that. So the first one is du-che and du-ma-che. Say du-che and du-ma-che. 99.9% of the universe is created by causes. 'CRE NAM SA CHE SAPA MEN LAM MA TOG PA'I DUR CHE NAM SA CHE KHAN CHER DE RANG LA SA NAM KUNDI YI GYE PAR GYE SA ME LANG GI DAMA DANG DUMA CHE NAM SUNG YANG TE NANG GA DANG NI GO PA TE NANG GA MA TE PA'U Opening lines of the Abhidharma question. First thing, get it straight. There are two kinds of things running around in the universe. What? 99.9% of your experience is stuff which is in constant flux, constantly changing. Not just changing. It's not that you get old. It's that you never have a moment that you're the same. It's like, you know, getting old is composed of billions of little so everything is blinking in and out. kichiki kichiki kinchibiture. Say kichiki, kichiki. Twice, ready? kichiki kinchibiture. Definition of impermanence, very famous. Things going in and out of existence Millisecond, by the millisecond, right? 65 times a finger snap. Okay, so you got to understand that your world is like that. Why? Why does the world going like this? Yeah, because it's coming from seeds. Seed, open, stop. Seed, open, stop. Seed, open, stop. Seed, open, stop. Seed, open, stop. By the time your husband says you're an idiot, you've used up like 500 seeds. I mean, that's a good thing. There's a joke. You can always be happy about problems with your partner because you're using up bad karma. Yay! My partner got upset today. Yay! That's like 2,348 seeds gone. You know, they say there's a joke. You can always be happy that you're suffering because you're using up that many seeds. Yay! okay it's hard to it's hard to appreciate okay uh so that's the first great division is there anything that doesn't change like that yes yeah and it's uh certain kinds of listen this is difficult certain kinds of things not being there don't change Certain kinds of things not being there don't change and have no cause. Certain kinds of things missing don't go like that. They just are the same all the time. They are constant. They are constant. Now a difficult question. A difficult question. Can they stop? Yes. No. we can't use the word stop we're not allowed to use the word stop because stop means okay like a plane landing right but blink out of existence yes okay blink out of existence that's possible stopping implies change because it goes like Okay, but there is one that goes like, gone. Okay, and absence can go out of existence, but it doesn't stop. It doesn't come to a stop. Good, okay, can we say it that way? Absences of things never come to a stop, but they can blink out. Okay. And so we say they are not changing. While they're there, they're constant. Then they blink out. But in their blinking out, they don't change as they blink out. Got it? They never change. Absences never change. Is there a mouse? Sorry. Is there a mouse in this room right now? We don't know, but I mean, basically not. Let's say not. Now, listen, is there an absence of mice in this room right now? Yes. Yeah. Now, what happens if a mouse puts just his nose, just that cute little nose, which is the only cute part of a mouse. If he puts his nose in the crack of the door, then there is a mouse in the room. Even if it's the first part of the mouse. We say there is a mouse in the room. A mouse has broken the line of the room. A piece of the mouse has broken the line of the room. It's like I see a jet plane going over a line, you know, like the nose of the plane has broke the line, but the tail is still in the other room, okay? What happens to there's no mouse in the room? It blinks out. You see, it doesn't, it's not like less mouse, less mouse, Sorry, more mouse, more mouse, more mouse, more mouse. And then there's a mouse in the room. Either there is or there ain't. Either you got mice or you don'T got mice. It's not like you got have. It's the kids in the monastery. When those little kids debate about, that's the kind OF stuff for 4 or 5 hours. It's the mouse. The mouse knows it's a member. But the mouse knows it's a member. But they have to put the mouse in the room. Not anywhere. Nowhere's a member. And they'll go on like 5 hours, you know. Everybody thinks they're debating. I guess they are anyway there's no mouse in the room either there's no mouse in the room or there is a mouse in the room there's no third state there's no third choice got it? when the mouse's nose crosses the line of the door the lack of mice in the room blinks out but it doesn't wear out it doesn't gradually change Okay, got it? That's important. All right, that's important. That's important in the next, in the next verse. Okay. So there they're talking about working things and things that don't work. Okay. Changing things and unchanging things. Okay. Somehow unchanging things are going to help us get out of samsara or the wheel of life okay somehow unchanging things are important to get out because we have now passed we have now crossed our noses into the third higher truth okay which is what stopping your pain stopping your pain okay stopping your pain right after you teach people about karma, you want to teach them how to stop it, okay? How to stop their trouble, okay? All right. So all things in the world are either working or standing. Working means changing. Changing means working, and working means changing. Everything that changes is doing something, and everything that's doing something is changing, okay? Whether or not the absence of a mouse in the room can do It's a huge debate and we're not going to talk about it. It's too much today. Okay. Then he has an interesting line. He says, "You know what? You and me are changing." You know, Jacqueline, we are changing. You guys are all changing. You are changing things. Okay. Why? You are Bhutandria. Say Bhutandria. - Thank you. - Bhutandria. Okay. Bhuta, Indriya. Bhuta, Indriya. And when an A meets an I in Sanskrit, it changes to E, Bhutendriya. Like, what's the Buddhist name? Munendra, king of sages. Indriya means power. Indriya means power. Indra means power, okay? By the way, dra means a doer. In means sends the rain down, okay? Indra's traditional function was to send the rain down, okay? That's a long story, okay? But your sense powers and your capacity of thought is called Indra. Indriya, power, powers. You know, in English, we call sense powers, right? So in the ancient languages, your senses are called the powers. They're not called senses. They're called powers. Okay, why? Why would you call them powers? They have a unique ability to act in the world. Seeing, hearing, smelling, feeling, tasting, and thinking. These are uniquely powerful. Without them, you'd be dead. Without them, there'd be no interaction with the world. They are powerful. They create experience, okay? So they're called powers. And even in English, we say the power of thought or the power of sight. We have the same word, indria. So if you think about the human being, they're like 50% capacity. You can also say capacity to feel, capacity to think, capacity to sense. That's called indria, okay? Now there's another part of you, which is called bhuta. Say bhuta. It comes from a verbal root, which means to be, and be comes from that. Okay, bhuta. And it means the chemicals in your body, the physical components of your body, the chemicals. Okay, bhuta. All right. They're called the Jungbo in Tibetan. And they are translated as the, what do you call them? The four elements are the five elements, okay? Sa-chu-me-lung. Say sa-chu-me-lung. You can radically translate that as the chemicals of the body, that the chemicals inside the skin and bone and flesh that keep you alive, all right? You are 50% untouchable power of thinking, sensing, and you are 50% chemicals, you know, carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, whatever, okay? Buta, say buta. Now, and people like to say all those ancient people, they were ignorant. They thought you had dirt in you or water or fire or wind. They're so quaint and ignorant to think that carbon and oxygen and hydrogen should be called earth water fire and wind okay but i got something for you okay then that second chapter of the abhidharma which is called the study of the indriyas they are the elemental forces of of the universe okay they are not water and fire and wind they They are not. They are magnetism, electromagnetism, gravity. What do you call it? The tendency of a body to continue moving. Inertia and the opposite. Anyway, they are the principles of those things. They are not, it's not that the ancients thought the coffee cup was 40% dirt and 20% water and 10% wind or something. They're not so stupid. They're more intelligent than we are. This is composed of elemental forces like electricity, magnetism, gravitation. They have a direct correlation to what we talk about in quantum physics. Okay, it's very interesting. Okay, anyway, why are we talking about that, Geshe-la? You have a choice. Here we go. You ready? If you get your indriyas, and if you get your bhutas, which means what? If God grants you a life, a human body, if you are granted a human body with the chemicals and the invisible thinking, awareness, awareness and chemicals, you are awareness and chemicals, Buddha, sorry, Indra and Buddha. He reverses it. He calls Bhutanria. Okay. You are chemicals and thoughts. Tim, I got to go over for three minutes. I'm sorry. Just sometimes it doesn't work out to the exact time. It's like a flight. Sometimes the wind is blowing. Something happens. All right. You think of yourself as chemicals and awareness. That's all. Patanjali is saying you are Bhutendriya. You are Bhuta and Indriya. You are Bhuta and Indriya. Okay. And you can either bhoga or you can apavarga. Say bhoga. Apavarga. You got a choice. What you do with your chemicals and your invisible thought processes and your senses, including your thinking, right? Your physical senses and your thinking sense. You have a choice in your life. You can bhoga or you can apavarga. Okay? what's bhoga mean experience of joy yeah bhoga means you can use it consume it you can consume it you can use up your elements and your senses it means you can age and die you can eat drink work poop shit sex raise kids build house die house falls down gets sold to somebody else kids die also you know you got a choice you can boga that's a choice he's very powerful here he says yeah you can boga your bhutas and your indria you can consume what god gave you you know your chemicals and your awareness you can just go through life and use it up spend it you can bhogak okay you can spend it on things that are going to fall apart anyway you know i mean come on you didn't notice that the house you own was sold to you by someone who got deaded deaded okay didn't you notice you know you think you're to be different, you can bhoga or upavarga. Upavarga means you can get liberated, moksha, tarpa, okay? You can use the body. You can use the chemicals and the senses that God gave you or that you were given at the start of this life. You can use them up, squander them, waste them, Or you can serve other people. You can serve other people with those chemicals and senses. You can devote your chemicals and senses. You can use up your resources called life on boga. Eat, drink, use up money, make more money, use it up. Or you can serve other people with it. And it's very beautiful. It's very beautiful. You can boga, you can take your bhutas and indriyas, you know, the chemicals that you were granted when you got, when you're by your mom or whatever. And the senses, the brain power, the sense powers, and you can squander them. You can just use them, you know, drink, eat, do yoga thoughtlessly, or you can serve other people with them, upabharga, okay? Upabarga. Upabarga means you can help yourself and you can help others get out of this, get out of this trouble. But it's up to you. He says it's up to you. Okay. You can use up what you were granted when you were born. Waste it, squander it, like your parents gave you a lot of money and just waste it. Or you can use it to better the world, to make it a better world. Okay, got it? Cool. All right, we didn't make it to the end of the class. We only made it through question three. We still have some more questions to go on. Okay, I'm sorry, it's a deep topic, but I will definitely speed up by tomorrow. Okay, questions. So you won't be able to do past the first three homework questions, okay? Use your chemicals and senses. That'd make a good name of a book, right? Okay. Squander your chemicals and senses. Okay. Questions, Tim. Thank you so much, Geshe-la, for this beautiful teaching. We have lots of questions coming in. And the first one says, Master Patanjali teaches the five limbs of Ashtanga in Chapter 2. However, he also specifically mentions three of the Niyama practices, tapas, svadhyaya, and isvara pranayama, as Kriya Yoga at the very beginning of the chapter. Why does he bring such special attention to these three? Are they more important than the other limbs? Tapas, svadhyaya, and isvara pranayama. Tapas, svadhyaya, and isvara pranayama. Okay, so yeah, he does mention those early on in the text, earlier than you would expect. You would expect them to come in the third chapter, because there are more, I guess there are more actions than physical, I don't know. Anyway, let's talk about those three quickly, all right? uh tapas just means uh difficult spiritual practices what's the most famous stuff as a law not getting angry yeah shantideva in his chapter on patience says that the most difficult tapas of all is not getting upset when someone pisses you off all right so that's supposed to be this supremely difficult spiritual practice it's By the way, you're talking in the context of a country where for thousands of years, it was considered a spiritual practice to hold your arm up your whole life until it withered away. Okay. And if you have an arm which is only an inch thick, you're considered very holy because you had the willpower to hold your arm up for 20 years. Okay. Stuff like that. so you know it was a big thing when shantideva said that's not come on that's easy not to get upset at your partner when they're being irritating now that's toughest you know that's a difficult spiritual practice so they're talking about this one uh svadhyaya is uh it's it's a miss miss translated by many many people as self-study and i've seen i've attended lectures where the the teacher explained it as self-study for an hour it has nothing to do with self-study it's just the words are sva it it's a very common word for memorizing scriptures and reciting them heyam do come and i got them you just fadaya and it has nothing to do with self-study it's a and I've heard people explain it for an hour, you know, and it doesn't mean that it's just a very common word for the spiritual practice of learning the book and memorizing it and being able to recite it. It's called Dumba in Tibetan, Kan Dumba, Shen Dumba. So that's the second one. And then the third one is say Ishvara Pranidhamma. Ish means wish. The word wish came from Ish. And by the way, well, that's another story. I won't explain why it's whiskey. And Vara means the best. It's the EST in Sanskrit. So vada means EST, like biggest, smallest, longest. So Ishvara means most wish. Wishest? Wishestest. Okay. And it's a word for the king of the gods because he always gets what he wants. If you go to dinner, he's the one who decides what everybody eats. And by the way, that's the classic example. A king decides what's served at his banquet. So that's Ishvara. Pranidhana means to make prayers to Munlam in Tibetan. What's that got to do with anything? It's talking about how you serve your teacher. Okay, your Lord is your teacher. That's Ishvara, for you. And then Pranidhana means to serve them, to make prayers to them. Okay. Now, why are we talking about that? The question was, I guess the question was, are these more physical practices? Would we consider them part of the first five components of yoga? Or would we consider them more spiritual or inner practices like the last three? What do you guys think? Let's talk about those three. Tapas? Is it inner or outer? Prashanti Deva is an inner or outer. It's inner. I would say inner. I would agree. How about the second one? Swajaya. Learning the Sanskrit and being able to recite it. Inner or outer? Well, I think traditionally they'd say it's physical. It's speech. It's chemicals and senses. And what about Ishwara Pranidhana? Honoring your teacher. Respecting your teacher. doing what your teacher says. Doing what your teacher says. Not doing what your teacher said not to do. Outer. So I don't know. I'd say it's a mix, okay? Lydia, I don't know. It's kind of a mix. You know, my teacher used to say, let's write a letter to Patanjali. You do it. let's ask him why why why did you put it there anyway i think it's a mix next i think a skillful teacher could treat it as inner or outer depending on their presentation okay and and you have that you have that leeway as a teacher to push things according to your presentation if it's more useful for your students present it as inner if it's more useful for your students present it as outer How's that? Okay, next. Okay. Thank you so much for that beautiful answer. Our next question refers to kind of chapter two, verse 14, where it's telling us that you deserve everything that happens to you. So can you please speak on or recommend a skillful way for students or teachers to emphasize empathy and compassion when we're dealing with other students or family members that have experienced trauma? That's a great question. And, you know, my education came from proximity to my Lama. My education, spiritual education, came from hanging around my Lama. It's osmosis. You know, you learn much, much more by being in contact with your Lama than by what they say. You absorb how they behave, and you're constantly watching how they respond to questions, for example. So for me, I remember the day that this came up, and I was probably 26 or 27 or something. one of my job was one of my jobs in this little tiny mongolian temple for 30 years was chun gel 500 chun gel even word's not going to get it chun gel word yeah word says dharma word you're disgusting he's stealing my money every day you know what bad karma it is he's right unfortunately 500 bucks what did he say he said meet the dharma and chingel when you when you when tourists come to the temple which happened because we had a buddhist temple in the middle of New Jersey in a Mongolian community. And people would come from all over, and they'd just bang on the door and say, I want to see the temple. And in Buddhism, we don't say, see the temple. And we don't say, look at the paintings, tankas, and look at the statues. We say, meet the holy dharma. Okay? You never say, can you open the door? I want to look at the statues. That's considered, that's like telling your mom, hey, dude, what the, you know, it's like very impolite. You're supposed to say, I would like to have a personal meeting with the Holy Dharma. It means I want to look at the paintings in the temple. Okay, got it? So it's my job to, I got stuck, this is one of the 10,000 jobs I got stuck with. I had to take the tourists around the temple and explain why people are mean in some of the paintings and, you know, why they're not dressed in other paintings. And, you know, this was my job. And I remember a lady came and she asked a lot of questions about why innocent people suffer. Kids die in car accidents, you know, stuff like that. And I was and foolish and I told her the truth. I said, look, you know, no one gets anything they don't deserve. You know, I said, look, that's just a fact of the universe. No one gets anything they don't deserve. Well, how can kids deserve to die in a car accident? No, I said, no, the question is, how could they have done something to deserve the accident? You should be asking me that, which means you would understand past lives. You see what I mean? Don't ask me to prove to you that past lives exist. If kids can die in car accidents, there must be past lives. Don't ask me to explain why kids die in car accidents. You know, it's obvious. Something happened before then. People don't, things don't happen to people randomly. People deserve what happens to them. And I was very righteous, you know. And then she got really quiet and she looked at me and she said, and she said, well, can you explain the swastikas on the throne? There's swastikas on the throne. And these are swastika, su-asti, su-asti-ka. It means goodness. We talked about asmita, right? Asti means third person, singular. It is. Su-asti means it's good. Swasti-ka means it's great. It's wonderful. okay and she's like what the why the heck you got swastikas on the on the throne i said we always put swastikas on the throne because your teacher sits there and she's what's i got to do with swastikas i said swastika represents goodness and it's a way of asking your teacher not to die we always put swastikas on this room you know and she she's like well i'm leaving and i'm not coming back you know and i'm like what i what did i say wrong she said i'm a victim of the holocaust i lost my parents in the holocaust you know i lost my mom and dad uh in in the camps in in they were burned they were killed and burned you know and uh and i don't see how you can say that people deserve what they get you know i don't see how you can say that and uh and especially with kids and and then i was like i just felt you know dang you're being so illogical and then uh she left in a huff and i was grumpy the whole day and finally i asked rinpoche you know what should i have said you know and he said no no no why do you think there's four schools of buddhism there's times when you can't tell people the truth. There's times when you gotta, you gotta put some sugar in it to make it easier to swallow. He said, why do you think Buddha taught four different schools? There's times when you have to present it in a softer way. And there's things you shouldn't say until people are ready. So the question of deserving what you get, it's inviolable. It's always true. You always deserve 100% of what you get. Now, if that implies that children have done something evil to die in a car accident, then that's, and again, I'll repeat that point, okay? And you have to think about it. Don't ask me to tell you why children die in a car accident. You tell me how they could die in a car accident without deserving it. You tell me. You tell me how something can happen without a cost. Because that's what you're really asking me. You're asking me to explain how there could be a car accident with no cost. The police come to make a report and they don't write anything. Why? It just happened. No reason. And we reject it. We talked about that. There's three choices about where the world comes from. One of them is Big Bang Random, which by the way is totally against science, totally in contradiction to the teachings of science. Either things happen for no reason at all, or they happen for a reason all the time, always. Don't ask me, did the child deserve it. Of course they deserved it. Ask me, how could they do something before that to deserve it? Because they were just a kid. Well, then you're going to have to think about an earlier time. It's not that I have to prove to you past lives so you can feel comfortable with children dying in car accidents. It's that you have to tell me if a child can die in a car accident, how could they have done something before that in two years of not being able to talk or lie or cheat or steal or kill? How's that possible? Got it? Now, that's in a category called don't mention it to every visitor to the temple. And my teacher was quite blunt, as he always was. He said, you're an idiot. You're not going to prove to someone who lost their parents in the Holocaust that their parents deserve to die in the house come on you know you don't talk like that you you you talk about love you talk about compassion you you bring up other topics that they are ready for and in fact there's a bodhisattva vow who can tell me yeah don't teach emptiness to someone you break your vow if you teach the most important thing in the world to someone who's not ready, you break a vow. That's an interesting rule, right? You break a vow. If you teach emptiness to someone too soon, you break a vow, okay? So yeah, it is true that we deserve everything we get. It's true that children and people who died in the Holocaust got what they deserve. And you should never, ever speak like that to someone who's not totally ready to hear it and you should teach them something else okay and it's up to you to to teach a lower school go to abhidharma go to sutras go to mind only go to svatantuka because that's what the person who saw all things decided to do okay that was his solution was to teach a a different presentation change the presentation make it softer you know it's I had a dream one night okay I had a very powerful dream uh I was in that Mongolian temple I was probably 27 or something same time period I had a very powerful dream and I was sitting at a table with a bunch of academics and the highest teacher in the world was at the head of the table and somebody said something dumb about emptiness one of the professors said emptiness means nothing exists and and that the big teacher was about to answer them and I grabbed his arm in the dream and I said I'll take care of it let me answer you know I'll take care of it you know and I I gave this very uh eloquent defense of emptiness you know proof of eloquent proof of emptiness you know I was like so there it doesn't mean nothing and then that the teacher like kicked me under the table it was the highest teacher in the world right he kicked me under the him and he said he look at me in the dream right he said sometimes it's more important to be nice than to be correct okay we'll stop there today thank you so much for your time for the teachings for that beautiful answer again i'm not sure if they shared the chat with you in real time but everyone is extremely grateful and appreciative to be here. Thank you so much. Glad to be here. We will take a short break. Does 10 minutes give folks over there enough time to set the room for Sanskrit? Or do we need 15? We need 15. 15, okay. So we'll take a break. It's 10 after the hour. We'll meet back here at 25 after the hour. And thank you so much. Okay, see you guys. Продолжение следует...