ACI 8 (Mon/Fri)

All right, for the recording, welcome. We are ACI course eight called Death in the Realms of Existence, & we're on class one. This is May 2nd, 2025.

Class Opening

Bring to mind that being who for you is a manifestation of ultimate love, ultimate compassion, ultimate wisdom. See them there with you. They are gazing at you with their unconditional love for you, smiling at you with their holy, great compassion. Their wisdom radiating from them, that beautiful golden glow encompassing you in its light. 

Then we hear them say, “Bring to mind someone you know who's hurting in some way. Feel how much you would like to be able to help them recognize how the worldly ways we try fall short. How wonderful it will be when we can also help in some deep and ultimate way, a way through which they will go on to stop their distress forever.”

Deep down, we know this is possible. Learning about karma and emptiness, we glimpse how it is possible. And I invite you to grow that wish into a longing and that longing into an intention and, if you feel ready, that intention into a determination.

Then turn your mind back to your precious holy being. We know that they know what we need to know, what we need to learn yet, what we need to do yet, to become one who can help this other in this deep and ultimate way. And so we ask them, please, please teach us that.

And they're so happy that we've asked. Of course they agree.

Our gratitude arises. We want to offer them something exquisite. And so we think of the perfect world they are teaching us how to create. 

We imagine we can hold it in our hands and we offer it to them following it with our promise to practice what they teach us, using our refuge prayer to make our promise.

Here is the great earth filled with fragrant incense and covered with a blanket of flowers.

The great mountain, the four lands, wearing a jewel of the sun and the moon.

In my mind, I make them the paradise of a Buddha and offer it all to you.

By this deed may every living being experience the pure world.

Idam guru ratna mandalakam niryatayami

I go for refuge until I am enlightened

To the Buddha, the Dharma, and the highest community.

Through the merit that I do in sharing this class and the rest, 

May we reach Buddhahood for the sake of every living being. 

I go for refuge until I am enlightened

To the Buddha, the Dharma, and the highest community.

Through the merit that I do in sharing this class and the rest, 

May we reach Buddhahood for the sake of every living being. 

I go for refuge until I am enlightened

To the Buddha, the Dharma, and the highest community.

Through the merit that I do in sharing this class and the rest, 

May all beings reach their total awakening for the benefit of every single other.

Introduction to the Course

So thank you for finishing your Course Seven. Have you gotten your certificates? Some have not yet. Let me know if you don't get them soon. I know the dean will do it. We just may need to give her a nudge. So last course we learned the behavior guidelines that we use. Once we understand enough about karma and emptiness, we get a glimpse of the responsibility we have to reach our own Buddhahood in order to really stop any suffering at all, right? That let alone all sentient beings suffering.

So when I first was taking these series of courses, it seemed odd to me that we had reached Middle Way, Diamond Cutter Sutra, that says, what's a Bodhisattva to do? And then went to course seven, here's what a Bodhisattva does, this is how they live. And then of course 8 is this course that comes from Abhidharma Kosha text, which they say is a lower school. And it seemed like, why are we going backwards? But then as I thought about it, I realized once we've made our pledge to be a Bodhisattva, whether you've taken your vows yet or not, the Bodhisattva vows course tells us how we are to behave so that we can help all sentient beings leaving not a single one out as Diamond Cutters Sutra taught us. So this course is about all those sentient beings.

Who are and where are all those sentient beings that are suffering and what kind of suffering are they having so that we can better understand what behaviors to avoid and what behaviors to take up in order to become a being who can help those others stop suffering in that way. So in that sense, it makes perfect sense that the next thing we study after Bodhisattva vows is who are all those suffering beings? Because otherwise we might be thinking, well, there's 9 billion humans and I don't know how many mammals and how many more animals that are non-mammals and how many more insects (I don't know where they fall in all of that.) But we might be thinking, okay, all the humans and all the animals, that's all sentient beings and we'd be missing some, as in, missing a lot. So this next course, course eight is from the Abhidharma Kosha, which is a text exploring the Four Arya Truths.

And in one of its sections, it's describing the truth of suffering. So it's not just saying, look, that's suffering, everything's suffering, headaches are suffering, when the good things wear out that suffering and meanwhile, you're getting old and dying and that’s suffering. This chapter in this text goes into the specifics, like deep nitty gritty. And the whole course is a big downer because it's just awful describing all the different ways that beings suffer.

And I've had people say, “I can't do the homework and quizzes. I can't think of it. It's enough to just sit in a class & I don't even want to do that.” It really is a hard, hard class to want to hear when we've been growing our compassion and softening our hearts and we see someone having trouble and we just melt. This whole course is one kind of suffering after another. So please bear with me, right? I am not trying to torture you. I am contributing to opening our hearts further, is the idea, and opening us to wisdom. Alright, so that said, let me get up my screen share here.

Vocabulary Class 1

• Abhidharma Kosha (sk), chu ngunpa dzu (tb) Treasure House of Higher Knowledge

• Acharya (Master) Vasubandhu (350 A.D.)     yik-nyen (tb)

• Vaibhashika                                          Detailists, lower way school in India

•  tar lam selje (sk: moksha)                   Illumination on the Path of Freedom (name of the Commentary on Abhidharma Kosha)

• Gyalwa Gendun Drup (1391-1474)   First Panchen Lama, Victorious One Gendun Drup (Kundun)

• du kam                                                  Desire Realm

• preta                                                      Hungry Ghost or Craving Spirits

• sura                                                        another word for deva

• asura                                                      Jealous Gods

• suk kam                                                 Form Realm (physical matter)

• samten                                                   meditation levels of the form realm

• suk-me kam                                          Formless Realm (mental beings without physical matter)

• deva (sk)                                                hla (tb) Pleasure Being

• bardo                                                     the in-between, intermediate state

• okmin                                                    Below none (the heaven below none)

The main text that we will be using is one we're pretty familiar with, I think, the Abhidharma Kosha, which was written by Master Vasubandhu around 350 A.D. in India. Yik Nyen is Vasubandhu 's name in Tibetan. That's so hard to say. It seems like everybody uses his Sanskrit name of Vasubandhu. We know Master Vasubandhu is the half-brother of Arya Asanga and they were both master practitioners and they both mastered all the trainings and they specialized in different things. So one of the things Master Vasubandhu is known for is having written this text called the Abhidharma Kosha, now that we know that translates into the Treasure House of Higher Knowledge, (kosha being Treasure House and Abhidharma meaning higher knowledge.) When we learned about Abhidharma Kosha originally, we learned that Abhidharma (higher knowledge) is a whole subject matter or topic of investigation. And the Kosha is the text that teaches us about all existing things. So its reputation is that it is a teaching from the lower way from the school called Vaibhashika (in case you just haven't seen that word.) It's one of the four classic Buddhist schools, not the four Tibetan lineages, but the four Indian schools that we've studied.

The text's name in Tibetan is Chu Ngunpa Dzu.  Dzu is the Kosha, the “Treasure House” and Chu Ngunpa is the “existing things, the highest existing things.” So this text, it's explaining all of Buddhism in a nutshell:

1.      The first chapter talks about the parts of a person and one's mind.

2.      The second chapter talks about the energies within the self.

3.      The third chapter talks about all existence, the universe, creation, time, space.

4.      The fourth chapter talks about karma, explains karma. Geshela shares that he feels that chapter on karma is the best explanation anywhere.

5.      The fifth chapter is a chapter on mental afflictions. And he says again, this text chapter on mental afflictions is the best presentation that he's come across.

6.      The sixth chapter is about understanding meditation and its role.

And then further chapters are about what we have to do to liberate ourselves. This course is only studying chapter three, the chapter on existence, creation of the universe, time and space. And it comes about by way of Master Vasubandhu explaining the truth of suffering.

Buddhism explains that existence is made up of three realms. Suffering existence is made up of three realms. The desire realm, the form realm, and the formless realm. As humans, we are in the desire realm and within the desire realm we only directly perceive with our senses a small part of it, the human, our specific human aspect of it, and the animal realm related to our specific human realm. But there's much more of it that we get to learn about.

1. Class 1, so we'll learn today about the desire realm and the form realm.

2. Class 2, we'll study formless realm and rebirth.

3. Class 3, we'll study the lives of animals and craving spirits, also called hungry ghosts. That class will have a different text that we'll be studying from. It will come from a text called Tenrim Chenmo (The Great Book on the Steps of the Teaching) by Geshe Drolungpa, which was the text that inspired Je Tsongkapa to write his Lamrim Chenmo.

4. Class 4 we'll study the lives of humans and pleasure beings. And for that information we will use a text by the first Panchen Lama, Lobsang Chukyi Gyelsten, (1567?-1662) a Lam Rim called Delam or Easy Path to Bliss. Maybe some of you have studied that recently. And a commentary on that from someone named Ngulchu Dharma Bhadra (1772-1851), called Rinchen Bangdzu or Chest of Jewels.

5. Then class 5, we'll learn about the Bardo and the intermediate beings.

6. Then Class 6 is a class on what's called the kinds of sustenance, what keeps us alive in this life.

7. Class 7 is the hell realms.

8. Class 8 will be a description of time and space.

9. Then classes 9 and 10 will come from the Lamrim Chenmo. We will explore Je Tsongkapa’s death meditation practice to help us process- what do we do with this understanding of how much suffering there is? How do we address that?

And then of course our Class 11 will be our review that you'll teach me.

So when Geshela taught this for the first time, it came very shortly after he had completed his debates for his Geshe degree and he shared with his class that there was nothing that they asked him in all of those geshe debates, that's not within your ACI coursework, which is pretty extraordinary.  To complete your monastic training, you studied more, you memorized, there was more that was taught, but aACI is not missing anything. So it really is the equivalent of that traditional monastic training. The information that we learn. The homework and quizzes tell us what we need to concentrate on. The final exam, that's the most important part. And then the meditations also are done very specifically.

If you ever took those meditations and did each one in sequence, instead of over how many years it's going to take us to do them, if you worked on them end to end, it would reveal something different than learning them the way we're learning them. I found it to be an excellent exercise just to go through them all and write them all down so I had them all in one page and just to look at them and remember what it was like going through, it's significant. Those meditations are significant.

Talking to his early class, he said too that the reason he was sharing this coursework in the way that he was, was because he felt that with Buddhism coming to the west, it needed to come to the west accurately and authentically. So this was in the nineties and Buddhism had been coming to the west since the sixties, but it was just starting to gain momentum and so he took it upon himself to bring the monastic lineage into the United States and he had to get permission to do that, of course. So thank goodness he did, you know given that 30 years later, here we are.

But then he keeps saying, so as a student, we're taking these classes because we want to learn and we're suffering and we want to change. And somewhere along the way please start thinking, well, maybe someday I really will have an opportunity to share them with somebody. If we get that seed planted in our mind, even if our initial reaction is no, no way, I'm not going to get my teacher's certificate and all that stuff, just think when the time comes and somebody asks me, I have the material I can go to and we can sit down together in our living room and let's talk about these things. You have an authentic method of doing so. Please open yourself up to hearing someone say, “what is it that you're learning?” and consider that you're being trained to pass the Dharma on authentically. Otherwise it dies.

The Texts we Study

So you know about looking at the Tibetan to help the Western Chinese language stay alive. So we'll still do that and there's a fair amount in this course. Alright, we chu ngunpa dzu. Abhidharma Koha text is one of those kinds of books, I find, that if you're in the right frame of mind, you can sit down and read that book and wow, it's packed with fabulous wisdom and if you're not in that frame of mind and you read it, it's like, it does not make sense. It's difficult. There is an English translation already available and it's difficult.

Stanley and Geshe Michael are working on Abhidharma Kosha and then they got to a certain place and they said, oh wait, we've got to go here to be able to do this well, we have to go there first. So they're in another text right now and then they'll go back to finish Abhidharma Kosha. Geshela keeps saying, you know what, it's going to take 50 years more probably. So it's hard to have access to the Abhidharma Kosha beyond what we have in our reading and what mixed nuts has done so far, which you can access what's been done so far, the rough translation. So, it's too hard to study from directly and that's been the case for a long time. So there have been masters who have written commentaries, probably they did a teaching on it and somebody took notes and wrote it down. So one of the commentaries on the Abhidharma Kosha, the one we will be using, was written by this person whose name is Gyalwa Gendun Drup and his dates 1391 to 1474. So you can see his dates are in the timeframe of Je Tsongkapa, aren't they? 1357. So, Gyelwa  means Victorious One. It's the term that Tibetans used for the one we called Dalai Lama. The Dalai Lama is a Mongolian title. Great Lama. Gyelwa calls them Victorious One. So Gyalwa Gendun Drup, Gendun Drup is the guy's name.

He was one of Je Tsongkapa’s close students, not one of the two. It's like, the third one. Je Tsongkapa had many students. This one was exceptional because he went on to be taken as the spiritual leader of all of Tibet. So one of Je Tsongkapa students. All of the different lineages looked up to him so much that they all said, okay, you lead Tibet, you be above all of our highest masters. So each lineage of Tibet, they have a high Lama and then each of those high Lamas says, okay, Gendun Drup is our overseer and he happens to be Gelugpa. But fresh Gelugpa because Gelugpa wasn’t Gelugpa in the time of  Gendun Drup because Je Tsongkapa was just getting started then. I don't know the story, but you're not really the first Gyelwa until the second Gyelwa comes along. So he reincarnates and reincarnates and reincarnates. Now we've got the 14th, not the 14th Gendun Drup, but the 14th Gyelwa, Victorious One.

Alright, so special guy and he writes this text called Tar Lam Selje. Tar is short for tarpa, which means freedom. Lam we know is the path, meaning what we do along the path, but also meaning the realizations that we get. Selje means that which makes clear, like in a dark room you turn on a lamp, you can see the stuff in the room. So Tar Lam Selje is translated as Illumination of the Path to Freedom written by Gyalwa Gendun Drup. It's a commentary to the Abhidharma Kosha. Now there's another text called the Illumination of the Path to freedom that was written by Gyeltsap Dharma Rinchen, another close student of Je Tsongkapa. So it is easy to mix up our Tar Lam Selje, we just need to be sure to look at who the author was.

All right, so Geshela said, once again, don't believe any of this stuff until you have enough information about it to prove it to yourself or until some personal experience shows you that it's accurate, that it's true. So if there's any part of this course, as with any of the rest, your mind is going, no way, no way, no way, right? Grab the ‘no way’ and say, ‘I just don't know’. Put it on the shelf. Leave ourselves open for more information, more kinds of experiences, something. Acharya Vasubandhu is a master. He has realizations, direct experiences, he's writing about them. So that doesn't mean it's true for us, but it's true for somebody. And so we're not just reading a novel, it's the important state of mind.

The Three Realms of Suffering Existence

Okay, so this class is about du kam, suk kam & suk-me kam. Kam here means realm, like a realm of existence.  is made up of three realms of existence. One of them is

1.      du kam (du means desire) so, desire realm. Humans live in a desire realm.

2.      Suk kam, suk is the word for form. Our five heaps (form, physical body, feeling, sensory & emotional, discrimination, perception, mental formations & other factors, & main mind-consciousness), we'll talk about that and then

3.      suk-me kam would mean the formless realm, which usually in English when we say, oh, formless, we mean no form at all. But this is used more literally. Formless meaning the absolute least amount of form possible, which means whatever form is there is so subtle that it doesn't qualify for what we, as humans, would say is form. So we'll talk more about it formless.

So desire, realm, form realm and formless realm. And each one of those realms has different beings in it. So remember, we are speaking from a lower school in lower schools, these existing things exist and they're all suffering both the noun and the verb suffering. So we're studying them from this perspective of there they are and there's beings in them. Of course, by the time we get to the end of this course, we're going to go “and they're all projections and they're all real and et cetera.” But we're not learning this from highest worldview. We can't help but apply it. Please do, but let it be lower worldview for right now.

1.      Du kam, desire realm is where we as human beings live.

2.      Suk kam, the form realm: we have form, of course, so what characterizes the form realm as the form realm is it is the realm where form has reached its highest manifestation, meaning its most exquisite, its most beautiful, it's most pleasurable in the form realm. There are objects of the senses and they're all exquisitely beautiful and pleasurable.

3.      Suk-me kam realm or the formless realm. Those beings have no gross physical body. They have no subtle physical body like we learn in yoga. They have mind. Their entire existence is mind. And the only version of form that's there is the very subtle winds that move the mind. So they call it formless because that wind doesn't ever get gross enough to get solid. So it's a place of thinking, of mind, of thought and they still have suffering because they have mental afflictions related to their thoughts, but no physical existence. Which means it has no place. We'll talk about that more.

So let's go back, this class is about the desire realm and the form realm, and we'll do formless realm next class.

Form Realm - Suk kam

So let's talk about the form realm first. It's called this because physical matter has reached its highest expression, as I say. The beings living there are there temporarily, but temporarily is a really, really, really long time.

Geshela says the descriptions of form realm sound a lot like the Judeo-Christian descriptions of heaven. The beings are happy, they're experiencing pleasure, they live a long, long time. The terms they use for the beings in the form realm is deva or hla. Deva is Sanskrit, hla is Tibetan, but it's confusing because those same terms are used for fully enlightened beings. Beings in the form realm are not fully enlightened beings. They're pleasure beings. So Geshela calls them pleasure beings in order to make the distinction from enlightened beings where we also use the term deva and hla. So you can imagine that whatever it was that ripened to allow a being to find themselves in a form realm, that being is experiencing their own body as exquisitely pleasurable, everything around them is exquisitely pleasurable. Everything that happens to them is exquisitely pleasurable and they're using up that goodness as they experience it.

So somehow, they're missing the component of sharing it with others. I don't begin to really understand it because it seems to me that if your pleasure being there with other pleasure beings, you are sharing pleasure with others, but apparently the state of mind is not that, somehow. So you get to a form realm by way of some certain extraordinary goodness that I'll talk about shortly. And then by getting there, you're ripening all your seeds of that similar goodness, but you're not doing anything to replant. Depending on how much goodness you have from all of lifetimes since forever, you keep in this pleasure realm until they're done, right?

Eventually we run out of the seeds that can sustain a form realm, and then what happens is there's some short period of time where that pleasure being realizes they've gotten ugly, they've gotten smelly, other beings are avoiding them. They have visions of what's coming next. And what's coming next? If you've just used up all of your good seeds, all that's left is the negative seeds from all those lifetimes before. At the end of that life, the seed that pops is going to be a lower realm. Well duh, there's not much higher realm to go to from a pleasure being. So they say when the pleasure beings paradise finally wears it out, they drop to a lower realm and the scripture says, oh, they dropped to hell, but they could drop to any lower realm. It's just the likelihood of it being a hell realm is great since apparently we all have lots of hell realm seeds. We'll talk about that later and what to do about that.

Although all the time that you're there in your form realm is exquisitely pleasurable because it wears out it's still a suffering realm. So it's not something that we aspire to in our tradition. It apparently is something that's aspired to in other traditions. Other traditions see this heaven as a permanent thing. You're not God, you're in heaven and it's forever. According to this tradition that's not really possible because you still have negative seeds.

This form realm is not inside our desire realm. They are different realms. They say, however, that the form realm is above our desire realm. Again, remember we're in lower school, so there's a desire realm here somewhere, the one that we're in. And then, because it's a more beautiful realm, it's said to be higher than us. The form realm is above us.

They go on to say that there are 17 levels of form realm, 17 different levels of this exquisite pleasure, like maybe different specialties of pleasure. I'm not exactly sure. Those 17 levels come out of what are called four samten. Anybody remember the word samten? We've had it before. I'll give you a clue. ACI course three. It's one of the words for meditation, meditative concentration, samten.

So the 17 different levels of the form realm are divided by four levels of meditative concentration, four levels of concentrated mind. And in those four levels, there are multiple levels within each of those four and the multiples end up numbering 17. I'm going to show you in a minute.

Now, the reason they're called samten is that the projecting karma that would take you to a form realm is a karmic seed planted by way of a samten, a deep meditative concentration. So when we were learning about meditative concentration, we learned that we need to be at the first samten level in order to have our sensory activity withdrawn enough that we can experience the direct perception of emptiness. That there's a platform of meditative concentration we need to be at, and it's called the first causal level of the form realm.

Do you remember that? How confusing that was? So you'll see the scripture saying, oh, you're in the first level of the form realm when you do your meditation. And it's not actually true that you're in the form realm. It's that you are meditating at a level of withdrawal of the senses that the concentration that we're at as we're doing it is planting seeds that if any one of those seeds is the one that projects from death into the next rebirth, the next rebirth will be the first samten, the first level of the form realm, do you see? So it's meditative concentration at deeper and deeper and deeper levels that's planting the seeds that if that one pops at the moment of death, we'll color our next lifetime into a level of the form realm being that we find ourselves being, I'm not sure if that was English.

So yes, we want to cultivate a deep enough meditative concentration that we can see emptiness directly. Our tradition says you do not need to cultivate any meditative concentration any deeper than that. There are deeper levels to go. They get more and more pleasurable. While we are in them, we are not doing any kind of negative movement of mind even. Clearly, we're not doing any physical negativity. We're sitting on our cushion. So to be in a deep concentration level of meditation is itself planting good seeds. But if we don't use that deep meditative concentration to turn our mind to the emptiness of whatever the object we're meditating on is, then the seeds that we're planting are seeds that could ripen us into a form realm rebirth.

That doesn't mean well don't meditate deeply because you don't want to make those seeds. What it means is always in your meditation, no matter how deep or not, at some point, turn that concentrating mind onto the no-self nature, nature of whatever it is you're concentrating on so that our meditation seeds don't become seeds that could send us to a form realm.

The reading kind of makes it sound like if you die while you're meditating, that's what makes this happen. But we understand about seed planting and seed ripening to understand that if you're a meditator and you spend lots of time in meditation, so you're making lots of these samten level seeds, you don't have to die in meditation, you can die however. But if you have lots and lots of these seeds, the likelihood of one of them being the one that moves you from that death into your next lifetime increases. So there are traditions where you learn to meditate and you sit down and you meditate for days, weeks, months. That was some of the Hindu traditions and our tradition says, remarkable skill, but it's just going to land you in a form realm and that's a temporary pleasure. So don't waste your time. Our tradition says any deeper than the shamata we need to see emptiness directly is not necessary because it'll only give us this result.

So these divisions of the samten that make up the 17 levels starts with the first level, the second & the third samten levels, each of which have three levels (making nine levels total),

1.      The lesser, the first one you reach, the deep level,

2.      The medium, the middle one you reach, the very deep level

3.    The greater, the deepest one you reach, the extremely deep level

The fourth samten has eight subdivisions.

I don't know how they're subdivided, but three and three and three and eight makes 17. So there's our 17 levels of the form realm. So seeds made from spending time in any of those sub levels, if that seed ripens at the moment of death, that's the samten that we go to.

So they say then that there are 17 different kinds of pleasure beings. So if you're the pleasure being of the first level of the first samten, that's one kind of pleasure being. One kind of pleasure, I guess, that you're experiencing for a long, long, long, long time that then wears out. Now that finishes form realm discussion, suk kam.

The Desire Realm – Du kam

Okay, let's talk about the desire realm, du kam.

In the desire realm there are six kinds of beings. Hell beings is one of them. So remember, within our desire realm, there are beings that we as humans cannot see with our gross sense organs, sense powers. These other beings are in desire realm, but operating at a different frequency, I guess. So we can't see them. Some people can be aware of them in different ways, but for most of us we don't see them. It does not mean they don't exist, but just because somebody's telling us about them does not mean they do exist. We need to work it out for ourselves, the extent to which we come to understand whether or not they exist.

None of us here are natural born Buddhists. I don't think. Victor was your family Buddhist?

Victor: Not really. Teacher is more like Taoism.

Yeah, yeah, Taoism. Yeah. So even Taoism has the ancestors, right? And not all the ancestors are happy ancestors. So you'd have ritual things that you do to help the ancestors or to appease the ancestors. So I don't know if in that tradition there is a concept of a hell realm, but I know I am in Christian tradition, there's one, and depending on your Christian tradition, it was emphasized more or less. But if we're here, we rejected that for whatever reason. Now we're back sort of here in the same thing in greater detail. Even that it's like, yeah, I am not sure. Again, let's keep our minds open, hear what they have to say and then work it out for ourselves how we want to relate to what these masters are telling us they've seen.

Jumping up to highest view. They're possible if we've ever seen ourselves doing anything that hurt another being to try to get what we want or to avoid what we didn't want because the seeds planted when we did that would be growing. And they could very well grow into a reality in which hurting and hurting others is your existence. Or being constantly hurt is your existence. Or have we ever withheld something that we could have shared and didn't share? Those seeds could ripen into a whole existence where it doesn't matter what you do, you can't get what you need. And so just consider that these different things within the desire realm could happen to somebody. And then of course, oh my gosh, could happen to me.

Geshela says on your direct perception of emptiness, he says, you will see other realms. You're seeing the emptiness of other realms, because you’re seeing the emptiness of all existing things. Which means you know the existence of the other realms because they have to exist to be empty. So somehow you come out of that, oh my gosh, that stuff they say about hell realm hungry ghost, there really are beings ripening the seeds to experience themselves that way. Not meaning there really are hell realms that you get stuffed into, but meaning it really is possible for beings to ripen that kind of suffering acutely.

So we are in the desire realm and the desire realm is a suffering realm. It is a realm made up of suffering, and it is a realm that every being in it is suffering, moment by moment, and they are the cause of suffering -their own and other beings. So they are suffering. We are all suffering in the desire realm, both in the sense of a noun. The noun are suffering, we equal suffering, and the verb we are suffering, it's hard to, it's grapple with that. What is it? The noun suffering versus the verb.

So let me go back. In the desire realm, there's six kinds of beings. In the hell realms there's eight hot hells and eight cold hells, and then we'll learn there are these peripheral hells and these special kind of hells. There are different kinds of hells and lots of beings in all of those different levels. Yes, Roxana,

Yes, Roxana,

Roxana: Thank you. I'm not sure if I quite understood when you said the noun against the verb with the word suffering,

Lama Sarahni: Right.

Roxana: So it's like a noun, it's a thing and a verb is an action. So I'm supposed to be thinking of suffering, a thing, like a place. Could it be?

Lama Sarahni: Could be.

Roxana: And everybody's suffering there. I'm not quite understanding.

Lama Sarahni: Cook it, please.

Roxana: Okay, thank you. Yeah,

Lama Sarahni: Take it into meditation, and get the ramification of that.

Roxana: Okay, thank you.

To say we are suffering, we are the thing suffering and we are experiencing the action that we call suffering, the experience suffering. We are the experiencing and we are the thing. It's necessary, helpful, let's say.

1. Hell Realm Beings

So let me go back. In the desire realm, there's six kinds of beings. In the hell realms there's eight hot hells and eight cold hells, and then we'll learn there are these peripheral hells and these special kind of hells. There are different kinds of hells and lots of beings in all of those different levels.

Okay, so eight kinds of, they say eight levels of hell beings, but there's eight hot, eight cold, and more than that.

2. Craving Spirits or Hungry Ghosts

Secondly, there are craving spirits, preta in Sanskrit sura in Tibetan, and then often called asura. I'm getting confused right now between sura and asura because they're opposites, but they're both in desire realm. Craving Spirits have the kind of experience where they're craving something, they're hungry, most of them are hungry, hungry and thirsty, and their whole experience is that they're in search of something to satisfy that hunger and they can't get it. Maybe they can see it, but then it gets, by the time they get there, it's gross and they don't want it or they try to eat it and it won't go down, or they eat it and it makes 'em sick.

But it could be hungry for food, it could be hungry for water, it could be hungry for anything, but you just can't get it, unable to get your needs met in any way. It's a result of selfishness. All these realms are, but the selfishness that comes across as stinginess and pride, no me first, my needs first. If I give this away, I won't have enough for me, those are the seeds that we are accumulating through any given life that if one of them is the projecting karma between a life and the next life where we experience ourselves next is this world in which we can't get our needs met and nobody else around us can either, and we don't care because the seeds that got us there were, we don't care enough about the other.

So those seeds fill in and it goes on until we use up those seeds from all lifetimes before it ends. They have different kinds of bodies than humans do. So humans can't see them generally. In all of these realms beings that are on the same wavelength can see each other, but beings at different wavelengths, so to speak, can't see each other. So really the hungry ghost realms could be all around us and we just don't see them because at the human vibe wavelength, and they're at the hungry ghost vibe wavelength. Except for some people who have a little bit of the seeds to have some awareness that bridges that gap.

3. Animals

Third kind of desire realm being is the animals. So, phew, finally, one, we understand. There are animals. Abhidharma Kosha points out that the great mass of animals live in the ocean, which means land living creatures like humans are really not aware of most of the animal realm because it's in that ocean and we never see them. We see a few, which seems like a lot, but it's not a lot compared to what's in there.

The experience of animals is to live in this constant state of eat or be eaten, right? So it really is a constant state of highly alert fear because at any moment, something's going to eat them. And of course they're perpetuating that because they're in constant search of food, so they eat and be eaten. So then you start thinking about different levels of animal realm. Vegetarian animals are the ones most likely to not be perpetuating lower realm seeds because they're not killing others to get your own needs met like animals that are either carnivorous or omnivorous. But if you are willing to trample others to get to the berry plants, we're still having trouble. So in these lower realms, it's almost impossible to make seeds to get yourself to a higher rung.

And fortunately or not fortunately, you're burning off the seeds of that lifetime just as we are. And if you have leftover worst seeds and one of those pops at the end of your monkey life, right? You go to a lower realm. If you happen to ripen a better seed from monkey life or previous life, you might get a higher rebirth.

4. Humans

The next one in desire realm is humans. Now they say there are four kinds of humans related to the four continents, and our tendency is to think, oh, they must mean Asian, Caucasian, Negro and American Indian, which actually is really similar to Tibetan Mongolian, all of that, Eskimo, but that's not what we're talking about. In the 37 pile mandala, here's the great earth with the four continents and the subcontinents. Each one of those continents has humans living on it. Our continent, the southern continent, the humans look like us with these variations.

The other continents, they are human, but they look different than us. Their shape is different. Some are bigger, some are littler. They still qualify as human. But if we put ourselves all together, all four, we'd go, that's not human. So four different humans, kinds of humans each with slightly different tendencies, but all desire realm beings with the five heaps with the heap of form and similar mental afflictions.

5. Pleasure Beings & Jealous Gods

Then the fifth is what's called pleasure beings, which we already heard the form realm beings are called pleasure beings, but there are desire realm beings called pleasure beings that are similar in the sense that they're seeds of some kind of mistaken deep concentration, got them into the pleasure realm. And it's similar in the sense that desire realm, pleasure realm is a realm where the form and the experience is all pleasurable. And it's similar to the form realm in that they are using up those seeds of goodness as they live there without replanting new ones. And so eventually they also run out of those seeds, get ugly, get smelly, start to have pain and distress and see where they're going, which is to a lesser realm because everything's a lesser realm for them if it's not going to form or form less realm.

But they've used up so much goodness that the likelihood that their lesser realm is even a human realm is remote. So we don't aspire to even a pleasure being in the desire realm because it's a delay in our spiritual progress. If we weren't on a spiritual path, then sure aspire to a rebirth as a pleasure being. But if we have spiritual aspiration, it's a dead end because it uses up our goodness. We drop to a lower realm,

 And got to crawl ourselves back up to where we were. So that's five beings in the desire realm. When I started out, I said there are six.

6. Bardo Beings

The sixth being that they say is part of the desire realm are the bardo beings. But technically bardo beings are samsaric beings, they are suffering beings, but they're not in the desire realm. They're not in the form realm, and they're not in the formless realm because they are in between. That's what bardo means. Pronounced “pardo” really not bardo. It means the in-between, the intermediate being.

So you can't really say it's a desire realm being, you can't really say it's a form realm being, you can't say it's a formless realm being, and you can't say they're not either. So when whatever lifetime being you were at the moment of death, right? You're at the end of that lifetime, your identity as a me in that lifetime is done. The seed ripening is still happening. There's going to be a next seed from the moment of dead to the next seed popping. That projecting karma, it will have a characteristic and that characteristic is sending us into the next manifestation. But it takes a little time where we'll find for that manifestation to fully flesh out. And the time it takes for that to happen is what's called being in the bardo, being in between, dying from the previous life and fully showing up in the next life.

We'll learn the details about what happens. So if you've died from a human life and, e gads, you're headed to a hell realm. It's like is your bardo being still desire realm because you're going from human to hell. But what if you're going from human to form realm? Is it a desire realm bardo or is it a form realm bardo, right? So you have to say, yeah, they say there's six kinds of bardo beings, but you would say only if you, you're a bardo being from one desire realm being to another desire realm being you could say you're still in the desire realm. Technically, bardo beings are not in any of those realms, but they are still samsaric because there are other beings that are outside of desire realm, form realm, formless realm, but they are not suffering beings who are totally enlightened beings, beings who managed to visit somebody in their totally enlightened paradise. Yes, Roxana,

Roxana: Thank you. Although I have taken this course, I don't remember asking if animals, do they also go to the bardo and they get reincarnated?

Lama Sarahni: Yes. Okay.

And I haven't read and understood the Abhidharma Kosha well enough, but just in thinking about it, when your hell realm finally ends also the same process is happening, right? Those seeds ripening hell realm may come to an end. You're not done with all your seeds, they are still seeds. So a next one, ripens. And then in order for that one to get all fleshed out with all the rest of it, the details, it takes time. So you would have a bardo between your hell realm, dead, gone and end of hell realm. You don't call it dead, but end of hell realm and whatever comes next. So there's bardos going every which direction. And in the wheel of life, that second ring outside the three, you see there's beings going up and there's beings going down, and it represents whether a being is headed for a higher realm or a being is headed for a lower realm.

Those are the only two options. Because even if you go human to human, the circumstances are going to be higher or lower, right? We're not going to get the exact same circumstances even if we've managed to get another human life. Okay?

20 Parts of the Desire Realm

So we said there are six kinds of desire realm beings if you include bardo, and that those six desire realms are able to be divided into 20 different parts. 10 of them are, they call 'em bad births, let's call them lower births, and 10 of them are higher births.

So what make up the 10 lower births is the eight hells, the one craving spirit category and the one animal category. So lots of different kinds of animals, but they're all lumped into animal. Different kinds of craving spirits, they're all lumped into craving spirit. But somehow the different kinds of hell beings that we'll learn about, they're called eight different desire realm beings, all hell beings, but different kinds of sufferings I guess.

Then in the higher births there are also 10, which is because there are four kinds of humans, of which each continent is only aware of their own continent. And then there are six levels of pleasure being in the desire realm. Each of them experience a different kind of exquisite pleasure, apparently.

So if the desire realm is nothing but suffering, why do they call it the desire realm? Because who in the world would desire it if it's nothing but suffering? And they say that the desire realm is called the desire realm because every being in it is driven by a desire for food and sex. And it's like, okay, I guess I could buy that for animals and humans. But hell beings, are they still driven by food and sex? Like hungry ghosts, food? Okay, I get it. It's like a lot of this I still have on the show because it seems like that makes sense for this category, but not for the rest. It's like if the highest level of the form realm is the pleasure and greatest expression, then wouldn't the form realm beings just be having orgies the whole time?

But that's not what they say, or maybe they just don't mention it. So what motivates us in our ignorance is that deep impulse for “I want.” And it’s I want, whether it's a pleasure that you want or a displeasure that you want to avoid, it's still an I want and because of the belief that the “I “is this independently existing, no, that's not right. We don't think we're independently existing. The “I” is this special singular unit that needs to be fed and housed and clothed and loved to exist. Our misbelief of our nature makes it such that we think that's the most important thing. Even the most loving, compassionate, amazing samsaric being still has deep down inside the “me” that exists in some kind of consistent meanness string that needs to be taken care of, needs to get its needs met. And then those needs are sustenance and procreation apparently. So everything is driven by desire, driven by the misunderstanding of a me versus you, a me versus other. So it's all, it's this that makes the desire realm, the desire realm. It's a realm of I want, which includes the I don't want, I want to avoid that. It's still a desire. So everything is driven by desire in the desire realm by all of us. Hell realms, hungry ghosts, animals, humans, pleasure beings. It's all about I want.

What would the pure version of I want be? What would the wisdom version be? Any guesses?

Roxana: I want the wish for enlightenment.

Yeah, yeah. I love. What if your deep, deep impulse was the happiness of other. You make the other by being self, you make other. What if that deep impulse was your concern for the other in one's constant created experience instead of the first concern for the me only? Because by the time we're at that level of love, the self and the object are still two things, but our relationship to it is, it's all us, right? It's not me/ you, it's you/ me. It's not you/ me, it's we. And then this love has a completely different take on it. Parents get a glimpse of that with their tiny babies because all of a sudden that child is more important than you, and then it grows up. You still have that same sense, but you differentiate more and more. That's what it is to grow up. So we have the seeds of the glimpses of where we're trying to go with all of this. So all of this is driven by our misunderstanding that pushes our selfishness, right? Self-grasping, self-cherishing. (So all of that was not part of the original class.)

So characteristic of the desire realm, the text says is that we can have thoughts which are bad deeds. We can have thoughts that make negative karma. That implies that there are other, in the other realms, they don't have thoughts that makes negative karma. Apparently. They don't have thoughts that make positive karma either. They just have that are ripening using it up. I don't begin to understand.

Roxana: They just exist by existence.

They exist by existence. So let's jump back up into the form realm again. They exist. There are other beings existing with them. They are all wealthy beyond belief. The weather is always perfect, no struggles. Everything pleasurable, everything pleasurable. Everything pleasurable for everybody. So there's no need to share. There's no need to compare. Your enjoyment is so complete that you're there. Little kids, I don't know what age one, two years old, they can be all playing in the same room together, but they're all playing by themselves, it’s like that in the pleasure realms. So it's not like a wealthy person takes another wealthy person out to lunch. They would be perpetuating their wealth by doing that, even though the other wealthy person has no need for you to take care of my lunch. The one who did so would replant seeds for generosity. Apparently in these higher realms, there's no inclination to do that. So it still seems like you have to be planting seeds, but it must be something like you're planting the seeds to just burn off seeds somehow. You're not replanting the seeds that will perpetuate your pleasure, but your mind has all these other seeds that aren't ripening part of the pleasure realm. They're not virtuous enough and they're still there. That when the pleasure realm seeds wear out, what you've got ripens, and then that all just disappears and your bardo and then you're next, whatever it is.

Roxana: It's like, I'm trying to imagine it in my mind, and it's not that easy to imagine it.

Lama Sarahni: Not for me. I can't get it, but I get the gist.

Roxana: I get it. But at the same time, it's like I think it's being jail by yourself. It's about the same thing.

Lama Sarahni: Yeah, yeah. Only we just said that in the desire realm, which implies not in those others being in jail, you cannot interact with anybody at all. And you can sit in jail and going right, hating everybody that put you in jail, and you'd be making more negative seeds just by thinking. And when they say the desire realm beings are characterized by that, it implies that the other ones are not right.

However, we're going to see that Suk-me realm, the formless realm, all they are is mental beings. So all they are making is thought karma. So anyway, as desire realm beings who are humans, who can be aware of our thoughts and change them, we have those seeds. This is saying, look, it's not just deeds of action, deeds of speech that are making karma. It's deeds of movement of the mind, thought, karma, just our initial reaction to something has already planted a seed and then we can go, Ooh, I regret that. And then it's like the seed doesn't plant. Whereas, if we wait until the end of the day and it's like, oh, I shouldn't have thought that, right? The seed's already drilled in. Maybe we can damage it. But so all of these are just little added facts into the encyclopedia that's helping you understand how to negotiate your day better.

All right, I have a little bit more, Chrys, you were going to say something and we missed it.

Chrys: Yeah, I keep wondering whether the hell realms and the pleasure realms are training us to be the way we are here. We think that selfishness is normal and the way that we should be like pleasure beings in “heaven.” We hurt other people in the hell realms, we beat on other people and think that's normal there. So I mean, it's like having kids playing violent video games when they're little and they grow up without getting to the higher feeling of Bodhichitta or anything like that. Because that's the way this system continues, that’s how it works. And the system wants itself to continue. That's how we're trained.

Lama Sarahni: Exactly. Exactly, exactly. So it really is, as humans, we have a little bit of hell realm. We have a little bit of hungry ghosts. We have a little bit of all of them. And so it's very common to hear a class like this and go, oh, they're just talking about different aspects of human life. A person could have a hellish human life, and it's like, okay, fine. Think of it that way. And when you experience the ultimate nature of all existing things, you'll understand it differently. But you're absolutely right. And I guess that's the beauty of the humanness realm then, is that we can learn to be aware of how we're behaving, like hell beings, we're behaving like hungry ghosts so that we can choose to behave differently. It gives us that opportunity. Okay, so there's a little bit more here for class.

In those levels of the form realm, I said there were 17. The highest level of the form realm is called the word ok means below and min means nothing below. So okmin means the form realm that's not below anything else. Again, it's this like, wait below none. Yeah, below none. It's below none, which means it's at the top. Okmin.

There's a place in Arizona called Oatman, O-A-T-M-A-N. It's up in the mountains of the desert, and it's this little town that at least in the eighties it still had wooden sidewalks. And the saloon and the wild burros meander through the town. Everybody loves the wild burros. Nobody owns them. Everybody feeds them, and they just walk through the traffic and walk down the street. They're not allowed into the buildings, but they're just, the boroughs are all over the place. And it's like we went there once, it was so fun. So I am hearing this class and I'm hearing on the tape, Geshela was saying, Okmin, the highest level of the form realm is in.

And it's like Oatman, I've been there. There's burros walking everywhere. And I had to read the reading to see that he was saying Okmin. And it's like, oh, I was so disappointed. I thought, wow, I could just go back there anytime I would Oakman, Arizona.

So in the scripture, the reason we're talking about this is this word Okmin gets a little bit confusing. It is the name for the highest level of the form realm, which is still a suffering realm, not in the desire realm, suffering realm, but still within samsara. And then we read the day we become a Buddha, we will do so in a paradise called okmin, right below none. We will be in this state, none when we reach our Buddhahood. Right? That makes perfect sense. And we'll think, oh, so as I'm getting close to my Buddhahood, I have to Google map where is okmin so that I can get there and sit down at the base of a tree and finalize my enlightenment.

And we would end up at Oakman, Arizona with the burros and we wouldn't reach our enlightenment. Not what okmin means. Do you see? It is the name for the highest level of the form realm. But when we use it as the name for where we will get enlightened, it's not the name of the place, it's the place, it's the ripening. It's what we call the ripening of the extraordinary purity of those last hours. It will be the place we are in. But do you see, it's not somewhere we're going to go. It's going to be where we are. It will be a place below none because you're getting enlightened. Of course it's a place below none. So when Prince Siddhartha finally reached that place where he said, I'm going to sit down here on this pile of Kusha grass, and I'm not getting up until I'm enlightened, that was his okmin.

which means each of our okmins are probably going to be different. And apparently there's this debate about it. It's one of those debates you do in your monastic training. Is okmin a place you go to get enlightened or is it the place you are when you get enlightened? And how do we think of that differently? Or how does thinking about that differently help us?

Roxana: Is it like you go through the five paths and then voila, you reach okmin when you achieve the path of seeing, accumulation, all those, it's like,

Lama Sarahni: Yeah, yeah. Right. So the words that you just said, you go through your five paths and then you reach okmin. It's like someone who's not trained well would likely think, oh, so there's this yellow brick road and you just keep following the yellow brick road and eventually the yellow brick road takes you to this beautiful garden and, and there’s okmin you're there. And it's like, I know that's not what you meant, right? But do you see when we use the words, we don't know if the person we're talking to is going to think of it that way, which is incorrect. Or if they're going to go, oh yeah, this realization, then this realization, then this realization, then this one, and then voila. The unending realization of emptiness, dependent origination in all times. At all times.

Compelling, loving compassion to emanate exquisite beauty and everything that every being who doesn't see themselves that way needs and wants. If that's what you meant. Yes. If a place is what you meant, then no.

When you're the one being asked the question it's slippery how to answer. A student may be in a position where if you think you know what they've been taught and what they understand, you can just agree. Yes, that's right. But what I'm learning, learning how to guide people, is when they give me this explanation and I'm not omniscient, so I don't know how they're interpreting it. I generally have to say, probably you've got it wrong. And I see their face just get so disappointed. But it's like, I can't say yes, you've got it right. If I don't know for sure which of those two they meant, do you see? It’s hard.

So again, the reason we're going through all these details of our suffering realm is because understanding higher way, or once we get to understanding higher way, we can look at this information and go, oh, this is giving me finer details on what I will want to give up and take up in order to stop perpetuating this suffering world. Master Vasubhandu isn’t using his text to train us in that he's giving us the encyclopedia of information that helps us work with our own karmic seeds as we train ourselves.

So that's the reason we're studying all of this in really fairly fine detail compared to what one would study in a lam rim training, for instance, or what one would learn about in church if you were just a Sunday goer and not a studier. We’re getting the fine details, not to scare us, but to motivate us to help ourselves and others with greater precision in our choice making. So now we can see why it comes hot on the heels of Bodhisattva vows, because really in the end it's going to help us choose those behaviors better. Okay, so we're done with this class one. Let me stop share.

We'll have, have this course done by June 6th is my note. And then on my schedule, I didn't have a starting ACI9 until September because there wasn't enough time to finish it before Sumati and I go away the end of July. But I really don't want to leave us hanging for so much time. I'm feeling the pressure of getting this done before I get too old to do it. I want to propose the idea of starting course nine hot on the heels of the end of this before you even do your final. And then if we do that, I could have all but the review done before I travel and I could have a substitute teacher help us with the last class or two if I need to. And then you'd take all of August off and we'd start 10 in end of August, September.

So I'm putting it out there. I'm not asking you to do it because I know it's going to add some pressure, but you all do your homework as you go along. So consider it please. And by the time we get close to the end, I'll ask again whether we do that or not. If we don't, we'll do something else. I owe you the end of that Purify Make Merit Lojong, and I have other Lojongs up my sleeve. So there are other stuff that we can do together in July that won't have homework, quizzes, and just delay our progress. I'm eager to get to course 10.

Chrys: Nine is ethical, lifestyle,

Lama Sarahni: Ethical, right. Ethical living.

Chrys: It's positive.

Lama Sarahni: Yeah. Right. Another reason not to leave you hanging for six weeks after this about hell realms. So another reason to just go on before you get your final finish. But you see I'm like breaking my own rule by saying let's go on before your final is done. So anyway, just think about it.

And then one more thing is that when we get to course 10, which is the beginning of Master Shantideva’s Guide to a Bodhisattva’s Way of Life, and that's a great place for new people to come in to the ACI because it reviews refuge, it reviews how to set up your preliminaries for meditation. It's a synopsis of course, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, even. Not that it's going to qualify somebody. So new people for me, I'm happy to take people that are interested to start at level 10 and go forward if they want. So doesn't need to be advertised that way in any way. Well, I'll ask again later. Help me remember.

Victor: Teacher, regarding the desire realm, just now you mentioned there are six types and probably five types, whether we include the bardo, but I remember when we are learning Lam rim from this world, life is like those picture actually is into six realms.

Lama Sarahni: You're correct. The desire realm, God realm is divided into two, the full God realms and the pleasure being or the jealous gods, which we will talk about more. So you're right, you could take to the debate ground, there's six kinds of beings in the desire realm. But in fact there's seven because, and make your case for the pleasure being two and the bardo being when the bardo being is going from desire realm to desire realm. And then your debater will say no, Bardos are not desire realm beings because your bardo could be taking you to the form realm, right? So it would make a great debate. And how you would resolve that all would be fun to hear. So you are correct. Technically, they call both those pleasure beings. Pleasure. So just one. All right.

Class Dedication

Remember that person we wanted to be able to help. We've learned a lot. You may never sit them down and tell them about form and formless realm. That's okay. But because of what we've learned, our behavior will change.

And that's a great, great goodness. So please be happy with yourself. Think of this goodness, like a beautiful glowing gemstone that you can hold in your hands.

Recall your own precious, holy guide. See how happy they are with you. Feel your gratitude to them, your reliance upon them. Ask them to please, please stay close, to continue to guide you, help you inspire you. And then offer them this gemstone of goodness. 

See them accept it and bless it, and they carry it with them right back into your heart. See them there. Feel them there, their love, their compassion, their wisdom.

It feels so good, we want to keep it forever. And so we know to share it, by the power of the goodness that we've just done may all beings complete the collection of merit and wisdom and thus gain the two ultimate bodies that merit and wisdom make. 

So use those three long exhales to share this goodness with that one person, to share it with everyone you love, to share it with every existing being everywhere. See them all filled with happiness, filled with loving kindness and may and be so

Okay. Thank you so very much.

Vocabulary Class 2

suk-me kam formless realm

namka taye limitless space

namshe taye limitless awareness

chiyang me nothing at all

si-tse the peak of samsaric existence

dushe me dushe me min         non-conceptual - not non-conceptual

semchen a suffering being with a mind    

dzu kye miracle birth

drusher le kyewa warmth and moist birth

ngel kye womb birth

gong kye egg birth

chakravartin Wheel turning emperor

[Usual Class Opening]

Review Class 1

Alright, I'm going to skip the quiz of this mess up this morning. I do apologize. Lemme go right to our share screen.

Below is the review from the evening class:

Last class we learned the text that we are studying for to learn about the realms of existence. That text, we learned, was that chu ngunpa dzu, Abhidharmakosha Karika in Sanskrit, written by Master Vasubandhu 350 AD.

We're only studying the third chapter in this course, and it talks about how our world comes into being and how it gets destroyed, and what it consists of. It particularly goes into details about the desire realm, the form realm and the formless realm, which are the three realms that make up our suffering world.

We learned that the desire realm is divided into 20 different parts. Starting with the hell beings, then the craving spirit and the animals and these are the lower births. And then you have 10 so-called higher birth or happier rebirth, four types of human beings, because of four continents. And then six types of pleasure beings in the desire realm. That makes 20.

Then we learned that the nature of the desire realm is the desire for food and sex, and that's like raw and direct. We could say sustenance and procreation, and that would make it a little bit more like didactic. Geshela says, just think of it as food and sex.

Then we learned that the form realm is called the form realm, because it's the realm where form has reached its highest expression. So when we're talking about existence, I mean we can't help but talk about it from a human perspective, because that‘s what we seem to be. So from a human perspective, form means our heap of form, it's not limited to this. It is any form that we can experience. So the material world of the form realm is at its highest expression, meaning exquisite beauty and pleasure of form, of material things. 

Quiz question 5 was, the question asked, why do the four levels of the form realm consist of 17 sections? But the answer isn't why. Really, the question is, how is it that the four levels of the form realm consist of 17 different sections?

We learned that the first three levels of the form realm, each have three sections each. Like a beginning, a middle, and a higher. Then the fourth level has eight sections. We learned that the sections are the karmic results of the seeds made during certain levels of meditative concentration.

The last question on your quiz was, according to Highest School, what ultimately causes each of the different realms and types of birth? Not just talking about the form realm, but talking about any of the levels of any of the realms, the ultimate causes. To really answer the question you would say our behavior is the ultimate cause, and the reason our behavior is the ultimate cause is because the behavior our minds perceive ourselves thinking, saying, doing imprint that mind with the seeds that when they ripen are the causes of the experiences that we have. So ultimately karmic projections onto otherwise blank screens are forced results from the past behaviors that created the causes of those results. 

Again, that's partly why to study it, so that we can understand the connection, we can better understand what our habitual behaviors might be planting the seeds for future experiences of. So that we can be motivated to, maybe I don't want to do that one so much, or at all. And maybe I want to do more of this other one so that I can plant my seeds differently. 

We're already well-trained in that notion, but now we're learning greater specifics, deeper specifics by way of learning what kinds of experiences one's mind could ripen us into as a whole lifetime, a whole life form. 

Then our question to our ourself would be, ooh, how do I prevent those lower ones, and how do I cultivate the higher one that will keep me on my path? Because not all the higher ones are actually desirable. All of them are still in the cycle of suffering. So then we'd ask, how do I plant my seeds so that I can just get out of 'em altogether, right? Quit perpetuating this cycle of suffering. 

Introduction to Class 2

Okay, so today's class is about:

1. the formless realm &

2.  the five ways of taking birth.

So those are two separate topics. This whole course is called Death in the Realms of Existence. And we're learning about these different realms of existence. And by the end, we'll learn that death meditation that I think most of us know already, but we'll learn again. But the reason we're studying all of this is so that we can live in a more informed, conscious and conscientious way. The more we understand that the suffering of our world, the better we can choose our behaviors through which we contribute to more of them or refuse to contribute to more of them.

So partly we learn about the different realms to learn about what are the different possibilities of what could happen in a future life for ourselves. And we learn about who are those all sentient beings that we're referring to when we make our Bodhichitta  prayer, right? I will save all beings. If what we mean by all is leaving some out, then our all won't be all. And so our prayer is too small to have the effect that we think it's having. So we have these two reasons to learn about the different realms. The idea being it strengthens our motivation for our practice of the path.

Now this third chapter of Abhidharma Kosha is describing all the different realms of the world, how it's created, how it'll be destroyed. And it doesn't sound so consistent with our personal experience of what our earth and world is like. And it doesn't seem at first so consistent with what science says. No, we have this bias that if science says it's true, it's true. And in one level of understanding that is more true. But on our understanding of whether science is right or not is also a ripening result of our past behavior. Science as the ultimate sayer of truth comes down one notch and we still rely upon it anyway. So when we hear about how master Vasubandhu is describing the creation and destruction of the world, it comes in later in this course. It's like, no, that's not what happens. And yet what we're bumping up against is this truth of our experience that two different beings can be apparently aware of the same object or event and experience it in very different ways, two very different ways. (holds up a pen.)

And then as we think about that, I find my mind going, well, how different can they be? And there's got to be a basis there, something real that they're both looking at. It goes like dominoes. When I hear myself say, two beings can experience this in two different ways, validly. Correct? So, take that to looking at our world, and the story about where it comes from and all this suffering and what we can do with it. And here's master Vasubandhu, a highly realized being. Then here's me, an unrealized human, puny minded person saying ‘no, my personal experience has to be more real, more valid, more correct than this guy who I don't really even know for sure who he is.’ But the point is understanding emptiness. Okay?

It is possible at this moment for the way Master Vasubandhu is describing these different realms to become our reality. I'm not saying, oh yeah, so see, because he's more realized than me, his reality is more real than mine. You see, that's not the case. My reality is my reality and it's real because it's my projection. And the way Master Vasubandhu is describing the way our world is made up of these different realms is valid for his projection and they're both real. And the fact that a realized being can experience it in this way shows me that my own realizations will show me that my world actually exists in a way that's much bigger than what I believe is the limit of what's in its existence.

So Geshela’s point in saying what we are going to hear just sounds not so possible because it's not within our usual realm of experience as a human, even a really interested, experienced, like you've read the Encyclopedia Britannica and you know a lot. So keep an open mind is the point here because it all sounds just really weird and it gets weirder as we go through the course until we get to the end. And then hopefully it's not so odd. Geshela says proof of the emptiness of our world, which makes existence actually “be”, always, and makes non-existence impossible.

All right, so Master Vasubandhu wrote down this text and it's cryptic and hard to understand. So we study from a commentary that's, in my personal experience, also cryptic and difficult to understand. But thank you, we have Geshe Michael to explain it to us so that once we've had it explained, we can go back and read it and go, yeah, this isn't so hard. Which I think is partly why they say don't read the reading till after you've heard class. Anyway, so we have the tar lam selje, we learned last class, Illumination on the Path to Freedom by one of Je Tsongkapas students, Gyalwa Gendun Drup 1391 to 1474.

The 3 Realms

And they're telling us that our samsaric world is made up of these three realms, not really places, but three different states of mind. Three different ways we're forced to see our world.

1. Desire realm

Du kam, the desire realm, is the most gross realm, the most obvious realm. I don't know how else to say gross. The life in the desire realm is a struggle to get the things we want and to avoid the things we don't want. We learned before it's characterized by the desire for sustenance and procreation.

2. Form Realm

Su kam, a less gross, more subtle ripening of experience is the form realm, the realm where the heap of form has reached its highest expression. So of a being's five heaps, their heap of form, just the first heap, the physical nature of it is exquisite and pleasurable. So the heap of form doesn't mean just this (touches face, &  body.) It's like anything that qualifies as form (holds up a pen & then a paper.) Form is things that we can see, hear, smell, taste, touch. So one's own body, one's own experience has reached this exquisite pleasure in the form realm. But there's a realm that's even more subtle than that.

3. Formless Realm

Suk-me kam, is a realm where the mind is so withdrawn from attachment or interest in form that there is none. It does not mean that there's no physical realm, there is in the formless realm, but it's just very, very, very subtle energy. Very, very subtle vibration. Prana, chi.

It doesn't vibrate to make a tree or an arm, but it's enough form just to move the mind. So a being of the formless realm is a being made of mind and its movement. What do we know movement of the mind as? Karma, right? So I'm not saying that formless realm beings are made of karma any differently than all of us are made of karma. We all are nothing but movement of the mind, but the movement of the mind that is perceiving itself as a formless realm being has only four heaps. So the five heaps are form, I'm blanking out form, feeling, this discriminating between things, all the other factors that make us up and all the different kinds of consciousnesses that we possess.

So to be a being of the formless realm there's just no form. There is still feeling, discriminating between things, not form things, but between consciousness. There are still all the other things that make you up. And then there are still different kinds of awareness that you possess. You don't have the awareness of solidity, fluidity, you don't have any form awareness. So nothing that you see, nothing that you hear. But you have all kinds of awarenesses of your own movement, of the mind, your own thought, not just like I'm thinking all the time, but movement. There's still stuff happening in a formless realm. It's just minus the heap of form. So it's hard. It's like what would an existence like that be? And I don't know. But the point is, when we understand the seed planting that if one of those seeds ripens at the moment of death and colors our next experience of existence, we could plant seeds that could ripen into that experience of being a being who is mind, only mind.  (Don't confuse it with mind only school.) Just a being who exists as mind. So suk-me kam is what we're trying to delve into, this most subtle realm that is still samsaric. It is still suffering and the causes of suffering, and that's the problem.

Geshela shared that at a certain Bodhisattva level one can, in deep meditation, have your mind go to a Buddha paradise to get teachings. He said, you are still in the desire realm. Buddha is in their paradise realm and there's no contradiction. So why did that come up at that point? Because we're not saying that a formless realm is a Buddha paradise. Buddha paradise is outside of our samsaric experience. But it's a glimpse into what our seeds can ripen even before we ourselves have created the circumstance where we can only ripen seeds of truth, perceiving emptiness and dependent origination simultaneously, always perceiving ultimate reality. Reality in the way it truly exists is what I'm trying to say. Only Buddha does that all the time, but apparently, we can reach a deep enough state of meditation where our seeds can ripen contact with a being in that state.

So anyway, suk-me kam means the formless realm, not meaning no form at all because there's this most subtle prana. There's the little tiny wind that moves the mind, but that tiny wind does not ever go on to make something that would be perceived as form. So formless, least form ever. It has four levels.

It has four levels. Those four levels have names are:

1.  namka taye       limitless space

2. namshe taye     limitless awareness

3.  chiyang me       nothing at all

4.  si-tse                  the peak of (suffering) existence 

Anybody recognize these four from past Geshe Michael teachings and meditations?

Pia: Yes, from Lion's Dance.

Right. Those last four levels of Lion's Dance before you stop and get off at level eight to do the boo boo Lama thing. So the formless realm has these different levels of formless experience, different kinds of experiences that mind is having through which it's still suffering. So that awareness is having awareness of thoughts and emotions. So it's still having mental afflictions related to its own experience. It's hard to describe because I can't relate. Well, that's not true. I actually can relate. Come to think of it, when we're having this mental affliction going on and the person's not there anymore, the situation is over, we're just thinking about it again and again and again. And as we think about it, our emotional reaction to the event keeps coming back up again and again. No, there's no reason to be angry anymore. It's all done. But every time I think about it, it comes again.

And then I'm having a mental affliction about a state of mind because the thing's gone, the person's done. And it's more like what it's like in the formless realm except that there it's at a level where those thoughts are mainly all really pleasurable. So it's not like you're having anger in the formless realm and then upset that you're angry, it's mostly a pleasurable realm. But there's still this suffering and still these mental afflictions about the movement of the mind. It is happening on these four different levels. First the level called ‘limitless space.’

So of these four levels, as we said with the formless realm itself, there is no place where the formless realm is. We'll hear about the other realms. Animal, craving spirits, hell realms, and Abhidharma Kosher will say there's a place where they are, not there waiting, but they have a location. Formless realm has no location because location is determined by qualities of form. So if the only form is this very subtle movement, there's no place where it has to be. And that means that if at the moment of the separation of the mind from the body at the end of one's life, the projecting karma seed that colors where you're going next is a seed that would push forth a formless realm being, that happens right there. So there's no need for a bardo time if our projecting karma is for formless realm beings. So wherever you die, that's where your formless realm will be. But it's not like if you die in your bedroom you're stuck in your bedroom forever as your formless realm being (not forever, but for a really long, long time) because the bedroom is form. So you the being have no awareness of that bedroom or the earth or anything else. There is no awareness of form for you. There is no form. So bedroom's gone, people are gone. Everything about that world is gone. But it doesn't take time to get from one place to the other when we are reborn as a formless realm being.

So your question's going to be where is the formless realm? And then you're going to say there isn't a where is, it is wherever the being was when they died from the life that put them into the formless realm, you see? Whereas the other deaths and rebirths, there's some kind of travel that has to happen. There's some kind of time shifting, shifting, shifting that has to happen in order to shift sufficiently to land us into one of these other ways of getting reborn. Which is coming up a little bit later if I ever get there.

So these different levels of the formless realm, they are ripening results of different causes for the formless realm. So the seed planting is different for what would result in a limitless space quality of formless realm rebirth, than the limitless awareness, than the nothing at all. And the seed say they're all different seed planting experiences. They're all the results of different seed planting experiences.

Namka taye, limitless space, describes a state of mind, like a state of Samadhi, a deep, deep concentration where the state of mind is like looking into limitless space, kindof like looking into the starry sky on that dark moon night and getting this sense of such beyond vastness- going out forever.

Namshe taye is limitless awareness. It's a state of mind in deep, deep concentration, of Samadhi, that's a subtler state yet. So limitless space still has some quality of, I don't know, self and other, or some kind of limit somewhere. And limitless awareness is more the experience of being aware of whatever that object is. Those who are studying the Mahamudra we're getting to this subtle distinction between experiencing an object and being aware of experiencing the object and then being aware of, aware of experiencing the object and then keeping it deeper, deeper, deeper. So this is similar. Namshe taye is where the awareness is so vast, not the thing you're aware of is so vast, but the awareness is so vast.

Then chiyang me is subtler yet where in this deep, deep concentration you reach the place where there's nothing at all or you think you reach a place where there's nothing at all. And this is the meditation that is so famous for the debate between the Huashang and Master Kamalashila that happened very early on in the movement of Buddhism into Tibet. Huashang was teaching how to reach this deep, deep, deep withdrawal of the sense functions such that you reach a state where your experience is nothing. Blank your mind out completely and that's ultimate nature and you'll experience ultimate nature. And then some people were doing that.

Some people were saying, no, no, that doesn't seem right. And so the king called for a debate. You remember the story and Master Kamalashila came and his debate argument is, he must have done the pen thing and said, so see, our behavior is what plants the seeds for our experiences. And so if you are spending lots of time putting your mind in the experience of nothingness, you're just ripen future results of experiencing nothingness. And nothingness is not emptiness; nothingness is not the key to reaching happiness. You'll end up being reborn as a cow. All you do is sit there and chew your cud. So probably that's not the most effective meditation if your goal is to end suffering.

If your goal is to blank out, that might be a good one. So Master Kamalashila's argument was accepted by everybody and they say then that we are not taught to do this chiyang me meditation. But that's just an educated Buddhist perspective of meditations. There are still traditions that this is their goal with the belief that that's going to be the doorway to whatever their belief that the highest achievement is, which for most seems to be some kind of heaven, a permanent heaven sometimes called Nirvana, but believing that that's the ultimate goal. We don't hear most spiritual traditions saying, I'm on track to become God, but the Mahayanist is saying, I'm on track to become Buddha. And it is a little bit like saying the same thing for the tradition. There are many Buddhists where if you said I'm on track to become a Buddha, they'd go, you can't become a Buddha, right? Not every Buddhist believes that they can become a Buddha either. So chiyang me, a deep, deep, deep, highly concentrated meditation on nothing.

Then si-tse is the highest level one's mind can be in. But it still has pervasive suffering, which means it's going to come to an end. There's no obvious suffering. There's no suffering of change, but it ends. So technically from the lowest hell to this highest state, the very, very worst suffering to the most exquisite pleasure in samsaric worlds, it's all suffering. Both the verb and the noun. It's suffering and it's the cause of more suffering. So all of these have something to do with our level of concentration. The seeds planted during deep concentration, single pointed concentration on our object. We've heard that before. Ting ngen dzin is ninth level meditation, not Shamata, not Samadhi, but the necessary factor in reaching Shamata.

We do it when we're deeply absorbed in doing stuff. It's not a bad thing, it’s not good or bad, it's a skill. It's a tool. We can be deeply concentrated on something non-virtuous and we have the good seeds of the concentration and the negative seeds of the non-virtuous thing we're concentrating on. So these seeds of deep concentration, those are what become the causes for what could be a formless realm rebirth, right? It's not really a rebirth because there's no form taking birth, but a formless realm lifetime experience. We do need a certain level of meditative concentration in order to deepen our understanding of emptiness and karma. And we've learned we need that certain platform of concentration in order for our, when the timing is right, our intellectual exploit in the nation of the emptiness of our meditation object to shift to a direct perception of it.

We've learned we need to be in the first level of the form realm. Remember we talked about that last class? It's not a place your body went to. It's a quality of concentration that our mind gets to. So in that same way, the quality of concentration that our mind gets to in our meditation can go deeper even than the causal level of a form realm. It can go deep enough to be the causal level of a formless realm rebirth. So if you're familiar with that lion's dance meditation and as you're getting to that section as you're going down or up, I'm not sure which way you're going your elevator, when we get to that place where they're calling it the namka taye level, I don't remember how Geshe Michael described it, but to me, I've gotten down in there and then suddenly the mind, like goes vast in a linear plane and then namshe taye, it goes vast in more a spherical plane.

And then chiyang me it all blinks out and then si-tse, I don't know what that is. It's just beyond that, all. And we're taught those factors. But Geshela, of course, says don't spend any time here. We're just planting some little seeds in order to have the tool to be able to take our mind deeper, deeper, deeper, deeper for the direct perception of emptiness. We don't need to be in these and we actually don't want to be in those for any length of time because if we hang out in that level of limitless space, while we're there, we're planting seeds that if one of those were to be our projecting karma at the moment of death of this body, that what would come next would be a formless realm, rebirth in the level.

So to do a meditation called namka taye, you're not in the formless realm. It might seem like it, but it's a causal meditation of the limitless space, which means you're planting seeds that would cause a lifetime as a limitless space level formless realm being. I think we've gotten that point across.

So during that lifetime where we are a formless realm being at the level limitless space, we're using up our good concentration karma, we're using up goodness, it's going to come to an end and we're still going to have past seeds from the past, not-namka taye, and probably more selfishness than we want to admit. And when the seeds that are sustaining our namka taye formless realm end then out we go and down we go into some lower rebirth. And really, we're starting over again because we used up so much goodness that was sustaining us in the formless realm.

So both form and formless realm are not something we aspire to because they're dead ends and we use up so much goodness while we're there and they last a really long time. Somehow if we manage to ripen a seed into a formless realm being there must be a lot of them. And then we use up all the goodness that sustains them, we use them up and all the goodness that sustains them. So it's not an aspiration.

So why are we learning about it? So that we can know what to avoid. I have to avoid going into a deep enough meditation to avoid formless realm. I don't think I have that problem so far. But what if we did? What if our seeds become low, our meditation, because we're in Samadhi house, five houses and we're helping people with their concentration. Suddenly we're going so deep into meditation and it's so pleasurable that you're meditating for weeks at a time.

And we think, well that can't be, you have to get up and go to the toilet, you have to eat. But actually you don't. What you would call a physical body would go into kind of like hibernation. Bears don't eat and drink and pee and poop while they're in hibernation. So it's similar.

These are levels of concentration that we can get to. Our tradition says you don't need, we shouldn't. It's a dead end. So these four different levels, however, we should not take that to mean, oh, then I shouldn't work on my meditative concentration. Of course we need that first level of the formless realm, causal meditation in order to see emptiness directly. And in order to do that, we need a regular consistent daily practice building up to an hour a day of effort. Not an hour of single pointed meditation. There will come a time when you can do that. But it's not like we're not making any progress until we can do that. We are making progress as we try. But give yourself an hour session where maybe you're in deep for 5 minutes, 10 minutes and then again for 7 and then again for 12. That's where, if you're doing a meditation journal, you're tracking yourself, okay?

Alright. It's like training for anything else. You're not perfect while you're training, you're training so that when the competition time comes, then you can give it the 100 percent and do more than you ever did while you were in training. Same with meditation.

So there are four kinds of meditation that are planting the seeds for these four different formless realm rebirths. The first one of the four, whose meditation time would plant the seeds that would ripen as a namka taye level formless realm being a limitless space is a meditation called dushe me dushe me min. It's fun to say. Dushe me means non-conceptual.  Dushe me min mean means not-non-conceptual. So putting ourselves in a state of mind, state of experience that's not conception and not not-conception, right? It's like, wait, that's contradictory. You have to be one or the other. It's saying that there is a quality of experience called not conception and not-non-conception. And when we reach that experience and stay there, we're planting seeds, any one of which would throw us into a whole lifetime as a being of the formless realm, being limitless space.

We had dushe me dushe me min back in Diamond Cutter Sutra. What's a Bodhisattva to do? To Nirvana-size, all living beings, beings born from a womb, born from an egg born miraculously, remember all that? And beings who are neither conceptual nor non-conceptual. And I don't know, the first 30 times I went through Diamond Cutter Sutra, it was like that just passed me by. What's that talking about?

It's talking about being in this meditation, this particular meditation. You get into that particular meditation and you stay there maybe for your one-hour session, maybe for a week, whatever you decide, I'm going into my meditation for, right? You determine it at these levels of meditation, you decide how long you're staying in and you will stay in that long. So there are beings, according to Buddha, when he is teaching Diamond Cutter that are in that state of meditation while we're learning about Diamond Cutter and you Bodhisattva, they're included in the ones that you are going to bring to nirvana because they are not planting seeds for their own nirvana.

They're planting seeds for eons of time in that state of mind and then it's going to end and they're going to be one wicked hell being at the end of that. So help them, too. Do you see? So those beings and those deep meditations, they're our responsibility as well. Because the meditations they're doing, as exquisite as they are, are just a dead end. Because they haven't turned their mind to the emptiness of their object. They don't even know to do that. So dushe me dushe me min is the name of the meditation that if it seeds ripen, ripen us into a formless realm being at the limitless space level. The other levels namshe taye, the meditation that's done is a meditation called limitless awareness. So it get the causal meditation gets the same name as the formless realm it creates. So namshe taye is the name of the meditation that gets us to the level called limitless awareness.

Chiang me is the meditation that gets us to level chiang me formless realm, sit se gets us to the sit se formless realm.

What those other meditations are, I don't know. Well, I know of, but I don't know the meditations.

Roxana: Dear Lama, wo what you're saying here, I'm sorry to interrupt, is just to have a clear motivation of why we're sitting in meditation? Correct?

Lama Sarahni: Correct.

Roxana: And think of all those beings that we want to, is it right to say nirvana-size or…

Lama Sarahni: To nirvana-size we understand means, well that's not full Buddhahood, but not everybody's aspiration is full Buddhahood. We've seen that before. And what I took home from the Diamond Cutter Sutra is when Buddha is saying nirvana-size, he means bring them to total Buddhahood because even once they reach Nirvana, they're eventually going to wake from that and go on to Buddhahood.

So Geshehla has taught us don't Nirvana-size them. Plant in your seeds, in your mind, you're going to take them to full Buddhahood, whether they aspire to that or not right now. So Buddhahood, yeah.

Okay, let's take our break here. Yeah. Okay, so I stop the share pause recording.

What provides the basis for the stream of the mind in the formless realm?

In the reading the question is asked; what provides the basis for the stream of the mind in the formless realm? How can a mind can exist without a body?

And we should let ourselves ask that question and explore why we even say it. And it's like, do we relate to ourself as something that exists independent of our body? And it's like no, a body has to have a mind and any body and mind have to have a ‘self’. And without a body and mind, how could there be a self? Where could the self be? And that's all the explanation that ACI is helping us dig into. So what is the continuum of a person? What is the continuum of Sarahni? So is the person physical or mental?

And of course it's a diamond deal. It's a diamond deal question. But when we look at all existing things, we divide them into changing and unchanging. Is the person changing or unchanging? I think it's a changing thing. And then is it physical? Is it physical matter? Is it mental? But you remember that third category, existing things that are neither physical nor mental ideas, facts, concepts. I propose, this is not ACI, this is Sarahni on the debate ground, that everything is in that category and through that category we put things into physical and mental, but nothing's, anyway, that's not class. Where is this continuum of me carried?

So my me, call it Sarahni, it has a physical body, but it isn't the physical body. It has the experience of mind, but it isn't the mind. What is it?

1. A Concept

It's just a concept, it's an idea, it's a name, right? Literally, Sarahni is a name and it's a way we express the idea of the more subtle name that we call subject, the subject side, my me. But it doesn't qualify as a physical thing and it doesn't qualify as a mental thing. Why? I'm not quite clear. It's an idea. So this idea, me, it carries on. And so it carries on with the movement of the mind and it doesn't need a physical body to carry on. It just needs the movement of the mind. It isn't the mind, but it's carried in the mind, is their explanation. And it's like the reason it's carried in the mind is because this movement of the mind and what it motivates is this process where the mind is colored by its experience of subject / object, interaction between. And then that color, that imprint comes in at some point, colors another experience.  And because the imprint had subject /object interaction between then the out print of that imprint is going to also have subject / object interaction between. So as long as we're planting, subject side, there's always going to be a subject side ripening. And so the subject side is this me, that is this concept me. So it's carried in the mind is what they say the me is carried in the mind. So it doesn't necessarily have to have a body to go on. So there can be such a thing as a formless realm is explanation number one.

2. As Energy

Somebody else trying to describe how is it that a me can be a me with no body is that, look, the life energy continues and that life energy, the mind rides on the life energy. So meaning the subtle energy, prana, chi, there are other names for it, that's indestructible and it's never the same two moments in a row, but it's never not. It’s going from one movement to the next movement to the next movement. So yes, the life of this body, me, will come to an end, but the life energy that brought this into being just continues. It doesn't even pause for an instant. And the mind's riding on that. So the “me” is riding on the mind that's riding on that energy. So there'll always be a me. So you don't need a body. There's always this life force that's going, that's the very most subtle basis of what can become a body but you don't need to have one.

3. As Karma

The third explanation. Karma, for crying out loud. The mind continues because of karma. Karma is movement of the mind. Movement of the mind is karma. They're not two separate things. They're two ways of describing our experience.

Seeds planted by what we think, do, say towards other experience, seeds ripening as other me and things happening, experience, the whole process is existence.

4. Impermanence

Then fourth, Abhidharma Kosha says the fact of one's impermanence reveals the subtle changing nature, which is the condition of existence and it carries mind. So somehow that explains how it is that you can be a formless realm being experiencing a self and a other, and interactions between, without any gross or subtle physical form. Only the most subtle impulse that moves the mind.

Geshela said recently in mixed nuts, something about to die is to prove you exist, right? The fact of one's death is an unchanging thing. Once we've died, the fact of our death is an unchanging thing and that proves that we lived and that proves that we are still living, not Sarahni, but the subject side. And it was like, wait, what? And this is alluding to that idea. The fact of impermanence proves our immortality. And it’s like, ooh, wow. Okay, let's leave that one.

What distinguishes the formless realm from the other two?

So what distinguishes the formless realm from the desire realm and the form realm? It's simply the level of subtlety of the mind. And so each of those realm’s beings, desire realm beings, form realm beings and formless realm beings. The being and the realm itself are defined by their unique mental afflictions and attachments. So formless realm beings get afflictions about their minds because that's all they have and they're very attached to it. So somehow, they still get jealousy, ill will and desire about their own mind and its function. It's just in much more subtle ways than we as desire realm beings, if that's what you are, can conceive of. To travel between the realms or within the realms from one level to the next, just simply means that the mind is reaching more and more subtle levels of attachment, more subtle experiences of those mental afflictions. The going from worst desire realm of each of the hells all the way up to this level of si-tse, means only that the mind of that being as you're going up is becoming more and more detached from their relationship with their outer world. So they're withdrawing, withdrawing, withdrawing, withdrawing.

The more time we spend in any given level of detachment from our world, the more seeds we plant for that detachment. Any one of those seeds that ripens at the moment of death of this body colors the next life. So again, we want to be spending our time planting seeds that any one of which were to go off at the end of life, we'd be happy with what the result would bring. Now, that does not necessarily mean that things we do in this life are going to be the ripening seed, but the things that we do good and bad in this life are adding to past seeds that we already have and increasing the numbers, right? It's truly a numbers game. You want to win the lottery, right? We need to put in so many lottery winning seeds that the likelihood of a lottery winning seed ball popping is the one. We need lots of them to increase the likelihood. Yes, Roxana,

 Roxana: Dear Lama, please explain detachment.

Lama Sarahni: Detachment means something happens. An ordinary attachment is, oh, that brings me pleasure, that brought me pleasure. I want more of it. I'm willing to do blah, blah, blah, to get or keep it. Detachment would mean, oh, that was nice, it was pleasurable, fine, it's done. Wisdom would be, wow, nice, great, who can I share it with? Right? So simple detachment is released from that “I want more or I want to avoid.”

And in meditation, our detachment is grossly moving from what we have to do at that moment of the day. But then inside we're getting aware of our more and more subtle attachments, which is like our distractions. We're trying to meditate on such and such and our mind just keeps going off on that other thing. We have this attachment to thinking about that other thing, thinking we can solve something, whatever, to detach just means let it go. Come back later, right? I hope that helps.

Roxana: Yes, thank you so much.

The 5 Kinds of Birth in 4 Different Ways

Lama Sarahni: So formless realm, you are now experts in formless realm. Let's move on to this second topic, which is about the five kinds of rebirth. Again, we heard it in Diamond Cutter Sutra, all the different beings you're going to bring to nirvana, bring to your Buddhahood, Mr. Bodhisattva. Don't think that we're only talking humans and animals. There are beings that are born in these five different ways, and then there are the ones who are in those different meditations. Don't forget them. All beings, beings born in five different ways.

I'm sorry, I'm saying that wrong. There are five kinds of births that can happen by taking birth in four different ways. Five kinds of births in four different ways, meaning five samsaric beings that take birth in four different ways. So the five kinds of beings are hell beings in a samsaric world, hungry ghosts or craving spirits, animals, humans and pleasure beings.

Pleasure Beings

We have pleasure beings in the desire realm. And then form and formless realm beings are often called pleasure beings as well. But then the term that we use deva or hlas is also the term we use for a being who's reached their enlightenment by way of diamond way. They're also called deva and hlas. So it's a confusing term in a tradition that's so precise about their terms. So okay, deva or pleasure beings.

Then there's this term semchen. Semchen means living being a mind holder. Semchen, to hold a mind or to have a mind. And yet they say Buddhas are not semchen, but it's like, wait, Buddhas have minds. The implication of the sem in semchen is a being with a suffering mind. So semchen refers to a samsaric being not being outside of samsara. So are formless realm being semchen?  Yes, they are inside samsara, but they are not inside the desire realm. Do we have it right? Form realm beings are not inside desire realm, but they are still inside samsara. They are a samsaric realm, a suffering realm that creates more suffering by being in it.

Buddhas are not semchen, because they are not suffering beings. They are not in the formless realm or desire realm except when they're manifesting being there for our benefit. Buddha paradises are not in desire realm, form or formless realm.

Bardo Beings

So what about bardo beings? So by definition, bardos are in between, but what are they in between? Are they in between samsara and Buddha paradise? Or are they in between the different opportunities, different possibilities of samsara, right? That's where they're in between. So you can't say there's a hell being bardo being because the bardo being isn't in the hell realm yet. Even if they're headed that way. They're in this in-between, but still within samsara, bardo beings are still samsara.

Jealous Gods

So then somebody also asks in that category of pleasure beings in the desire realm, pleasure beings, there is a level of pleasure being called the asura, which is not quite pleasure being and it's translated as jealous God. So the pleasure being realm, they're sometimes called Gods, sort of like the Greek gods or the Roman gods. They're not enlightened beings, but they're powerful and they live a long time and some have better karma, karmic goodness ripening than others. And the ones that are pleasure beings, but a little less so than the others, they're aware of each other and the ones that are less so they're jealous of the ones that have it all. So like really, really wealthy people, jealous of someone who's wealthier than them, even though they all have more than they could ever use. So they say are, why don't those jealous gods get their own realm? And their answer is because they're still so beyond the other realms of a desire realm that they qualify as pleasure beings even though they fight with the higher-than-them pleasure beings. Anyway, it seems like a funny argument, but it's important to know, it's useful to know that there are these different qualities of pleasure beings.

So suppose you were going to do an imaginary movie of you, your Buddha you, emanating to bring all beings to happiness, you would make up this story. How would I go to a hell realm? How would I influence those hell realm beings to get them to awaken a little bit of compassion in their heart? How would I go to a hungry ghost realm and get them to have the idea, oh, that other person is so hungry, here's some food. I want it so much, but I'm going to give it to them. How would I inspire somebody? How would I inspire a jealous God to stop being jealous of the other pleasure beings?

It's just a fantasy. How would I inspire a pleasure realm being to recognize that their exquisite pleasure that's been going on for a long time and they expect to go on forever, won't go on forever. How can they use it to get to their Buddhahood? They should be like this close to Buddhahood, just one little switch and that pleasure realm being could become Buddha, don't you think? All in our creation stage practice.

So it's worth thinking about these different levels of hell. We're going to learn about these different ways of being a craving spirit because they're planted by seeds in their ripening seeds. And so you the angel are going to know how to help them plant their seeds differently. That's why we're studying all of this. It's going to inform your Diamond Way practice so beautifully. Yes, Roxanne?

Roxana: By burning off my selfishness and dedicating it to them, those seeds could influence them?

Lama Sarahni: Yes.

Roxana: Okay. Thank you.

The 4 Ways to Take Birth

Here's the four ways to take birth:

• dzu kye                         miracle birth

• drusher le kyewa         warmth and moist birth

• ngel kye                        womb birth

• gong kye                                  egg birth

Okay, so these four ways of taking rebirth. The first one's called dzu kye, second one, drusher le kyewa third one ngel kye, fourth one, gong kye.

1. Born Complete (Miracle Birth)

Dzu kye, dzu means a miracle. Kye means birth. So a miraculous birth. We think of miraculous births like Jesus or like Padmasambhava, right? Born on the lotus. There he is complete. And that Padmasambhava one is more what we're talking about than the Jesus one. Not that Jesus didn't get born miraculously, but what this means is to be born complete. Just poof, there you are. As opposed to needing to be a fetus, right? We're going to see in the other ones just born complete and we think, well, how rare is that Padmasambhava is the only one I can think of who just showed up one day and stepped off the lotus and went into India and did his thing.

But apparently the dzu kye type of birth is the most common, meaning hell beings are born complete. Hungry ghosts are born complete. You don't get born as a baby hell being and have to grow up as a hell being. You're just there. Really, it's just animal realm and human realm that where a born complete is so rare. So now that's going to be, well, we'll get there later.

2. Born from Warmth & Moisture

So drusher le kyewa means to be born from warmth and moisture. So I don't know, back in the 1600, 1700 where science was starting to look at stuff they called it spontaneous generation, right? There's no mosquitoes in the winter, and then it gets to be warm, it warms up, the water warms up, and all of a sudden there's mosquitoes everywhere. My compost pile goes through it this time of year, every year, all of a sudden there's trillions of these little teeny flies. And then within a few weeks or a month, they're done. They go away. There's no more flies until, I mean, not any, some, but not like trillions of them. They weren't there. And then they're there. Then eventually science says, oh, there are these little teeny eggs and they seem to be indestructible, and they make it through the freezing and they make it through the heat and then they hatch. But it's like Buddhism says, okay, call it that if you want, but it's born through warmth and moisture. The conditions are just right and poof, there's a being there.

3. Born From a Womb

Ngel kye means to take birth from a womb. So this is humans, mammals, some fish and some reptiles, right? Certain rattlesnakes give live birth, guppies, other fish give live birth. The rest give eggs.

4. Born From an Egg

So, then there is gong kye which is birth from an egg. So birds and fish and apparently mosquitoes if you believe the egg theory of mosquitoes.

Types of Birth

The Best Type of Birth

So they ask of these four different kinds of birth, which is the best and which is the worst, and how common are they? So their description of a better birth or a lesser birth is based upon the extent to which it hurts beings. It's very interesting. You would think better or lesser would be whether it gives me good circumstances or not.

1.      So they say that the best kind of rebirth is the dzu kye or miraculous birth because it doesn't hurt anybody. Just poof, you're there.

2.      Drusher le kyewa is the second one next best is from warmth and moisture because it only is painful to one cell. Apparently, it's painful for the warmth and moisture to push you into existence.

3.      The third one is ngel kye, born from a womb, because it hurts two. It hurts the mother to push you out and it hurts you to get pushed out.

4.      And gong kye, being born from an egg, it hurts three, meaning three kinds of pain. It hurts the mom to push the egg out. It hurts you, the being who's in the egg to get pushed out. And then you have to peck your way out of the egg or at least push your way out of the egg, and that hurts a third time. So three levels of pain or three episodes of pain to somebody to give you birth by an egg. So apparently the worst is to be an egg birth being.

The Most Common Type of Birth

Then the scripture says the frequency of these four is in the same order. The miraculous birth is the most common. That one shook me because I was stuck in humans and animals. And it's like, what? But that tells us how many beings there are in these other realms who are all miraculously born. You see, born complete. Born from warmth and moisture, second most common. Womb birth, next most common, Egg birth, least common. Curious.

The Most Aware Level of Birth

Then they say, there are also different levels of awareness that we can have in this process of taking birth. Whichever way it's going to be. The significance of this, I still don't quite understand, but they say, for example, a Chakravartin, do you know that term? It's a Sanskrit turn ‘wheel turning’. Chakra is the wheel. Vartin means an emperor.

There are different levels of beings called Chakravartin. They are some samsaric beings. They must be form realm. And they have such great, such great karma that they're powerful and they have this job of taking care of a world. And some Chakravartins have such good karma that when they show up, the beings in that world beg them to be their emperor. Please, please, please. You're so wonderful. And then others don't have quite that much karma and they have to campaign, please, I'll take good care of you. These are my beliefs. Others are in that situation, but their karma is not so good and they have to wage a more powerful campaign. And the fourth level is they have the karma to be emperor, but they have to force people to allow them to be emperor. Sounds curious.

So someone who has that level of goodness, these beings as they are entering a womb, they are aware of entering the womb. So have we heard yet about the bardo being attracted to some pleasure going on somewhere? It looks like there's a baseball game in a park. I want to play baseball. They go and they end up trapped inside a womb because it wasn't baseball at all. And they're inside. They're then inside the womb going through this cycle.

So for a being, I'm not sure if this was a being who was a Chakravartin, who is becoming a Chakravartin. But at this level of goodness that being is aware that they're entering a womb, most of us are not.

Then a self-made arhat, they have awareness of entering a womb and they have awareness of staying in the womb while they're there. So self-made arhat, that implies that they have reached the end of all their mental afflictions because they experienced selflessness directly without a state of mind that wanted to end the suffering of all beings. So they are a being in nirvana, self-made arhat. So their quality of seed ripening experience is to be aware of taking a rebirth, a womb born rebirth and being in the womb waiting.

Then they say Buddhas are aware of entering the womb, staying in the womb, and coming out of the womb. And again, it's like, wait, why does a Buddha take a womb birth at all? You're already Buddha. Well, number one, you might take a womb birth in order to appear in a world of beings who are ready for you to appear to demonstrate what it takes for a human to get renunciation, gain their bodichitta, do their steps on the path and make their transformation. So you might manifest that. And if you choose to do that, if it's time for that to happen, you will be aware of going in, staying and coming out of the womb. Duh, you're Buddha, you're aware of everything, everywhere. But the point is that we can experience these things differently according to our seeds ripening, of course.

And then lastly, they say those born from eggs are not aware of any of it. And again, it's like why is that information important enough of all the stuff that Geshela wants us to know? Why is that included? So don't discount it, but it's one of those, it's like on the shelf for me, it doesn't feel so important, but it's a piece that we need to know. And now you do.

So Geshehla says again and again in this course, this chapter of Abhidharma Kosha is not very often taught in the West. It's not very often taught in Buddhism at all when a teacher is teaching to lay people. It's probably not taught even to the ordained unless they're on their Geshe track and need to know the details. Because it's confusing and it stretches our understanding. But that's why we're here to stretch our understanding, to understand so much about this process of our behavior, planting seeds in those seeds growing and ripening into our experience that we use it to grow our compassion, to recognize how without this understanding, we stay on automatic pilot and react to things from our I want, I don't want. And our thinking that to do ordinary worldly behavior is how I get or avoid what I want.

The more of this background information we have, the more clear it becomes to us that the worldly things we do to get and avoid what we want don't work. They aren't what are doing it. And we have the goodness to be in a tradition where we get it laid out so clearly. And in my world still, there are countless beings that have never heard it and are not the least bit interested in it. And that's a ripening of my own heart from past zillions of lifetimes of being in that category. And it's all designed to open our hearts and inspire our practice and our motivation. And can we do it without this information? Sure. But with this information, we're so much better informed on what kinds of things beings need for us to think, do and say, to contribute to the end of their suffering. So that's why we're studying this course eight. And so please be happy with yourself that you are here. Course eight is hard. Okay, I'm done.

Yes, Chrys?

Chrys: I have this misunderstanding that once all beings are enlightened, that samsara will disappear. Poof. Because it's sort of like, well, there's nobody down there making karma and making it happen. And I know that's a misunderstanding in that it's something to do with everything happening all at once, but is there a point in the teachings where they say, and when all being achieve enlightenment, this will be the result? Do you know what I mean?

Lama Sarahni: I do know what I think. I understand what you're saying. So there's different levels. I've tried to work this out myself. When I become Buddha, me, I have no more seeds for suffering. So I can neither experience it. I can't project anything suffering. So I have this reality where everything is a paradise and everybody in it is a paradise being. So every existing being is a paradise being when I get to mine. So within that is omniscience.

So in my omniscience, I will perceive all other as paradise and beings in paradise, and I will perceive their mind perceiving themselves. So I will perceive them as a fully enlightened being, and I will perceive them however they perceive themselves. So some of them are perceiving themselves as fully enlightened beings as well. Some of them are not.

My compassion that sees them as Buddhas from my side (not Buddhas, from their side.) My compassion goes (makes a gesture of expansion) and it does whatever is needed until they see themselves as enlightened beings. And it's like, well, isn't there going to eventually be a time when there's no more beings that I'm seeing them as enlightened and them seeing themselves as not enlightened? No more of that. Everybody's seeing themselves as fully enlightened. And my understanding of this tradition says yes. And when that is reached, that will be forever. And my mind goes, I don't buy it because forever is too long a time. Now, first of all to get to there. It's going to be a long, long time, but it's still, …

Chrys: It’s like forever will be happening at the same time as not-forever.

Lama Sarahni: Exactly. But if we let ourselves say, well, no matter what I do, there's always going to be suffering. We won't do what we need to do to stop it.

So it is a question to noodle about. And for me it ended up with, I think really a deeper relationship to what they mean by those four bodies of a Buddha. They are really these four different experiences, ways that what it means to be a Buddha, these four… anyway. So it's like cook it, work on it, chew on it. It will take you really far in your understanding to not get a quick answer to that.

Maybe rocks take on consciousness. Other traditions, like Theosophy says, look, the plant kingdom is evolving also, and eventually there'll be a plant that evolves to such consciousness level that maybe it takes rebirth as a human or maybe, right. So maybe it's like these other aspects that we don't even include in our conscious beings that they become conscious somehow. I don't know. I'm just speculating based on other traditions. But it's a great question. And keep chewing, please. Thanks. Yes, Victor?

Victor: Yeah, teacher, after learning all these desire realm, form realm and formless realm, then I have a question because even during the fire puja, when we are doing that, we are invite those angels, so-called angels to come. So my question is, are they high level Bodhisattva or are they form realm kind of things?

Lama Sarahni: Yeah, that's a great question. There are the beings that we invite into the fire, that we throw the fire stuff into. Those are fully enlightened beings. And then when we are saying the different offerings in the second section of the fire puja, we are offering to fully enlighten beings.

And when we are speaking to protector beings, like when we set up the markers, for instance, there are protector beings who are fully enlightened beings and there are protector beings who are not yet fully enlightened, but who are, like they've been enlisted to be dharma protectors. And then that's their mode of becoming a fully enlightened being, right? They take on the job of protecting dharma practitioners, protecting the dharma, and it's through that, that they are working their way from dharma protector to fully enlightened beings.

But then some fully enlightened beings say, my job is going to be to protect the dharma. So it's like the answer is both. We're offering to both fully enlightened beings and high level protectors who aren't yet.

Victor: But then the next question, because we're aware of their existing, so I mean, when we say the wish, do we include them as a wish to bring them to the fully enlightenment also?

Lama Sarahni: Yes. Yes. So if there are beings that are not yet fully enlightened, they are included in who we want to help get that way, and it's like, yeah, but they're so much higher than me, how can I?

Victor: They're giving so much protection to us.

Lama Sarahni: Yeah. Yes.

Victor: Okay.

Lama Sarahni: Yeah. Good. That's that's a good question. All questions are good questions. I mean, good question. It's making me think too. Okay. Yes, Roxana,

Roxana: Thank you. I have too many questions, Lama, because this is so interesting, and as I'm listening, I think more things are arising. For example, a bardo being when it enters the womb has the new opportunity to start a new life for their enlightenment. Should I think of it as a new opportunity to get closer to enlightenment in this lifetime?

Lama Sarahni: Sure. Yeah.

Roxana: So we have to start all over, right? From learning to speak, to walk, to eat, to, I mean everything. We start all over.

Lama Sarahni: Right, we start all over.

Roxana: Imagine that there is a being who has had realizations in the past and faculties in the past. And of course, since it's in this world, it's still stained with ignorance. So can that being kind of get glimpses, through dreams, of things that were in the past?

Lama Sarahni: Yeah.

Roxana: Yes.

Lama Sarahni: Yes.

Roxana: And how could those faculties come to be awakened?

Lama Sarahni: So that being is likely to have the goodness to be born into a situation where they have very early contact with someone who has the particular wisdom or information, let's call it, so that being is ripening very early in life. So for instance, we hear the stories of a Mahasiddha when they're forced into a rebirth or maybe they've chosen it and then at four years old, they're already surrounded by teachers or at four years old, their parents take them to a picnic and they meet a wise woman. And so they're learning at a very young age. And depending on the quality of their seeds, maybe they start learning at four, maybe they learn at 10, maybe it's not until they're 20. And then swiftly, their seeds from previous realizations will ripen into wisdom, knowledge, new experiences that confirm that wisdom. That for that being may be, oh, that's my first experience of ultimate reality when I'm six years old.

But it wasn't the first at all, because they had it in a previous lifetime. Like we hear this story of Sidhartha when he's, I don't know, six or seven or eight years old, they're out on a picnic and he sees the field that was plowed and the worms are hurting in the sun and in their effort to get dig down, the birds come and pluck them. And he's so struck by this cycle of suffering that he sits down at the base of a tree and the shadow of the tree stays there, even though the sun goes on, you know that story? And they just said, he goes into a deep state of understanding suffering. I think he saw emptiness directly when he was six years old. And then he goes on to excel at everything, but he is dissatisfied. And then finally they say, you have to be king.

I don't want to be king. I want to go be a monk and they say, no, no. And he finally has to sneak off. We know this story that it's like that on a smaller scale for beings who come in with realizations, whether it's emptiness directly or impermanence or what. Very swiftly their seeds will ripen meeting the teaching in some way. They can't help it, right? Their seeds are going to ripen a first-grade teacher that teaches them the pen and the other kids just our learning to write with a pen. And this kid's learning the known self-nature of the pen in the first grade. Do you see what I'm saying? It's going to happen early.

So if you are the person around this new child, I see where your mind's going with your new baby's coming. It's like, you don't want to impose your view on them, but you'll be a powerful influence on them as they are growing up to the extent that their karmic seeds will see you that way. Are you grandma? Yes. And are you grandma who I want to hear what she has to say, et cetera, like that. Just the task would be not to antagonize the parents, right, to be within the guidelines of the parents, but be this uplifting influence that can only happen if the child seeds ripen it that way.

Roxana: Well, I can see the goodness. For example, Edward, they took him to the Zoo and there were some goats and you were supposed to pet the goats and brush their hair. So Adrian and Eduardo spent five hours there because he brushed every single one of them. He couldn't stop. I mean, at three. I'm not saying that he's a Mahashidda or anything, but I can see the goodness in his heart, one child does spent hours there just he couldn't let go because there were still other missing without brushing their hair. So I thought, that's kindness. It's so sweet.

Lama Sarahni: So we want to cultivate that. It could end, right? It could end. So let's do our dedication.

[Dedication]

Welcome back. We are ACI course 8, class 3. It is May 9th, 2025. Let’s gather our minds here as we usually do, please. Bring your attention to your breath until you hear from me again.

[Class Opening]

Welcome back we are ACI course 8 class 3 it is May 9th 2025. Let’s gather our minds here as we usually do, please. Bring your attention to your breath until you hear from me again.

Review Class 2

Last class, we learned about the formless realm (first topic,) and then those four ways of taking birth, (the second topic.) And we learned that the location of the formless realm is one of those new nebulae that the Hubble telescope is photographing, right?

No, Chrys says no, that's not right. You're saying it's some other place?

Chrys: No, it is no place. I mean, it's no specific place. It's wherever you go into it.

Lama Sarahni: Yeah, nice. Formless doesn't need a place. Yeah, nice. Wherever that being's previous life ended the formless realm is, that being appears, you can't say in formless realm, you'd have to say appears as a formless realm being, a being who has only four heaps, right? Although technically, they have a fifth heap, but all it is, is very, very, very subtle energy movement. But they say that formless realm beings have only four heaps. The heap of feeling, discriminating between things (between this appearance of mind and that appearance of mind) all the other factors that make us up and all the different kinds of consciousnesses, which is all the consciousness of mind. There's no seeing consciousness, right? So they don't have so many kinds of consciousness. It's all thought consciousness, but not thought like I'm thinking thought, ‘oh, it's a beautiful day’, I say in my mind, not like that. Aware of mind, it can't conceive. I don't begin to relate to what it would be like to be a formless realm being.

 Anyway, the point being, if we make the mental imprints made in those deep kind of meditations, if one of those mental seeds is our projecting karma at the moment of death, the next experience is this formless realm life, formless realm being. The moral to the story is don't do those formless realm causal meditations. Why in the world do they teach them then? And we learn because there are some traditions that believe that's the goal. Those meditations are the goal in this life. And if they even know the impact those meditations will have going forward, they believe that they'd want to get into that level and stay there forever. They are pleasurable. You would have the shamatha level quality of mind, right? With those semchen, we could see it's easy to fall into that thought.

So that those four levels of the formless realms have four names. We learned

1.      limitless space,

2.      limitless awareness,

3.      nothing at all, &

4.      peak of existence.

Different kinds of beings, different experiences of the beings who are called formless realm beings. Then we discussed, what provides the basis for the stream of the mind in the formless realm? And we had those three different explanations, but apparently the one that is the actual basis of the stream of the mind is that it's called the ‘simple me’, the continuing of the me of the being and upon its life was the answer. That doesn't mean much to me, frankly. But the me part that's planted in every seed from seeing my me do that to that other, is what carries on because there's always a subject side. If there's always a subject side of every perception, there has to always be a subject side of every ripening, right? And that's how the me is carried on. That's how the mind is. That is what it is for the mind to stream on. All right, last on your quiz were those four ways of taking birth, right? Miraculous birth, meaning just poof, you're there complete, born from warmth and moisture, born from a womb and born from an egg. And we learned that that order is also the order of frequency and the order of, I don't know what they call it, like a good birth or a bad birth, but just in terms of how painful it is. And what was interesting about that is that in that discussion, you take into consideration the painfulness of the mom and the painfulness of the you getting born. So to be born miraculously, which doesn't put you in a human realm probably, they call the best kind of birth, but only in the sense that it doesn't hurt anybody. But hell realm beings are born miraculously, that's not a good birth. So the purpose of describing what good birth, bad birth, isn't related to whether you're in a realm that's higher or lower or better or worse. It's just in terms of the amount of pain that happens, some significance there that I don't quite get yet.

Craving Spirits & Animals

Okay. So class three is that within the desire realm we learned that there are five kind of beings and then the bardo beings that gets a special designation. And within those five kinds of beings, we have craving spirits and animals.

So today's class is about craving spirits and then animals, because we're working our way through the different beings of samsara, so that we can understand better who all needs our help. And so that we can understand better the behavior choices to make in this lifetime to increase our chances of a better rebirth, meaning human, and decrease our chances of any of the other rebirth. Any one of which would stall our spiritual work towards ending all suffering for everybody.

So for this class on craving spirits and animals, the suffering of those beings, Geshela went to two different texts. So we've moved from Abhidharmakosha. We'll come back to it. And so what he shared with us is from the Tenrim Chenmo. The Tenrim Chenmo, Chenmo means a great, great book. Rim means the steps like Lamrim. And ten means teaching. So great book on the steps of the teachings.

This was a book written by a man named Geshe Drolungpa. He was from the ~1100 a.d. in Tibet. So he's pre-Je Tsongkapa. He's a little post the Kadampa's of the Lojong, right? He's an accomplished being. But this term, Geshe, here is his name, not his title. Because recall that Je Tsongkapa was the one who founded the Gelugpa tradition. And it's the Gelugpa monastic tradition that gives this term, the Geshe, as spiritual master. Geshe means spiritual friend. In Sanskrit, it's Kalianamitra. A spiritual friend means that one that you're so close to, like, closer than brother, sister. Like, you know, when you had your very, very, very best friend when you're a little kid, and you said, let's become blood brothers, you know, like that. And this Kalianamitra, though, goes from this very, best friend to this very best friend that you admire so much. So it's a little bit different. Friendship doesn't necessarily mean you admire the other one so much you want to become like them. But here, Kalianamitra has that closeness of friendship, but also this admiration from our side to their side.

Now, maybe they have it back to you as well. That's what the term Geshe really means. But it's become understood to be the title that one receives when they have successfully completed the monastic course of study and pass those debate exams. You get the term, the title Geshe, Geshe Michael. And there are different levels of Geshe, you know, according to how high you went, in terms of how many debates you're the one whose outcome was accepted by everybody.

The Text we Are Studying

So this is this guy's name. His name was spiritual friend Drolungpa, which is Drolungpa is like the place he was from. ‘That spiritual friend from Kansas’ is the guy's name. So Geshe Drolungpa wrote this massive synopsis of Mahayana Buddhist practice called the Tenrim Chenmo. And our hero, Je Tsongkapa, 1357 to 1419, read that book. And during his reading of that book, he had a series of dreams, and it was significant for him. But then he goes on and he decides, well, something inspires him to re-write the Tenrim Chenmo. And he writes this text that we know as the Lamrim Chenmo, great book on the steps of the path. So this great book on the steps of the path was inspired by the Tenrim Chenmo. The Lamrim Chenmo is not a commentary on the Tenrim Chenmo. It's like a text that makes things a little bit more clear. And they say Je Tsongkapa wrote this having been inspired by Lord Manjushri to do so, and then they go on to say, and you know, really Je Tsongkapa was just taking dictation from Manjushri. And you know, we'll leave that open.

So in there, there is this section about yidak, the kind of beings called yidak. So yidak is the Tibetan word. Preta is the Sanskrit word. I think we tend to hear preta more often than yidak for some reason. And both words mean craving spirit. Geshela calls them hungry ghosts. It's an odd term. You know, to say hungry ghost in English already has a meaning. And here the hungry ghost, it's not like that, maybe a little like that. Craving spirit is probably more accurate because, anyway, it's probably more accurate to say craving spirit. And what it means is that there is this kind of being and kind of place where the beings cannot get their needs or wants met. And because it's desire realm, suffering, those needs and wants relate to food and sex. We don't talk about sex in this. Really, it's focused on food. And so the experience of hungry ghosts is that they're hungry. You know, not just hungry for food, although that's what we talk about. They're hungry for anything.

And the quality of that being's experience is that they can't get it. Or they can get it, but they can't partake of it. Or they can partake of it, but then it hurts them instead of giving them the pleasure they were expecting. And, you know, we can relate. Yeah, there are times when I'm really, really hungry and I'm sick, so I can't eat. Or I'm really hungry and there's just nothing that’s right. We relate, kind of, but this is a whole moment-by-moment quality of being that you just like you have your needs and you can't get them met. And it's your moment-by-moment, all-inclusive existence. We'll talk about it more.

To those that existence as a cause, it's a result of causes, of course, we would get, we would end up being experiencing ourselves as that if a certain kind of mental seed was the one that was the projecting karma at the moment of birth, that sends us into the bardo headed for hungry ghost realm, craving spirit realm, because of the nature of that seed, what's inside that seed.

Four Causes to Become a Craving Spirit

So they say that there are four main causes for rebirth as a yidak, one general cause, and three specific causes. Again, learning about these different causes, we learn what to avoid so that we lessen the number of our craving spirit seeds. And we know what kinds of behaviors to purify. And then they tell us what kind of behaviors to do, right, which is the opposite of the ones not to do in order to decrease the likelihood of the seeds that are still there, that could ripen as a yidak life. To decrease their likelihood for doing so.

One General Cause:

1. Doing the 10 Non-Virtues with Medium Strength

So the general cause for being forced into a rebirth as a yidak is doing any of the ten non-virtues at medium strength. It’s the cause for rebirth as a craving spirit. Any one of the ten non-virtues, killing, stealing, sexual misconduct, lying, divisive speech, harsh speech, useless speech, jealousy, ill will, wrong view, those specific wrong views, no past, future lives. And karma doesn't run the show.

Roxana: I'm sorry, is medium what you said?

Lama Sarahni: Right, I said at medium strength. Medium strength, to do any one of those deeds with medium seed planting strength versus strong versus lesser. Medium - in between.

Light Strength

So if we do any of the ten non-virtuous deeds with light strength, what that means is that we would do, you know, that deed, we kill something, you know, by accident. You know, you accidentally step on the ant. Maybe you were even trying to go around it, but you stepped around the bunch of them, and there was one over there. And you will all Okay. That's a small deed of killing. It's not premeditated. It's not strongly intentional. It's not doing it again and again.  It happens just now and then. And that's a light, a light planting of a non-virtue seed.

Strong Strength

A strong planting of any one of those non-virtues would be premeditated, highly intentional as you're doing the deed, right? The one you're doing it to is clearly identified. Do you remember these? Four parts of a path of action.

1. You do the deed.

2. You complete the deed.

3. You're happy you completed the deed.

4. You'll do it again when it comes up, right?

That's strong planting of one of those non-virtues. So medium is anywhere in between, meaning you have, you know, some of those four factors of the full path of action, but not, not all of them really strong. So it's really a pretty big category of doing our non-virtues because we don't go out and kill the whole anthill intentionally, right? We don't do that stuff anymore, I hope. But medium strength is more than just that, you know, accidentally stepping on one.

Somewhere in between there is, yeah, but that anthill, it's causing me trouble. I'm going to put out stuff so that the ants don't like being where they are. Do you see it's a really big space of justifying some kind of what would be a non-virtue because I need to do so for some reason. And that kind of seed, whether it's seed of killing, stealing, right. Mediumly planted non-virtue.

If any one of those seeds is the seed that projects at the moment of death of this life, what we will see ourselves as is a being who's that underlying selfishness takes front stage. And it's defining our very being that “I want, I want, I want”, but we're completely unable to satisfy that.

I mean, we can say, I've known humans that are craving spirits. I've had my own version of a craving spirit. And that's true. To have a whole lifetime as a craving spirit, take any of those distresses when we have this strong need and we can't get it met and multiply it by every instant of perception. And that's a yidak lifetime.

So general cause is the seeds planted when we do any of the 10 non-virtues with medium strength. I hope I got that across.

Three Specific Causes:

Now there are three specific causes, meaning three specific things that we might do that make imprints that if that seed were the one to project it would also send us into a craving spirit lifetime. And we'll see in the different descriptions of craving life, craving spirit lifetimes. We'll see how these show up a little bit differently. So here are the three. Here is the first of the three specific causes for rebirth as a yidak.

1.    Not giving - jimpa namsum majimpa

Jimpa means giving, majimpa means not giving. And nam sum, sum means three. So it means not giving the three kinds of giving. We've learned the three kinds of giving, haven't we?

Three Kinds of Giving

1. Sang sin ki jimpa- giving material things

2. min jik pe jimpa- giving protection

3. chuh ki jimpa- giving the dharma

 We've actually learned four kinds, giving love. This one's talking about the three kinds. Jimpa namsum majimpa is failing to give the three types of giving. So what are the three types of giving?

Sang sin ki jimpa

Sang sin means material wealth, material things. So to give material things, shelter, food, money, clothing, things that people need to live on. It's considered the lowest kind of giving. It helps temporarily.

And with all three of these we hear these teachings and it's like, oh, well, I'm doomed, you know, because every homeless person I see would be an opportunity to stop and, you know, give them my sweater, give them the money out of my wallet, give them my credit card, whatever I have to give. Everyone's an opportunity. But the seeds, and that is true, on a sort of vague level.

But we fail to give any of the three kinds of giving when we're in a circumstance where we're directly involved. So suppose the homeless person has come up to you, you know, and said, could you help? And then I, you know, have my usual mental affliction about it and say, no, when I could have helped. That would plant a seed that if left to grow and then becomes the projecting karma at death could land me as a craving spirit.

If that homeless person comes up to me and asks me to help, and I'm there without my wallet I really don't have what they're asking for at the moment. And so we say, I'm so sorry, you know, I can't. That's not a seed that will land us in the yidak lifetime, do you see? It has to be a circumstance where there's a need we have the capacity and the resources and the ability and we just decide, no. That's mine and I won't share. It's this idea of “mine” and I won't give it up - is the seed. So, failing to give the three kinds of giving, to fail to give material help when we could and we choose not to, that's the seeds we're talking about. Second one is, yes, Roxanna? Are we talking about here, about ignorant liking, ignorant disliking? Well, that's what's driving the show, but no, we're not really talking about that.

Second one is, yes, Roxana?

Roxana: Are we talking here about ignorant liking, ignorant disliking?

Lama Sarahni: Well, that's what's driving the show, but no, we're not really talking about that. Now we’re talking more about that selfishness that is “this is mine and I don't want to be without it. If I give it away, I'm not going to have it for when I or my family or my needs it, right? It's really based in ignorance, of course.

Roxana: Okay, thank you Dear Lama, but there are the five poisons also right? I mean it's the five poisons that will land you right there.

 Lama Sarahni: Absolutely.

min jik pe jimpa

Jik pe means fear and then min jik pe would be, not fearless, but decreased fear. So to give someone decreased fear means, is trying to say, to give someone a sense of protection. To fail to give someone a sense of safety when we could is one of the not-giving of the three kinds of giving. One of the kinds of giving is to give a sense of safety, a sense of protection. Being so trustworthy that somebody would leave their wallet with all their credit cards in your care because they know you're not going to walk off it with it and they know that you're going to protect it like it was your own. You know whether you like the person or not because you're just that kind of person. To not give that kind of protection when we could plants a seed that if it's the one that ripens would ripen as c] yidack. Safety, protection.

chuh ki jimpa

Chuh ki means all existing things. But here what it's the chuh is being used in the in the sense of dharma, meaning the Buddha Dharma, and broader meaning giving the wisdom, giving insights into the wisdom through which that being, that other, could go on to stop their suffering forever. So the highest form of giving they say is giving the dharma whether it's being given in a formal class like this or giving somebody a book or a DVD or giving someone insights into behaviors that would be more conducive to reducing suffering by way of how we behave around other people when other people are watching. That's also a kind of giving of the dharma. So to fail to give the dharma when we have the opportunity is also seeds that if they ripen at the moment of death could land us in a yidak lifetime.

So they say that the giving of the dharma is the highest kind of giving, highest in the sense of it's the most valuable, the most useful, the most impactful. It's what I'm trying to get our motivation set as we do our opening prayers. You know there's the person who you know they need medicine; I can help them get medicine, right? They need a friend; I can be a friend for them, but that all just wears out. That doesn't mean don't do it, of course, but wouldn't it be wonderful that as I got them their medicine, I could also help them understand better where getting medicine comes from. And the thing is when somebody's sick and needing their medicine they are not the least bit interested in hearing about where that medicine really comes from. You know? So in order to be able to have the circumstances to share the dharma with another they need to have their needs met and they need to have a enough of a sense of safety and protection that they might turn their mind to wanting to know where reality really comes from. So, it's not to say that the high giving-of-the-dharma is the only thing worth giving because there are human beings or who are in the situation where they're in survival mode. Right? They are unsafe and they can't get their needs met. So to say, sit down I'll give you a talk about the pen it's like, no way, no thanks, it's not going to have an impact. So these other two forms of giving are terrifically important in terms of our own practice. All right, so that's the first of the three specific reasons for becoming yidak. Yes, Chrys?

Chrys: Which kinds of beings actually can plant seeds and accrue karma? Can hell beings?

Lama Sarahni:  All beings are planting seeds and ripening seeds. Only humans have the capacity to understand and make decisions based on this concept of morality. Only in human realm can do that but all beings are imprinting and exprinting, if that's a word, right, imprinting and projecting all that is what reality is.

Chrys: So if you're a hell being and everybody's beating on you and you're beating back, what level of intention is that?

Lama Sarahni:  Yeah “save my life.” Right? I don't know why you'd want to save your life as a hell being but you still do. Right?  Save my life. So, really, we can see under these other realm beings, we can see the underlying selfishness and the underlying ignorance within that selfishness. Right?  In the hell being we're going to see it's just pain and suffering and so the being in the pain suffering their whole instant-of-every-reality is this terrific suffering and it wants it to stop and it can't make it stop. It has no power over anything, it can't make it stop.

Hungry ghost: craving, craving, craving and can't-get-it-met and so underneath that is “I want this craving met” and because how we think craving gets met, doesn't get met. To act according to how we think craving gets met makes the seeds for craving spirit where you can't get the seeds met. When it's done with this only medium strength, negative selfishness with medium strength. Min jik pe jimpa, the not giving the three kinds of giving when we could make seeds that could land us as a yidak. Meaning any being who is a yidak, these are the behaviors that they must have done, to enough of an extent that they had one of those seeds that popped at their last life rebirth. From whatever it was. Maybe they went from pleasure being to yidak. I don't know. So the first specific of the three specific reasons is not giving the three kinds of giving. What are the three kinds of giving? Those three we just talked about. You got it?

2.    Stinginess - serna

The second of the specific cause the specific behavior that plants seeds that would be this could ripen us into a yidak lifetime is serna. Serna means cheap, stingy, you know, possessive. Possessiveness will keep us from giving the three kinds of giving, of course. So it's that state of mind that because of our misunderstanding of where my stuff and the keeping of my stuff comes from, we don't want to part with it. So it's mine, I will protect it, I will keep it, I will use it. Right?  For myself, for my loved ones. I’ll even use it for people I don't like but only when I'm ready. Only when I feel like I will still have enough if I give this away. Serna is no I'm not going to share that because this is mine. Right?  I don't want to share it. If I give it away I will not have it for me. At the really biggest grossest level serna is we just accumulate, accumulate, accumulate and accumulate. Unwilling to part with it because somehow it's going to lessen my safety, lessen my, I don't know, whatever reason we surround ourselves with stuff and are not willing to give it when somebody wants it.

We go "Oh come on, who's like that? Nobody's like that." But we all have some part of that. Yes there are lots of things if somebody walked in my house and admired something I would say, here please take it. Kind of also selfishly motivated because it's like I'd really like to right clear out so, please take, please take. But if they look at my mother's diamond wedding ring that I'm still so attached to although I don't wear it and they looked at it you know no I would not say "Here take it." Right? Because it's my mother's wedding ring. Do you see?

So, that to an extreme those seeds are seeds that would ripen. But it doesn't even have to be to a great extreme. The extreme quality of mind means that we're holding this you know possessiveness to our stuff in a really, really, big way. But to have that happen in a specific circumstance towards a specific being that's still plants a seed. So technically, one stinginess seed floating around could possibly be the one that happens to pop. We don't need 10 billion of them for one of them to be the one that pops. If we have 10 billion of those seeds the likelihood of one popping is greater but it only takes one. It's like, egads!

So serna, stinginess, possessiveness telling us, you know, think back even in this life, oh I remember being like that here and there and there and there and even recently and I regret it. Now that I understand better it's like, that was so stupid. At the time it felt necessary. But man, I regret, I’m going to go give some stuff away, you know, as fast as I can as my antidote. Right? We know what to do with the things that are going to come up in our mind as we study this stuff to clear it out.

3.    Jealousy - trakdok

The third specific seed kind of behavior that plants a seed that could be yidak is trakdok. Trakdok is the word for jealousy, the non-virtue of coveting. When we become aware of some other who has something that we want or that we aspire to and they either have it or they get it, that you know little twist in our heart that goes "Why them and not me?" A little bit of upset at someone else's success is trakdok.

For a Bodhisattva it would be horrifying, I mean it is horrifying for a Bodhisattva because Bodhisattva’s have pledged “I'll do anything to bring happiness to anybody.” Then they hear of somebody's promotion, whether they wanted the promotion or not, they hear a promotion and they go "ew" instead of “wow” that person got a promotion. Our own selfishness driven by eons of belief that selfishness is protective, makes our reaction have this little bit or big bit of "ew" - unhappy that they got something they wanted, unhappy some little bit of unhappy, that they have that beautiful car that's more beautiful than mine.

Now I remember that state of mind seeing people in a really fancy car. I used to drive around town, you know, I don't anymore, and see somebody in a really expensive, fancy car and my mind would be attracted to the car. I'd feel that, like, wow, that's a beautiful expensive car. And the very next thought would be, why would anybody spend so much money on a car? You know, and it was such a judgment but it was this jealousy really. It's not that I wanted that kind of car. I didn't want it myself but I had this judgment about how that person chose to, instead of going "wow, cool." They have the resources, they have the abundance, which means they at one time did the generosity that brought them the abundance that allowed them to have this beautiful car. My mind just couldn't rejoice for their goodness, it had this track in it and it was so constant once I recognize, it's like, oh my gosh like shut up in there. I’d drive by a house, you know, why would they paint their trim that color instead of “wow!” I don't know, trakdok seed, jealousy seed, unhappy with someone getting something that they wanted, must have wanted, lands us as a yidak. Can you see?

These specific causes for hungry ghost we can see the karmic correlation. Upset with someone getting the things they must have wanted with their success ripens us into a being who just can't get our own success. Refusing, clinging to our stuff, serna, puts us into a being who can't get anything to cling to. And not giving when we can give makes us into a being that can't get. All of them - yidak is you can't get, driven by seeds of not giving someone what they needed to get. We can see that correlation so time for a break.

Karma & the Rebirth as Hungry Ghost

• le ngepa                            karma is definite (equal makes equal)

• pel chewa                         karma grows

• majepa dang ma trepa   deed not done can’t give a result

• epa chu misawa             deed done will give a result

So in order to help prevent us from thinking that this hungry ghost realm is anything other than karmic seeds ripening and karmic seeds being planted from karmic seeds having been planted, let's review the four principles of karma. Karma, le, what is karma? Movement of the mind and what it motivates. What it motivates means what we think, say and do as the next instant from the movement of the mind.

The first principle le ngepa, karma is definite. But remember what definite means, it's not “karma is absolute,” it drives everything. That is true but that's not le ngepa, that's not the first principle. The first principle is it is definite that a kind behavior must bring a pleasant result and an unkind behavior must bring an unpleasant result no matter what it looks like in our experience.

So Geshela's example was suppose you're out, you know, at a farmers’ market and one of the stalls is selling hats and you see this amazing hat that you really, really want and the price on that hat is $100. You don't want to spend $100 because of our serna, our possessiveness and so we say to the shopkeeper, "Look I only have $75." It's not true right you've got $200 in your wallet, but you say "I only have $75 would you sell me that hat for $75 please. And suppose the shopper keeper says "Sure." So you get the hat and you get to keep $25 because of your little white lie that said you only had $75. Do you see?

So ignorance says "Because I told the little white lie I got the hat and I got to keep $25." Is getting the hat and keeping $25 a pleasant result, a pleasant experience? Yes. So is it true then that telling the white lie was the cause of getting the hat and keeping the $25? No. Why do we know that? Because the result of telling a lie is being lied to. Right? Being cheated. Is it pleasant to be lied to? Is it pleasant to be cheated? No. Does it matter whether the hat seller knew whether you were lying or not? No. What matters is that your own mind knew that it wasn't true and what matters is that our own mind believed that it was the right thing to do to get what I wanted. That's the ignorance. And that when we got the hat and the $25 our ignorance says, see lying works.

Wisdom says, uh, huge mistake there. Ignorance says no, lying worked, so I will lie again in some other way. So once we have this clear in our mind kindness brings pleasantness unkindness brings unpleasantness if we're experiencing anything unpleasant in any way regardless of the circumstances around it happening we know that the only reason this is unpleasant is because of some unkindness this one saw itself do before. Whether this one in this form or some other form, who knows, doesn't matter. If this is experienced something pleasant it's because of some kindness. Right? The ramification is, I want pleasantness. That's fine, that is not non-Bodhisattva to say I want to be happy. Because it motivates everything and everybody, even Buddhas, and it's what we believe we do that brings about the result of that pleasance that shows our level of wisdom versus ignorance, that manifests as our unselfishness or selfishness in our choice of behavior. So le ngepa gets us started.

What's the second principle of karma? We all know it. Karma grows, right? So little teeny white lie grows, grows, grows, grows. When they ripen, ripen as big, being cheated, being misdirected, right? Being in a position where things aren't trustworthy, even as a low self-esteem lying, ripens as low self-esteem.

You don't even believe your own, right? Beliefs, your own self-worth, what you say, what your mind is saying is useful or true or what I should do. We don't believe ourselves even as those seeds from the habit of little white lies. So same for all those non-virtues.

They grow. Third one, ma jepa dung ma jepa, a deed not done cannot bring a result. And that seems so obvious, but we very frequently, right? Have the attitude, why did that happen to me? And it's like there isn't anything that can happen.

It's not a ripening of our own seeds. Anything we can be aware of is a result of our own subject side and how it interacted with what was perceived as object side. We cannot experience anything that's not our karma ripening.

That's what this is saying. So when we're getting things we don't like, can't blame anything or anybody, but our own past seeds. And if we're not getting things that we want, we can't blame anything or anybody, but our own past seeds of not having created the causes or not getting them to ripen.

And then the last one, jepa chumi sawa, is a deed done must bring a result, not the result. In English, the difference is important. A deed done must bring a result.

What result it brings will be pleasant or unpleasant according to its kindness or unkindness level. It will be bigger, more than the seed, the deed done planted. It can't be something we haven't created and it will be for something we did do.

With that caveat, unless we do some powerful, effective something to damage that seed that was planted so that it cannot go off, but give in and of themselves, once the seed has been planted, it will bring a result. It must bring a result. And if the deed planted was unkind, the result it will bring will be unpleasant, bigger than the one I did.

If the deed was kindness, it will bring a pleasant result, bigger than the one that I did. And they all wear out when they're made with misunderstanding and the cycle turns. So given that, with any of these ideas about rebirth into a different realm, or even another human realm, we can work with our understanding of karma and how imprints out will be in, will be perceptions out, and work with the karmic correlations that we learned from the karma class and work with the karmic correlations that we'll learn about in lojong class in course 14.

And we'll have enough information that we can start designing what kind of behaviors we would like to train ourselves in so that we can be planting the seeds for a more beautiful, safe, abundant, happy, joyful existence. The only place that existence is going to come from is seeds planted for its cause that will grow while we're in the period between its planting and its ripening, right? We know we've got the system, but now we're learning, fine-tuning the details. We have our vows, we have the ten non-virtues, and once we know all these greater specifics, we can look at those ten non-virtues, flip them around into virtues, and see how more specifically trying to live according to the virtues creates the seeds that if any one of those ripens at the end of life, it'll be, wow, cool, right? Another life where pleasant things happen, pleasant, pleasant, and more pleasant, as Geshe Michael has been promising to people, you know, touch the diamond world, live according to this, and life will just be a huge dharma party all the time.

And it takes gardening to get to that point, but it's possible as he demonstrates. Okay, let's go on here. Okay, so there are three kinds of hungry ghosts, not only three kinds, but three main kinds.

Let me find the Tibetan. Here it is. One kind is called chi-yi dripa chen.

Chi-yi dripa chen. Dripa chen means obstacle. Chi-yi means on the outside.

So there's a version of hungry ghost reality where their obstacles are on the outside, meaning that the obstacle to getting their hunger, thirst satisfied, the thing they're going to to get their hunger and thirst satisfied, that can't satisfy them. So their suffering problem is from the outside, the obstacles on the outside. And so the explanation of this is, for instance, that hungry ghost shows up complete, they are starving and thirsty.

And they look in the distance and they see this beautiful lake, and they perceive this beautiful lake as the place where they can satisfy their thirst and get some food. And so they exert themselves to the maximum. They go running to that lake.

And when they get up close to it, like ready to immerse themselves in it, what they see there is pus and blood and feces and like disgust. And it's like, just as they're ready to dive into it. Yeah.

And they look and out there in the distance is another beautiful, and they run, run, run, run, run, run, run. But that same thing over and over and over is this Chi-yi Dripidchen. They see what they need to get there, need met in the distance.

They exert themselves to get there. By the time they get there, it's not, it's disgust, disgusting. Second kind of Yidak experience is Sekom-gi Dripidchen.

Here's the obstacles again, Dripidchen. Sekom means, oh wait, I missed one. No, I didn't.

Sekom, food and drink. Sekom means food and drink obstacles. But this one means this being is able to actually get food and drink that's not pus and blood.

They can get to the food and drink. But, sorry. But they can't swallow it? No, no.

These are the ones who they can eat it. They can swallow it. But when they have it inside them, it burns.

Right? It causes pain. So they're going to this thing for their relief. They ingest it and it's pain, it's suffering.

Sekom-gi Dripidchen. I'm sorry, I skipped one, didn't I? This is the third one, Sekom-gi Dripidchen. Chi-yi is they're running to the stuff and then it gets disgusting.

Sekom is they eat it and it burns. The middle one, I missed the middle one. Nang-gi Dripidchen.

Obstacles. Nang-gi means on the inside. Their obstacles are on the inside, meaning in the inside of them.

And this is the being that they can get the food and drink, but they experience their body as having this big belly. So their stomach is big, but their esophagus is really narrow and their mouth is like this little needle pinhole. So they've got this beautiful piece of pizza, you know, and they can't get it in.

And they have this delicious berry smoothie and they can get it in, but then it won't go down because their esophagus is so thin and the stuff is too thick. Do you see? It's like not specific, but you get the idea. The first level, Yidak, is like exerting themselves to get what they need.

And then by the time they get there, it's disgust. The second one, they don't have to exert themselves. The stuff is there, but they can't ingest.

They can't get it in. Frustrating. The third one is they can actually eat it, but it's suffering.

It burns. It makes them sick. And yet they're compelled to keep eating.

Do you see? The seeds ripening as they just keep trying again. Oh, maybe this. Oh, maybe this.

No pain, maybe this. No pain. All the one seed that projected us into ourselves in a realm like that.

And then all the other seeds of stinginess, not giving when we could have a third one. Jealousy ripening into the details of that life and Yidak life lasts a long time. So they're not in a world where the sun's going around or the earth is going around the sun and counting years.

They're in a world where they're driven by these seeds. So until all of those jealousy, stinginess, not giving seeds are used up, you're in this realm. Or until something happens that that being has an instant of compassion for another suffering hungry ghost.

And that would pop them out. They can see each other. Apparently hungry ghosts on similar levels can see each other.

But it's like how beings don't see hungry ghosts. Humans don't see hungry ghosts. Where are the hungry ghost realms? There are specific locations, they say.

But there are also is a version of hungry ghost realm that is like right around here, us, that we just don't see. But there are prayer practices that we can do. Uh, for instance, having to do with our eating, that we can set aside like a piece of our food and direct it to them.

And some of them, you know, who have enough goodness inside their mindstream seeds, they can actually partake of our food and without painting them without but, you know, the impact, you could think about how that could actually work and help them and help us. Okay, so they say that one day in a yidak world is like 500 human days. And that no, I'm sorry, one day is like a month in human days.

And it takes about 500 days to to burn off all your hungry ghost seeds. I don't know how they get to a figure like that. 500 500 yidak days would be about 15,000 of human days.

So that's how long a yidak lifespan would be, you know, give or take depending on their seeds. 15,000 are days. Anyway, to burn up you said your llama? Yeah, before they exit their yidak lifetime.

I was thinking that when you offer when you leave behind a piece of food right in your plate and you offer it, although you know, they're suffering, and they might not be able, you know, to enjoy it. What would be the state of mind or the motivation? You know, to plant the right seeds, because I don't want them to suffer anymore. I don't want them to their tummy to hurt.

Yeah, I know. I find it a little bit difficult. But they say that our one is that we, we make contact with those beings then, in the sense that we will sooner or later be able to take them to their end of their suffering forever, by our intention to give them a little speck of pleasure in the face of their yidak experience, whether our giving them trying to give them that pleasure actually gives them that pleasure, we don't know.

And then but given the right emptiness, understanding the emptiness of them and the emptiness of the food and the emptiness of us, we can be saying, you know, may my effort here be something ripening out of them, that shortens their life as a yidak, that, you know, gives a connection that I can take them to ultimate happiness, very similar to doing the emptiness of the three spheres with the piece of bread to the bird, right? It's just perpetuating their suffering. But we're doing it with this emptiness of the three sphere state of mind. So it would be the same.

Thank you. Okay. As we learn and train ourselves to live by karma, we'll reach a point where we can, like, feel those karmic seeds imprinting, you know, not the 65 per instant, necessarily.

But, you know, when we do, you know, we're on automatic pilot, and all of a sudden, we do or say something, and instantly, you feel that, like, oh, man, right, that instant regret is so useful. But it's because we have this, like awareness of like, man, that just impacted my mind in a way that I don't want. And it comes from studying all these correlations and getting really familiar with this process of, right, the perception moment by moment is our ripening, ripening, ripening.

And our reaction to that ripening creates the seed that will be the new ripening sometime in the future. All right. In Buddha's time, someone must have said, you know, how, like, how, how, how, how, how frequent is it that someone goes to a lower realm? And Buddha, you know, took his finger and wiped it across the rock he was sitting on.

And he said, see the amount of dust on my finger? Yeah. That's the number of beings who will go to a higher realm. Do you see the amount of dust in the whole world, in the whole of existence? That's the amount of beings who's going to a lower realm.

Scary. You don't share that with a brand new group. Like that Buddhism, it's a real downer.

You know, they make it so clear that you're just going to be a hell realm being or a hungry ghost. And not till we understand enough to hear a teaching like this and have it be motivating instead of, I give up. So please don't give up.

So bottom line, a yidak lifetime grows out of perceptions of ourselves having not given when we could have, being stingy, or being jealous, or having done any one of those non-virtues with medium strength, one of those seeds from any of those behaviors. If it's the one that is the one that moves at the moment of actual death, when the mind leaves the dead body, that ripens into a life of perceptions of not being able to get enough, not being able to get any kind of satisfaction. And they don't get out until their seeds for that lifetime wear out.

Same as that's how human life ends. Seeds for this human life wear out. Seeds for hell realm wear out.

Can you get out sooner than your seeds wearing out? Theoretically you could, but the likelihood is remote because you're suffering too much to care about anybody else's suffering. That's the beauty of human realm. We can come to care about somebody else's suffering.

We can come to care about our own suffering such that it will change our behavior. Other realms can't do that. Even the animal realms.

Yes, they care about their young. They care about the other members of their herd, for instance, but they're incapable of choosing a different reaction than the one that's driven by their seeds of being the animal that they are. Humans have this ability to choose morality, choose virtue, to assess and choose virtue.

It's something unique about human realm. Let's shift to animals. In our immediate world, of course, there's billions of people suffering and we do Tonglen, right? Is it wise to do Tonglen on the Yidaks or not? Yes, one can.

Okay, thank you. Be sure that your mindset of why you're doing it and what you're doing with Tonglen is accurate, right? You're not taking their hunger. You're not taking their, right? You're using your Tonglen to try to help them stop their suffering, gain the wisdom that will bring them relief.

Okay, thank you. But I think, I don't know, in the matter of suffering, I guess they're suffering more than a human, right? Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.

So it would be wise to do Tonglen to them because they're suffering more. They are, they are. Thank you.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, take the worst imaginable poor person, you know, in our world. For me, the image of the trash heaps in India and the people, you know, the women are dressed in their saris and they're digging through the stinky, awful trash heap to try to find things either to eat or to take, to sell to somebody else.

I mean, just imagine how miserable that is in the heat, in the humidity and the, oh my gosh. And like multiply that suffering beyond comprehension. And that's a Yidak experience.

And the small children, they are also Lama. I know. Horrible.

The kids, oh, they just break my heart too. Yeah, me too. So that multiplied is Yidak life.

Okay. So let's switch to animal, animal realm or animal existence. We're going through the different desire realm beings.

Now we started with hungry ghosts. Let's talk about animals. The animal realm, for some reason, humans can perceive them.

It appears that they can perceive humans, although their perception is probably very different, right? When the praying mantis runs away from you, we think, oh, they saw me and big old me scared them. I'm a giant, but you know, praying mantis just sees, sees something there that's coming at them. That's dangerous.

And they run away. So, so there is interplay between human realm and animal realm. That's more perceptible, more concrete, if you will, from the human side, then we have with hell beings that we have with Yidaks, right? We can see animals is what I'm trying to say.

That's driven by our seed. It's driven by their seeds. So there is one general cause and two specific causes that will land a mind stream into an animal existence.

If at the end of their previous life, these one of these seeds were to ripen, the general cause for life as an animal is doing any of those 10 non-virtues to a lesser extent. So we spoke before lesser extent, 10 non-deeds is doing them accidentally, doing them with an unclear intention, doing them towards a not powerful karmic object and or doing them repeatedly. So those kind of all go together in our experience, you know, things that we do accidentally, we don't do them repeatedly as in, you know, intentionally doing them over and over again.

But just by way of saying, oh, I accidentally stepped on that ant, it may meant that I wasn't being aware enough to not step on it, which means my intention isn't clear moment by moment, which means I probably will do it again and again, unless I tune up my intention to be more careful. So it really this doing the non-virtues to a lesser extent reflects a mindset that's, you know, not having a higher level of concern about our moment by moment behavior and its impact on our own mind, which then is going to reflect the impact on that outer world. So when we do any of the 10 non-virtues without all those factors that make a karmic seed more powerful, those seeds right left to grow and any one of those seeds being the projecting karma will land us in some version of an animal lifetime animal realm.

And when we think of all the different kinds of animals, wow, the different karmic fill ins, right can be so different. It's a hugely different experience to be, you know, lion king of the jungle. And I don't know what's the most passive, a sloth, right versus a fish versus a slug versus a mosquito.

All of them are animal realm, but then these finer details about what kind of animal and what kind of experience you have as that animal. Okay. So there are two specific causes, the seed for which could take us to animal realm.

The first one is to consistently repeatedly break minor rules. So the general cause was that doing the 10 non-virtues to a lesser extent, this is just a bit more specific. Like we let our life is like willing to tell those habitual little white lies.

And the little white lie is making the seeds to be lied to and cheated and et cetera. And the fact that they were consistent and repeated, meaning we're not intentionally choosing that behavior. We're just doing it on automatic pilot.

And if that seed ripens our next life, it ripens us into a being that's forced to be on automatic pilot, right? It's forced to be driven by, you know, in intuition, that's not the right word, instinct, right? Animals are driven by instinct, not by moral choice making. So the extent to which we are operating on instinct is planting seeds and instinct for an ignorant human would be protect myself, protect my loved ones, get what I need, right? It's selfish driven. So we can see why instinct seeds would send us into an animal realm instead of instinct sending us right into Buddhahood until our instinct is wisdom, compassion, emptiness.

When that's our instinct, we are Buddha. So repeated, habitual, breaking minor rules. Then the second specific cause for animal is to do a great many minor wrong deeds.

But then they say such as disrespecting others. I don't know why they don't just say a great many disrespecting others, but I think it's because we do a certain deed because we disrespect somebody. We would, we would, we would withhold, I don't know what, how could I use that? It would be out of disrespect for someone that we'd be willing to put our selfishness above their need, right? We're just not recognizing that their need is as important as ours, or maybe even more important.

And we choose our need, our want over theirs. So that kind of disrespect, those seeds ripen us into a kind of being who is disrespected by others. And it's like, well, how do lions disrespect the wildebeest? Well, because they hunt them down and eat them.

That's pretty disrespectful. No, it's not. They're just taking care of their families.

That's what nature does. Right. What would happen if a pride of lions decided to respect life? They'd become vegetarian.

Yeah. And then they'd die and they'd get out of their animal life. Wouldn't they? What about the mosquito? Right.

It's awareness. I don't know what a mosquito awareness is, but it's hungry and it needs a place to lay its eggs. And so it does what it has to do.

And it doesn't matter whether you're a human or a goat, right? If it can get your blood to eat, it'll do it. And so in a sense, animals are being disrespected and they are perpetuating that disrespect. I'll eat anything I can get a hold of.

And that's what it is to survive, driven by the seeds that got them there. So it's like, how do you get out of an animal realm? Burn off all those seeds, but you seem to be making them as well. We don't go into what kind of seeds do you make while you're in all of these realms? And how come that doesn't just perpetuate it constantly? I don't know the answer, but it takes a long time to get out of these realms that perpetuate the very seeds that put us there.

Until something happens that we either burn off those seeds, or that animal mind gets influenced in such a way that it in fact does do a different behavior than its instinct would have made it. They're perpetuating themselves as animal, probably from lifetime to lifetime, even. So, you know, we have handy service dogs now, used to just be seeing eye dogs.

You know, this dog gets trained to help its human, you know, incredible, different seeds than just straight up dog behavior. They, pets, right, have this unique existence. It's probably really good karma, like good karma, bad karma.

Do you remember karma class? There's the good planting, bad ripening. I can't remember the actual words, but it's a bad karma to get projected into an animal life, but it's a great karma to be Roxanna's dog, right? Her grand dog who gets to come and visit. So, right, all the realms have that, the bad karma that puts you there, and bad karma that's in there would be that's mongrel dog in India, you know, everybody just kicks it, versus Roxanna's grand dog, you know, who gets to come visit and play in Mexico.

So, that's in all the different realms. Ours too. Oh, I'm almost out of time.

Really fast. For example, when a fly gets into our house, I go, oh, fly. I don't kill it, but I go, a fly.

So, better yet, I develop compassion because of those seeds that she continues being annoying or, you know, perpetuating its cycle. Yeah. Yeah.

You don't make becoming fly seed by going ish fly. But we do perpetuate circumstances that are annoying and rejecting. Exactly.

Exactly. So, there are different, you know, kinds of animals, all of them have their unique, right, karmic ripening circumstance. And so, there are animals in the wild that are on survival mode, of course.

And then there's the animals that have the honor, they say, of being in greater contact with humans. And some of those animals are in service to humans in the sense that we put them to work, which is a good karma and a bad karma, because theoretically, we feed them and take care of them, but we're cruel to them, making them work so hard. And then there are the animals that have the goodness to be somebody's pet.

And wow, you know, fed, nurtured, pampered, loved, taken care of. Also great karma for being in an animal realm. But all of them, because they are ripening animal being seeds, they are all driven by that instinct of eat or be eaten.

So, their experience is this constant alert. Am I safe? Am I not? How do I get my, right, where do I get my food? And it's constant in that animal realm, even Roxanna's grand dogs have it, right? They will startle, they will bark, they will misbehave when they feel they need to in order to protect themselves, their people, in order to get what they need. It's instinct, right? Even the best trained lassie dog has that instinct.

Scriptures say there are 360 million species of animals on our planet. Google says there's 950,000. But they, Google says there are 950,000 described species, which implies there are more species that have not been described.

But how can you count a species that's not been described? Which is probably why they don't count them. But an enlightened being, right? 360 million different species, not different individuals. Then 80,000 of those species live in or on a human body.

Yeah, that's kind of a clue. Also, in terms of, wait a minute, this thing I call my body, it's somebody else's entire universe. I'm providing a whole life, right? I'm providing for these beings.

It's like this doorway to a different relationship with this thing we call our body and those beings that live here. Who's responsible for them? They're responsible for their own karma, but I'm feeding them. I don't know what they do during sleep.

Probably they party and that's why I wake up so tired. But I'm responsible for all those beings. That's a little bit close to Bodhisattva, isn't it? I don't know.

It's wild. So then the scripture says, and all of those animals, they live in two places. This is the Jingnan Nepal and will be done.

Jingnan means warm water and Nepal means middle. So somehow that together says the vast number of animals live in the ocean. And I think science is just coming to learn that, that the diversity of species in the ocean outshines the diversity of species on land.

And we're just really learning about the diversity of species on land and how vast it is. But in the ocean is like, that's where karmic life takes, or animal life takes place. The other place animal life takes place is spread out all over the planet, Katorwa, spread out all over the planet.

So land, air, animals and water animals is what they're saying. So if the teachings on emptiness is true, Geshe Michael said, if everything is projections of our minds forced by karmic results, then it is plausible that we could become when any one of those beings in an instant, simply by a shift in projections. End of life, bardo, animal, three shifts, bing, bing, bing is all it takes.

It's a miracle. It hasn't happened yet. Yeah.

We just celebrated, you know, my birthday, then Smati's birthday. And, you know, it used to be like birthday, no big deal. You know, who cares about it? And now it's like, whoa, I made it to 72.

It's like a miracle. You know, outlived my parents are like, wow. It just I have this whole different attitude.

It's like another year. Yay. Instead of e-gads, right? How did I get to be 70 years old? Okay.

Yes, Roxana. Like people who have cancer, those are like bad living organisms in our system that are attacking us, right? Yeah, yeah. So it's like we purify.

Could those bad living organisms be nice and stop attacking us? Yeah, yeah. You know, I don't know that the cancer is a separate living organism. It's our own cells that have gotten miss misdirected and are no longer following the rules and are deciding they're going to take over, right? To me, I think of cancer as a mutiny.

No. And so like, I work out this, this thinking about, like, I personally haven't had it, but someone who has it, and we're talking about it karmically, helping them design a method of visualizing and helping that rather than fight the enemy to recognize, well, these are karmic seeds. When I, I was one who took over and right.

You could, you could take that to an extent and then do a purification practice. It wouldn't take just one, you'd have to do it repeatedly. And then see how you could turn it around and rejoice in when you did the opposite and do the opposite now to help whatever cancer treatment you were doing work.

Right? Because it's not a given. Chris, you have something to say, I can see it. Well, I was thinking of more like the microbiome, right? Those are all of the creatures.

And if you feed them plants, they make all of the chemistry that we need, like dopamine and serotonin and all that stuff. But if you feed them too much, you know, standard American diet, then the creatures you have living in, you can't make the right chemistry for you to be happy and healthy. Yeah.

So it's interesting that if you don't nurture those creatures inside of you, they can nurture you. Yeah. Nice.

Very nice. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. If we think symbolically about our health issues, and then apply these different karmic correlations, it can be a really useful doorway in into how to help one heal. Right to get down into that deeper meaning of what we're manifesting.

What's the name of that woman who is so good at the, the affirmations and pointing out, you know, left shoulder pain means blah, blah, blah, in terms of a mental affliction. I can't think of her name right now. She's so famous.

Anyway, yeah. So remember that being we want to be able to help. We learn stuff that we will use sooner or later to help them stop their suffering forever.

And that's an extraordinary goodness. So please be happy with yourself. Think of this goodness of like a beautiful glowing gemstone that you can hold in your hands.

Recall your own precious holy guide. See how happy they are with you. They see how you're connecting the dots.

And they're so pleased with you. Feel your gratitude to them, your reliance upon them. Ask them to please, please stay close.

To continue to guide you, help you inspire you, and then offer them this gemstone of goodness. See them accepted and blessed. And they carry it with them right back into your heart.

See them there, feel them there. Their love, their compassion, their wisdom. It feels so good.

We want to keep it forever. And so we know to share it by the power of the goodness that we have just done. May all beings complete the collection of merit and wisdom and thus gain the two ultimate bodies that merit and wisdom may.

So use that, those three long exhales to share this goodness with that one person, to share it with everyone you love, to share it with every existing being everywhere. See them all filled with loving kindness, filled with why to be filled with loving kindness. And may it be so.

Okay, thank you so much for the opportunity to share. This is Friday. I will see you Monday morning if not before.

Thank you for doing your homeworks. Thank you. Have a great weekend.

Vocabulary Class 4

• De Lam the Path to Bliss (Ease)

• lobsang chukyi gyeltsen 1st Panchen Lama (1567-1662), author of Del Lam

• rinchen bangdzu Chest of Jewels

• ngulchu (quicksilver) dharma bhadra (1772-1851), author of The Chest of Riches, commentary on Del Lam

• duk ngel druk the 6 kinds of suffering

• ngepa mepa 1. nothing is fixed

•  ngom mi shepa 2. no satisfaction

• yang yang lu ndorwa 3. to shed our body again & again

• yang yang nyingtsam jorwa 4. being reborn again & again

•  yang yang to-men du gyurwa 5. high to low again & again

• drok mepa 6. no companion

For the recording welcome back we are ACI course 8 class 4 it's May 12th 2025 let's gather our minds here as we usually do please bring your attention to your breath until you hear from me again now bring to mind that being who for you is a manifestation of ultimate love ultimate compassion ultimate wisdom see them there with you gazing at you with their unconditional love for you smiling at you with their holy great compassion their wisdom radiating from them encompassing you in its light and then we hear them say "Ring to mind someone you know who's hurting in some way feel how much you would like to be able to help them recognize that the worldly ways we try fall short how wonderful it will be when we can also help in some deep and ultimate way a way through which they will go on to stop their distress forever deep down we know this is possible deep down we know this is what we're meant to do meant to become in understanding even a little about the marriage of karma and emptiness we get glimpses as to how it's possible how it's actually inevitable in fact I invite you to grow that wish into a longing into an intention even into a determination if you feel ready then turn your mind back to your precious holy being we know that they know what we need to know yet what we need to do yet what we need to learn yet become one who can help this other in this deep and ultimate way and so we ask them please please please teach us that and they are so happy that we've asked of course they agree our gratitude arises we want to offer them something exquisite and so we think of the perfect world they are teaching us how to create we imagine we can hold it in our hands and we offer it to them following it with our promise to practice what they teach us using our refuge prayer to make our promise here is the great earth filled with fragrant incense and covered with the blanket of flowers the great mountain four lands wearing the jewel of the sun and the moon in my mind I make them the paradise of a Buddha and offer it all to you by this deed may every living being experience the pure world i go for refuge until I am enlightened to the Buddha the Dharma and the highest community through the merit that I do in sharing this class and the rest may we reach Buddhood for the sake of every living being I go for refuge until I am enlightened to the Buddha the Dharma and the highest community through the merit that I do in sharing this class and the rest may we reach Buddhahood for the sake of every living being i go for refuge until I am enlightened to the Buddha the Dharma and the highest community through the merit that I do in sharing this class and the rest may all beings reach their total awakening for the benefit of every single other [Music] so today is Wesuk for anyone who celebrates for Hinana traditions it's a really special day and they they say um this this special ceremony happens in a deep deep secret valley in the Himalaya mountains that only the high masters and some practitioners know about and they all they gather there and Lord Maitraa you know goes he he oversees the ceremony and the the highest ones under his direction do this like I don't know they they've they get in these different positions that form different shapes and as he's saying you know certain verses and certain prayers he's holding this staff and there's a vase of water and this this group of beings are shapeshifting this thing as Lord Maitraa is doing his invocation and just as the moon is coming to its full not rising but you know the moment of the full moon invokes Shaki Buddha and Shakimuni Buddha appears in the sky and you know huge giving blessings and everybody there you know the ascended everybody like hits their face to the earth but it's like surely they peak so they get to see him you know and this blessing goes out over all the world that Lord Buddha appears and it doesn't last how do you spell it i mean what what is Wes S A K sometimes v E S A K and you know it's pronounced Wessick somehow a W and a V mixed together wessick and you know I don't know how long the apparition stays it's not an apparition it's Lord Buddha and then the the water in the vase of course receives the blessing and they distribute the water everybody has a party and then goes home and it happens again another year so theoretically I don't mean theoretically that's happening uh and I don't understand that thing about the moment of the full moon but it's got it's happening 4 hours from now like in our time zone the moment of the full moon is 9:56 a.m so that means wherever in the world 9:56 a.m is for us that's happening everywhere so it's like I like to tune in and imagine you know maybe I could spy on it or maybe I could be there or something and anyway so it's 5:00 a.m here 6 7 8 9 4 hours and 45 minutes woohoo uh so that is not from ACI right that's I learned about that in Theosophy so anyway it's a fun thing for us to be doing class on Wessick like a merit multiplier day it's one of those days okay so last class we learned about uh hungry ghosts and animals and we were studying from uh not Abiid Dharma Kosha but from the Tenrim Chammo by Geolpa from the 11th 12th century does that mean 1100s i get confused about that and then that book inspired Jets on Copus Lam Chamo so we're but we're actually the information that we got for last class was from the great book on the depths of the teachings by Gish Dolumpa and we learned that we learned lots but one of the things we learned was that there's one general and three specific causes that might make us take birth as a hungry ghost if you recall and the general cause was due making the karma of having by having done any one of the 10 nom virtues at medium degree and then the three specific causes would be a karmic seed planted by way of failing to give the three kinds of giving material things protection and dharma the second specific was seeds planted out of possessiveness and the third would be seeds planted out of jealousy and again the the idea is the more jealousy seeds right we've got in our mind the more possible it is that a jealousy seed could be the one that projects at the moment of death meaning in the chaos of death jealousy is is inside there as well the only reason it would be if we had a habit of being jealous in that whole lifetime it you know there's no reason to think that would go away as we're going through dying um so so again it's not like one instant of jealousy and you're headed for hungry ghost it it that seed has to be the one that is the projection karma at the moment of death so the more of them we have the more likely that can be that's the point then your quiz asked name one general and two specific causes for birth as an animal and the general caused any of the tendon virtues done to a lesser extent like meaning by accident by carelessness by not really uh caring about our behavior not carelessness being not caring what happens to the other and then carelessness about not caring about our own morality like just general okay so 10 non virtues to the lesser expense extent and the two specific causes breaking minor rules of morality repeatedly and then the second one was doing a great number of wrong deeds such as disrespecting others so I think the important piece is the disrespect because the the relationship that animals have with humans or that humans have with animals is that they really are disrespected you know and so we're willing to use them in all different kinds of ways so what will land us as an animal experience is making the seeds that would ripen as us in the position of being the one disrespected okay all right so this class moves on then to speak to the existence of humans and pleasure beings recall that we are studying death in the realms of existence in part so that we know who the who what beings are needing our help and in part to become more aware of what our what our future could hold to help motivate us like either way this course is supposed to motivate us and you know I don't know I lose students at this course because it's anyway kind of hard to get inspired anyway so in Abid Dharma Kosha it apparently goes into the specifics of geography and the different kinds of humans on different continents remember the 37 pile mandelola and there are the four continents and each of those continents has a different version of what's human still human but you know not these kind and you know it probably would be really interesting but Gela chose he felt it was more important for us to understand the sufferings that are unique to humans and pleasure beings So he's shifted over to um the doom text by our hero the first ponchan llama languki gelson so let me get our vocabulary up here let's make us bigger [Music] down and across there we go first punch and llama that's his title lobanguki gelen that's his name his dates 1567 to 1662 uh panchen means uh mahab pandita great master the Tibetan for great ma master uh llama means high one of course and then loang pure mind it means he's in the lineage of jets kapa chuki gelson chuki means um darn Dharma one of the dharma and Gelson is a victory banner so you know when you when your army wins the war you march through your new place right holding this flag and then you stick the flag in the ground and that's our victory banner so his name is Pure Mind Banner Victory Banner of the Dharma we've heard how extraordinary he is and he was the first then of a line of reincarnate beings and the the system of Tibet's um Dalai Lama was happened was just coming into being and first Punchin Lama was the one who took over from the Daly Lama when that Daly Lama passed and then he helped train the next one and then from that came the system of when the Daly Lama is in the you know Daly Lama has withdrawn emanation but the new one isn't old enough to take over the ponchin lama would lead and then when the new Dalai Lama was ready to take over the ponchin lama steps back so there is a lineage of ponchan llamas uh until recently so here's this one we know how extraordinary he is we've heard his amazing stories his text day lom we know as path day means uh easy or blissful so they call this text the the easy path or the path to bliss and we studied that text for the first year in diamond way course at diamond mountain it was the first year of our tantric training was to study this textbook and then you know recently Jigme and Galce taught the dam now dam can be taught as a sutra teaching and it can be taught as a diamond way teaching and and it's this bridge right it's it's a sutra teaching where you get glimpses into diamond way which is why Gisha Michael asked them to teach it last year so maybe you've studied that text maybe not doesn't matter if you go on with me we will someday but here we're getting uh The information from the dalum that Gisha felt was more important for us for understanding our human reality and the reality of uh pleasure beings pleasure beings of the desire realm not the form realm not the formless realm desire realm pleasure beings it's funny because we would think I'm human i know all about being human and first punch in LMA you know he says actually there are six kinds of sufferings that humans have that most humans don't understand about themselves and about their other humans and that without that understanding we won't stay motivated enough to do what we need to do to stop suffering right we say "I want to be a Buddhist so I can stop the suffering of all sentient beings." Well if you don't understand how they're suffering how are you going to stop it so we really do need to master all the different kinds of suffering and of course our heart doesn't want to do that like I suffer enough i don't need to I don't need to feel what it feels like to have a kidney stone to know that I want to stop kidney stone pain for everybody but what if you'd never heard of kidney stones you know it wouldn't be on your radar screen to help people stop having kidney stones if you don't know anything about them so there's six kinds of sufferings that humans have that we apparently don't know about meaning we don't recognize that they're suffering okay so I got ahead of myself we're also learning from a commentary to the dalam called ring chin bangu renchin means jewels and bangu means chest so ring chin banju is chest of jewels like your treasure chest right and it was written by someone named Nulra Dharma Badra 1772 to 1851 notra dharma badra is a llama that in d in our diamond way tradition we will get very familiar with and he he wrote texts and instructions and sad uh he he's a great great practitioner nulu means quick silver Mercury so often he's just called quicks in in the English translations so it's helpful to know when Gasha used that text to teach this class in the mid 1990s that was the first time wrench and bangu had been translated into English of course now it's old right but still it's it's not like you know it was never published so that people are familiar with it so it really is special in your reading to have access to that [Music] so Deam says in order to understand humans and the human world we need to understand dural we know is suffering so the six sufferings when we say I want to stop the suffering of all sentient beings when it comes to humans these are the six sufferings we are saying we want to stop so we need to know them gashelist said if you were to say you had a friend or coworker and you're talking about I don't know what what you do in your off time and you say oh I study and practice Buddhism and they say well why do you do that we would probably say because all life is suffering you know and we know what we mean by that if we were having the discussion between us we wouldn't have to explain it but this other person is likely to say you know come on i don't I don't I don't agree with that i'm having a good day you know this tea tastes good my spouse is great my kids are great most of the time you know come on life's good mostly and and we would say no it's all suffering it's either obvious suffering or the suffering of change or pervasive suffering you know you're going to lose it all you're going to get old you're going to get sick you're going to die in some order of that and they might say you know well it hasn't happened yet you know I'm healthy i'm young i can do stuff i'm okay you're so obsessed with suffering that's your problem you know just look on the bright side panchan Lama says human suffering is harder to be a to understand harder to be aware of than the other sufferings we've been talking about we don't want to admit it one thing and and it the the suffering is more subtle then for pleasure beings they have these same six only it's even harder to understand because they're they're um the the goodness of the deep meditation that planted the seed that pushed them into their lifetime as a pleasure being is a seed that's ripening pleasure pleasure pleasure pleasure but it is subtly still having these six sufferings that only become obvious when the seeds for all that pleasure are are are wearing out like they are wearing out but running out and then when they run out in this last short period of time v these sufferings kick in really fast and then they lose it all and down they fall [Music] neither h most humans nor suffering beings or pleasure beings excuse me are suffering moment to moment like the other realms are which is why they are a considered a higher rebirth and is why they are a dead end unless we do something special with our human life which we're not able to do from a pleasure being life because by the time you're aware of the suffering that you would want to stop you don't have enough time to do anything and during the time that you're having so much pleasure you're not aware that you're having any kind of suffering there's no motivation to do anything to stop future suffering so really human the human realm is the perfect realm for our for stepping onto and you using our time uh for a spiritual life that guides us in this method of uh stopping all that suffering okay and what we'll learn towards the end of this course is and our window of opportunity is short and anyway so what are these six sufferings of human and pleasure beings one two three four five six okay first one means fixed as in you know attached and then map means not so the first suffering of humans and pleasure beings is that nothing is fixed meaning things shift so unpredictably no one minute Sally's my best friend then something happens and all of a sudden we're fighting and hating each other very likely we've all had some kind of similar experience things are constantly shifting they're never stable we want them to be stable we want something to be reliable and you know we don't want things to be fixed like you can't they're stuck to the floor and you can't ever move or change them but we want things to be predictable and reliable and you know we want some sameness we expect that when we fall in love with somebody we're going to stay in love with them forever and we know from experience even if we do stay in love with them that love changes and we have hard days and good days and in the end we lose them either we die or they die or something happens and right we stop loving them and it's constant because of the the way in which the that karma is made it's it's right karma shifts karma karma karma karma karma 65 per instant no wonder nothing's fixed it doesn't have to be a suffering that things are not fixed but it is right as humans we want things predictable reliable and they're not every desirable thing will wear out it will change it will go from something that gives us pleasure to not giving us pleasure anymore because that object and the pleasure we think it gives us is all being projected it's all results of karmic seeds those seeds ripen and pass ripen and pass ripen and pass there's not an unlimited amount of those seeds for your your mother's favorite teapot and so when my mother's favorite teapot that I keep that I find so precious gets dropped or broken I'm get upset oh my mother's favorite teapot i It reminded me of her it's like I don't have one but I'm just using the example we we expect and want things to stay the same and of course they don't they can't even if we didn't understand about karma we know things are impermanent we know that teapot's going to die someday it's going to something's going to happen to it or me so and how do I know that because it happened to my mom right it was her favorite teapot and now she's gone so it's like it's so obvious but we somehow like suffer from things not being fixed and don't and we're not even aware of it right that we have this need for things to be reliable and they're not and that's a human suffering and pleasure being suffering but they're not aware of it till the last few days theist says you know when we when we are experiencing something that is wonderful let's call it another person oh they're so wonderful and we're ripening results of our own past having been wonderful for another when our seeds change and they're not so wonderful anymore we are ripening seeds from past times when we were not so wonderful to somebody else they don't change our karmic seeds making them is what changes that makes our experience of the other go from oh they're so wonderful to I don't want any part of them or whatever you know in between napa same thing is happening in what we call old age youth is a ripening of goodness of virtue of goodness and when that goodness wears out the ripening is old age it's not that we are young and then we are old it's our seeds are shifting so we can't stay the same because our seeds are always different second one here altogether means we can't get satisfaction and it always brings to mind right everybody's mind that song right I can't get no uhuh satisfaction i don't know everybody knows that so it's it's it's it's ex it's exactly what this is trying to convey we see something we want we do something to get it they say once we get it it becomes a part of us and it's like it's not like we're an amoeba you know and my cell phone becomes you know goes into my body but all those things that we own that right are ours they are our our identity extends to include them once we have them and it it's supposed to make us happy that's why we did whatever we did to get the thing is because the thing's going to bring us happiness right otherwise we wouldn't go to the effort to get something so we we go after it in order for it to increase our happiness our pleasure by it becoming a part of our our being right we don't think oh it becomes a part of me but it it does and and yet what we what we then experience is that sooner or later that very thing that was meant to bring us happiness and pleasure doesn't maybe right away right we go to great trouble to get that promotion and then we get the promotion and oh my gosh I hate this drum right it turns out it wasn't what you expected or we go to great trouble great lengths to get that car that we've always wanted and wow it feels so great to have that car and then I don't know how long later 5 years later 10 years later the car breaks down on your way to work it makes you late and you know for 10 years that car gave me great pleasure but all of a sudden it betrayed me you know it became not reliable and so you fix it and a year later it does something else you fix it again right you're this precious car that gave so much pleasure now it's being a source of trouble because of all that time that it was a source of our pleasure we're so sure that it really was the source of our pleasure and then it's like not anymore and we blame it but technically we set into motion that can't be satisfied i mean we never set it into motion it's in it's inherent in the great mistake that colors the process of existence that any thing or other that we reach to as the source of our happiness will will not satisfy us if it seems to at the beginning it's not it that's bringing us excuse me the pleasure if it was the other that is the source of the pleasure then we should be able to rely upon it but then even if it were the source of the pleasure it's wearing out you know any functioning thing which it would be if it's functioning to give me pleasure is going to wear up so even if we're trying to blame it wisely we're still mistaken because the pleasure we're feeling in the moment is not actually related to the object it's related to the ripening of some kind of kindness that we've done in the past and then that object is you know part of the ripening of the of that past goodness seed we can't get satisfied it is human realm pleasure being realm that nothing satisfies us if we think it does it's temporary and when it stops satisfying us it's suffering which means it was always suffering right causing us suffering because we thought the satisfaction we got was coming from it which means we are willing to do stuff that's not very kind to keep it maybe we were willing to do something not so very kind to get it in the first place thinking "Oh it will give me pleasure." If it gives us pleasure right if we lie to get the deal and we get the hat and get to keep the $25 have we had that example in this class i get confused between my two classes that we think every time we wear the hat we're going to be so happy or every time we see the hat we're going to be so happy and when we are happy from seeing the hat we say see the hat makes me happy but we got the hat and we lied to get the hat thinking The lie got me the hat is mistaken because getting the hat is a good thing it had to be a result of some kindness we did not from telling a lie so again karmic understanding shows us these six sufferings very clearly but until we've we are we are like really tuned to things being karmic ripenings and nothing but this can't get any satisfaction we we argue about that no no mostly I am satisfied yeah but mo not mostly isn't satisfied so again our disappointment comes in our expectation that the thing is going to make me happy and then it's supposed to keep making me happy and it doesn't because it never did and meanwhile we made the karma of whatever it is we got it whatever it is we had to do to get it and then we need to continue to make karma to keep it yeah so we can't get any satisfaction it's the nature of our mind and it's constant constant but doesn't have to be which is why we study and practice with our understanding of karmic seeds and our behavior gisha says again Buddhist practice is not about learning how to be a better crap coper you know just cope better with your constant dissatisfaction it's about stopping all of these stopping all of this uh I can't get any satisfaction number three yang we see yang three times here yangyang means again and again again and again and again and again over and over this one luna lon means body and dwa means shed like the snake sheds its skin the human and pleasure being suffering of having to shed our bodies over and over and over well that really is one that like we're not very aware of and it isn't I mean like is it a suffering that we go from life to life to life and it's like yeah it is because it happens so out of control and then what if we don't even believe it does it still happen if we don't believe that there's past and future lifetimes you know it's not about belief but then it's also not about a truth that somebody made made be truth it's a ramification of the process of reality is oh the mind goes on the awareness it it can't it can't stop so it is true that it's a suffering to be forced into a rebirth which is what it would mean to be to take on a new body again and again and of course it's a suffering if that new body isn't necessarily human body suffering to get another human body more suffering to get an animal body even more to get a craving spirit even more to get a hell realm one and still a suffering to get a pleasure being one because it's going to wear out right the the very fact of being forced into rebirth is a suffering but that's not really what this suffering is alluding to says first punch lama um the human suffering here about the body is that while we have our body we go to such great pains to take care of it like it's it's our constant concern to feed it to bathe it to get it to bed on time to rest it when it's tired to pamper it when it's sick and it's like you know until I heard this class a half a dozen times it was like I don't have that relationship with my body right i like whip it into shape i make it do stuff i discipline it but even then it's not like me's over here and my body is here and I'm dealing with it like I would a pet dog you know or something it's just like me and I feed me and right and I right I take care of me in the form of this body because my idea is this is me and with that perception this is me it's sort of first first concern like it's at the front of the line always right i need this i want that i I I even when it's like it's subtle we're talking about subtle human sufferings it's a suffering to have the needs of this be first up on our mind constantly no it's not if I didn't have me in mind constantly I'd walk out in front of traffic you know I'd play on the railroad tracks i wouldn't have any concern about protecting me if this wasn't right up front in my mind constantly that's not a suffering punchin Lama says big mistake to think that way because when this need is the first it means others needs are less important and when others needs are less important I'm willing to think say do stuff to take care of this over and above a need that some other it has and that karma is the karma that makes this thing get old get sick wear out to put its needs over someone else's needs makes suffering and it's hard to grasp that no it would be suffering if I never ate because I gave all the food away that would be a suffering and it's like could any seed of giving food away ever ripen the experience of not having enough to eat but way if I give all my food away I have nothing to eat did giving your food away result in you having nothing to eat do you see how hard karmic seeds are in the moment it appears that way but our our hunger our having nothing to eat now is not related to the giving food away now it's just like so hard to get that in our head cuz by nature giving something away means you don't have it but technically if we didn't have the gap the instant you gave away something would show up you know and you'd give away and show up give away and show up right we can like kind of get a glimpse of what Buddha Paradise is going to be like this outgoing but never you can't say outgoing because there's incoming all at the same time i don't know it's hard so yang luna is that we're willing to do unkindness in order to take care of this thing because our concern for this thing overrides our concern for other and that's a suffering that we don't even recognize is a suffering we think that's normal human behavior it is normal ignorant human behavior and it's a suffering and they call it the suffering of again and again shedding our body because we take the karma with us of what we did to protect this body when we're just going to shed it anyway but it can leave the wrong wrong idea it's not meaning oh just ditch caring for your body because it won't last long if we don't take care of it next one yang Ningome Jora little bug creek just popped out i'm sorry the punch line from the one before in case it didn't come across is we shed these bodies over and over again but we collect negative karma on behalf of the bodies and we don't shed that so yinga ning means um threshold means to go over the threshold it's the term they use for uh being reborn ninga to be to go over the threshold so over and over and over again we go over the threshold meaning we're reborn again and again so first the one before was we shed our bodies over and over the second one we cross the threshold into another life over and over and over again the process the karmic seeds ripening shedding body meaning dying that that process of seeds ripening and technically seeds planting as we're going through it there are energies ripening that are pushing us to this threshold and then there are energies which ripen which protect us over that threshold that that period of to the threshold and over it is bard is the in between death of this life and start of the next one and that that those energies are uh defective they were made in a misunderstood way right a me that exists independent of other factors other that exists independent of other factors and an interaction that brings what comes next all mistaken not mistaken in the sense that what we do is not happening but mistaken in the sense that what we do to get what we want isn't actually what brings us what we want so that this energy this process that pushes us into an a lifetime drives that lifetime and because that energy is changing changing changing it is the energy that drives us into aging and illness in whatever uh order ending in the ripening of end of life ripening of death and so because th the very those very energies that are pushing us by which I mean karmic seeds because all those karmic seeds were planted ignorantly they all are ripening with that ignorant stain and that makes us choose behaviors colored by that ignorant stain which makes us perpetuate the cycle right we all know that and every time we hear it it sinks in a little bit more deeply how that very process is existence and it's not the process that's bad or wrong it's the mistake that believes that what I do in the moment brings what comes next because that's where all our expectations and our disappointments and everything lies is in that belief okay so pushing us into our next life is inevitable by way of the changing nature of these stained seeds that have pushed us into the life that we're losing so to be to come to the end of one life is going to push us into the next one and so that suffering of losing one life and being pushed into another in in un involunt in involuntarily uh is this suffering we have this suffering of being pushed over the threshold into a next life the instant we're born into this life when we get have the goodness to be pushed into a human birth and a human birth that has the circumstances where our our needs are met enough that we're not struggling for survival and those seeds have the goodness to ripen as meeting a spiritual path right that we're attracted you and those seeds have the goodness to uh have the intelligence to understand the path and the goodness to be able to practice the path that that like is this amazing exquisite teeny little window of opportunity a ripening of amazing goodness that we are hopefully replanting some of by way of our study and we are right using up so Gisha always says do something to act on something that you've learned from each class no I wasn't always able to do that but to hear something from class and then immediately act in some way from it helps plant the seeds to keep getting more to learn something new and then set it aside right is is seeds for learning but not using him okay young nam let's take a break stop share pause recording so we have the six sufferings of human and pleasure beings is that there nothing is fixed there's no certainty nothing is ever satisfactory we're never satisfied we shed our bodies over and over and we take with us the karmic seeds of everything we did on behalf of that body we are forced into a rebirth over and over again by way of the seeds that we planted in every moment before since forever we shed the body were forced into rebirth number five yangyang again and again domen dura uh yurwa means change do means high to low high to low high to low high to low high to low so after high comes low and of course after low comes high but the the we would say after low comes high is not a suffering the suffering is after high comes low right meaning we we finally get that promotion and maybe we keep it for the rest of our lives and then we die oh maybe we're in that promotion you know who knows a month a year 10 years and it becomes a pain in the butt or the company changes and we're doing a great job and they still fire us or now you know you're 80 years old doing that job we want a young guy in it right whatever the the karma shifts and we don't keep it so there is this suffering that over and over again the highs turn to lows we get what we want and it we and it changes we lose it and then of course after low comes high something else comes along and we want it we do whatever we think we need to get it maybe we get it and we think "Yay now I'll be happy." And that alone is a suffering isn't it to expect that getting that new new job will be the source of our happiness is it a happiness to get that dream job sure but wisdom says it's only a happiness because we help somebody else get their dream job have their dream job so how am I going to keep this being my dream job use it to help other people's jobs be their dream job so if you're the supervisor in the company right our human habit is I'm gonna get my team to do really well because I want my reputation right i want I want the benefit we can't help it we're not bad no it's not about that it's it's about the misunderstanding that colors the seeds without it we wouldn't be motivated to do anything until what motivates us is our bodhicitta right then we would take that dream job so that we could help each one in member of our team just thrive beyond belief even if it meant somebody in the member of my team would end up getting my dream job like putting putting ourselves out of business because we helped somebody else get so good and it's like come on human nature would be resentful wouldn't it mentored that fellow and then he got my job and I got pushed out of the company I would leave me upset instead of yay right i did such a good job mentoring that person that he got better than me it's it's hard it's a human suffering not to be able to rejoice in that after high comes low why does it have to be that way because what we do to get to the high isn't always so kind if we did nothing but kindness to bring about that high state the pleasurable state if we did nothing but kindness to bring that about would it wear out i mean technically if our kindness was not imbued with wisdom it would still wear out but in order to do nothing but kindness we would have to have a pretty high level of wisdom because life throws at us circumstances where it's really hard to be acting from the level of kindness that would be the kind of seed planting that would contribute to that high not ever wearing out in a human perception highs wear out but not because there's something about great jobs that wear out it's because of the seed ripening that that great job turns to a not such great job when our seeds are always colored with wisdom compassion and love let's call those three different things although they're not the seeds we plant with that color of our mind are somehow seeds they say seeds that don't wear out but my own explanation to myself and I'm not sure it's correct is that they those seeds are so instantly perpetuated that it's as if they never wear out you know as your Buddha you your emanation being is instantly replanting compassion love and wisdom as experiences are happening so it's like we have that long gap as omnisient beings there is no gap so you're ripening and planting simultaneously so things don't wear out and that means we are perceiving all existing things in all times at all times right it's still seed shifting shifting shifting but they're being perpetuated I believe so this high to low high to low high to low high to low it is a human suffering that we don't notice doesn't have to be But it characterizes human last one number six dro Mikba uh Dro means companion mapa is there is none right so this six suffering is we have no companion and we might say that what that what that that alludes to is at death right we go through death alone doesn't matter how many people are at your bedside we'll hear it more specifically as the as we're going through the experience that we called dying the brain function is breaking down and we our our karmic seed experience is that our ability to think think through something is riding on brain function and so as brain function breaks down that ability to have a coherent thought to understand what's going on to experience things in a way that makes sense is breaking down and our our faculty of seeing breaks down our faculty of smelling etc it's all breaking down and the experience of the one going through it it's just chaos and there's there is no awareness of the people around you're all by yourself not like me surani all by myself but the mind the the subject side the me is like right and it's it's terrifically frightening and painful so okay you know in those moments of dying that's a human and pleasure being suffering but this goes beyond that it says no actually in every instant of human and pleasure being life we are technically alone and it's like you know I guess so because our own perspective is always unique to us and we really can't share it right we could have an identical twin that we live with for our whole life and still we would have different opinions we would see a friend the pen unique to each of us every experience is unique to each one of us and in that way we are alone we really can't share um and then deep deeper yet in this suffering is that we alone make and carry and ripen the karmic seeds of what we think do and say and we want so desperately for somebody else to be able to take our seeds help me even like even as we're growing our bodhicitta we want so desperately to be able to take somebody's seeds and help them feel better and it's a suffering not to be able to do that like have you felt that been around somebody that you you know you can see so clearly the the mis the mistake the mistaken perception that they're having in a situation that they're suffering from so badly and it's like you wish you could just like I can just show you if I could just right if I could just take those seeds you would right this would all be over for you and we just can't there's nothing we and say there's nothing we can do but be there for them right it's like it hurts compassion is painful from a human perspective because we want so badly to help and whatever we try maybe it'll help maybe it won't even if it does it'll be temporary it hurts to love so much it hurts to have that much compassion which is what drives us to you know I've got to reach that state where I can know exactly where I can be exactly what they need right that's our emanation being is we be for them so why am I talking about that meba no companion means we alone carry our karma technically We are our karma and nothing but which means nobody not even Buddha can take or fix our our karmic pool we have to do it ourselves we get to do it ourselves we have the power to do it ourselves but then it's our responsibility to do it ourselves so our morality is our responsibility and technically once we're on this spiritual path our morality is our sole responsibility others morality is not our responsibility and and that's where many there we like we tend to go through this stage in our growing wisdom it's like whoa I have the answer to everybody's suffering you know if everybody just knew this we would all behave so much better and everybody's suffering would stop and so we turn our mind to other people's behavior and we say you know if you stop doing that and you do this you'd be so much happier you know and do you remember when you were a teenager and your parents said "Don't do that do this be sure to do this." And as a teenager it's like "Tell me what to do." Right same for when we impose our level of morality on somebody else it's probably not going to be received very well until they're the one who's saying "Wow can you help me with something?" Then they give us this window of opportunity but until then our tendency to impose our belief and understanding and use of morality on somebody else goes sour their morality is not our responsibility what we see them doing is our seeds we don't change our seeds by going to them and saying "You've got to stop lying right we change our seeds by setting examples such that they finally ask our opinion about something and then we have the doorway to make suggestions to help we alone are the makers keepers and experiences of our karma that that that doesn't seem like that's a suffering it's a suffering from a human perspective because we want so desperately for somebody else to fix it for us you know that's why we go to the doctor they are going to fix it for us and guess what sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't right because they can't fix it for us they can only they are only serving as the vehicle of our karmic ripenings it's a suffering to have this expectation that somebody else is there for us somebody else can fix it somebody else can help us can other people help us can appear that way if we've helped others yeah so yes we have other people around us this does not mean we are the only real person in our world that's not what this means at all it means we are the one solely responsible for everything that we experience and when we don't understand that that's when it's a suffering do you see technically all of these are not in and of themselves suffering it's that we don't understand them to be the nature of how our seeds are being ripened and planted and that's what makes it a suffering none of them have to be suffering at all in fact they can be reasons uh they can be opportunities to transform all of them okay so you know I think you I didn't look at your meditation assignment but it's going to be something about looking at these six kinds of sufferings and checking out to see whether or not you believe you have one so you know you can probably choose the one that's most obvious and show it to yourself or choose the one that's not so obvious and show it to yourself or think about them and say "Well what about them could actually be beneficial could actually be helpful." So that this relationship to human suffering that we don't even know we have let alone others have could actually we could actually use it to our advantage so they're subtle for humans these same six are even more subtle for pleasure beings they become less subtle in those last you know period of time when their pleasure being seeds are wearing out and they become aware that they're losing it and that they're going to fall and then these like kick in big time apparently yes Roxanna thank you dear LMA i just want to share it's about almost eight years that I took this course with you and I remember back then that I would buy pretty expensive creams for my face and from that time on I thought no more expensive creams just ordinary creams anyway you're going to die invest that money helping somebody else or do something with it so I remember you know reflecting on that so what's the use of buying the same product that at the end it's not going to help you yeah and look how beautiful your skin is oh thank you well wisdom taught me that it's through kindness that you are able to maintain your health and everything i was thinking when you were saying about right now that we can't take anyone suffering away when I I when my seats ripen to see somebody really suffering and that I can't do anything i just wish I I offer all my goodness and all my virtue and all my merit that I've done just to help that being that it's in that state of suffering so not even that helps right your llama well it doesn't it doesn't right it's like we could always tongen is that punchline we could always do something to try to help the way it helps is by the way it changes our own seeds it so yes it helps because their suffering is nothing but our own seeds so yes it does help but to an outerworld being who doesn't understand about karmic seeds we would say "No you know nothing about your prayer touches them." And it's like right well nothing about my anything I do touches them which is why we can touch them why we can help them it's it's it's slippery and subtle how it is that we do help others by way of our own karmic seeds changing nice so this completes class 4 we're done a whole half an hour earlier even though I went off on tangents so let's do our closing prayers and then if you have questions comments discussions I'm happy to stay if you want the extra 30 minutes to go do something else I'm happy to do that too so remember that being we wanted to be able to help at the beginning of class we learned a lot that we will use sooner or later to help them in that deep and ultimate way and that's an extraordinary goodness so please be happy with yourself and think of this goodness like a beautiful glowing gemstone that you can hold in your hands recall your own precious holy being see how happy they are with you feel your gratitude to them your reliance upon them ask them to please please stay close to continue to guide you help you inspire you and then offer them this gemstone of goodness see them accept it and bless it and then carry it with them right back into your heart see them there feel them there their love their compassion their wisdom it feels so good we want to keep it forever and so we know to share it by the power of the goodness that we've just done may all beings complete the collection of merit and wisdom and thus gain the two ultimate bodies that merit and wisdom make so use those three long exhales to share this goodness with that one person being share it with everyone you love share it with every existing being everywhere see them all filled with the wisdom of loving kindness and may it be so so the bottom line of all of these is refuse to be willing to make a negative karmic seed on behalf of others or on behalf of your own body just refuse to do negative seeds like if it were that easy to just decide okay no more selfishness you know we'd be perceiving ourselves as Buddhas in Buddha paradise already it's not something we have can just turn on our willpower and quit doing which is why we study we meditate to drive it deeper we take it off the cushion to try it on for size that's called serving so we study we meditate we serve and then we study meditate and serve meditate study meditate serve really it's like this so that Yeah good you know I'm preaching to the choir as they say but it helps us all to hear it again and again and again yeah okay all right so that's all I have to say i'm happy to open to any question about anything if you like yes Victor teacher I have this question because every time you mention that at the at at the uh end of our life if one seed is going to project I mean that stness are stingers seed or whatever bad seeds is going to project that will bring to our uh next life into either the crabbing being or to the spirit being or hell ram But then my question is like when we die we go into the B then from the B only then we go to the next life so where is that exact moment happened is it like before the B or it's like the moment when we are when we are dying then our last breath that is the time it happened yeah so the projecting karma is what they call the karma that that that goes next at what's called the moment of death so the moment of death in this tradition is the moment the mind leaves the body so in physical world experience the body dies when the heart and breath stops and then the brain function ceases and the mind has not yet left the body at that point in most beings in uh traumatic death the mind is like ejected from the body pretty swiftly but in you know laying in bed kind of slow onset dying the body dies and it takes time yet before the the mind reaches the experience that we're calling the projection projected karma right so let's have the perspective of we're the living ones and we're watching the dead the dying person right they finally last breath go they're dead the body's they're dead this tradition would say their body's dead but until we get these certain signs the body the mind is still in there in there somewhere and it may take a few hours it may take a few days it may it may even take you know a week 10 days two weeks for a practitioner to move their mind away but that's different this is like ordinary human the way we know the mind has left they say is that suddenly there'll be fluids that come out the nose or the other orififices like they've been dead for a little while and then all of a sudden something drips here i don't quite understand the connection but that's the indication that the consciousness is no longer connected to to what we're calling the body now if we try to imagine the being who's going through that when the process of dying starts the we've talked about those elements in our body right earth water fire wind the seeds ripening me living has these four elements in every moment and what happens as we start into the dying process is our karmic our karmic seeds earth element has has lost power and so as our seeds are ripening they ripen without earth element and that means water element is getting into predominance and we have a certain vision that if we were aware of the vision and knew like it meant oh my earth element has dissolved away we'd be able to know to expect that the water element's going to stop being projected and fire element would so we go through these series of visions that an untrained person doesn't recognize they're scary a trained person goes ah right I'm starting the process we can use it so as that's happening if you're seeds no longer have solidity then you're there's no solidity in your experience which means your awareness of your body laying on a bed is gone so So you go through this process everything's like gone gone gone gone gone there's still a wearing happening at some point that awaren happening reaches the final end of what we would call this life although by then it's like nothing similar to this life at all it's chaos and and then the next seed that pops out of this pool of karma where where this is all bubbling along right and then with that one of course is it's in an instant so there's actually 65 that's got a it's an it's an impulse and so if that mind that's going through this chaos if it's like underlying theme is you know craving and selfishness and possessiveness then the likelihood of this impulse that is the next one to bubble out of this soup is going to be right possessiveness and at that moment that mind is experiences itself in the in between it's died it isn't reborn yet it's in between and that's Bardom so that Bardo being is already headed towards the realm meaning it's already bubbling out of the soup of its karmic seeds it's its fullon appearance in its full-on next life it takes time for that to bubble out right of this soup and that period of time that it takes for that next life to manifest is called bo so the projecting karma happens at the end of the death of the previous life and it defines the start of bo except if that seed is going to ripen us into formless realm as we learned formless realm needs no bardo because it's just there right you see so the dying Is this process that the last instant and the next do you see it's still 65 per instant happening it's just life dying dead boto next birth right constant yeah like teacher for such a detailed Yeah explanation be careful what you ask anything else i have question oh I'm sorry pia go right ahead please i don't find the hand and I don't find that that's okay yeah I don't know where that is either uh teacher yeah I don't know in the east but in the west we used to do a very express death sometimes to the to our people to our family and so so the doctors say okay your mom doesn't eat anymore uh we are going to put her morphina morphine and so in 24 hours she's going to be dead and me I had this experience with my mom she didn't want to die then And at that moment they don't give them more to eat not to drink and it was really painful for me to see my mom she was not dying and the doctors he said "I have to go to pick up more morphine more everything for because she's not dying she should die but she's not." And it took like seven days to see my mom dying for me it was like terrible because she couldn't eat she couldn't drink it was like and how this affect glitter also with this uh projecting seeds and these seeds ripening because this is a very painful process we don't leave people just die in peace u just doing nothing just letting them die yeah is pushing pushing pushing for people to die i don't know if in all the countries it's the same but at least in my area of the world it's like this and so I I was at a program by on hospice you know by the hospice nurse and um someone asked a similar question and and she said in her experience you know it's very common that the person even If they right don't like uh intellectually know they're dying the the fact that they stop eating you know and so forth it's like deep down they are a they are aware but she said her experiences the family would say you know they need to eat let's get them to eat can't we get them to eat and the nurse said "Look it'll be more uncomfortable for them to be fed than to not eat at this point because this is the time where the body is shutting down and they are processing things and even if they're alert enough to still be talking to you if we were to feed them the food would just fester inside there and it would make them more and more uncomfortable so once the person stops eating don't force them to eat then she went on to talk about medicating them and the family would often say you know don't drug them up they want to be alert as they die and the nurse said that the experience in hospice is that the the anxiety gets so strong that even uh if it's like their ability to be alert enough to go through the you know saying goodbye to everybody it it they can't do that because the anxiety gets so bad that then they you know they can't hear what you say and they react badly and right it's like it makes it worse to not give them something to let them be calm and so you know what I heard her saying is that you know the the giving the sedatives is is to give them the opportunity that their body calms down so that their spirit or soul or whatever they're relating to has this ability to let go when the time is right so you know I hear what you're saying the doctor's attitude is she should be dead already but you know that you kept them her there she kept her comfortable she went when the time was right for her to leave it took that many seed moments of wearing off so you know ideally we sit down in meditation and meditate until the body the seeds for having that body are done and we move our mind to the next place consciously intentionally but you know that takes huge ability to concentrate through the worst chaos like could you sit in meditation as your city was being overrun by vandals and you know armies could you just stay on the park bench meditating you know not I and it's worse in in dying so I hear your struggle with mom you know I wish I could say something to make it better when you get there with dad right your understanding will be different yes don't force him to eat you know if they want to sedate him let them sedate him and whisper to him whatever his religious belief is whisper to him about it whisper to him about all the amazing kindness that he's done not just you've been so kind you were so generous you were so helpful remember that time right he's not remembering he's beyond all that but your guidance will help him say over and over again like if he believes in Jesus or Mother Mary watch for Mother Mary she's going to come watch for the angel she's going to come watch for mom she's going to come reach out to them go to them right everything positive positive instruction about what to go to throw in there there'll be this brightness there'll be this clarity that's your true nature right you can help him his mind go regardless of what's going on with body the body is not him yeah and he'll be beyond the experience of the body that you are seeing it go through he'll be beyond that already thank you good we can help people die okay any Yes so Roxanna you had something no it's concerning what's day today dama thank you for sharing that so I'll be almost at the pool at the time so you said that in that in that vase my trey I mean my treya is the one who's holding the vase the water base no he has it on this big rock that's an altar and he's standing behind it with this staff and he's pointing up to the sky with this staff invoking Buddha to come and then when Buddha shows up of course the blessings going everywhere so some of it's going into the vase so I guess it just pops in my mind now put a vase of water out side you know open vase of water okay and then I thought if I'm gonna be if I'm going to be at that around 10 o'clock in the morning in the pool it's like oh I'm bathing on this i'm bathing in it yes yes nice enjoy thank you it's so wonderful yes Chris so what about animals because I was I was raised to believe that when an animal gets old that it's the proper thing to do to have them put down i know and now I'm not I don't really think that's the right thing to do and I have a like 15year-old little deer dog and I'm like it's it's like I'm trying to get prepared to like no matter what I'm gonna and is that sort of the you know I'm going to help her through naturally whatever it takes it because it's so much it's like inconvenient to have a sick right you know yes absolutely yeah exactly you know and having come to that conclusion yourself it's way more powerful than to hear a you know a spiritual teacher say you know you shouldn't do that and and but it's because of your connection and so as you're right our society says it's right to put them down but it's because it's inconvenient you know you're not going to take time off work to stay home and help your dog i'll do it for my mom you know and maybe my brother if he doesn't have anybody else but not the dog you know and yet here's this being that is a being who was my mother it is that being was my mother from before is my mother from before it's like they deserve the same kind of care but also the same kind of opportunity can we guide that mind from animal realm into the clear light so that they can see their own true nature i mean that being could come back as a human in the dharma who sees emptiness directly when they're 5 years old right and goes on to become a great teacher because you touched seeds in their mind as they're dying that help them like skip grades you can do it poor little thing yeah she's not there she's not dying yet i'm just being Well let us know when the time is coming close we'll all add our juju to make it be easy because it's not easy it's hard there was a a a I go for a walk on at the beach whenever I can every day and there was a guy who had a old dachshun and his eyes were drooping and he was obviously blind and he had wounds and it was like and he would had him in a stroller and he would take him there every day and the dog would go bark bark all of it you could you knew where he was because you could hear the dog and I so admired him i thought that's that's what I'm going to do i'm going to you know if you even have to put her in a stroller sweet and push her around cute a lucky dog sweet nice you know the ACI you know guestless worldview organizations there's that new one what is it blue Sky People or something like that prayers prayers for the world is that Yeah prayers for the world but that's a part of this new one that has to do with not just healing prayers but guiding people in dying and so forth with the the the organization has a name beyond that but it it is it's like focused on learning from this tradition how you help people my experience is you know not directly from our jets lineage from the Tibetan but and then um from personal experience so uh it'll it'll be interesting to see how that group is able to bring forth guidance right for the rest of us okay okay all right my dearest this is Monday i will see you Friday for more on the realms of existence okay thanks so much

Vocabulary Class 5

• bardo “pardough” being in between

• barsi lifetime in between

• bardowa the being that is experiencing the life in between

• drisa ”dtreesa” smell eater

• dzukye born complete

• rikpa using logic/clear thinking

• lung using scriptural authority

• dru gyun the stream/ continuum of a piece of grain

• chele jungwa cut off the continuum

• sipa dun tenpay do the teachings on the 7 kinds of beings

• ma-rung datsen den a menstruating woman

• pama chak shing trepa parents have desire & make sexual contact

• drisa nyewar nepa a smell eater is nearby

• bardo dawa nirvana (gone beyond the bardo state)

• hlaychen the eye of a god

• trulku the emanation of an enlightened being

All right, for the recording, welcome back. We are ACI course eight, class five. It is May 16th, 2025.

[Usual Opening]

Class 4 Review

Last class, we heard about those six sufferings that are unique to humans and desire realm pleasure beings. A kind of suffering that, although they are within the obvious kinds of suffering, suffering of change and pervasive suffering, their specifics can easily escape us if they're not pointed out, right? Which is why they were pointed out. So somebody can give me any one of those six. Any one? Victor, give me one.

Victor: Life has no certainty. I mean, nothing is fixed.

Lama Sarahni: Right, we don't know what's gonna happen next. Somebody give me another one. Chrys.

Chrys: We can't get no satisfaction.

Lama Sarahni: Yeah, I relate to that one. Give me another one. Somebody.

Pia: We have to leave our body over and over again.

Lama Sarahni: Yeah, and what's the suffering in that one?

Pia: We work all of our lives to have a beautiful body, to have a good body. And we plant so many bad seeds because of that. And after all, we have to leave it again and we will take birth somewhere else that we have another body.

Lama Sarahni: Right, we take the karma with us. Yeah. Good, somebody give me another one. Roxanna.

Roxana: Yeah, I was thinking of the five poisons. I know it's not here, but it's kind of, I know.

Lama Sarahni: Give me one of the six, please.

Roxana: Yes, that's right. But anyway, they're gonna land you as a suffering too. What is ignorant liking, ignorant disliking, complete ignorance, those. And ignorant liking is just that we think that our happiness and everything that we like, everything that we have is gonna remain and it's not gonna remain. The karmic seeds are gonna wear out.

Right, but that is not a suffering unique to humans. Every being has that. These six are unique to humans. That's why they're designated and that's why they don't talk about the general suffering. Right, and the ignorant suffering because every samsaric being has that. These are the six that are unique to humans and worldly pleasure beings. And you're right, they have those. That's why they have these six.

Roxana: Okay, it's just that I wrote something that gives us pleasure and then it doesn't. Nothing is fixed. It shifts.

Lama Sarahni: Right, that's the ‘no certainty’. Because of that, because of our ignorance, of course. So we have no certainty, no satisfaction. We shed our bodies over and over again. We take birth over and over again. And the very nature of birth is to die. That's why it's a unique suffering. Now, I just contradicted myself. Like every being takes birth over and over again and every being's birth leads to death. It seems that the suffering from that is unique to humans because we can come to know it. Implies that as an animal, you can't become aware of, oh my gosh, I'm gonna take another birth that's gonna make me die again, right? Only humans and worldly pleasure beings can become aware of that. Then after high comes low, right? That ties in with to what Roxanna was saying as well. We try so hard to get where we wanna go and then it crashes. Yeah, and then we despair thinking the crash is gonna be forever, but it's not.

And that up and down, up and down, up and down. When what we want is something steady, right?

Then sixth one, no companion, right?

And again, it's like, we can be alone and not lonely. We're born alone, we die alone. Like what's really the suffering in this suffering? It's that we make all kinds of karma on behalf of our people. And then in the end, when we need help the most, they can't do anything, right? They may try, but they can't. And so we feel a sense of betrayal, number one, if you remember the death meditation practice, but number two, we take with us the karma that we made on behalf of those people. And that's a unique suffering to humans in the world. In the sense that we can apparently become aware. And then, I don't know, it seems to me the suffering is I can become aware that I make good and bad karma on behalf of other people. The people can't help me and I alone go on with that karma, but I can't just go, oh, okay, I'm gonna stop doing that.

All right, so I know I'm in this predicament of how I'm perpetuating my own suffering by way of my own selfishness. I can become aware that I'm doing it, I can't stop it. Right, that's sort of unique to a being who has that level of awareness and that's human.

Bardo Beings

Okay, so this class is the class of bardo beings. Um, bardo, pardo, it's a hard word to say in English. The B, sounds more like a P but it's not a whole P, like a French, Bs and Ps, you know. So this whole course is about the realms of existence. Another kind of existence that a mind experiences is an existence called bardo, isn't it? Bardo means in between. So bardo means the state in between, not meaning like the state of California, but meaning the experience, the quality of the experience, the state of mind. Sometimes the being who's experiencing bardo is called bar-see. So the bardo is the state they're in, the barsi is the one who's in it. They're also referred to as bardowas. So barsi and bardowas means the same thing. It means the being who's going through that. A third synonym for the bardo being is drisa. This D is one of those Ds that sounds like a T but it's not a full-on T, it's not tri-sa, it's drisa. You do something different with your tongue. So barsi, bardowas and drisa, they all refer to this state of being that's in between something. What are they in between? In between death and rebirth. So we're in between right now, we're in between birth and death.

At the end of life, before we take the next rebirth, there's this period of time that's called the in-between. So that's what we're talking about. Something's gonna happen in that in-between. Drisa means smell eater. is fragrance or odor, smell. Drisa means smell eater, which means that what sustains bardowas in bardo isn't food, it's odors. And I don't know any further explanation where in the world do odors come from in the in-between. No, it's, I don't know. And why would a bardowa need any kind of in-taking sustenance? I don't understand, right? Curious.

So for this information, we are back into the Abhidharmakosha and the commentary by the first Dalai Lama, Gyalwa Gendun Drup, in the text called, what was it called? Tarlam Selje, right? Illumination of Freedom, something like that. So Geshela shares that our tradition suggests that many of the teachings on the bardo have been misunderstood. And so, true to the Gelugpas and then true to Geshela's choice of what material to share with us, we're using two texts that have been established as authentic teachings. Texts that gathered their material directly from the sutras, so they can be deemed as accurate. That's why we're using Abhidharmakosha and Gyalwa Gendun Drup's commentary on it for our information on the bardo. Because Abhidharmakosha, Master Vasubandhu gleaned all of that from the sutras.

All right, so that's said. Geshe-la shared that our tradition believes that that text called Liberation Through Hearing, the Bardo Thodol, isn't completely accurate. So we don't study it. That said, it's been used by many people, apparently successfully. So although it may be inaccurate, it can work. It's used as an instruction manual to direct the mind of the being that's going through and has recently gone through death to help them recognize the clear light as their own true nature when their opportunity is there to do it. And then if they don't, how to direct them to a fortunate rebirth to help them get off this automatic pilot of going directly to where they're going. So the debate is, can you really do that? And we're not gonna go there in this class. We're just gonna learn about the bardo and what happens in that state.

There are other teachings about bardo and how to use the bardo in the Diamond Way teachings that we'll learn when we get there. For this class, we will learn the authentic sutra information about bardo. And then we use this material in order to share with others when the time comes for us to share information about bardo.

So bardo beings are born dzuke. Do you remember dzuke? I wouldn't. If I were in your position, I wouldn't. I hope that you do. Dzuke means born complete or born miraculously. Do you remember? Just poof, you show up there, which would be remarkable if that were what happened as a human. But in bardo, it's just your last seed for this life ends, your first seed for what's next happens, and that's bardo. And you are there. They talk about it loosely as a rebirth because it's what happens right after death. But then we're gonna hear later in this class that no, it's not a rebirth. It's what happens when you're headed to your next rebirth. But in that time, there is a you, right? And there is a manifestation of you in some way, shape, or form.

So you could say, well, I had a rebirth as a bardo being, and then I had another rebirth as my next whatever it's gonna be. And technically, that would be incorrect. So we wanna be kind of careful. We wanna be really careful in our terminology that even when the teachings say you have a rebirth as bardo to make it clear that it's not the next rebirth of the life. It's just this period in between. What we go through in order to get to that next rebirth.

So because most of us have not had direct experience of bardo that we can recall. We're talking about something that we don't really know exists. And then as a result, before we start talking about its details, we should see if we can find some logical or scriptural proof that tells us they really do exist or we shouldn't waste our time with it.

• rikpa = using logic, clear thinking to come to a conclusion

• lung = using scriptural authority to prove our case

So until we have that direct experience, we use logic and scriptural authority. So to use logic to prove something to ourselves is called rikpa. And to use scriptural authority is called lung. And in the commentary, he does both. So together it's called lung rik. But we haven't gotten to our logic course yet where we learn about syllogisms and so forth. This logic example that they give doesn't use the syllogism method.

This logic that he's going to share with us, logical proof of bardo is a logic that's called a totally analogous example. So if you can get a perfectly matching example from something in a person's real life, I say, but something that someone knows is true from personal experience, and that matches something that we have not had personal experience of exactly, then that we can logically say, okay, right, then that is what bardo would be. So I don't know. I don't completely buy these as proof. Although I do buy the bardo. So I'm being inconsistent. Anyway, here it goes. Here's the perfectly analogous example that's given to us by somebody, right?

The Example of Seeds for Crops of Grain

• dru gyun the stream/continuum of a piece of grain

• chele jungwa cut off the continuum

It's in the Tarlam Selje, but I don't think Gyalwa Gendun Drup made it up.* Dru gyun chele jungwa. That's it. So Root texts are short and sweet, so they can be easily memorized. Dru means a grain, as in a grain of wheat or a grain of barley. Gyun means a stream or a continuum. So the continuum of grain, of a grain, chele jungwa. Chele means cut off and jungwa means continuum. So it's like “a grain's continuum cut off continues.” What does that mean? Like, how is that any proof about bardos? So thankfully we get an explanation.

* Found in the 13th century Tibetan, Chim Jampey Yang’s commentary on the Abhidarmakosah called The Ornament of Abhidharma.

It means if you have a grain or a seed for something, so the plant has died because the seed is mature. And in order for that seed to produce the next plant, it has to go through a period of time when it's a sprout, doesn't it? It can't go from kernel of corn- to corn stock with the ear of corn already mature. It has to go in a continuum. So the previous continuum, the corn stock, the ear of corn, it's cut off. The corn kernel is continuing and then it will go through, right? Cotyledon, sprout, I forget the name for the next one and the next one and the next one. It's moving through a continuum. To create the corn stock, the full-on corn.

And they say, see, in that same way, the continuum of the being who just ended their life, the corn stock that has just died, the continuum of that, the kernel of “my me” which is my awareness, is continuing. And in order to reach its mature next life, which would be for a human, the conception, right? We're not talking adult-human mature. We mean the maturation of the next life, which would be for a human, the moment of conception. But in order to get there, you don't go from dead-me to conceived-me in the next instant, it's too different. It needs the period of time of sprout maturation, et cetera. And it's that time that it takes for this shift, shift, shift, shift, shift of the continuum until it shifted such that it's in the, whatever's called the next rebirth, that period of time is what we're calling the bardo.

So the bardo is not a place that beings go into and go out of, it's this period of time and the qualities of experience that is what happens to that continuum of mind that has lost this life and is headed towards the next rebirth. This example, a grain, you can see, we can experience directly that a grain goes through sprout to become its next life plant. Said to be a perfect analogy. So from that, we can go, okay, bardo must exist.

Then somebody says, well, wait a minute, a perfect analogy would also be like a person looking at themself in the mirror, seeing the reflection in a mirror. That would also be a perfect analogy then. And for that, you don't really need this timeframe when you're something different, right? You're standing in front of a mirror. It doesn't matter if there's nothing between you and the mirror. It doesn't matter if you're close up or if you're far, far away, your reflection will be in the mirror. So this person is saying, you know, so you wouldn't need a bardo time because if your mind is always there, you're always gonna be reflecting in the mirror. So it doesn't matter.

And it's like, I don't quite understand why this negates that other as a proof. But Master Vasubandhu's answer to that apparently was, we're not trying to prove a next rebirth. We're trying to prove that there's experience still happening in a time between death and rebirth. And in this example of the mirror, he says, the you that is the continuum is not in the mirror ever. Whereas the corn kernel goes in, right, becomes the corn stalk by going through being sprout, right? Being next stage, being corn. So somehow the fact that we are not in the mirror says, look, that example of the continuum of the mind stream and its appearance is not analogous enough to what happens in the bardo to prove (or disprove) bardo.

And I'm just giving you the words because it's like, why is that significant? Why is that important enough for Geshe Michael to include in a class on bardo? It would have something to do with our thinking, our me is some self-existent thing that's going in and out of these different stages, but actually is staying the same, right? The corn kernel isn't still the corn kernel experiencing itself as the sprout. It is now the sprout, experiencing itself as sprout. And then it's corn plant, right? So in the same way that when we die, it's not Sarahni becomes a bardo being. It's that subject side, it's no longer Sarahni and isn't anything or anybody yet, is bardo is in the in-between until what it's gonna become next. And then it's full on that, like the corn seed is no longer a corn kernel, now it's sprout, right? So total analogous. Yes, Roxana.

Roxana: Thank you. I'm thinking of that mind stream in that particular place, Dear Lama, and of course that we lose five consciousness there, right? But do we keep the six and the seven? I mean, the six is the mind stream, and the seventh and the eighth, do we keep it in that mind stream?

Lama Sarahni:  I would guess so. As long as we're aware that what we mean by that is just the raw consciousness in the imprints, not a sense of-

Roxana: Right, that's why probably we don't remember, that we're lacking the other consciousness. That's, so in my opinion, that we need all of them to make the awareness of where you are and so on.

Lama Sarahni:  Right. We would either need all of them or we would need to understand that we're beyond any of them.

So of course, ultimately, everything is projection. Shifting, shifting, shifting, shifting. But it's not like knowing everything is a projection. That means a state of bardo will not be, will not happen. Right, it happens because everything is projection, projection, projection.

When we think of it from higher world view, karma will force us to see ourselves taking bardo bodies and it will force us to see our bardo body taking rebirth. And all of that is suffering and causes of more suffering. And it happens to every existing being who's that life existence wears out with the exception of beings who are headed to the formless realm. Remember, we learned that.

Why does a formless realm being not have a bardo time? They, their formless realm, them, has no place. Okay, all it has is this subtle movement in terms of its material reality, its form reality. Too subtle to be called a form heap. So if the reason that we experience our bardo being time is that it takes a certain amount of karmic shifting for that mind continuum to fill in the full, having a rebirth, the form, and that's gonna be at some place different than where the end of life happened. It takes time for, it takes time for the mind to get there.

And that's like, wait a minute, it doesn't take any time at all for a mind to go somewhere. Again, like why would we need time to, for my mind to get from Tucson where it died to Guadalajara where it's gonna be reborn? You know, why can't the mind just go zip there? Because the mind goes zip, zip, zip all over the place now. There's something about at the level of understanding that is being taught from Abhidharmakosha is that it takes time for the mind to go from where it was, where it died, where it experienced dying to where it will experience its rebirth, whatever its rebirth is. You know, I struggle, it's like, why?

So then if we think about it, I mean, we'll learn later about what karmically is going on, but it takes time for the karmic seeds to ripen into the full-on rebirth. Like, oh, now that makes sense. So why am I going there? We die in one place. We're not reborn in that same place, right? If you die in your room, you're not gonna be reborn in that same room unless you're taking formless realm rebirth. And then that will be where you are, but that won't be your room, right? Because there's no your room in the formless realm. So then there's no other people left living in your house, wondering where you are, because for you, none of that exists. You are beyond form realm, right? So the only suffering being that does not experience bardo is going from wherever you are into formless realm, which we don't wanna do anyway, because it's just a dead end.

Scriptural Proof that Bardo Exists

All right, so next we go into the scriptural proof that bardowas exists. And again, for this, Master Vasubandhu has found various places in Buddha's sutras where it's not that Buddha is proving bardowas exist, Buddha is talking about something else. And in that discussion, he mentions bardowas. And for Buddha to mention a bardowas being there when something else happens, that alone proves that bardo was exist.

But remember, whatever course that was for, where we were talking about, was it for? -a Buddha's omniscience. A Buddha has become one who became (turned) correct. And we went through that apparent proof of how a Buddha is someone who wasn't correct and became correct. And to become a being who's totally correct means you can't hear yourself say anything mistaken, which means you can only be aware of yourself experiencing things directly, which means you can never say or do or anything misperceived, which means anything they hear themselves say must be true. And it's like, until we are convinced of that, we're not supposed to believe that anything Buddha said is true. But once we've convinced ourselves that they are incapable of saying anything inaccurate, well, then everything they say we can take as true.

But then it's like, yeah, but wait a minute. If I'm reading the sutras and somebody else had to write them down, did they interpret them right? My mind still goes, yeah, yeah, yeah. So at some point I just decided I'm gonna believe enough in order to take from these teachings what will help motivate me to be more kind so that the seeds in my mind are trying to, the virtue seeds in my mind are trying to outweigh the selfishness seeds in my mind to give me a little bit more confidence that when this life comes to an end I'll be able to do something significant with that experience. So, you know, I hear myself saying that and then thinking, you know, are you doing that in life? It's like, ooh, cattle prod.

Sutra In Which Buddha Taught the 7 Kinds of Beings

So using Buddha's scripture only as a proof if we've already beyond a shadow of a doubt believe that what Buddha taught is correct. So given that, there's a sutra called Sipa Dun Tempe Do. It means The Sutra In Which Buddha Taught the Seven Kinds of Beings.

•  Sipa Dun is seven types of being,

• Tempe Do taught that.

Geshala said, someday in deep meditation you will experience directly the truth of Bardo. And then when you come out of that meditation, no one will be able to disprove Bardo to you. So we actually can't prove Bardo exists to someone who doesn't wanna believe, doesn't believe but we can prove that they, we cannot prove that they don't exist. And that's true for rebirth as well. Technically when we're trying to prove rebirth to someone we show that we can't disprove rebirth. It's a little different way to think of something. So in this teaching about the seven kinds of beings Buddha was teaching the conditions for a being to enter a womb. And so he's not saying consider Bardo as they exist because he's talking about, here's what happens when a being's headed for a womb birth.

1. ma-rung datsen den, a menstruating woman

2. pama chak shing trepa, parents have desire & make sexual contact

3. drisa nyewar nep, bardo being.

 So in these three, what he's saying is in order for a being to take a womb birth. First, there are three conditions that need to be present.

Number one, there needs to be a woman. Ma-rung means a woman who possesses the sign of the month. Meaning a menstruating woman, not meaning on her menses but a woman who's still capable of making a baby is ma-rung datsen den. So there has to be a woman who can get pregnant and carry a child.

Second condition that must be is pama, that man and woman. chak shing trepa means have desire, chak shing trepa mean and make sexual contact. So second condition for a birth, womb, womb birth, sexual contact must happen between a man and a woman.

Third condition necessary, drisa nyewar nep, a smell eater must be in the immediate vicinity. Nyewar nep means immediate vicinity. So Master Vasubandhu, he gives this quote and he goes, so see, bhardowa's exist because Buddha said a smell eater needs to be in the immediate vicinity of this couple, of this pair in order for a womb birth to happen. So we'll talk about it later, what's actually happening in this. The point here is because Buddha said a Bardo being needs to be nearby to take a womb birth, the fact that there are womb births means Bardo being was nearby when that event happened. Proof of Bardo's, do you see how it goes? Buddha was not talking about Bardo's, he's talking about conceiving, starting a new conception in a womb birth. But the condition necessary is a Bardo is nearby, so therefore they must be.

Reaching Nirvana from the Bardo State

Okay, second one, there was a teaching Buddha gave called Bardo Dawa, Bardo Dawa means reaching nirvana, the words exactly don't mean it, but it means Reaching Nirvana From The Bardo State. So this comes from a teaching Buddha was giving about the five states from which one can enter their nirvana. And one of those states is from one's Bardo. So again, it's another example of where by Buddha mentioning a Bardo being, it gives us proof that there are such things because of being of direct perception could not otherwise say that. Not would not, could not. So therefore there must be Bardo beings. Geshela says, just hearing that you can reach nirvana from your Bardo state is not enough to make it happen. And he says, it's still risky. So don't think, oh, I'll just reach my nirvana when I die, because it'll let us get complacent. Your likelihood of reaching nirvana before you die is much greater than your likelihood of reaching nirvana after you die. So don't hear that and feel like, right, we don't need to make the changes we need to make.

So in the Abhidharmakosha, like somebody must have said, hey, wait a minute, Master Vasubandhu, what about somebody who's done one of those immediate misdeeds? Scripture says that being goes directly to hell realm. So there's a being who doesn't need a Bardo because they go direct. And the Master Vasubandhu, or I don't know where it's said, clarifies and says, no, a being who's done the five immediate misdeeds is going directly to a hell realm in the sense that though any of those deeds are such a heavy karma, that one of those seeds will be their projecting karma, the karma that pops at the moment of the end of life over all the other seeds, that one, those ones, one of them will take precedence. So once you're projecting karma fires, there's no diverting, with some rare exceptions. And the karmic seed of any of the five misdeeds are seeds that will ripen as a hell realm rebirth. Do not pass go, do not collect the $200, but it still takes time for that karmic seed to fill in with other seeds into the full-on hell realm rebirth. So even after the five misdeeds, there's still a Bardo time before the hell realm life is ripened. It's just that there is no possibility at all of any kind of diversion.

Now, later we're going to hear, there's no diversion anytime. Once you have your projecting karma go, you're headed that direction. So then it's like, so then the significance of the five misdeeds is the fact that those seeds are so heavy, that they are going to be your projecting karma. For other deeds, we don't know what our projecting karma is going to be. It's like the lottery balls, you know, popping around in the big vase. Any one of them can pop out the top. If in your lottery balls, you have five misdeeds, any one of them, doesn't matter how many other ones you've got, it's going to be the one that comes out. That's the point of the five misdeeds.

(55:37) Then somebody else must say, yeah, but what about trulkus? So the word trulku means - it's used now as a reincarnate Lama, right? So Khen Rinpoche Lobsang Tarchen, 

the Dalai Lama insisted that he become Abbot of Sera Mey Monastery. And he kept saying, no, no, no, no, no, no. And finally His Holiness said, look, I need you to be Abbot, so that there'll be a reincarnate Lama. So Khen Rinpoche has right now started a reincarnate lineage. And that young man, I don't know, he's 16 or 17 now. They're called trulkus, but they're a reincarnate line of highly realized beings. But technically the term trulku is the term for a Buddha emanation.

So somebody must have asked, do trulkus have bardo time? And the answer would have to say, well, do you mean trulku as a reincarnate Lama that we're not seeing as totally enlightened being emanation? We're seeing as really, really high Lama coming back to help us. Or do you mean a Buddha's emanation?

If you mean a Buddha's emanation, no, they don't have bardo. Because it's the instant you make your full-on transformation, the next instant you are manifesting your emanations everywhere to everybody. That's what it is to be Buddha. So your trulkus don't need time to go from you and your Buddha paradise to wherever they're gonna be. It's just instant. But if you're talking about reincarnate Lama, yes, they do have a bardo time, but for them the experience is gonna be way different than for an untrained, unexperienced, unrealized being.

So why doesn’t Master Vasubandhu just say, ‘Look, I've seen them’, right? He's an Arya. He's seen that bardo exists. Why doesn’t he just say I've seen it? It doesn't prove it to us if we hear somebody say, I've seen them so they exist. And we go, oh, okay. So then they exist for me too. Then when we hear somebody say, you know, unicorns exist because I've seen one. We'll go, oh, unicorns exist, too. Now, I don't know if that's such a bad thing to be honest with you, but if we take someone that we don't see as a fully enlightened being incapable of saying anything that's not direct experience as truth, then we'll take what somebody else who's not enlightened being as truth and we'll be mistaken. That's the point. Whether it's true for them or not, that's not the point. We're trying to make it true for us. And just to believe that something's true because somebody else experienced it is not enough for it to become true for us.

Is it enough to say, well, maybe, right? And so I can act on it from the maybe, yeah. But not from the conviction that it's true until we go through either our own direct experience or our own sequence of trying to disprove it and failing. Got it? Okay.

So then he goes on about the nature of the bardo. Okay, so the body of bardo beings are made of very subtle matter. So they do have subtle form. Their appearance is said to be, they will look like that being that came before. That sounds in English like, if you die a human, your bardo being is gonna look human. And that's what many traditions who believe in future, more lifetimes believe, but it's a mistranslation of the Sanskrit and Tibetan. What ‘it looks like the being that came before’ means is it looks like the being you are headed for, the one that's in front of you. When they say before you, they mean in front of you, right? Here's my bottle of cold pills in front of me. That's what before means in Tibetan. You see, and it's like, if you didn't know that, the word before means behind me, right? What happened before.

So your bardo being, from the first moment of bardo being, you already look like where you're headed. And they use that to say, see, so it's really unlikely that you're gonna divert if you already have the shape of your hell realm being from the next moment after death, the likelihood of going off in a different direction is pretty remote, unless some powerful factor affects us. So that projecting karma, the one that pops after the one that ended that was dead, when the mind moves from the dead body out, that's called the projecting karma. That projecting karma is the seed for the circumstance of the next rebirth.

The Appearance of Bardo Beings

So if the seed that ripens is a seed made from cruel selfishness, that seed forces us to perceive ourselves already in this very, very subtle form as a hell realm being.

1.      Hell realm beings look like a charred piece of wood, they say.

2.      Animals look smoky colored, and probably have the shape, a vague shape of the animal you're gonna end up as.

3.      Preta beings are translucent, meaning watercolor.

4.      Humans are golden color and appear five or six years old.

5.      Pleasure beings in the desire realm look similar, golden and five or six years old.

6.      Pleasure beings of the form realm are white, adult and clothed somehow. Again, I don't really understand.

7.      What do you suppose a formless realm being looks like? Yeah, nothing, right? No look, because they have no form.

The Length of Time in the Bardo

Okay, so then how long do we spend in the bardo? This tradition says that the process of bardo happens over the course of seven sets of seven days. Now it's like, wait, how long is a day in the bardo? Are we talking about bardo days or human days? So if we're talking about human days, what it means is that the day of death is day one. And then by the seventh day, there's this window of opportunity to have reached your next rebirth within that seven days. And if you didn't, then that bardo being seven days ceases, they say it dies. And then it starts again at another level of bardo being. But you would think then it's like, well, then a new projecting karma would happen, but apparently not. This is all happening from the original projecting karma. So every seven, this timeframe of seven days, let's call it seven human days, within each of those seven days, that being right is being compelled to find the circumstance of their rebirth. If they do, bardo is done for them. If they don't, some kind of death happens again at 14 days. And 14 to 21, again, at this different level of experience somehow, that can go on for 49 days, seven sets of seven. That within that seven sets of seven, they will find their rebirth. They will ripen the full-on rebirth. So theoretically, every bardowa is finished with their bardo in 49 days.

So when prayers are said for deceased people, special rituals are done on day seven for them and special rituals are done on day 49. For those who didn't manage, right? To get out of bardo before the end. I don't know what happens if you don't get out of bardo by the 49th day. Like a lot of this is like, wait a minute, it doesn't logically make sense. And then if we wonder about, well, those beings who've been ghosts in the Scottish castle for 500 years, is maybe they're still within their 49 days. You know, I don't know how long is a day for a bardowa. So maybe it's not human 49 days. Maybe it is for the bardowa, which then their level of time would be unique to each one. Not like there's bardo time and, you know, seven years is human years is one, but it's not like that.

But the main essence of this is there is a set period of time that it takes for any given being who has died to manifest their full-on rebirth. So as we learn how the process, the projecting karma pops, but it's like a sketched outline of a master artist's painting. And then the apprentices come and they're the ones that paint in the details. So the projecting karma, the seed that pops at the moment of death is the master painter, but it's all the additional seeds ripening similarly that accumulate into the full-on lifetime rebirth. Rebirth as a hell being, rebirth as a hungry ghost, rebirth as the pleasure being. It takes these other seeds ripening to manifest that. And that takes time for that to happen.

So Who Can See Bardowas?

So a bardowa can perceive other bardowas that are headed in a similar direction. So charred piece of wood bardowas see other charred piece of wood bardowas. You know, I don't think you know I look like a charred piece of wood. You look like a charred piece of wood. We must be headed to hell realm. I don't think that that awareness is that, but there is awareness of other beings similar. But that implies that you don't have awareness of other beings that are not similar to you. So suppose two people die in the same hospital on the same day, they both throw their bardo, one's going to another human life, another is headed for a pleasure being life. It's the mind stream is still in that general location. It's not like they go, hi, see ya, have fun, right? It's just their realities are totally different. Even though those of us left behind would say, well, but they're in the same place. It's not the same place for them once they're dead. You see dead means everything familiar to this life is gone. There's just this awareness happening.

Bardowas can be seen by the ‘Eye of a God’

All right, bardowas can also be seen by someone with the ‘Eye of God’. I should have written that hlaychen, (lie-chen), it means the ‘Eye of God’, which means this vision that one gets in deep meditation. So meaning in deep meditation, if we did not have eleven certain conditions that are obstacles to it in meditation, we could be aware of bardo beings. I don't know if that means that you could also cultivate awareness of them out of meditation, but if you had that, if you were free of those obstacles and it would be beneficial to be aware of bardowas, you could see them.

Roxana: Dear Lama, can you please spell again, eye of the God?

Lama Sarahni: Yes, hlaychen, (lie-chen). It's all one word apparently.

Roxana: Thank you.

Cannot be Diverted to Another Type of Birth

They tell us that once we are in the bardo, we cannot be diverted to a different birth. So the first moment into the bardo, we're headed for the whatever level of birth. And although it's going to take time, it's not that we can change our mind. No, I'm not going to go there. I'm going to go somewhere else. And it's not that somebody else can change our projecting karma because it's already gone off, do you see?

However, there is a teaching that says you can reach nirvana on your way to a form realm. And how that might happen, I'm not exactly sure in the sense of, does it happen randomly or spontaneously? Or have you done something going through your death process in a state of deep meditation that makes it such that projecting karma that would take you to the form realm is now going to take you to nirvana instead? In which case they would still say, you're headed for the form realm, but you divert to nirvana. So it's not really clear how that process works.

The reason it comes up is that we might have the misunderstanding that although the projecting karma has already ripened, maybe we can divert ourselves by practicing in the bardo to not head there. And that would be like saying, right, ripen your seeds for a car accident and stop the car accident after it's happened. Wait, no, that doesn't work. You can stop it before it happens, but that would mean stopping that projecting karma from being that projecting karma and getting some other one to project instead, in which case you're not diverting yourself in the bardo, you're directing what bardo you're going to go into. That's a different practice.

The Special Powers of Intermediate Beings

Okay, the nature of being bardo means it's a subtle, subtle, subtle level of physical form, which means they're not the familiar obstacles that human lives has to movement and change. So bardowas beings, they can fly, they travel quickly, they move through solid objects. There are two solid objects, however, that they cannot pass through.

1.      One of them is the diamond seat of Buddha, Vajrasana, the diamond seat of Buddha, a bardo being would hit that, somehow not able to move through that.

2.      The second thing they cannot move through is the walls of a womb. Once they get in to the walls of a womb, their karma has shifted such that they're technically no longer bardo being. So now they no longer have that subtle existence that allowed them to go through the walls of the womb in the first place. So they're trapped in that womb until they're pushed out as baby bunny or human or whatever.

So I'm guessing that's the same for egg birth, but quite how that relates to complete birth or warmth and moisture, I don't know.

While they are in that period of time between death and rebirth, their sustenance of that very subtle form is by odors, by smells. And it's like, where do the smells come from that they're smelling? It's not like they're smelling the fried onions from our kitchen, because that doesn't exist for them. But there's some kind of fragrance in bardo. Hopefully it's pleasurable.

You know, it's just like, it's popping into my mind now that if we were headed for a hell being, probably those fragrances smell kind of burnt. I don't know. This is not from scripture. It's just popping into my head. Yeah, and if we're headed for hungry ghosts, they probably smell delicious, whatever that would be. So yeah, there are somehow odors in bardo.

If we are that charred being headed for a hell realm, we're traveling upside down. And it's like, how does a charred piece of wood have a top and a bottom? I don't know.

And then if we're headed for a human or a pleasure being birth, we're traveling right side up. And do you remember in the Wheel of Life, the second hub is beings going up and beings going down? And it signifies going to a higher rebirth or a lower rebirth. It's the same idea. It's like you're going up or headed down.

Lama Sarahni: Yes, it is. All right, that's what I have to share about bardo. It makes more questions than answers, doesn't it? Yeah. Yeah, and the answer was always going to be seeds, karmic seeds. So that to take away this motivation to fill my foundation consciousness heart with as much loving kindness as I can, so that those loving kindness seeds are gaining weight over the reject, reject, violent, selfish, selfish seeds. So that the likelihood of kindness seed ripening is greater. Even if I find myself flying through the windshield of my car, can my mind be on kindness? Like that's the take home of all of this about the different realms of existence, all driven by how we interact with others moment by moment by moment. Not to scare us, but to motivate us. We're all in the same boat. Every other being, the one that irritates you and the one you love the most, all in the throes of karmic seeds ripening and karmic seeds planting. And at least we know, right? We know the punchline. So why don't we just be nice even when we feel bad, even when they're being nasty, even, right?

And it's so hard because our me kicks in. Yeah, but what about me? What about me? You know, I hear it inside there all day long. It's just shut up in there. Shut up, but it's still there. You know, why does David do that? Why, why, why? Just shut up. It's, I don't know.

But motivation, reminding ourselves, not acting from that inner voice that says, do this for me. It's like, no, right? It's all right. No, no. Treat my own inner self like this little two-year-old, you know, having a tantrum. Let's go sit in the corner together. Wait this out, it'll pass. I don't have to act on it. No, okay. All of that helps our bardo be in a bardo that will take us to a human lifetime, which is what we want, yeah? A human lifetime with our needs met in the dharma. So how do we plant those seeds? Help people get their needs met. Help the dharma stay. Share what you know. Support the teachers, however you can help them, right? Support HCI, donate to ALL, right? All the standards, but live your dharma. That's to share the dharma more than any other way. Live it, and that keeps it alive. So that's our job, and it's fun. Okay, that's bardo class.

[Dedication]

You know, I'm seeing in the chat, Ali asked, is it possible we remember teachings from our current life when we're in the bardo to help us get out of there? Unfortunately, not unless we are a realized being. So another reason to push for bodhicitta, two forms. Yeah, let's see, is there anything else in there? Okay. Yes, Roxana.

Roxana: As you were saying right now, all those beautiful seeds that we're planting by helping the dharmas, spreading the dharma and all those, I just realized that Geshe-la said in the past retreat that think of your future Buddha you. So if we do that, that means that I must be influencing my bardo time as well, right, dear Lama?

Lama Sarahni: Yes, yes, yes. Thank you. If we can think of Buddha me as we're dying, that dying will not be dying for us. It may be dying for whoever's watching, but it won't be for us.

Roxana: That's so beautiful.

Lama Sarahni: Yeah. Nice. All right, take care, have a great weekend. I will see you Monday morning. Do your homework, please.

For the recording, welcome back. We are ACI course eight, class six. It's May 19th, 2025.

[Usual Opening]

Review Class 5

The last class, we learned about the in-between, the bardo, and we were offered two kinds of proof, like reasons, to consider so that we could decide whether we were to choose to believe that they exist or not until we ourselves have the direct perception of one. So the first reason was, actually, they called it a logic reason, but it was a logic based on what's called an exact analogous example. And that example was, just like a seed has to go through being a sprout before it can become a full-on plant, the continuum of a being needs to go through a period of time before they get to their full-on rebirth. And that in-between time is called the bardo, and the being that's experiencing itself in that in-between time is called the bardowa, the one who's in-between, having died, but not yet fully reborn in its next life.

Then we were given scriptural authority, but it wasn't just Buddha saying, look, bardowa's exist. The scriptural authority comes in the form of Buddha's explanation for how it is that a being can take a womb birth. The three conditions necessary to take a womb birth. And in those three conditions, one of them is that a bardowa, he said, a bardowa needs to be in the vicinity. So those three conditions we learned, there must be a female who's capable of giving birth, right? So a menstruating female is what it says, meaning one who's still having her menses. There needs to be desire and contact between the male and the female. And there must be a djisa, an odor eater, in the vicinity. So therefore, because Buddha even mentioned djisa, which is another name for a bardowa, there must be them because there are beings who take birth from wombs.

So we apply the logic to finding the mention by Lord Buddha in the scripture of a bardo being. And then we go, well, do beings take birth from a womb? Yes, many. So therefore, for that being to get into the womb, they had to have been a bardowa. There had to have been the parents. There had to have been the menses, right? We apply the logic. Buddha wasn't doing that.

Then your quiz asks who can see a bardowa. And other bardowas of the same type can see each other. Someone with the ‘Eye of God’, meaning a certain level of deep meditation can perceive them. And of course, omniscient beings perceive them. I don't know why they didn't add that. I guess it's a given.

Then is it possible to be diverted to a different type of birth once you're in the bardo? And they say no, because to get into the bardo, you've already had your projecting karma pop. And that's driving you towards the fill-in of that result. And even though you apparently die in the bardo every seven days before you've filled in your whole lifetime, it's not that you have a new projecting karma at the end of each bardo life. You're still being driven by that initial projecting karma. So no, you can't be redirected with the exception of someone who's headed towards the form realm level called ‘Class of the Pure.’ Apparently, it is able to divert and reach nirvana from there. How, I have no idea.

Then the fifth question, it was more specifically how does a bardowa enter the womb of a human? And that was that explanation about how the bardoa sees some fun happening. They don't know. Where I mean, to them it's something different. It's a man and a woman making love and the bardowa is attracted to the fun that's happening, thinks they can participate. They get so close that the next thing they're aware of is they're trapped, right? Until then the bardowa can go anywhere. And then all of a sudden can't go anywhere.

All right. You are now experts on bardo.

Four Types of Sustenance

• Drowa living being

• nepa-yin means to stay. They stay.

• se-kyi is how it is or what's involved in them staying.

• Drowa se-kyi nepa-yin means the beings need substances to stay alive

This class is about types of sustenance, first topic. Second topic is our physical world. So we're studying from Abhidharmakosha third chapter, just getting brief introductions into the topics that it goes into in great detail apparently. So let's get our vocabulary. So please say drowa se-kyi nepa-yin. Drowa se-kyi nepa-yin. Drowa is another word for living beings. Dro means to go. So drowa means those who go. Se is the word for sustenance. Seki means by sustenance. And nepa yin means they stay. So what this is saying is living beings stay because of sustenance. And then there are four kinds of sustenance through which living beings stay.

Those four are

1.  Portionable Sustenance- kam gyi se

2. Stained contact- sakche kyi rekpa

3. Stained movement of the mind- sakche kyi senpa

4. Stained consciousness- sakche kyi namshe

So we're gonna talk about each one of these.

1. Portionable Sustenance- kam gyi se

• Kam= district

• se = sustenance

Kam, this word kam, it means district.

So we've heard Je Tsongkapa, really means the guy from the district of onion fields. Right, the district was called Tsongka and he's Tsongkapa, the guy from Tsongka. Tsongkh is his kam, his district. Like my district is Pima County in Arizona. But it also means family in the sense that we are in the kam human beings, and the kam Caucasian for me. Right, the idea of a group, like set theory, right? There's the set and I'm a member of the group of that set.

And then it also has the meaning in Sanskrit of datu, which I've never quite understood this word that's either spelled dathu or datu Which like means existence in this vague way, like all of existence, but non-specific something. And, but here the word kam is being used as a portion. So it kind of fits in the sense that all the other meanings of kam were there's some bigger thing and a kam is a piece of that bigger thing. So this too is there's this bigger thing of sustenance, and then a kam is a sustenance that we take in portions, like little pieces at a time.

So kam gyi se means sustenance that's portionable. It's so awkward. What they're trying to say here is food. Why didn't they just say food keeps you alive? But it's because when we say food, we think humans and animals, right? We know what kind of food they eat, but apparently hell beings eat food as well. And it's not food like we know, but it's stuff that they partake of in portions. Like our food, you take a bite, you swallow it. You take a swallow, you swallow it. You take food in portions. And that's true for bardo beings, they are sustained by smells, but it comes to them in whiffs, right? And so whatever other being needs to be sustained with physical food, subtle or gross, they take it, it's sustenance that comes in portions. Kind of hard to relate to.

Solid or Subtle Substances

Now there's portionable sustenances that's solid and there's a gross and there's portionable sustenances that are subtle. The subtle portionable sustenances is like for bardo was whose sustenance is odor smells. They're very, very subtle compared to an apple, right? Then food for a desire realm pleasure being is also considered subtle and it's called dutsi or amrita.

This word amrita in Sanskrit, sometimes you see it spelled amirta. Other times you see it amrita. It's because in the Sanskrit, it's amrta. And it's like in English, you can't say that without adding the vowel in there somewhere. Geshe-la says it's this one, amrita. In Tibetan, it's dutsi.

So if you remember when you were making your tormas, we had that dark looking liquid called dutsi. It's made by making very, very strong black tea and dropping a dutsi pill in it. And that dutsi pill had been made from taking someone's black liquid and making it into a solid form. So it would last longer. And that's been being done since the first amrita was made that I can't tell you how that was made. But it's based on very, very sacred substance that has been added to, right? The energetic sacredness of it has been added to through the generations and it ends up being in that substance. We call that dutsi, nectar, nectar of the gods. It's said to have the power to transform things.

This is not that dutsi. Same word, but here they're using the term dutsi for this substance that desire realm beings partake of in portions.

Then the food of the first human beings on a new planet is also called nectar, dutsi, amrita. Again, because of its purity. And so when a new planet forms, there's no beings on it. And then very, very pure, but still samsaric humans show up there. Like that's where they're bardo being, I don't know. It's like they're not taking a womb birth, they're taking a miraculous birth there. Those humans don't have physical solid bodies like ours yet. The world doesn't have a sun and a moon yet. The beings that show up there are still like in the form of light bodies, they make their own sunshine. And the earth is edible at that point for them. Their virtue is so high that when they have need for sustenance, they just run their finger through the earth, as Geshe-la would say. Portionable sustenance is so subtle at that time.

And then what happens over time is those beings get more selfish. Somehow, so crops start to grow and they're eating the crops. And then there's not enough crops to go around. And some of those beings are in charge of these crops. So selfishness happens. And as selfishness gets worse and worse and worse, the beings' bodies get more and more solid. And it downgrades until those humans, not meaning the same ones that took birth, but that the humans on that world get so selfish that they destroy each other and they destroy the planet and the whole thing starts over again.

All samsaric. So those beings, the first ones there, they eat dutsi as well, but not the dutsi that is the stuff we use to make our tormas and do other things with. The reason for all of that is that subtle sustenances don't require that body to separate pure from impure. So there's no waste product from partaking of pure sustenance. Gross sustenance by nature has purer elements and impure elements in the sense that they have elements that the body that partakes of it can utilize and elements that the body that partakes of it cannot utilize. And so the body system must separate what it can use from what it can't use. And it must have a method of getting rid of what it can't use and absorbing and utilizing what it can use, right? So I'm talking for humans and animals about our physiologic ability to eat and get what we need from food and discard the rest.

So this thing called kam gyi se, the portionable sustenances, which is just one of four different things that sustain us, it's a combination of tastes and smells and what they call tangibles, meaning all the other stuff. So for gross sustenance, like all the other stuff that makes up an apple besides its taste and its smell is the tangibles. That kind of sustenance only exists in the desire realm. So form realm doesn't have kam gyi se. And of course, formless realm doesn't have it either.

To reach those, what it is to reach form or formless realm is to spend time in experiencing a level where we are beyond desire for those smells, tastes and tangibles. So we learn that a cause of a form or formless realm rebirth are certain levels of deep meditation, so deep that we've withdrawn our awareness of the functioning of our sense organs. And as we do that, we're planting seeds, right? Of no desire for those sensory inputs anymore. To get there, to even get into that level of meditative concentration, our desire for contact with our sense object world needs to be withdrawn, right? We're turning inside and going deep. It's hard to do so because of our attachment to things we see, hear, smell, taste, touch, feel, think. So it makes sense that when we are spending time withdrawn from all of that input, but we're making seeds, that if one of those is our projecting karma would send us into a whole lifetime where there is no interest in those desire realm things. Would be a form or formless realm depending on the level of our meditation.

2. Stained contact- sakche kyi rekpa

All right, so the second factor in our sustenance, a being sustenance, not just human, a desire realm being sustenance is rekpa. Rekpa means contact. Contact means the convening of three things:

1. an object,

2.  a sense power perceiving it,

3. and consciousness.

So in this case, we're talking about the rekpa, the contact with food, with sustenance. So there must be the object, the food there. For a human, there's an apple. There must be the sense power perceiving it. Let's say we're perceiving it with our eyes. So we must have the eyeball with its retina, right? With the mechanism of the brain, that whole thing intact. They say just retina, but it of course has to be all of it. The sense power perceiving the apple. And then there needs to be the consciousness. So the eye consciousness that picks up that information and gives the label, oh, apple, right? It isn't just apple, it's apple, I want apple, or apple, I don't want apple, right? Whatever the immediate response is comes up.

So apparently to just see and recognize food as food brings a bit of pleasure in the sense that that pleasure can sustain us for a while. They say no one starves to death within three feet of food. I don't know that that's true. They also say that something keeps the horse going those last few steps when it can perceive the water that it needs. It won't drop dead if the water is reachable. Something about our mind sustains us when we have these three factors that gives us hope.

They give this example; it's like a story or an analogy. Once upon a time there was this father with his two sons, two young sons, they're in the middle of a famine. They're starving, starving, starving, there's nothing. And someone comes along and gives them this big bag, you know, and the person says, here's this bag, don't open it until you're very, very, you know, last, almost your last breath, don't open this bag, but here is this bag, like implying that it's food. Like, so bag of flour, but don't open it. So they put it on their shelf, you know, and they're staying alive, barely, but they're staying alive and staying alive. And finally, their curiosity overcomes their following the advice. And they open the bag and they see it's a bag of sand, not flour, and they all dropped dead.

Like as long as they believed that there was flour there, so they could eat it, if they got to the end of their rope, it was keeping them alive, like that. Something about hope, expectation. They say the pleasure that hope and expectation bring from just seeing a source of sustenance is itself sustaining. Is that all we need? No, but it's a contributing factor.

3.      Stained movement of the mind- sakche kyi senpa

 The third is sempa (sk. chitta). Sempa is the Tibetan, chitta is the Sanskrit. It means movement of the mind, which means a mental function, which means the mind shifting from object to object. And of course, movement of the mind is what? Karma. So it's like, why don't they just say karma sustains us? That's all we need to say. But it's like, that's jumping to a conclusion. They want us to take these little steps. The very fact that our mind moves from here to here, to here, to here, to here, to here, to here, always wanting something, right? Whether what we're wanting is to avoid something or what we're wanting is to get something we're still wanting. And that movement in search of something is sustaining. In that lifetime, it's sustaining.

They say another explanation for sempa is how that movement of the mind pushes us from one lifetime to the next. Of course, the mind is continuing to move. That's what bardo being is all about. Move, move, move, move, move, move, move, right? And then eventually the move is such that it's not bardo anymore, it's next life, whatever it is. And the mind just is not ever not going. Sixty-four per instant. The movement of the mind instigates our deeds. Our deeds plant the seeds for the circumstances of future movement of the mind, we know. The underlying essence of all of that karma-making is movement of the mind.

I would argue the underlying essence of movement and the mind is karma, right? Which comes first, Arya Nagarjuna would go there. So our life is feeding off this karma that threw it, the projecting karma that threw it. It's part of what sustains us. Do you see?

4.      Stained consciousness- sakche kyi namshe

The fourth factor is namshe. Namshe means the mind itself, awareness, consciousness. So the mind itself, if you could say that, which we can because we're in Abhidharma school. The mind is the basis for the mental function, the sempa that sustains us. Of course, there's no sempa without namshe, but it is a separate factor in the sustenance of the being with that namshe, right?

So I don't know, it took me a long time to be able to make this distinction between am I relating myself to my mind or am I relating myself more to my body with the mind? You know, what's my identity? And I know it's not just body, but it was like ‘me’ has a mind, ‘me’ has a body, what's that ‘me’? And it still isn't quite completely clear what that thing is, but it's always gonna have a mind. It's always gonna have an awareness, whether it's perceiving itself as an amoeba or a giraffe or a pleasure being, whatever. Even as enlightened being, it still has a self-perception. Namshe has a mind. So all three realms, desire, form and formless have rekpa, contact, sempa, movement of the mind and namshe, mind.

Four Things that Nourish Physical Bodies – gye pay gye shi

1. Ka-se food (mouth sustenance)

2. Lek-ja taking good care of the body (doing good)

3. Nyi sleep

4. Ting-ngen-dzin single pointed concentration

Only desire realm has the portionable sustenance factor, the fourth one, the first one we talked about. Now, in speaking about desire realm beings and those with physical, solid physical bodies, so humans and animals, there are four things which nourish our bodies. So those four things are gye pay gye shi. I'm sorry, gye pay gye shi is the topic, the four things that nourish our body.

• shi is the number four,

• gyu is cause.

• gye pay means to flourish,

The four things that cause flourishing. I saw recently that somebody did a worldwide study, 200,000 people gave them surveys about the extent of their flourishing. Isn't that interesting? Wouldn't you like to take a survey that asks you all the different questions about your perception of your own flourishing? It would be so interesting to know what they asked. And then they assessed people in different countries, their own perception of their own flourishing, and where is it that people seem to flourish the greatest? It's really fascinating. But what brought it up to my mind is this word flourish. It's not one we like, you don't go to your neighbor and say, hi, are you flourishing today? But it's like really an underlying urge to flourish. I like the word.

All right, there are four things that cause our flourishing. Our human body, let's say, let's talk about humans here, just because it gets confusing for animals, I think. These four factors that help us flourish are four factors that help the physical foundation of our sense powers to function effectively. So our sense powers, eyes, ears, nose, taste, touch, technically thought as well. And what supports those sense powers is the four elements.

Those four elements, they're called;

1.  earth,

2. water,

3. fire,

4. wind

I think we've talked about this before. The earth element means the quality of solidity of our systems. Water is the quality of fluidity. Anything that is liquid is predominated by water element over the other elements. The fire element is our metabolic processes that manage our temperature, how many calories we need to eat, right? Our level of ability to do work. And then wind is the quality of movement, all those factors through which we can move.

So all the different systems of our body, they all have all four elements in varying amounts. So obviously your liver has more solidity than blood, but the liver doesn't lack fluidity. It’s got water elements in it. Its cells are bathing inside in liquid. They all have metabolic process happening. They all have movement to some extent, but a liver moves a lot less than blood and both of them move a lot less than breathing, breath. So these four elements, they are in varying amounts in varying parts of our system. And then their interaction is that they're to keep each other in check and they're to support each other.

So when they are helping to balance each other, when this one needs to go up, these help it go up, but these keep it from going too high. When they're all doing that exactly right, that's a state of health. We're actually almost never in that state because of many different kinds of factors. One element isn't strong enough to keep the other in check. That one goes haywire for a little while and we end up with a fever. This one's overbearing on all the others. They can't function as well. We get this weakness. There's this constant dance within them. And in a sense, it's a miracle that we do as well as we do.

Something helps to sustain these four elements and their ability to do this dance in a way that keeps any one of them from reaching overbearingness because when one of them goes unchecked for long enough, that's inconsistent with life and we die. So as long as they're all keeping each other in some semblance of check where our body can stay alive, when they no longer are able to do that, one of them will kill us. Why am I going to all of that? So there are these four factors that help these four elements sustain each other in this beautiful dance.

1.      ka-se                  food (mouth sustenance)

The first one is called ka-se. Ka-se means a mouth sustenance, meaning the foods we eat. The foods we eat contribute to these four elements' ability to keep themselves in check and to support each other.

2.      lek-ja                 taking good care of the body (doing good)

Second one, lek-ja. Lek-ja means doing good. Doing good helps these four elements maintain their intricate dance. And it sounds like it means, oh, go be kind and your physical body will be healthy. And highest school would say, yes, exactly. But this is from Abhidharma level. So here lek-ja means taking care, taking care of that physical body, taking good care of it, lek-ja. It means bathe it, massage it, exercise it, apply ointments to it. Sort of the opposite of what we think Abhidharma practitioner would be doing. It helps our bodies flourish to take care of them is what lek-ja means.

3.      nyi                      sleep

Nyi is sleep. One of the necessary factors to sustain our elements' ability to sustain our physical body is sleep. Sleep is nourishing, as we all know. Sleep in the proper amount, of course.

4.      ting-ngen-dzin  single pointed concentration

Fourth one, ting-ngen-dzin. Concentration, single-pointed concentration. Single-pointed concentration is a kind of nourishment for the body. Western society lost that recognition somewhere along the way. To focus our mind on a single object to the exclusion of all else helps sustain, right, our four elements' ability to do their thing. Less scattering. And ting-ngen-dzin is the word for ninth level meditation. But the ting-ngen-dzin that helps sustain us isn't only formal meditation on a cushion. It's anytime we're in that deep state of single-pointedness. We all do it, reading a book that interests us, watching a movie that interests us, doing a jigsaw puzzle that interests us. Anything where we are, you know, you've had that feeling. The thing is, as we learned in meditation, we tend not to have the ability to turn it on and turn it off at our own discretion. It takes the interesting object for us to be able to withdraw that outer scatter in so well. But when we do, it contributes to the flourishing of the elements of our physical body.

And I think it's really interesting that the mindfulness practices have become so popular in the last, I don't know, 10, 15, 20 years that they're used in so many different arenas and people really benefit because it's a practice of single-pointed concentration. You know, at least giving ourselves a time to let everything else go and just be deeply relaxed in the moment is benefiting people. And it's not the kind of meditation that we say, our school says will help ultimately, but it helps sustain, it helps the physical body flourish. And if people have that result from it, of course it's gonna be popular.

The function of these types of sustenance: to perpetuate suffering

So physical bodies need these four kinds of nourishments to stay functional, to flourish, not just functional, but to flourish. However, down here, this term sakche, none of these are ultimate remedies. None of these are ultimately useful at all, in fact, because they are all sakche, sakche means polluted. Geshe-la says, if you have your dog's water bowl with your, you know, it's freshly washed and the water in it is clean and clear, and the cat comes and poops in it, that dog's water is now stained, like worse than stain, right? It's now disgusting. That's what sakche means, impure.

So physical bodies need these four kinds of nourishments to stay functional, to flourish, not just functional, but to flourish. However, down here, this term sakche, none of these are ultimate remedies. None of these are ultimately useful at all, in fact, because they are all sakche. Sakche means polluted. Geshe-la says, if you have your dog's water bowl with your, you know, it's freshly washed and the water in it is clean and clear, and the cat comes and poops in it, that dog's water is now stained, like worse than stain, right? It's now disgusting. That's what sakche means, impure.

But it's like, you want this idea of, yuck. So the thing with all of these sustenances is what they sustain is our samsaric body in our samsaric cycle. So yes, as long as we're perceiving ourselves as a samsaric being with a samsaric body, we need these kinds of sustenances to keep it. But like once we understand, it's like, but I don't wanna keep it. Well, no, I do wanna keep it long enough to make this transformation. But do you see it's like, yes, we learn all of this stuff about sustenance, but it only sustains our suffering being, right?

So none of these sustenances are ultimate. They are all polluted. We can do everything we can to keep this body as healthy and young appearing, young functioning, and it's still gonna get old and or sick and die. But as long as we're here, we might as well learn what sustains it and how to then give it those sustenances that it needs so that I can use it as a tool.

Our World, the Perishable Base – The Mandala

Okay so next, let's talk about the world we are a part of. The term that's used in Tibetan is jikten. In Sanskrit, lokta. Jik means perishable and ten means the base, the perishable base. Our world is called the perishable base. We call it earth. They called it the perishable base. Abhidharmakosha's third chapter goes into detail explanation about how our world starts, how it goes on and how it's destroyed. That we'll get into that later.

So there was a time when this earth wasn't yet. And then lung gi kyilnkor is the Tibetan, mandala is the Sanskrit. Lung means wind. Gi kyilnkor means a huge disc of wind. So what starts earth is something propels a wind to move. And where does the wind come from? What propels it? Later. But a wind starts to stir. And it doesn't mean the wind's going from here to there. It's a spinning wind. It's making a disc. So this wind spins in this flat disc and it starts slow circling and it speeds up and speeds up and speeds up and speeds up until it congeals into a mass. Like wind moving at some certain velocity becomes solid. I don't know if physics agrees with that.

It keeps spinning. It gets a hard as a diamond. It doesn't become diamond, but it becomes as hard as a diamond. It's huge. And it's the basis of what we call our world. So our planet, so I just have to say what Geshe-la said. Our planet is defined by being the one that is connected to Buddha Shakyamuni's paradise. He said, I don't know what that means. I'm for sure saying, I don't know what that means. So here's this disc. It's spinning. It's huge. They measure it in what's called yojenas. I didn't write that down. It's a Sanskrit word. And Geshe-la says a yojana is about four and a half miles. What's that? 10 kilometers. So this disc that we're talking about, that's this hardness, the first hardness of our perishable base world is 7 million miles thick, and 4.5 times 10 to the 60th, miles wide. So much, much bigger than what we say Earth is, as big as Earth is, right? Earth is 7,926 miles in diameter, 12,756 kilometers. I Googled it. So we're talking way huger than what our concept of Earth is.

On this huge solidity forms water, and within the water forms a disc of gold. The gold disc is 1.4 million miles thick. The water disc is 3.6 million miles thick. Both are 11 million miles wide. Don't take the details. It doesn't matter. Just get the idea. There's this huge solid disc, and then there's a water disc, and then a gold disc above it.

Do you remember the long form of the 37-pile mandala?

Om vajra bhumi ah hung - Here is the mighty ground of gold,

Om vadzra reke ah hung - Here is the surrounding outer wall of mountains.

1.   In the center is Summit, King of mountains.

2.   To the east is Greatbody,

3.   To the south is Dzambu,

4.   To the west is Cattle,

5.   To the north is Sound of Terror,

6.   Body & 7. Greatbody,

8.   Oxtail & 9. the Second,

10. Moving & 11. the High Path

12. Sound of Terror & 13. its Mate.

14. Here is the Jewel Mountain,

15. The Tree of Wishes,

16. The Cow that gives whatever you want;

17. Crops that grow themselves.

18. Here is the precious Wheel,

19. The precious Jewel

20. The precious Queen,

21. The precious Chancellor,

22. The precious Elephant,

23. The precious Horse,

24. The precious General,

25. The gold mind of the Vase.

26. Here is the Lady posing lovely,

27. The Lady of the garland,

28. The Lady of song,

29. The Lady of dance,

30. The Lady of flowers,

31. The Lady of incense,

32. The Lady of lamps,

33. The Lady of perfume.

34. Here is the Sun,

35. Here is the Moon,

36. The jeweled Parasol,

37. The Banner of Victory.

This is describing the creation of that basis. So in the center of this great disc with its gold and water discs, like we're stacking up like layers of a cake. In the center appears Mount Meru, terraced starting from the gold disc coming up through the water, coming up above the water. This huge mountain. It's surrounded by water, and it's surrounded by seven mountain ranges going out. And then outside all of them is an eighth mountain range. So altogether you've got nine mountains. The outer one is made of iron. All of the inner ones are made of gold. Mount Meru is made of four different precious metals according to its side. Each side is a different precious metal, which has a different color. And the sky above that side of Mount Meru, the sky above all the area to that side of Mount Meru, the sky is the color of the precious metal of Mount Meru's side. So for instance, Mount Meru's east side is made of silver.

• East is silver. So the sky above everything to its east side, the oceans and the ring of mountains, that section of it, the sky above all of that is silver.

• South is blue. The south side of Mount Meru is made of lapis lazuli. So the sky is blue. Guess where we live?

• West is red. The west side of Mount Meru is made of ruby. Its sky is red.

• North is gold. The north is made of gold. Its sky is gold.

The sun moves around Mount Meru, chased by the moon. The rings of mountains start down at the disc of gold. They come up through the water and then up above the water. And each ring of mountain is half as high as the ring of mountain before it. So Mount Meru is huge. The first ring of mountains closest to it is half as high as Mount Meru. The next ring of mountains is half as high as that. You follow? So they're going out, getting smaller, but they're still huge. Huge, huge, huge mountains. There are huge oceans in between each ring of mountains. And from the last, within the last two rings, that ocean is like huger than all the other ocean. And it's inside that ocean space where the continents have formed.

So each side of Mount Meru has a continent that's come up out of the ocean on that side between the last gold mountains ring and the iron ring that's all the way out. Hey, you've got an image of your mind. That main continent has two side continents, each one on either side of it. So there's an Eastern continent with its two side continents, smaller. The Southern continent with its two, right? Western and Northern.

The Southern continent, it's called Zambuling. It's our earth, what we call earth. It gets the name Zambuling because apparently in the early days, there were many, many of a certain kind of tree that lived on the edge of the ground and that great ocean that it came up from. And those trees had these great big fruits that would fall from the tree and drop into the water. And when they dropped into the water, they would make the sound ‘Zambu’. So in my mind, it's like a coconut, you know, a coconut tree right on the edge of the water. And from high up, the coconut drops into the water and it doesn't go plop, it goes ‘Zambu’. And that there's so many of these dropping that Zambu, Zambu, Zambu, Zambu. The whole place got the name Zambuling, the place of Zambu. Like, I don't think geology has found any fossils of a Zambu plant root, so we don't know.

None of it really is consistent with our geological history that we know. Hmm, anyway, each of those continents has a particular shape. It has a special quality. It has a special treasure. The beings that live on it have unique qualities. We are the humans that live on the Zambuling continent.

There are humans who live on the other three continents as well, but they are very different than us, although they are still human.

That 37-pile mandala practice is a practice that describes this impure world, jikten, and then as part of the prayer, you take it as an impure thing, and you recognize that it's made by emptiness, it's made by karma, and is empty, and so therefore can be perceived as pure. And so we offer it to the Lama as payment for the teaching, in our request for the teaching, as payment for the teaching, because it's the most precious thing, this mandala of the existence of our world, which is that which we will use to transform samsara into paradise for everybody. It's like all the riches of gods and men, the prayer says that. And we take all that goodness, all that wealth, and we offer it to the teacher as payment for the teachings, because the teachings are so precious, right? There's nothing else that is worth giving.

So we use that 37-pile mandala prayer typically before we receive a teaching to request it, and then after we receive a teaching, we offer it again as payment for what we just received. And then, you know, it's long, and it has the grains that you can, you know, there's a practice that goes with it. And it got simplified and simplified and simplified down to our seven-pile mandala. Here is the great earth filled with fragrant incense covered with a blanket of flowers that we say at the beginning of every class. That's why we are hearing ourselves offer the most precious thing that we have access to, to those holy beings in order to receive the class.

There's a whole class on how to do that practice. The practice itself is a merit-making practice. So you can learn how to do it as a practice, right? In order to be part of our ‘purify and make merit’, right? Accumulation of practice through lifetime. You know, separate course, not a formal ACI course, but can be done, right? Roshana and Vicka are teaching it now. I have taught it, others have learned it. Available by request.

All right, so above and below each of these continents there are hell realms, their corresponding hell realms and their corresponding form and formless realms, not corresponding, well, maybe corresponding, and the paradises. I guess that means the paradises of the enlightened beings that are somehow related to the beings of that earth, right? I don't really understand. So this whole description is explaining one planet, the disc, the gold, the water, the all the mountains, the all four, all of it. That's one planet.

We think of earth as one planet, but earth is just part of this thing, one planet. And then we learned in Diamond Cutter Sutra, right? Consider a planet like that and consider a thousand of a thousand of a thousand of those planets. Do you remember? So like the galaxies that those telescopes are showing us, right, there's our huge Milky Way. And then, oh my gosh, you get outside the Milky Way and there's more of them and more of them and more of them. And within each one, there's many of these humongous planets. So it's like, no, like our minds go, no, the world is not like that, right? There's our sun. There are those nine planets going around the sun. Earth is the only one that has life on it. Yes, probably there's life somewhere else. We haven't found it yet or we haven't recognized it, but come on, our earth is a sphere. We have photographs of it from outer space to show that it's a sphere, not a flat disc. Yeah, we agree it's spinning. It's not as big as what you say, right?

We say, no, Master Vasubandhu, reality is not like what you describe. And Geshe-la says, who's right? You know, in the past, this chapter in Abhidharma, people have said, right, so Mount Meru is like Mount Everest and then the Southern Continent is India, Northern Continent is Russia, right? They like try to fit it into what would have been the worldview of the people in the time of Lord Buddha. And others say, no, Master Vasubandhu knew it wasn't really like that, but he's writing for the readers who believed it was like that. So apparently, this explanation was more consistent with the worldview of the time of Master Vasubandhu, 300 AD in India. I don't know anything about what people in India believe the world was like at that time. But apparently, it was more consistent with what Master Vasubandhu was describing. They did not believe that the world was a sphere. Like all I know is Eastern history, right? Or European history. And the world was flat because you see the horizon and it's a line. And if you sail a ship past that line, you're gonna fall off. Personal experience, see? It's an edge. And nobody was willing to go to the edge to see, right? It was too scary.

And then somebody, I don't know who, Vasco de Gama, right? I'm gonna go check it out. Yeah. And he sailed and he sailed and he sailed and he sailed. And that doggone horizon kept moving, apparently, because he never reached it. And then somebody goes, oh, well, then it can't be flat. But it was a really, really, really long time before they got personal confirmation that it wasn't flat because still the experience was you sail your ship towards that horizon and it stays flat. But because you can never reach it, it can't be flat. But until the first astronaut brought that picture back, look, the world is this blue marble in space. But come on, that's just a picture that seems to convey a sphere. The way our eye sees the picture, the picture's flat. Yeah, but the astronaut that took the picture, he saw it as round. Yeah, but he just saw this thing that was flat that looked round. Like, which one is it? We say, no, we've proven it's a sphere. It's proof, right?

Nagarjuna says any argument we give is proof of emptiness. Any argument we give for anything is proof of emptiness. So here it is again, proof of the emptiness of our world because we insist it's round. Master Vasubandhu tells us it's this flat, the whole planet is this flat disc of which the round earth is just a part. Proof that it's neither, so it can be both depending on who's looking. So now why would a realized being, Vasubandhu, say that this is reality when reality is really our sun with the planets going around it, right? Do you see my bias? It's like, no, it's neither really, it's blank. And what it is really is according to the perception of the one who's talking about it, thinking about it, experiencing it. Just because we experience our earth as round doesn't make it round. It makes it round for us. It doesn't make it round. It makes it round for us. Right, and that's what makes it round.

No, that's what makes it empty of being round or flat. Well, it has to be one or the other. No, it doesn't. It is what is being perceived. But honestly, are you perceiving your world as round? No, my world is flat, right? It has hills, but it's not round. Or I would get to some place where I'd be hanging off the side and then I'd be upside down and it doesn't, come on, our world is not round.

Geshe-la used this opportunity to go to that angry yelling boss example again in talking about, is our world this mandala or is our world planet earth? He said, consider that angry yelling boss. 

• It's unpleasant for that boss to be yelling at me. Bad boss, I don't like you, boss. You're causing my distress. 

• Somebody who doesn't like me. Here's boss yelling at me and their experience is, ‘good boss who thinks he’s given Sarahni what she deserves’, pleasant experience for that person. 

• Neutral person doesn't care. 

So is the boss good boss, pleasant boss; yucky boss, unpleasant boss; or just neutral boss? Boss is neither from boss's side, right? We all understand that. Blank from their own side. Why am I experiencing bad boss, unpleasant boss? It’s unique to me, a result of some cause I created.

But I didn't do what she's yelling at me for. No, that's not the point. I did something that's making me find this experience unpleasant. I did something that's making me experience boss yelling at me for no reason at all. This is unpleasant, hyphenate that all, right? It's all one thing, what's happening. So it's all coming from me, forced on me, but coming from me. But does that mean I can just, oh, this is all coming from me. I choose it to be pleasant now. Have you tried it? In the middle of something unpleasant to say, oh, this is empty, it's coming from me. I'll just decide to enjoy it instead. Sometimes it works, most of the time it doesn't. It's not under our power to choose. The seeds have ripened already and with the ripening is pleasant or unpleasant.

But choice, the power of choice that we have is how we respond because in our response, we are imprinting our awareness with what will become the cause of some future experience. So how we respond to the boss in the moment is where our power lies to create what we experience in the future to be pleasant or unpleasant that we can decide. You want an unpleasant future? Yell back at the boss or lie to wiggle out of what she's blaming you for. You want a pleasant future? Say something with the intention of bringing some kind of pleasure to the boss.

When you're angry and yelling at somebody, really, like what is it that you, what response do you want from them? Typically, you want them to agree with you, right? Generally. And so is there a way of me being yelled at- can I honestly say something that allows the person yelling at me to feel like I've somehow agreed with them and choose that response over the one that our impulses sing. But that's only part of the situation beyond our interaction with the boss. Where is it that we are responding unpleasantly to someone that's planting the seeds to have the experience of how the boss is interacting with me is causing me displeasure? It could be. The boss yelling at me could be a highly pleasurable event, couldn't it?

In my olden days, when I was an athlete, people were yelling at my team all the time. Half of the group was cheering us on. They were yelling at us. And it was pleasurable. You go up to serve and somebody hollers your name and it's like, wah. And then you make the point and they holler at you again. Like it's loud decibels, but it's pleasant. Do you see? It's like every situation that we think is pleasant or unpleasant isn't from its own side. Could be different. But not once it's already ripened as pleasant or unpleasant, those seeds have already brought their result. How we respond is critical.

So same in this arena of, do we take this explanation of how our world exists and go, oh, it's just some old-fashioned belief and cling to our scientific belief is the truth or do we recognize, here's a highly realized being, which apparently, we know by way of later chapters in this Abhidharmakosha, he's really clearly describing seeing emptiness directly and what happens afterwards. From which Geshe Michael says, oh, this guy knows what he's talking about. Well, I got myself distracted.

Do we say, oh, his truth is more valid than mine because he's more realized than me? Or is my truth more valid than his because I have direct proof from science? Or do we say not proof of unique to the individual? But then can you feel your mind go, no, but there has to be a bottom-line truth to earth because it's so real. And maybe we just haven't found it yet, but that's our ignorance clinging, clinging, clinging to there has to be something out there that has its own nature because for nothing to have its own nature at all is too nebulous. It's too uncertain. It's too nothing.

But the emptiness of our world does not mean it's not really there. It does not mean it's nothing. It means it is the potential to be unique to every being experiencing it. Isn't the gnat's world different than ours? And yet here's the gnat like flying around my world. The world we live in is completely lacking any nature other than the nature of what's experienced by every being who's experiencing a world, right? So Geshe-la wanted us to use this teaching not to reject it as some archaic belief, but to push ourselves in our understanding of emptiness and our experience of emptiness to be able to say, yes and no, the world is like that. Yes and no, the world is like what I believe it is. Yes, Konglee.

Yes, Khong Lee.

Khong Lee: So happy that today I can learn this. Actually, I was wondering two question, you know. Is it because the scientists always go beyond, you know, the outer space and find a new world and things like that. And I just wonder, is it, you know, the Buddha, he see all things and then he described the world is like that. And now the scientist is going to like, you know, bit by bit to, you know, explore, you know, the unknown area. And it's so big that, you know, I think it will take like, you know, I don't know how many years or, you know, to find it. So I'm just like, you know, I was, you know, so the feeling is so, wow. I mean, the Buddha is so great, you know? So, I mean, he described all, I mean, to us who study this.

And another one is that actually this one, I touched this, I mean, from others. Actually, I want to show a picture. I have a picture of this one. And I mean, to me, it's like, you know, it's bigger than the earth itself. I mean, the earth itself, but I don't know how big is it. So I don't know. And I just wonder if let's say next time, if let's say I can touch the diamond world, I can see all this, you know? So, I mean, I don't know.

Lama Sarahni: Right, right, right. Yeah. Yeah, I think when we touch the diamond world, Geshe-la uses the term we see all this, but if we mean something visual, it's not. We'll experience something that's beyond explanation that will make, you know, all of this more understandable. Oh yeah, I see. Right, nice.

Khong Lee: I keep a copy, you know, here with me. And I always like, you know, when I can study something and then I refer back, where is it? I mean, just to compare these two information that I have. Yeah, I get the constellations are in there too. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The middle one is the Mount Meru and then, you know, the four continental around and then the iron ring and things like that. Something like that. Right, exactly.

Lama Sarahni: Good, nice. 

Yeah. Geshe-la left us pointing out that this is all a lesson in deepening our understanding of emptiness and dependent origination. So the dependent origination, meaning our seeds are ripening to hear a class that's describing our world in this different way that includes a description of how that shows us the no-nature of either the world that's being described that way or the world that we believe is our world to show that both and neither exist, that what exists is according to the mind of the one who's experiencing it in order to help us then ask, well, why am I experiencing it this way? And they're experiencing it that way to come to recognize how it is that my interaction with others is the arena in which I do my creating of my future experience, right?

We're wanting to really connect that dot between my behavior and my future experience. And so my past behavior and my current experience. What we are experiencing is results, results of causes. It's our own personal experience result. So the cause we created had to be our own personal experience. Our own personal experience is experienced by way of what we see ourselves think, say, do. What we are aware of ourselves think, say, or do towards other. Is there ever a moment when we are thinking, saying, doing something towards another and we are not there to be aware of ourselves doing it? No, right? Even if we're dead asleep, even if we're knocked out, our me is always present. It's our me within which the causes are created that bring about the results of what happens to me, right? So our behavior choices is the arena in which we are creators. We do something, we get a result in the next moment. Are those two related? Seems like it. I say to Samanti, I love you, he gives me a hug. If I want a hug, all I have to do is say, I love you. The two are related, right? No, seems like it. Behavior now plants the seed, takes time for that seed to ripen. However, we have other seeds that we've already planted that are similar to the I love you seed that must have been when somebody said to me, I love you, I gave them a hug, right? Just to simplify, wildly simplify. So if it seems to work every time I say, I love you, I get a hug. If that were actually tied together, then I could say to a tree, I love you, and the tree would give me a hug. It's not, right? But my other seeds from hugging people when they said, I love you, ripen by way of saying, I love you. So many times I say, I love you, I get a hug. Do you see that we've got similar seeds that our kindness adds to? And we have opposite seeds. We have ugly seeds that our kindness actually makes the ugly seeds a little less powerful every time we do a kindness. Every time we do a similar unkindness to the other ugly seeds, they get a little stronger. And then our habit of being ugly gets a little stronger. But every time we do a kindness, they get a little weaker. Do you see how it's like, it's going like this. Our karmic seeds inside our refrigerator. They're not static waiting there like ice cubes. They're being influenced by everyone and everything. And that is our existence, right? There's not a me doing all of that. That is me and my experience. I love this mudra, right? Because it's so descriptive of what we are, not just what's happening, but what we are.

 So this class, it seems so cut and dry. Master Vasubandhu, our world is like this. Stop thinking it's round. It's 37 pile or yeah, 37 pile. Relate to it as 37 pile. That will not help us because nobody else relates it as a 37 pile, right? We all relate as round earth. So forget all that and relate by way of kindness. And then it really won't matter whether we believe our world is round or believe it is flat. We won't fight about it. Because there's no point. Fighting, arguing, disagreeing just increases the ugly seeds. Okay, all right. What is the nature of our world? Blank, right? Available. So we can create it into a Buddha paradise. We don't have to go somewhere to find our Buddha paradise. We create it and then it's right there. When that last seed shifts, whatever that's gonna be, there will be Buddha paradise. Buddha you and Buddha paradise emanating. It won't happen any other way than seeds ripening, seeds ripening, seeds ripening. And then spontaneously effortlessly perpetuated. Which is why Buddhas emanate. Paradise and emanation bodies is to perpetuate. Their Buddha-ing, Buddha-being needs to be perpetuated. Yes, Kung Ling.I just, the smell at the top come out. Okay, I think we are so lucky that we have two seeds to see that one world is round and then the other world is flat. So normally people will see world is round, but we have another seed to know that the world is flat as well. It can be both, right? Yeah, cool. All right, good job. 

[Dedication]

Okay, welcome back. We are ACI Course 8, Class 7, May 23, 2025. Let's gather our minds here as we usually do. Bring your attention to your breath until you hear from me again. Now bring to mind that being who for you is a manifestation of ultimate love, ultimate compassion, ultimate wisdom, and see them there with you. Gazing at you with their unconditional love for you, smiling at you with their holy great compassion, their wisdom radiating from them, that beautiful golden glow encompassing you in its light, and then we hear them say. Bring to mind someone you know who's hurting in some way. Feel how much you would like to be able to help them. Recognize that the worldly ways we try fall short. How wonderful it will be when we can also help them in some deep and ultimate way. A way through which they will go on to stop their distress forever. Deep down we know this is possible. Recalling karma and emptiness, we glimpse how it's possible, and so we turn our mind back to our precious holy being. We know that they know what we need to know, what we need to learn yet, what we need to do yet, to become one who can help this other in this deep and ultimate way, and so we ask them, please, please teach us that, and they are so happy that we've asked. Of course they agree.Our gratitude arises. We want to offer them something exquisite, and so we think of the perfect world they are teaching us how to create. We imagine we can hold it in our hands, and we offer it to them, following it with our promise to practice what they teach us, using our refuge prayer to make our promise. Here is the great earth, filled with fragrant incense and covered with a blanket of flowers, the great mountain, four lands, wearing the jewel of the sun and the moon. In my mind I make them the paradise of a Buddha, and offer it all to you. By this deed may every living being experience the pure world. Go for refuge until I am enlightened to the Buddha, the Dharma, and the highest community. To the merit that I do in sharing this class and the rest, may we reach Buddhahood for the sake of every living being. I go for refuge until I am enlightened to the Buddha, the Dharma, and the highest community. To the merit that I do in sharing this class and the rest, may we reach Buddhahood for the sake of every living being. I go for refuge until I am enlightened to the Buddha, the Dharma, and the highest community. To the merit that I do in sharing this class and the rest, may all beings reach their total awakening for the benefit of every single other.

So last class we learned about those different kinds of sustenances, and then we learned that, yeah, but all those sustenances are just what sustain us in this suffering life, right? So I don't know what conclusion to draw from that. It's not like we can decide not to sustain ourselves with that, but it's another clue to, uh, anyway, it's another clue to something. So this class, class seven, it's infamous. It's the class on hell realms. We're studying death in the realms of existence. Remember the two reasons why. Number one, when we study Diamond Cutter Sutra, as Mahayanas, we have made this pledge to become a being who can help stop the suffering of all sentient beings. All, the key word, all, not leaving a single one out. That means we need to know about who exists as a suffering being. And, you know, we may think, well, there are other humans for sure, and then there's animals, bugs, gnats, reptiles, fish, right? All those things that I've either directly experienced myself or read about or heard about. But if we stopped there, that would not be all sentient being. And yeah, but if that's the only ones I've ever experienced, it's all for me. And you know, that's a lower world view. There are existing beings that we've never heard about that are still coming from our karmic seeds. So in a sense, it shows us, I don't know how much bigger our identity needs to grow in our wish to be a Buddha for the sake of all sentient beings. So anyway, so number one, the reason we're studying about the realms of existence is so that we know who it is that needs our help. And then the second reason is that as we learn about these beings, we ask, how do you get to, how does one become one of those? And of course, we know the bottom line, it's seed ripening of past deeds done that were similar. So the second reason we learn about it is so that we can inspire ourselves to choose our behaviors such that we can reduce down to zero the likelihood of experiencing a future as one of these suffering beings, any of them, technically. So we've gone through formless realm, form realm, craving spirits, humans. Did we talk about animals yet? Anyway, what we've got today is the hell realms, hell realm beings. And anyway, we just need to do it. We could just say, look, there are hell realm beings, don't forget them. But that wouldn't help us much in terms of preventing, creating more hell realm beings. So we kind of do want to know the details. So here goes. Nyelwa is the term hell. It looks like nyelwa, but every time Geshe-la says it, it sounds like nyelwa.Just such a subtle difference in the vowel, nyelwa, hells. This is the Tibetan. In my upbringing, my family was Protestant. We had a Presbyterian church that we went to and the preacher was a really great guy. But it was not really a big part of our lives. And a hell realm was one of the things that I rejected as a kid. By the time I was a teenager and reading about this stuff, it's like, oh, they're just trying to scare me and control me. And I didn't believe it. And then fast forward. And here we are, they're talking about the same idea, only from that tradition, as I recall, it was held to be a punishment. It's like, you be a bad person in this life, God's going to punish you, judge you and punish you. And I guess that's really what got I rejected. And so here, the hell realm descriptions are not much different. But the reason we get there is completely different, right? There is no judge who's saying you go there, you go there. At the end of this life, it's we are our own judge constantly.Actually, during life is when our judgments are coming. Because our judgments are how we choose the behaviors that we do in any given situation. And that's what plants the seed, any one of which can be the projecting karma at the end of this life. So we are our own judge, as we will learn when we get to low jump. So in this explanation, Abhidharmakosha means the eight hot hells. Here's hells, gay means eight kinds. So means hot. There are eight kinds of hot hells, eight levels of hot house. They say these hell realms have a specific location. And each planet, each planet, where there are, well, each planet, where there's life, has has hell realms, apparently. And they are in specific locations. But they're below. They describe in our earth, the hell realms are like this huge columnar location. But that that that's our below Dorje Den. Dorje Den is this the diamond seat, the diamond basis. In Sanskrit, it's Vajrasana. Vajrasana means the place where Prince Siddhartha sat down, right on that kusha grass at the base of the tree, and said, I'm not getting up until I'm fully enlightened. It's now called Bodhgaya, that place. So that place, underneath it, in this column, is these different levels of hell realms. And then they describe how big that column is. And it's bigger than our earth is round. So it's like, I don't know, just put it on the shelf and get the essence of this class, which is there are behaviors to not do to avoid this. There are beings who did those behaviors and got themselves into this kind of life. And they need help. So Yojana is a measure of distance that's used. They say it's around four and a half miles, which would be what nine kilometers. And they this cylinder of hell realm is said to be 20,000 Yojanas. Sorry, wait. 20,000 Yojanas in what's that diameter, which is 90,000 miles, 145,000 kilometers, and 320,000 Yojanas deep, like beyond the size of earth. They're stacked like coins. There's eight of them. The one that's most superficial towards Dorje Den is the least suffering hell. None of them are least suffering. Then they get worse. The suffering gets worse. And the times that one is there gets longer at the different levels. So the eighth level down deep is the worst. So they go like this from top to bottom. The first one's called Young Su. Young means again. We've seen it before. Again, young. Young Su means to revive. Su means to fix or to repair or to renew. So this is translated into the hell called revive. And the reason it gets that name, well, I'll get there. I'm getting ahead of myself. So to get to end up in a hell realm, your previous life ends. The projecting karma that pops colors, right? You being headed to life as hell realm being whatever, whatever time it takes to get there. And then you just appear there miraculously. Remember that term? You appear there complete. No being born, baby hell bring. And the moment you're in this one, Young Su, you are in this mass screaming confusion of violence. And you just appear there. Somebody's coming at you with a club. You grab something and you whack them before they can whack you. And there's just this hitting clubbing violence happening in every one of these hell realm levels. The ground is burning hot. The air is burning hot. If there is air, everything's hot and burning. Beings there are all screaming and struggling. It's intense hatred towards everyone and everything. And just everybody's beating each other until they all beat each other senseless. And then this voice comes, revive. And they all pop up and it starts again. So it's not that you die at in a hell realm, right? All of this horrible torture happening and you don't die. I mean, your mind doesn't leave it behind until that till you've used up all the seeds that could fill in that hell realm. Then, of course, the whole thing ends. But even then, it's not called dying. So revive, you get it. Just awful, awful, awful cruelty that you're doing to them and they're doing to you. It's not like you're, oh, leave me alone. You're part of it. Y'all pass out, revive, up you come. They explain that there's a unique, special, horrible pain of suffering that we have when we die, which they say that's probably why we don't remember dying is because it's so painful. We've like blotted it out. I don't know if that makes sense. And as humans, we only experience it once. But that kind of pain is what hell beings are experiencing every moment. Okay. Typically, life in a hell realm will last millions of human years, long, long time, second level. So this is not first, you go to the first level, and then you go to the second level. The levels are, you know, if you're projecting karma is all only for the first level hell, the revive hell, that's, that's where you spend your time. Right? So it's not like you have to go through all of them. So the second level, the second worst hell is called tick knock. Tick tick means lines, knock is black, black line hell. In this level hell, there are beings called hell guards. So someone who has, you know, the terrible karma to be in a hell realm, but the good karma to be the guard of the hell realm, right? They say there's a Lord of the hell realm, which is like crazy, good, bad karma. You know, somehow you're in charge of a place that's nothing but summer suffering. That sounds disastrous for when that being's karma for that wears out, they're going to be the hell realm being. Anyway, in this black line hell, you show up there, the hell guards throw you on this hot ground, put these hot chains down your body that char a black line. And the black lines indicate where other hell guards come and cut you up. And so you're, you get cut and your body pieces are laying around, but you're still aware of them. Like if you cut my body up enough, I would die. I'm gone. But for a hell realm, you cut the body pieces, they're all all over the place. And you're feeling the pain of all of them, you don't die, you don't get free of it. And then of course, what happens is they all come back together and it all starts over again. So being cut up, I can't help but think what kind of karma would make a black line hell. And it's like, okay, throwing a live fish on a barbecue. You know, something like that. There we could have a seed in our mind. But if that's the one that pops, you get the picture. Awful. Next level, Dunjom. Dun means to collect or to gather, and jom means to destroy. So collect and destroy. This one, you show up there, and the hell guards, like herd everybody into this dead end canyon. And the two sides of the canyon are these huge mountains that have that shape of animal heads. And they push everybody in there. And then the mountains close and crush everyone. And then of course, the mountains open back up again. And guess what? You're helping again. The mountains change shape, come again. So they say that the mountain shape reflects all the different kinds of animals that we killed having to do with getting that kind of rebirth somehow. Number four, Numbu. Numbu means to scream, screaming hell. So no doubt they are all screaming, right? All the hells have screaming beings. But this one's characterized by the horrible screams. So in this one, the grounds are especially hot. They're made of iron. There's nowhere to go that's not like that. So you show up there and you can't stand still because it's so hot and burning. And so you're just running around screaming. And every time your body part touches that iron hot ground, you know it burns up. So your feet burn up, your legs burn up, your knees, right? Just the part that touches burns away until finally like you're completely burnt away, but then you regenerate and it starts again. The helplessness is terrible. The trying to get off this hot ground is driving your experience. So the ones before you were there with other beings, this one too, there's other beings, same things happening. It's the first one where you're beaten and being beat. All the rest seem like you're not interacting so much with other beings that it's your more personal suffering. But regardless, there's just no help you can get and no place you can go. Level five is Numbu Chompo. Great screaming hell. It's similar to screaming hell. Only the pain is worse and the lifetime there lasts longer. Sixth level. It's Sawa. Sawa means heat. So all of these are hot hells, but this one is characterized by it's horrible, horrible heat. And here they explain that you show up there finding yourself in a small steel hut with no door to leave. There's no escape. The place heats up and you roast and there's nothing you can do. And you're running around inside, you know, pushing against the walls, trying to get out, but everywhere you touch is just hotter than it was before. And you cook and regenerate and cook again. Number seven, Rabtu Sawa. Rabtu means extremely hot. So in this one, you find yourself in a steel hut that has two rooms. The first hut roasts. So you run to the second hut hoping it'll be less awful and it's worse. And then you run back to the first room because it wasn't as bad and now it's worse. And then you run back to get it. You just keep, you're going for some kind of relief. And instead of relief, it gets worse for longer than what it would be if you were in Sawa. Lastly is Narme. Narme means no torment. Nar means torment. Me is none. No torment.But what it means is not that there's no torment, but this is the place where the torment is below none. It's the worst torment possible. In Sanskrit, it's avici. There is no torment that is less than the torment of the Narme hell realm. They say every instant in this hell realm is more painful than all the other pain that's happening in all three realms of all beings at that moment. So you personally experiencing worse pain than all the pain of every existing being. And it's never less than that. So they describe that the instant you are a Narme hell being, this jet of flame blows at you and you are turned into this little incandescent filament. Do you remember the old light bulbs that had the two little electrodes and it had the little squiggly thing that went across? And when you turn the light on, that squiggly thing would get so bright, you couldn't look at it. That filament is glowing so hot. And the only way anyone could establish that that filament is a living thing is that it emits a moan, a horrible moan. So you're just this hot, hot moaning filament for the length of time that you are there. And if it ever does cool off, which it doesn't, another flash of flame will heat you back up again, they say. Longest hell life, worst pain. If you recall, when we were studying the five immediate misdeeds, killing mother, killing father, killing Arhat, trying to draw blood from the Buddha with wrong intent, evil intent, and causing a schism in the Buddhist Sangha, those are all deeds that plant seeds that will send us to the worst hell realm. This is the one they're talking about. All right. So if that wasn't bad enough, there are also eight cold hells. Drang nyal ge. Here's nyal, hell, ge, eight, drang means cold. So these apparently parallel the hot hells, but they're like next door. They say they're underneath the Himalayas. And again, the location doesn't make sense. But also this column of cold hells, eight different levels of them. And you show up in a cold hell, you're naked. The surface is all ice with no protection. There's nowhere to go. The winds are icy cold, and you're just huddled there trying to protect yourself. And at each level, the cold is worse. It lasts longer. It has a more impact on your body. And they describe it similar to a human in a freezing environment. First, your skin chaps, and then it blisters, and then it cracks open. And then everything itself freezes and falls apart. So each of the different levels of the cold hells has this worsening impact on what you're experiencing as your physical body. But you know, it's not like these physical bodies. But freezing, freezing, freezing. Of course, people are screaming, moaning, horrible. Then they say, there is something called the adjacent hells. Nye korwe nyawa. Nye korwe means the adjacent nearby. So meaning, you know, here are these columnar hell realms, just outside the columnar hell realms are these adjacent hell realms. And they say, if you could get to the edges, the outer edge of one of these hell realms, any of the hot hells, and break through, you would find yourself in one of these adjacent hells. So you kind of get an idea of these adjacent ones surround the original column. And in order to get out of the hell realm, you have to go through these adjacent hells. And I don't, I don't know, really. I don't know how it works. So they explain, there are these four doors at each of the, they say each of the corners of the hell realm, but it's like, wait a minute, they're columnar, they don't have corners. I don't know. They have four doors. If you can get through that one of those doors as your karma shifts, you're able to get out. And then there are these four zones. The first zone is this big trench, and it's filled with embers. So it's like, you've made it to the edge of your hell realm, a door opens, you're standing on the edge, and you're looking into this pit of embers, right? Do you jump or do you stay? They say you will always jump. But you jump into these embers, and of course you, you know, your legs burn up. And you struggle and struggle to get out of this trench of embers, but you regenerate and you stay in there for a long time. But when you manage to get out of that bed of embers, you end up in a swamp, up to your neck in a swamp of corpses and biting creatures. And so it's terrifying, right, to be in a swamp with dead things, and then be being eaten from below. And you manage to get out of that and you find yourself on a road whose surface is made of razor blades with their edges up, right? So you can't help but cut yourself as you're running along this road. And then you come to an area where there's some trees by the edge of the road, and you think, oh, I'll climb the tree. The tree's leaves are shaped as knives. So as you get close to the tree, the leaves fall on you and cut you. But then you're climbing the tree, and the bark is like razor sharp. You get to the top of the tree, and there's these crows that peck your eyes out. So you turn and go back down the tree, and the bark again cuts you all up. Like everywhere you turn for relief, it's just pain and more pain. I guess finally, I don't know what happens at the end of the tree. That's the most peripheral adjacent hell. Then they say there's one more kind of hell, the nitsewe nyewa. Nitsewe nyewa. Nitsewe means a tiny little part, a tiny little part hell. Geshe-la calls it a partial hell. And they explain this as being more of a personal karma, meaning you share this hell with just one or two other people rather than a whole big crowd. And I don't begin to understand this one, or the circumstances that would get it. They describe it as being like if a human, you know, we were in some small plane, and we crash on a desert island with a couple of different people, and there's nothing on that island, and we know we're going to die. It's just a matter of when. It's hot. We're starving. Maybe the plane is burning, and it's going to explode. It's like a very specific, terrible suffering that actually isn't probably going to last terribly long. I guess I don't know that for sure. But the tendency would be, oh, a partial hell would be what's meant for those really unfortunate humans that have that kind of life where everything was fine, and then some terrible disaster happens, and they can't find a solution. Or those unfortunate beings where life just never goes right, and everything is terrible, terrible, and more terrible. And this is specific to say that no, this hell realm is not a human realm. It is a hell realm. But rather than being this great big, like, everybody experiencing the same thing, hell realm, this one, the individual has a unique experience of this particular state of suffering, suffering, suffering. Okay. So more importantly than those details of what the hells are like is, how do we get there? Where do they come from? You know, do they really exist? And most importantly, how do we stay out of one? And we don't go into it in this class, but my question would be, how would I help somebody get out of one? You know, if as a bodhisattva, that's my, you know, that's my pledge, is this, how am I going to do that? And they didn't really talk about that. So how do we get to a hell realm? You know, it's, it sounds like it's a place underneath Bodh Gaya. So if we were to, heaven forbid, project a hell realm, projecting karma from where we died, from wherever we are, there would be a bardo time for that mind to get to Bodh Gaya. From the point of view of lower school that says that those locations have some existence of their own, right? Not self-existently, of course, but if there is a place for a hell and it's not under Tucson, then if I die in Tucson and I'm going to a hell realm, I need a bardo time to get there. Remember? Studying bardo. The point is, all you need are these three shifts. Dead. Shift number one, dead. Shift number two, projecting karma. Hell realm projecting karma. Shift number three, that karma ripens. The karma pops, it takes its, fill in seeds with it, and then boom. So like three shifts of mind is all it takes to go from this life to hell realm life. It isn't a place. It isn't a place. It's a ripening of mental seeds, of course. In Master Shantideva, we'll learn, he says in one of his verses, Geshe-la paraphrases, who do you think made the hell realm? Some acme construction company filed their plans with the county and got their permits and then took their equipment and built these metal huts or these fires or these mountains. It's like, no, our own minds make hells. And so they're real. But did you feel your mind say, oh, my own mind makes hell, I'll just quit making it. I won't believe. And that means there won't be any. But that's a mistaken reaction to what it means to say my own mind makes hell. Like my own mind makes traffic jams. I can't just decide to not believe I'm in a traffic jam and have the traffic free up. It doesn't work. I've tried. Because hell realms are projections of our minds, they are very real. And so they are very close. If we have the seeds of having reacted to things that we don't like, with violence or cruelty or hatred. Same for paradise, in the sense that it only takes three instances to get to paradise, too. Because it also is not a place that was built by somebody. It's also a ripening karmic seed.Yeshua said, we tend to think that the possibility of a hell realm is pretty remote. Because first, we have to get sick and or get old and die. And it seems like, you know, I'm healthy now. I don't have some disease that is life-threatening that I know of. It's like I have time. And of course, we learn through all of our practice is, you know, we don't know that. It seems to be the case, because I've had time up to this time. And but we don't know that. For sure. Do we? And then we also don't know for sure what seed is going to be the projecting karma that is not under our control. In the same way that the next karmic seed that ripens now is not under our control. Especially the one that pops at the moment of death, when we're already in that chaotic, probably fearful and painful circumstance. If our reaction to chaotic, painful, scary circumstances is to react badly to whomever is involved in that scary, painful circumstance, then we have the seeds that could push us into a hell realm. If our reaction to our very circumstance of dying is a violent one, we don't know. You know, what reaction do we have when we're terrified? I have to admit, I've never been terrified. I've been really, really scared, but never terrified. So I don't know how I would react. You know what, I pull the covers over my head, or would I come out fighting? And see, the difference is going to be that reaction of the mind, not the thinker. Because the thinker requires the brain. This is the reactor, our awareness reacting. Okay, so to avoid a hell realm in our future, what would we have to do? We would need to damage any possible hell realm karma seeds that we've already made. And we would want to make non-hell making karmic seeds in the rest of this lifetime. How do we do that? How do we make karmic seeds? We're making karmic seeds by way of our behavior, moment by moment by moment, what we think, say, and do. Most of that, for most of us, is on automatic pilot, which is the problem. Because automatic pilot is driven by me, me, me, me, right? Me and mine. So our personal practice is about growing our understanding, our intellectual understanding, growing our concern for our own future, and growing our compassion for ourselves, and then growing our level of mindfulness for that period of time between when we experience something and when we react to it. So generally speaking, we are on react mode, constantly. And the reaction is based on our belief in me and me, and that other's identity, and whether it's good or bad, is in it. So our natural reaction is to try to get it if it's pleasurable, and try to push it away if it's not. Our spiritual path is to learn to recognize the reaction, and before we actually do it, decide, is that really the seed I want to plant? It may be. It doesn't necessarily mean that you're going to change all your behavior. But you'll go from automatic pilot react to choice of respond to plant mode. And when we can have this keen awareness of how we are responding moment by moment, we have this window of opportunity to recognize, oh, there's some kind of reject or even very, very minuscule willingness to do harm, to avoid or to get. And in our window of choosing response, we can say, no, I won't do that. And that's where our stopping planting seeds that could grow into a hell realm lies. That's where our power lies, is in our interaction with others, whether it's inanimate others or animate others. It's our response, as we know. So it doesn't necessarily take big bad deeds to get to the hell realms. Yes, big bad deeds like the five immediate misdeeds will do it. But little harms grow. And if we have many of those growing, then the likelihood of one of them being the projecting karma at the moment of death, when we're experiencing this threat to our existence, is very likely to pop up. And maybe it was little when it went in there. But when it becomes the projecting karma, one that was willing to do harm to avoid something or willing to do harm to get something, could ripen as this whole lifetime as a hell realm being. So Gashula said logically, it's quite possible to go to a hell realm if we've ever seen ourselves being unkind to another. Right? EGADS. If one of those seeds colors our mind at the moment of it's moving from this body outward, then the next full on life will be this hurt and being hurt reality with nothing else. It's not a place we go. It's a shift in perceptions. And that's all. And so that means we can stop that cycle. We can prevent it from happening altogether by doing our purifications practices regularly. No, yes, we can clear. Theoretically, we could clear damage all this negative seeds we've made up till now. And then we would want to have some regular clean out process so that the new ones we make by way of our human habit don't accumulate. And that's why our purification practice is built into our seven limbs for meditation. Assuming we're meditating every day and doing our seven limb prayer. It's built in. I get on automatic pilot and I just blah, blah, blah through my seven limbs and my purification. It's better than nothing, but it's not going to be protective. So, you know, for myself every now and then, I hear myself giving a class like this and it's like, it's a runny. Come on, get more, get more. Like I get complacent. All right. So how do you get to hell realm? Three thoughts, dead bardo helping. That's all it takes. Unless we don't have the seeds for helping, then it can't happen. All right. So we act to avoid it. How do we act to avoid it? We take refuge. We avoid those harmful behaviors, train ourselves in the kindness behaviors, and to increase the power of that, of those behaviors, we take vows. So refuge in Buddhist morality is the protection against those lower realms, how realm hungry ghost animal. So just taking vows is enough. I'm sorry, I'm going through our break time. Let's take a break. So I just said, refuge in vows is what keeps us out of a hell realm. But of course, just taking vows doesn't keep us out of a hell realm. We have to keep our vows to have them serve in that way. And in order to keep our vows, we learn them, we know them, we track them, of course. So interesting. Our course nine is going to be vowed morality, right? We're going to learn about the vows, all the different kinds we can take, really was what that course is about. So what vows do we have? When we take refuge, if you've ever formally taken refuge, we get given 12 commitments. They're not actually vows because they're so broad, you can't actually keep them as vows, but they call them refuge vows. Regardless, there are 12 commitments to all of them designed to help us live by way of karma and emptiness when we understand that process. Then we could get five lifetime lay person vows that we'll learn about. That would be the next level of commitment. And they are actually, I vow to avoid such and such behaviors. And those five, as you know, I think are really so specific that they really are keepable as a human on a spiritual path anyway. The lifetime lay person vows, one can add celibacy to those vows. If one wants for temporary periods of time, there are advantages to doing that sometimes, or one can take that vow for like that whole lifetime, there would be a reason to do that. Then the next level of vow taking is ordination vows. Not that one has to take ordination vows, but it's an expansion of the five lifetime lay vows in which we are dedicating to leave the home life in a certain way. And in the olden days to take ordination meant you would actually physically leave your home life and move into a monastery and live according to the guidelines of monastic life, which would allow us to be less interactive with the ordinary needs of a human life. And that then the task is learning how to get along with others because you're living in community with people with similar goals that are similarly broken human beings as oneself. So it's not easy. It wouldn't be easy. If you remember, if you ever lived in a dormitory at college or at school, it's like that's a whole different level of learning to relate. Nowadays, you take ordination vows and you, at least in the West, there are no monasteries to go live in. So it's more attitudinal isolation. Isolation is not the right word. It's more attitudinal leaving the home life than physical leaving the home life, because you're still responsible for making a living and keeping up your home. But you can still have ordained vows and live life according to those, not in a monastic setting. They just have to be adjusted a little bit. So as we understand that we can decide to avoid a behavior. So for instance, we could decide to become vegetarian for ethical reasons. And it's a goodness to do that. And then we could, I mean, there's no vow to become vegetarian, but we could take a vow to avoid killing anything. And then our vegetarian lifestyle, those seeds would be planted with greater strength because we have the vow to avoid, not just the decision to avoid. And then the added advantage of taking a vow to avoid something is that every moment we are avoiding that something, whether we're tempted or not, every moment we are avoiding, we are making the goodness of keeping the vow, right? So typically, if you said, I am going to avoid, I'm going to avoid killing the ants in the anthill to keep them out of my garden. Then the only time I get the goodness of that decision is when there is an anthill and I'd be tempted to pour poison down it, and I didn't. But if I took a vow, right? I vow to avoid poisoning anthills. I am not poisoning anthills now and now, and now, and now, and now. I'm gathering the goodness of keeping the vow. Do you see? And then when I actually have the opportunity to pour poison down and I don't, I get the added opportunity, right, of saving the lives. But I was keeping my vow all along. It's like once I heard that about vows, it's like, oh, now I get it. Because I would hear Geshe-la say, as I understood vows, I wanted as many vows as I could get. And that didn't make sense to me.And finally, Venerable Phil, I call him Uncle Phil, we were doing some class together, and he was a monk by then, and he said, yeah, once I figured out this thing about the goodness grows, having a vow, the goodness grows every moment. He said it was a no-brainer. He said, I took my monk's vows. I got as many vows as I could. No, and it's not like it doesn't make you perfect at keeping your vows. But you see, you have this specific tool to clean out when you don't keep the vows well, and then you have this specific guidelines, and you have this goodness growing that we otherwise would only grow when we were in that circumstance. So you can see how the power of the five lifetime lay vows is so subtle, but so strong. It's like, I will avoid killing a human or a human fetus. I mean, probably we're at the place where we're not ever going to be in that situation to even do it, but we're gathering the goodness of not doing so, because we took the vow, do you see? And it's like, whoa, not stealing anything of value, not lying about my spiritual progress. I'm blanking out. What's the killing, stealing, not sexual misconduct, so not adultery, and not alcohol. For most of us, probably the alcohol is hardest one, because it's so ubiquitous in our world. But it's like, really, once we make that decision of the power of vows, it's like, no problem saying thank you, but no thank you. And then just not serving it to others either. So really, it's like the power of vows is quite extraordinary. When we understand, it becomes this uber imprint coloring everyone that we make. Okay, so we get and keep vows. I interrupted myself. So ordination vows, then the next level is bodhisattva vows. And then beyond bodhisattva vows is the diamond way vows, the tantric vows as well. So that word dharma, d-h-a-r-m-a, its root is d-r-d-h-r. It means to hold back or to restrain. So really, the Buddha dharma is learning to restrain ourselves from behaviors that perpetuate suffering. So when we say I'm studying the holy dharma, I may know my mind still connects dharma to Buddha's teachings. And right that that doesn't like zero in on restrain my behavior. But really, that is its basis, teaching us all about why to restrain behavior, and then what behaviors to restrain. Because as we've learned that specific consequences from specific behaviors is, it is separated by a period of time such that we cannot connect the dot. It takes omniscience to be able to know the specific karmic consequences of specific behaviors. And so out of their love and compassion, those enlightened beings who see those cause and effect relationships, actually, they see them directly. They give us a list. You know, these are the things that we are doing as normal humans, right? Not, not awful, ugly, horrible people, just normal, trying to be happy humans. These are things that we do that look like they're all right to do. Because sometimes they work. And when they don't, we find some other reason for why they didn't work. And an omniscient being, you know, says, Oh, you're just not seeing the big picture here. So they teach us. They boil down those 84,000 mental afflictions that make us do 84,000 harmful things, boil them down to a basic 10. And then teach us various things we need to know about how to choose our behavior differently. The Geshe-la says again and again, if you don't get anything else out of these classes, please get that Buddha's teaching is about just be nice, right? Be kind, respond with kindness, even when you don't want to. And it starts like a whole lot of Yeah, but what about me, me, me, right? Because in the long run, it's only our own seeds, we are responsible for our own seeds. And we're not responsible for other people's seeds that they plant. We can try hard to set a good example. But it's our own. It's our own behavior that we are in charge of, right? We're not really in charge. But we want to learn to be in charge of our own behavior. When we fill our minds with kindness seeds, we have nothing to worry about. Even if there are some little remnants of ugly seeds in there, the likelihood of one of them popping at the moment of death is remote. If we have like so full of kindness seeds, that ugliness can't ripen. Then even that process of going through death won't be that scary, terrible, painful experience. Right? There's nothing about dying that has to be that. It is that because of our terrified me that thinks it's disappearing. The me is disappearing when we die. self existent me that never existed, but I believe exists is gonna disappear. So of course, we're going to be scared and terrified. But if we're not relating to that me anymore, because our kindness has grown so big, that we weren't needing to protect me all the time, and to get what me wants all the time, because me has gotten so much bigger, then there that self existent me that's terrified of dying isn't there to be terrified of dying. It's a whole different experience. Driven by kindness. We resist, I can't be kind in the face of that jerk hurting me. Right, right. Van Rom. Okay. So of course, ultimately, how realms are our projections. So I'm so sorry, that I got to be the one to put how realms into your projections. But it's part of the job. So I did it, please forgive me. But now we know, right, who's there that needs help. And I admit, I, I see not in my immediate world, but in by way of my newsfeed, right? I see that there are beings in my world, that are, are leaders, and people behind that leadership, that somehow think that, you know, harming others is the way to get what they want. And, you know, at the, at the, at the first level, it's just so horrible, but deeper than that, what they're making for their selves in the future, is beyond comprehension. No, and so I really can start to squeak into having compassion for these beings that are, you know, to me, like, the enemy, right? That, like the epitome of selfishness, I just want to see it, right? But I'm starting to get to the place where it's like, oh my gosh, when your seeds ripen. Ah, no, it's horrible. And why can I see that? Right? All right. Okay, that's class.That's enough. I'll bank the extra time for more fun class. Yes, Chris. Is there a way, and I'm sorry, it's really noisy here. Okay. Is there a way that, that when you make your good seeds, and your kind, and everything, that, that it's sort of, you know, there's the same sort of, there's your good seeds, and your bad seeds, does it put them kind of on top, so they are more likely to pop? Or is it still just a numbers game? Is there? Yeah, dedicate them, dedicate them. And it adds to their strength or adds to their power. It like solidifies them. And, you know, it is technically a numbers game. But they will, as they, as they influence our choice making, then they are also coloring our mind. And then the more their, our mind is colored, the less likely one of the ugly ones would pop, because the less likely you would be to react badly, in that circumstance where your you is being threatened, right? What makes the negative seed likely to pop is the state of mind at that death time is terrified. And when we're terrified, we come out fighting, right? And that's what will pop one of those negative seeds. If in life, we've been gaining that when I'm terrified, I open my heart and see what I can do. Right, then that's likely more likely to be the case when we're terrified in this other way too. Right. And that is numbers, just in terms of the more seeds, the more likely it'll happen. Yeah. Teacher, I don't find the hand. I don't know where I have it. Okay, that's all right. That is just like this. These images that we see about our leaders know, like yesterday or the day before about Donald Trump, for example, with South African leaders and telling that white people, they want to exterminate white people in South Africa and all of this. This comes from our collective violence and hate? Or why do we see? Because we are all seeing the same thing? Yeah, yeah. You know, this idea of a collective karma. Um, if we mean by collective karma, that there is a karma. Oh, how do I say this? That's, that's, that's beyond mine. That everybody's experiencing the same way. Every human. It's like that. There's no such thing as collective karma like that. There is collective karma in the sense that, as humans, we've all, we've all done the thing that projected us into human number one. And then we all have these similar karmas ripening as similar behavior at similar timeframes. And in that way, yes, we have a collective karma. What it is to be human in May of 2025 is to ripen this event, right? That is right. It's individual karma that ripens to all of us at the same time. Yeah, each of us individual karma. That right has this commonality. Right, just like the weather, right, has a commonality to all of us, but it's all unique to each one of us. Okay. And you know, I like when I hear myself say that it's like I, I can feel the different levels of understanding karma and emptiness just in terms of weather. Okay, Tucson's weather is turning hot, right? We're into triple digits now. And some people, it's like, finally, it's hot. Others go e-gads, it's hot, right? There is a weather that exists. And we all react individually to it. That's one level, right? That's lower level understanding. Yes. I want to tell you something teacher, since you were in Barcelona, that we didn't have water. You remember, I told you for years, it's not raining. Since you were in Barcelona, it has been raining so much that now we have full of water everywhere. And this summer, we will have water for all the tourists because we have so many tourists. So we have everything full of water. Did that? Yay. I love these prayers work. They really do. They really do. They do. Nice. Yeah. Okay. So remember that person we wanted to be able to help? Probably we won't ever give them this class on the hell realms. That's fine. But what we've learned from it, we will use to help us become a being who can help them stop their suffering forever. And that's an extraordinary goodness. So please be happy with yourself. And think of this goodness, like a beautiful glowing gemstone that you can hold in your hands. Recall your own precious holy being, see how happy they are with you. Feel your gratitude to them, your reliance upon them. Ask them to please, please stay close to continue to guide you, help you inspire you. And then offer them this gemstone of goodness. See them accepted and blessed. And they carry it with them right back into your heart. See them there, feel them there. Their love, their compassion, their wisdom. It feels so good. We want to keep it forever. And so we know to share it by the power of the goodness that we've just done. May all beings complete the collection of merit and wisdom and thus gain the true ultimate bodies that merit and wisdom may. So use those three long exhales, I think I'm frozen, to share this goodness with that one person, to share it with everyone you love, to share it with every existing being everywhere. See them all filled with happiness, filled with kindness, filled with wisdom. And may it be so.

Vocab: 

kalpa

jikpay kalpa

       bar kal

chakpay kalpa

       tse me

nepay kalpa

kal chen

de drangme sum la sanggye

Okay, for the recording, welcome back. We are ACI Course 8, Class 8 on May 26, 2025. Let's gather our minds here as we usually do. Please bring your attention to your breath until you hear from me again. Now bring to mind that being who for you is a manifestation of ultimate love, ultimate compassion, ultimate wisdom, and see them there with you. They're gazing at you with their unconditional love for you, smiling at you with their holy great compassion, their wisdom radiating from them, that beautiful golden glow encompassing you in its light, and then we hear them say. Bring to mind someone you know who's hurting in some way. Feel how much you would like to be able to help them. Recognize how the worldly ways we try to help fall short, how wonderful it will be when we can also help them in some deep and ultimate way, a way through which they will go on to stop their distress forever. Deep down, we know this is possible. Learning about emptiness and karma, we glimpse how it's possible. And so I invite you to grow that wish into a longing and that longing into an intention. With that strong intention, turn your mind back to your precious holy being. We know that they know what we need to know, what we need to learn yet, what we need to do yet, to become one who can help this other in this deep and ultimate way. And so we ask them, please, please teach us that. And they're so happy that we've asked, of course they agree. Our gratitude arises. We want to offer them something exquisite. And so we think of the perfect world they are teaching us how to create. We imagine we can hold it in our hands. And we offer it to them, following it with our promise to practice what they teach us, using our refuge prayer to make our promise. Here is the great earth filled with fragrant incense and covered with a blanket of flowers. The great mountain four lands, wearing the jewel of the sun and the moon. In my mind, I make them the paradise of the Buddha and offer it all to you. By this deed, may every living being experience the pure love. I go for refuge until I am enlightened to the Buddha, the Dharma and the highest community. Through the merit that I do in sharing this class and the rest, may we reach Buddhahood for the sake of every living being. I go for refuge until I am enlightened to the Buddha, the Dharma and the highest community. Through the merit that I do in sharing this class and the rest, may we reach Buddhahood for the sake of every living being. I go for refuge until I am enlightened to the Buddha, the Dharma and the highest community.Through the merit that I do in sharing this class and the rest, may all beings reach their total awakening for the benefit of every single other. Okay, so the essence of last class was those hell realms are projections ripening from results of past unkindness to others. Current life ends, a karma projects bardo headed in the direction of the next circumstances of that lifetime shifts again into that horrible experience. So we avoid it by taking and keeping vowed morality, you know, a long story, of course. But the bottom line is this holiness, the Dalai Lama always says, just be kind, just be kind, embody speech and mind. Also easier said than done in certain circumstances. And that's the practice, right? If it were easy, we'd all be enlightened by now. And maybe you are, I can't tell. But I'm not yet. So Geshe-la said, class seven was so heavy, let's do an easy class on class eight. And I don't find it to be the least bit easy, or very much more reassuring than class seven. And then we get to nine and 10. And you know, they're a little better, but they're all about dying. So it's like he gads. So we'll carry on here. So this class is about time. Abhidharma kosha is describing all existing things. Chapter three in particular is discussing like the details of physical existence from the teeniest atoms to the vastest universes.And included in that description is time and space. And we would expect that explanation to go into quantum physics. And it probably does, if you knew quantum physics, you would probably see it in the Abhidharma kosha chapter. But in its description of time, it talks about, the discussion is related to the question, how long does it take to reach Buddhahood? Once you have your first genuine bodhichitta, the wish to reach total enlightenment for the sake of all sentient beings, whatever that means to first reach that state of mind, from that time forward, like until that happens, you know, not even a Buddha can say how long it will be before Sarani makes that transformation. But once that bodhichitta is in place, whatever that means, then from Sutra, three times 10 to the 60th countless great eons is how long it takes. And it's like, okay, how long is that? And that starts this discussion, trying to describe this concept of an eon. In Tibetan, it's kalpa, the term kalpa. So in science, they use the term eon and era. And it's a time frame, it's not a set number of rotations of the earth around the sun. I looked it up, an eon is considered two or more eras. And an era is a period of time marked by certain distinctive characteristics. So, you know, in geology, we have the, I don't know, Pleistocene era, and then other eras, and they call it that era because certain circumstances were in place on the earth at that time.But they don't say, you know, from this year to that year, because you can't say that, obviously. So in Buddhism, a kalpa is equally like, not a number of years, but a period of time within certain, within which certain events happen. And so a given kalpa, for instance, could be, you know, this long, one time, and then this long another time, because it took longer for those changes to occur in these things that are happening in repeating cycles. So a kalpa, you know, they say it's an indefinitely long time. Well, if it's an indefinitely long time, why use the term at all? Because, you know, to say, oh, three kalpas, that should be from here to here, three kalpas, so that you know where you are when you're in the middle of it. But it's not like that. The way you know where you are, is by the circumstances that are going on. So there are four, there are many kinds of kalpas, but there are four main kinds. Here are the four. Jigpe Kalpa, Chakpe Kalpa, Nyepe Kalpa, and then what's called the Kalchen. Jigpe Kalpa is called the Aeon of Destruction. Chakpe Kalpa is the Aeon of Formation. Nyepe Kalpa is the Aeon of Continuation. And I'll get to Kalchen later. So the Aeon of Destruction.So this is describing the cycles of worldly existence. The Aeon of Destruction is a period of time that's marked by four things happening at the same time. So for this Aeon to have been started, these four karmic events are happening. One of them, so you can't say one, two, three, four, like first, second, third, fourth, because they're all there. They've all occurred. And that makes the beginning of the Aeon of Destruction. So one of them is that no more beings are taking birth in the Avicci hell related to that planet. So our planet has its own stack of hell realms. And there are beings, both beings from our world and presumably beings from other places, would be taking birth in that Avicci hell related to our earth. But no more beings will take birth in that Avicci hell if the world that has that Avicci hell related to it is not going to last long enough for the beings to finish their time in Avicci hell, in that Avicci hell. You know, this is just so difficult to wrap my mind around. It's like, why in the world is this part of the projection? I just have to leave that on the show. So there are other worlds, thousand of a thousand of a thousand planets. Remember Diamond Cutter Sutra? There are other worlds that have beings that are desire realm beings, some of which are human. Whether they look like this, I don't know. And that world has Avicci hells also. So if, for instance, someone dies in a world where the being, where the cycle is such that there's not enough time for that being to finish their time in the Avicci hell of that world, their karmic bardo time will take them to the Avicci hell of another world. So, right, they need that bardo time to get there somehow. Anyway, so at what's what is part of the characteristic of the beginning of an Aeon of Destruction is the fact that no more beings are showing up in the Avicci hell of this world. Right? See, because it's telling you the Aeon of Destruction is started. There's not enough time left for them to finish. Second factor that establishes the Aeon of Destruction is people, the people living on that planet, their lifetimes have degenerated down to 80,000 years. Wait a minute, degenerated down to 80,000 years. That means they were longer than that. That's pretty inconceivable. Third factor, the Aeon of Continuation, which is the one that was before, ends. And fourth factor, the Aeon of Destruction opens. It's like this is those three establish the opening of the Aeon of Destruction. So once this world is in its Aeon of Destruction, then as animals and craving spirits in that world are dying, they or no, let me take this back. As beings are dying in that world, whose karmic projection would send them to an animal realm or craving spirit realm, their bardo takes them to the animal or craving spirit realm of another planet. So those on the planet in the Aeon of Destruction are going to see fewer animals in their world. Like they'll be seeing extinction happening. Fewer animals, fewer species. If we were aware of craving spirits, we'd be aware of fewer of them as well. As time goes on, the humans of that planet are reaching deeper and deeper stages of meditation, such that when those lives end, their projecting karma sends them into the first level of the form realm related to that planet. So there are even fewer and fewer humans on that planet over time. They say that the first person reaches that level of meditation. And before they die, it's so pleasurable that they teach other people and they catch on. And so more and more people are spending more and more time withdrawing their sense perceptions from the desire of their world and making the seeds to be free of awareness of a coarse world. And if one of those seeds pops at the end of their life, it can push them into the first level of the form realm, where form is exquisitely beautiful. But then it's too nice to be interested in where things come from. Okay, so they say slowly, slowly, the desire realm is emptying out of the world that's in its eon of destruction. And eventually, that world empties completely of living kind, because it's related living kind is now in its form realm. And then, let me see. So this process of all the beings leaving that planet, and no new ones being born there, because the planet doesn't have enough time for them to carry on. It's called a Barkal, like BP Barkal, which means intermediate eon. So within the eon of destruction, there are these intermediate eons Barkals. And it takes 19 intermediate eons for this process of beings who have come to this earth. Now, that's not right. For this place that has beings to empty out of all of its beings of its desire realm. I think I have that right. Then there's a 20th intermediate eon. The beings related to this planet are all gone. But the planet itself still goes through a 20th intermediate eon period of time, where the sun is going to supernova. And apparently, the description in Abhidharmakosha sounds like a scientifically based science fiction movie, where the sun splits in two. And so because of the additional heat, the rain stops, all the vegetation dries up, two suns are rising in the sky every day, all the rivers dry up, the streams drive up, the smaller lakes dry up. There's millions and millions of years that this is taking to happen. Then there's a third sun shows up, and everything gets hotter and drier, and then a fourth, and then a fifth. By the time there's six suns, the four continents and Mount Meru have burned up like in a puff of smoke. And then a seventh sun happens, and the whole physical world burns up to the first level of the form realm. And at that point, when that whole physical world is just disappeared, that closes its eon of destruction. Duh, right? There's nothing left. It's been destroyed. So it has no more eon of destruction. How long did that take? However long that took is how long that eon of destruction is. You see, it's really hard to wrap my mind around it. From this period of time where these four factors were present, to the period of time where all of this has happened, and there's no more physical world, that's the eon of destruction. And there's 20 intermediate eons through which that takes place. Then, yes, Chris? In the reading, I think it said that at one point that the high pleasure beings stopped sending the rain. And I'm like, I thought they just sat around eating bonbons. They do. Do you get that part? Yeah, I know. I don't understand. Okay. Good. I don't get it. You didn't miss them. Yeah. You know, I do believe I understand that there are beings who are, I don't know how to describe, let's say whose job it is to manage the water. Other traditions would say the spirits of the water element, right? They're in charge of water. Water belongs to them. Earth belongs to Earth spirits, right? And, you know, like something like that. But to be a water spirit, it's a big powerful job. It would be a result of great goodness. And right, so I think something like that, a different take on what it would be to be a pleasure being. Okay. So the eon of formation is this eon time period during which a planet and its beings are coming into being. It is also said to be 20 intermediate eons long. And in that first intermediate eon, the circumstances that start the eon of formation is that an energy starts to swirl. So our minds want to say, you know, first there's this, and then something happens that makes this happen. And then something happens to make that happen. And the description does sound like that, but they leave out the, well, what was there already? And why did that start to turn? Right? Those questions aren't answered so much here. So we would want to say that there is a space where no planet is. And then something stirs, an energy starts to swirl. And as it swirls, it's swirling in that place, a disc forms, and it continues to swirl faster, bigger, with a frequency that makes things harden. It's like, if a wind spins hard enough, it'll solidify. And I don't know that physics proves that or not, but this spinning disc solidifies. And if you've taken the description of the 37-pile mandala practice, it talks about that in detail, like how big and thick is that first diamond ground, and then it gets the gold, and then it gets the water, and then it gets, right? So this disc forms, and then still spinning, mountain ranges form, oceans form. The physical basis of the planet is taking shape. At some point, bardo beings from some other place that doesn't have enough time for them to complete their cycles, right, are attracted somehow to this newly formed planet. So these first beings, they say take birth there, but they would be showing up. They'd be showing up miraculously, right? Do you see where we're learning all these terms? They're showing up complete on this new planet, and they themselves don't really have solid bodies yet. They are beings who radiate their own light. This world doesn't have a sun and a moon yet. They can fly. They're very gentle. To them, all the planet is edible. So when they're hungry, they just, you know, scrape the earth with whatever, you know, their hand does with light. They, you know, they don't, they're not humans like us, but they're living beings. And then as time goes on, those beings' selfishness grows. And as their selfishness grows, their bodies change, get more solid. Their desire for food, for sights and sounds and smells and tastes and touches and pleasures increase. In this period of time from the first beings, as this degeneration is happening, it's still called the eon of formation. Their lifespans, those beings' lifespans are called seimei. Seimei means a not measurable time. But not measurable time doesn't mean, you know, not at all. Not measurable is a term they use for a certain period of time that's really, really long. And Geshe-la said he tried to follow the description of it and he got to 10 to the 30th exponential. And he said he got confused past that. So somehow it's their lifespans, these first humans, are more than 10 to the 30th years. 10 to the 30th means a year, right? With 30 zeros after it that long. Like we don't have a even a name for it. Abhidharmakosha calls it immeasurable. Long time. But as those beings get more and more selfish, their individual next lifespans shorten. And then as a group, the lifespans of the humans is shortening from immeasurable down to 80,000. And the period it takes for those lifespans to go from immeasurable to 80,000 is this first intermediate eon of the eon of formation. And so the world has formed, but these beings aren't like this yet because of, you know, a thing like this doesn't live 80,000 years. So they're still more subtle than these. So the eon is still forming in the sense of forming up into the world as we know it. I mean, to me, it sounds like the eon of formation is still destroying, right? Because we were closer to pure when we first got here. I mean, I don't mean me, but the beings. I don't know. This is all really hard for me. All right. So in a formation starts with that first swirl that's going to become the planet. And then all this other stuff happens through the course of these 20 intermediate eons. And the eon of formation closes when the first being from that planet dies and they're projecting karma pushes them into the Avicci hell, the lowest hell related to that planet. So in all this time of this newly formed planet, there's nobody in its hell realm, at least in its least hell realm. And that planet is fully formed when the first being dies and has done a deed or deeds, the karma of which becomes the projecting karma that throws them directly into the lowest hell, which could possibly have been one of the five immediate misdeeds or multiple lesser bad deeds, right? That one of which was the one that pops to go to the Avicci hell. So by the time the first being lands in that planet's Avicci hell, those lifespans have dropped down to the 80,000 years. So when beings are only living 80,000 years, we know that the eon of formation of that world is finished. And the next eon opens, which is the Nyepe Kalpa. Nyepe Kalpa means the eon of continuation. Eon of continuation also has 20 intermediate eons that make it up. It starts at the point where the lifespans of the beings is 80,000 years, which means the Avicci hell is filling up. And during this eon of continuation, the people are doing more and more non-virtue, right? Their selfishness is growing. And so their behavior choices are being more and more willing to hurt others to get what they want. And so they are doing more and more things like killing, stealing, sexual misconduct, lying, divisive speech, harsh speech, useless speech, jealousy, ill will, and wrong view. And as a result of those non-virtues, their lifespans are shortening. And over time, their lifespans will fall from the 80,000 years down to 10. So a planet's beings, humans we're talking about, will someday, the average lifespan will be 10 years old. And that's like when it's at its worst degeneration. In the eon of continuation, the planet's continuing, the beings are getting more and more non-virtuous, so their lifespans are shortening. So there's this cycle. At the eon of formation, the first beings, their lifespans are like more than 10 to the 30th. And then their selfishness drives them to their lifespan of only 80,000 years. Eon of continuation starts. Now lifespans are dropping down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down to 10. One can imagine, if we think of what we know about human history and those cycles of great civilizations that have evolved, flourished, gotten greedy, destroyed other civilizations in their greed, and then themselves collapsed, and how we've done that over and over and over again with seemingly greater or lesser cruelty. And here we are doing it again. Uh, it's like the period of time in human history that we apparently know about, all of that is in the period of time where human lifespans are around 100. So, you know, there are times when the average lifespan was 40 years. And then, I don't know, the Bible seems to talk about Moses having lived, you know, 500 years. And, but from our human perspective, that the whole period of time that we know about, humans have been in this time frame called the 100. Meaning you could, you could average 40 up to 190, right? We don't, they say 100, we're at the 100 level. And it's kind of an important distinction to be at the 100 level. But one can see that the reason our lifespans would be shortening is because karmically, we're being more and more selfish and cruel to others. So, our lifespans are shortening as a group, and as individuals, as well. So, you know, if we have enough goodness to get human again, which I don't quite see how human can get another human and another human for this to really make sense. But as a species, humans, as they get more and more cruel, as a species, their lifespans get shorter and shorter, which means by the time we're down to only living an average of 10 years, which would mean half the people die earlier than 10 years, half the people die older than 10 years, but not much older. The cruelty has gotten so strong that they're cruel to each other. And they were cruel to each other to make them have such short lifespans. So, they say what's happening is that in this dropping lifespan, the beings have been creating terrible weapons of destruction to fight with each other. And that finally, in this period of time when average lifespans is 10 years old, some people are out on picnics. They're out of the cities. You know, just about everybody lives in a city. And the weapons are unleashed. And all these cities are destroyed. And the people that were out on picnics, you know, they get home to find everything destroyed. And oh, they're distraught. And they go wandering around, you know, crazed and bump into people who were picnicking, you know, on the other side of the city. Who are equally e-gads what's happened. And because of the horrendous destruction, and because of the relief at finding some few other beings still alive, people's love and compassion just explodes. And their morality increases. And they live kindly. And they share stuff and they help each other and right they build this more loving, compassionate world. And slowly, lifespans start to increase again. And the more virtue that's done, the longer the lifespans are, and they rise and rise and rise and rise back up to 80,000. Again, at the 80,000 level, people's virtues are great. Life is easy. Life is good. But somehow, selfishness starts in, I don't know, my guess would be more, more and more people. It's getting crowded during crowded or. And so the although lifespans are long, because virtue is strong. It's not not ignorant. And so as resources somehow get less available, because there's more being selfishness kicks in again. And the cycle starts again. With growing selfishness, growing, non harmful behavior to get what we want and need lifespans dropping and down it goes again. To the point of another version of that destruction. And then a few people don't get destroyed. And oh my gosh, you let's not ever do this again. Let's love each other, right? And it goes again. And so there are these cycles of a new planet forming beings from somewhere, show up there with these long, long, long, long lifespans, they get selfish lifespans dropped to 80,000. They get more selfish lifespans dropped to 10. By down to 10, they destroy each other. It comes back up again. The cycle, eon of continuation, the cycle happens. This the first one from immeasurable lives to 80,000 down to 10. Is the and then sorry, down to 10. Is the first intermediate EM, then 10 up to 80,000, something like this, down and back up is the next one. And then the next one and then the next one in these cycles from 80,000 to 10 to 80,000. The time it takes for that to happen is another intermediate eon, the eon of continuation takes 20 of those 1980 to 10 to 80 and two on either end, 80 to 10 to 80. And one on the end. So the point is a really, really, really long time. But technically, whatever time it takes for this cycle, 80,000, 10 to 80,000 to happen 19 times. Because at the end of the 20th, something else is going to happen. I don't know, maybe it doesn't have to be so long. It depends. Long time at its end. Its end is one of the characteristics of the start of the eon of destruction, right? That's where we started the four things that are have occurred. That's start the eon of destruction. One of them is that the eon of continuation ends because the cycle has happened the 20 necessary times. Why? Why 20? I don't know. Okay. So then there's also this thing called the calcium. Calcium is the term for a great eon, Chen, great eon. A great eon is the period of time it takes for 8080 intermediate eons to happen. But it's not clear what, which 80 intermediate eons they're talking about. Because we just said that there's a eon of formation for a new place. And there's 20 intermediate eons in the eon of formation of this new place. And then we said there were 20 intermediate eons in that place's eon of continuation. And then we said there's 20 intermediate eons in its era of or eon of destruction. That's only 60. And where's the other 20 that makes up the 80 intermediate eons that would characterize this thing called a calcium. And why are we talking about Cal Chen anyway? Kongli shared, or did I dream this Kongli, shared that in the Chinese tradition, they offer that there's an intermediate eon in between the eon of destruction and the next eon of formation, like a time when there's nothing existing at all, before the first swirl starts. And maybe that's what it is. The Abhidharma Kosha does not describe that. Like a 20 intermediate eon period of time when there's nothing happening, because the period of time is established by certain things happening. So you wouldn't be able to, right, you could never establish how long that 20 intermediate eons would be because there's like nothing there. There can't be nothing. But it makes sense. Maybe there's 20, you know, time period when there's nothing happening. Anyway, Cal Chen, we don't know. Geshe Michael says, I don't know where this other 20 intermediate eons comes to make up the 80 intermediate eons. But the important piece is the great eon is significant. Because when someone says, how long does it take to become a Buddha? The answer is, it takes three times 10 to the 60th eons. Great eons to become a Buddha, to gather sufficient virtue, to purify and make enough virtue to become a Buddha from the moment you get your bodhichitta. So it's not just 10 to the three times 10 to the 60th eons. It's great eons. A great eon is 80 of these cycles, the time it takes for an existing world to go through this cycle, up to down, life spans up to down, up to down. Get it? Long time. Long, long, long, long time. But not like so much sun around the earth time. The time it takes for these changes to happen in the minds of beings. The time it takes. Yes, Roxana. Thank you, Jhulam. I'm trying to figure out who calculated all this. Good question. I mean, it's such a big number. Who did the math for us to be learning this and trying to figure out? At least I'm having trouble figuring out in my mind. An omniscient being, an omniscient being taught this to beings whose minds were vast enough that they could grasp and remember, sufficient to be able to write it down in a way that explains what they heard the Buddha teach. So Abhidharma Kosha was not taught by Buddha. It was written or somehow compiled from all the teachings of the Buddha by Master Vasubandhu. So, you know, how he sat down to access all the different sutras that Buddha taught to be able to write that, you know, I can't conceive. He didn't have a computer. I know, you know. Yeah, but still, I mean, back then and right now, with computers and with everything, we still couldn't do it. Yeah. It is, at least in my mind, that's my karma. No. Trying to figure out, it's because I can measure from here through here and have an idea, but using these numbers, it's like such a wide range of space numbers or what, I don't know how to explain. Yeah, yeah, my mind too is still trying to go, how long is that? And I'm just this, I hear myself talk about it. It's like, it's really describing the circumstances of behavior change of the beings on the planet and how long it takes for us to work out, right? To work through our belief systems, right? It's the shifting experiences more than the time that we're talking here. But then it shows us that in order for those shifts to be made, it takes a lot, a lot of, lot of work, a lot of experiences, a lot of 65 per instant seeds out, seeds in to make the change that we're wanting to make. I find this class as discouraging as the hell realm class. It's no fun class, Geshe Michael. It just sounds like it's going to be impossible to make this change that we're saying. Yes, Chris. So is it that period of time for like the Buddha as in Shakyamuni Buddha, who's going to lead everybody else or is it to become an enlightened being? It is, it is to become an enlightened being. It takes that much time. Yeah, that's discouraging. From Sutra, from Sutra practice. Yeah. Yeah. Don't give up. Don't give up. The punchline helps. Yeah, but if it's 2600 years for Buddha Shakyamuni until he got enlightened and for us right now, right? So if I think back before Buddha Shakyamuni, I mean, Siddhartha Gautama was born. Right. That means that a lot of, I don't know, a lot of transformation of all the kalpas had already passed in his world. Right. Right. And we're just 2600 years away from that. Comparing his transformation, right? Perfect enlightened being. Right. To where we stand right now. Right. Like he might as well have been here yesterday, right? Right. Yeah, but that's encouraging in a way, right? It is, but considering that he was just 2600 years ago, we can be him also, right? Yeah. I mean, we can be as close as that too. Right. Yes. Could be. Yes. Yes. There's Kong Ling. You can ask her, Duryodhana.Excuse me? There's Kong Ling. You can ask her what you were asking about. The time frame, remember? The intermediate period. Oh, about the other 20 kalpas? Yes. Was that you, Kong Ling, that showed us the Chinese version of the kalpas? Maybe that wasn't you. Which one did you? Of the intermediate kalpa. We were looking for the other 20,000 kalpas that makes up a great eon, and you showed us a picture in Chinese that said that other 20,000 was blank. Was that you? No. Actually, the one is of the Mount Meru and then the continents surrounding. So, it's just a diagram. Actually, previously, I really cannot imagine because it said 3,000, you know? I cannot imagine. And then finally, I have a picture. And then from there, you know, I mean, I got something, but I still don't know whether it's correct or not correct until I attend this class. And then actually, it's from, I mean, from the Buddha itself. And then, oh, okay, this one definitely must be true. But I still cannot imagine. So, for the time frame, I still have no information about it. Yeah, correct. Good. Okay, excellent. Thank you. So, let's take our break, shall we? All right. So, we've learned that a calchen, a great eon, is the period of time of 80, eight zero, of those intermediate eons. The intermediate eons are these periods of time within the eons of formation, eon of continuation, eon of destruction, and where the other 20 are, we're not quite sure.But the reason it comes up is that the scripture says, de jang me sum la tsang ge, in response to how long does it take to become a Buddha? So, the answer is, this de means that, meaning the calchen, jang me sum la tsang ge. Tsang ge is word for Buddha. Jang me sum is three countless that's, right, three countless calchens, tsang ge, after three countless calchens, Buddha. So, meaning, how long does it take to become a Buddha? It takes the virtue, the merit and wisdom accumulated for three countless great eons to transform oneself from suffering being to fully enlightened being. The word countless is like that tse me, word immeasurable, it doesn't mean uncountable, it means a specific number, like we call million, billion, trillion. They have, I don't know them, but countless and immeasurable. So, countless, the term countless, jang me, means 10 to the 60th power, sorry, one times, yeah, one times 10 to the 60th power. So, one with six zeros, 60 zeros behind it, right? So, one with three zeros is a thousand, four zeros, 10,000, you get it? Five zeros, 100,000, six zeros, 60 zeros. It's beyond a word in English that I know of. So, that many great eons, not years, three of those. It's beyond comprehension how long it takes to gather the merit and wisdom. Maybe we should say it's beyond comprehension how much merit and wisdom we will accumulate to transform ourselves sutra method from suffering being to fully enlightened being. That's what our Buddha demonstrated apparently. I don't know, that's a complicated story. Dilemma? Yes. You just said sutra method. So, if there's a tantra method, does the numbers change or are they the same? You know, it would make a great debate because the promise of tantra is that if practiced well, you make your transformation in this lifetime. But then the debate would be, did you get your first bodhicitta in this lifetime and reach your total enlightenment in this lifetime? Or is this lifetime with the ripening of tantra's availability and successful practice, the end result of your three times 10 to the 60th, countless eons of collecting merit? In which case, yeah, it still took you that long. You're just there, right? You're finishing it in this lifetime. I think it's a great way to think of it. Yeah, that's what I thought. I was just thinking 2600 years of Buddha Chakyamuni, we can be in his shoes right now. Could be. It could be. Yeah, it could be. But it's very hopeful to think it that way. Yes. Better to think of it that way. Yes. Than to think, oh my gosh, I might as well. Right. Just too long. Because I was thinking, how would Nagarjuna approach this? How would he encourage me to think of it differently? Right, right. And we should think of it that way differently, in the sense of, yes, it's all empty of self existence. And so my projection, but then my mind automatically goes, oh, so it doesn't really take that long. Right? Wrong conclusion, because it's all my projection. It is true that it can take that long. Like that's how subtle my selfish ignorance is, and how hard it is to overcome it. Because it's empty. In my mind goes, there's a big possibility. Yes. At any moment, it could shift. Right. Thank you, Dear Lama. Yeah. Okay, so you have one more question. How long does it take to become a Buddha? A Buddha occurs from the accumulation of merit and wisdom for three countless great eons. And three countless is the number for three times 10 to the 60th. 60. Sometimes the answer key says 10 times 10 to the 59th. Right? Do you see the difference? It's a math thing. One times 10 to the 60th is 10 times 10 to the 59th. So, all right. So in all that time, what we are gathering is that root of virtue. Right? The root of virtue that is that virtue necessary to color our karmic seeds such that our seeds ripen our experience of our own mind as omniscient. Right? Being made of love, compassion, wisdom. Okay. So, the text goes on to say, well, then, in this pattern of the cycling of lifespans due to the growing and lessening amount of kindness in the minds of beings, when do Buddha show up in a given world? When does the teacher show up to help people? Because they're not there all the time. Or are they? But people can't see them there all the time. And so, what is it about beings' minds that they can finally see a Buddha walking amongst them, or then can't see a Buddha walking amongst them? So, this text goes into that, explaining those circumstances as well. So, there's another kind of kalpa, another eon, another period of time called the kalpa sangpo. Kalpa sangpo. Sangpo means good fortune. Eon of good fortune. And it isn't quite clear to me where in this cycle of formation, continuation, destruction, this eon of good fortune is exactly. But it would again be characterized by certain circumstances. It must be somewhere between an era of continuation, but before destruction. Or maybe it's sometime in the era of destruction when beings are suffering enough, but not anyway. We'll see. I'm not exactly sure where it lands. So, there is this time called an era of good fortune, which they say we are in one now, which feels sort of contradictory. So, this was Master Vasubandhu, 350 AD, saying, even then, we are in an era of good fortune. And it's like, wow, a lot of awful has happened. During that time, or since that time. But nonetheless, they say we are in an era of good fortune, because we are still within the period of time in which a thousand buddhas are to appear to our world.So, this earth world is supposed to get a thousand buddhas. Shakyamuni Buddha was the third to appear on this world. First to do it from a human form, first to manifest doing it from a human form. So, if he was the third, and we're not seeing the fourth walking amongst us yet, necessarily. And there's supposed to be a thousand before this world gets destroyed. We've got some time left. And it's during this period of good fortune that those thousand can come. And it's like, well, are they going to come one by one? Are they going to come all at once? I don't know. But we are in that period of time when a Buddha could show up. Like, just maybe a little bit more tweaking is necessary. So, I need to write, I need to draw something. Well, let me do it, let me do it this way, so I can see what I'm doing, and then I'll show it to you. Okay. So, in these cycles of lifespans, where people's selfishness has gotten maxed out, so their lifespans are down, average lifespan is down around 10. And they destroy everything, and then some find each other, and they start to get kinder, and their lifespans start to increase. And they reach that 80,000 average lifespan, and then their selfishness grows again, and they start to drop. And as things are getting worse, and being's behavior is getting more selfish, they reach down here where average lifespan is around 100. And then it's going to go on to down to 10, the destruction will happen again, and it'll come up again. So, as I said, we're somewhere in here, probably on the this side of a hundred. Could you stop sharing your screen, so we could see the, I mean, if you stop sharing the vocabulary, we could see you in the whole thing. Thank you. Stop share the vocabulary. There you go. Thank you. Is that good enough? Do you want me to pin me big? Yeah. Okay. We got it. Thanks. Thank you for pointing that out. Okay. So, we go from 10, we get kinder, goes up, we get selfisher, it comes back down again, right? So, when we're down here at around 100, circumstances are such that a Buddha will show up to us somewhere in this period of time. They don't show up when our kindness is occurring to us ourselves, because, look what we've done. And they don't appear when things are so great, that our lifespans are long.And they don't appear when things are dropping until they've dropped enough, but not so much. Do you see, it takes very specific quality of the hearts of the beings on the planet at that time for a Buddha to show up. Remember, we are from avid dharma school point of view, where all of these things have their reality. Yes, they rely on their causes and their conditions to happen. And they are real. Okay, we're not in highest worldview, this is all my projection, but in the end, it comes out the same. Okay, so Buddhas will only come out of our projections, when we have a certain amount of suffering and a certain amount of goodness happening. And the reason for that, can I put my board down? You get the idea. It's on the fall. Yeah, it's not on the rise, that Buddhas show up. Okay. The beings that can produce the ability to see a Buddha walking amongst them, need to have sufficient goodness and sufficient suffering to be questioning. So it takes suffering to wonder, why do I exist? Where do things come from? Why me? When things are going well, we don't wonder, why did I win the lottery? Right? But when our house burns down, why did that happen to me? But also, when terrible things are happening, and we are in fear of our lives or our people's lives, we don't have the time and space to wonder about why me. We don't really get into that existential crisis when we are in survival mode. Survival mode takes over. So when our lifespans are really low, we're in survival mode. But even beings in the era of the hundred can still be ripening their own personal karma of being in survival mode. They're not interested in their spiritual life. It takes this certain specific, enough time, enough needs met, enough intellect, enough education, enough, right? Remember the leisures and fortunes, to have the circumstances to have a Buddha appear in the world. So yes, their compassion and their emanations are appearing all the time. But to, I don't know, to be noticed, to be seen, to be seen by a group of people to say, oh my gosh, right? This being is fully enlightened, right? This being is the one. It takes the karma, the goodness of the beings who are seeing them to see them. You know, like Jesus, not everybody saw Jesus as somebody special. Some saw him as enemy number one, you know? So saying, it's not like Buddhas are waiting in paradise. Okay, now I can go. It's that the quality of the hearts of the beings of the world, right? Make them show up when they show up. And that only happens when the degeneration is worsening, but it hasn't gotten so bad that everybody's in survival mode. And so apparently we are in that now and have been since 550 BC, when that first group of people recognized Siddhartha as Buddha. And we still have this circumstance where the next one could be recognized at any moment, right? Lord Maitreya, waving in the wings, so to speak. You know, he, she's not.But then they say all 500 years, Lord Maitreya will show up in 500 years, but they've been saying that since Buddha left. Oh, not to worry, Shakyamuni, or Maitreya will be here in 500 years. Well, it's 2500 years later.Have we seen him? I don't know. There's another tradition that says Jesus was Lord Maitreya. And he just came a little prematurely. And only got to stay for a short while. That's not ACI. Don't write that down in your homework. Don't even put it in your notes. But again, when we understand from highest worldview, okay, you know, maybe Maitreya is here now. And maybe we're not so far away. And maybe it isn't that they come one by one. Maybe there'll be more than one if we've got 1000 to go. Anyway. So the text goes on to say that there are signs that we can look for that indicate where we are in the era of destruction in the degeneration of our world. And there are five. Let me go back here. One, two, three, four, five, these last five words. Say, nyomong, semchen, du, and dawa are these five factors that show us the level of degeneration. So the first one, say, means life. And what it means here is that life is fragile. In the time of degeneration, as life spans are decreasing, because our virtue is decreasing, our selfishness is increasing, we will see that lives become more and more fragile. So if we live 80,000 years, right, if we have bodies that live 80,000 years, those bodies must be pretty indestructible. To live only 100 years-ish means our bodies have become fragile. Diseases, more diseases. There are more diseases. Our bodies get easily weak. It's easy for us to die. Like life is fragile. We're going to talk about it more. Second factor, nyomong. Nyomong means those kleshas, mental afflictions, negative emotions, negative states of mind. Any thought that disturbs our peace of mind is called a nyomong. And then they list the main ones, you know, desire, aversion, hatred, fear, pride, jealousy, doubt, greed, wrong view, right, thinking pure things are impure, no, impure things are pure. Here it's talking about the underlying factor of being uninterested in doing virtue. Like the circumstance that shows increasing degeneration is that beings have little interest in, you know, going out of their way to be kind. Less and less interest in helping somebody who needs help. Less and less interest in extending yourself to other people in need. Less and less interest in trying to be kind. Just, you know, allowing yourself to say or do whatever you want. This one, the nyomong, is reflected in the behavior of non-ordained people. So non-ordained people are uninterested in virtue. Ordained people still are interested in virtue. Third factor is samchen. Samchen, we know that word as suffering being, living being, but here they're using it in terms of our physical bodies. In the time of degeneration, our physical bodies are not strong, they're not well proportioned. So it's a little different than, say, the life. This is saying specifically our physical bodies are less and less serviceable tools. You know, so apparently when our lifespans are longer, the bodies that we have are these, like, really efficient, well proportioned machines that are reliable and capable. Like, I like to use the idea of someone who's a natural athlete, you know, they can just make their body do anything. They see somebody do something, they can just go, okay, I can do that. Versus, you know, somebody with a body like mine, like, it's got a low center of gravity, I can't move it like that, it gets weak, it's too short, it's too this, it's too that, right? And then in our world, and like what I see is, I see people, more and more people, like, built sort of knock-kneed or, you know, with the with the truncal obesity that makes it moving difficult. It's just our physical bodies are manifesting our karmic seeds of this degenerate times where they just aren't like the machines they're supposed to be. Not that they're supposed to be. That our goodness would make them be a body that you could use for anything. So we are in degenerate times, bodies are losing that factor. Not that you were born that way, and you lose it through life. But meaning the bodies we take on for life are not as efficient, effective machinery. The fourth one is de-time.But here it doesn't mean time as in ticking of the clock. Here it is a code for the things that we require to live. And it means here that the things that we require are themselves losing their efficacy to keep us alive, to contribute to keeping us alive. So for instance, our food is losing its nutrition, somehow. Not just that we're choosing to eat non-nutritious foods, but that the grown foods have fewer minerals, fewer vitamins, fewer such and such. I mean, science says that. I don't see how a plant can grow an ear of corn that's lacking the amount of magnesium it's supposed to have and still grow an ear of corn. But apparently that kind of stuff is happening. Our food is less nutritious. It's, you know, full of pesticides, you know the story. So it's all part of this manifestation of the degeneration of our world. Our water doesn't, our water is not pure. Our foods are not, don't sustain us. Vitamins, minerals, medicines don't work as well. Shelters are not reliable. Even the weather, right, is becoming seemingly harsher than before. So even if we can get those resources, they don't function as well for us. And then it will go on to scarcity, not even being able to get sufficient of those things we need to survive. That's the de-factor. And then Dawa is the worldview. And here it refers to reaching the point where even people who take ordination, take it for the wrong reason, and are not demonstrating an increased virtue factor in their life. And so when things degenerate such that even ordained people are not keeping vowed morality, like you know the degenerate times are really full on. So as these five degenerations grow and spread, lifespans continue to decrease. They are why the lifespans decrease, because the resultant behaviors that we do from these circumstances are more selfishly driven. And that lowers our lifespan. And it goes on to the point where there's no one interested in spiritual life at all. So then the first thing that happens is that even when there's a period of time where some people are searching for answers and trying to gain the realizations that their spiritual tradition teaches about, they're interested, they study, they try, but they can't gain the realizations. They can't reach that deep level of meditation. They can't get it. It gets harder and harder to have those realizations of renunciation, of the need for study, of seeing dependent origination directly, of seeing emptiness directly, going on to the ones that will come further. And as we can't get realizations, we get less and less interested in even trying. I mean, that's obvious. And as we get less interested in trying, we get less interested in studying and reading and going to lectures. So fewer get offered and the books get relegated to the libraries. And when they haven't been checked out for a long time, they get relegated to the basement. And once they're down in the basement of the library, you know, nobody remembers they're even there. And then pretty soon the library gets destroyed and then all the books with them. And we're deeply into the period of degeneration. And we eventually reach that point where people's selfishness has grown to the point where they're willing to kill each other to get what they want. And the killing happens and a few don't get killed and oh my gosh, look what we've done. And it starts over again, right? With the virtue growing, but virtue really meaning the kindness growing because the wisdom hasn't kicked in yet, right? When the wisdom, meaning the understanding of none of this is anything other than results of behavior, right? We can understand about kindness is important without understanding wisdom. We'll keep going in the cycle until our understanding of why the cycle is happening the way it is grows. That's what finally will cut this whole cycle, of course, is to understand, oh my gosh, none of it has any nature. It's all driven by how I imprint my mind by what I think, say and do towards others. And so, oh my gosh, I see how my behavior creates my circumstances, not in the next moment, but ultimately, not meaning ultimately a long time ago, but meaning now. My karmic seeds are making my world now and now and now and now and how I respond to it will make the circumstances of some future now. And that makes this whole cycle happen. So, it's not that this cycle isn't happening at all when we understand about wisdom. When we have the wisdom, we understand why the cycle happens, because we didn't have wisdom, that we believed that my me and your you were at odds instead of co-created. So, where does that leave us? It does seem to me like we are dangerously close to this destroy everything. No, I mean, if we don't do it with climate, we'll do it with bombs. It seems so close to me, but we are at the level of a hundred. So, it could mean that at any moment, we see a fully enlightened being show up now and guide beings in their growth of wisdom. But even then, if what is taught is sutra, it's like from what the scripture says, the sutra method of purify and make merit just takes so long and so much suffering will happen during that time period while we horse around with purifying all my negative seeds in that negative consciousness. It takes a long time, it seems, which is why our Buddha, Buddha Shakyamuni taught Tantra. It's like, it's not why, it's like there's a certain amount of goodness that the beings of our planet have that Tantra was taught, that Diamond Way was taught. Not everybody has the seeds to see that Tantra was taught or to see that Tantra is something that is meant to increase the amount of virtue in the world. They see it as something that's like mistaken and wrong. I'm confused. Why is something mistaken? Why is something mistaken? Yes. Why do you, why, why you said that they, that there's people who see it like if it's this as being taught as something mistaken, that's what I heard. Tantra, right, because, okay, so some people might hear about Tantra practices and they think it's some perverted sexual practice, which it's not. And then some know a little bit more about it and they think it's just these really, really long prayers and lots of mantras that you do. So it distracts you from life, right? You go on retreat, you just avoid everything. And it's like, that's not going to change everything for anybody. And maybe others think, oh, Tantra is all about those solitary retreats. And you just go out by yourself, right? And, you know, just eventually disappear. Like that's not it either. When we are well-trained, we understand the process of the Diamond Way is a very specific love and compassion centered on others' method for transforming all experience from ordinary to pure in a very swift way. And it revolves around keeping our vowed morality to a much more moment-to-moment extent than our Sutra practice did. And it becomes this tool for making this transformation happen moment by moment, right? To be able to access that space where it could happen in this moment, which is there in every moment, this empty nature of you, me, and the interaction between. So in the Tantric vows are additional behaviors that we train ourselves in. It's not behaviors, so much, it's a different state of mind that we're trying to learn to train ourselves in. So that's why you and Venerable Sumathi and Geshe-la are so, so, I mean, interested in all of us to have the right mindset, right? To be able to start that and to really learn all this. Right. To avoid all those misunderstandings that you would just mentioned them. Exactly, exactly. Okay, thank you. Because if we go into a Diamond Way practice with that state of mind that is still steeped in, things have their own nature, even the enlightened beings, right? Our mind would be even those enlightened beings have their own nature that we can pretend to do Tantra and it's not going to have the effect on our mind. And then if we're still at the level where when we hear, no, it's nothing but your own projection and our mind flops into the, oh, well, then it's not really real. I And it sounds like it's saying, do anything you want, right? And if you're thinking, oh, okay, I can do anything I want. And we still have that old mindset, then our selfishness will take over. And we'll say, see, I'm a great Tantric. A huge, huge mistake. And so, you know, someone who's going to be willing to take someone into that path, they're there, right? They want, they need themselves to see the other as ready to walk that middle line, because the mind is going to go, no, it is self existent. No, it's not existent at all. So I can with all Tantric students, flop between that. And if we don't have the capacity to pull ourselves back to the middle road, then our Tantric practice will take us off half cocked, you know, so easily. So we need that solid grounding to be able to check our own mind. Who am I blaming? And am I saying, well, then it doesn't matter. And to get back in the middle way. So yes, you know, my teachers said, make sure that you yourself have the ability to get yourself back on the middle way, before you go further in Tantra. And then they're saying, and if you're going to take somebody into Tantra, you make sure you've done everything you can to give them the foundation that they need to keep pulling themselves back to the middle way. And so, like, if that's my role is to take somebody into diamond way, like I anticipate that's going to be what I get to do for them. Then when they ask their questions, when they write their homework, I'm looking to see the words that they use to try to check how might they be misunderstanding their own words. I don't know your minds, right? Probably your minds know exactly. You know, this wisdom better than me. But my job is to say, do you mean this? Or do you mean that? Right? So that every time we do that, together, we both pull back to being on that middle way, we need to be in that space of the no self nature of anything as what's real for Tantra to work. And it takes this struggle with our foundational practices to go through the process that we need to show ourselves that we can do that, that we can keep pulling ourselves into the middle. And that's what shows that we're ready for diamond way. Yeah. Thanks for bringing that up.Thank you. So how do we prepare for it? We study the Lam Rim, right? Meaning the ACI courses. And now this other method, right? Coming to you by Geshe Michael. Put what you learn into practice on your daily life. Just try. None of us do it perfectly. Meditate regularly, seriously. You know, move yourself through those levels. And serve. Help people. Help others. Doesn't have to be human people. Help others. Serve your Lama. To help others is to serve your Lama. There's a big dove outside my door. Serve your parents if you have them. Serve the needy. Serve your Dharma center. Choose powerful karmic objects. I'll give you a hint. See anybody you serve as a powerful karmic object? That's Tantra. I mean, Geshe-la shared that in the very first Five Houses program. Those beings, they're not ordinary. They're not not ordinary. So why not pretend there are Buddha emanation yelling at you? Because how would you respond to a Buddha emanation yelling at you differently than the jerk boss yelling at you? Hopefully differently. Hey, what is it that I need to learn here? You know, I'm sorry you're upset with me. How can I help you? Like more genuinely than just making it up because Shakyamuni Buddha, or Shantideva suggested we do it. Yeah. Okay. So once we are well prepared, our own karmic seeds will force somebody to give us that initiation, to grant us the initiation through which we receive these additional vowed behaviors that are the guidelines for the behaviors that bring about this transformation in a swifter way than the previous vows that we've taken. But the previous vows that we've taken have, by keeping them, we've grown the goodness to be able to receive and sustain the vowed behaviors that come next. So keeping our Pratimoksha and Bodhisattva behaviors well is what will create the circumstances for a swifter practice, which is granted by way of those, the initiations, etc. Okay, Geshe-la ended this class of telling the story of there was a group of people that can Rinpoche was preparing to give initiation to. And one of those students asked, Rinpoche, you know, you're going to give us these vows, and you know, we won't be able to keep them. It's like, why does the system, even with this really careful preparation, go on to give us vows that, you know, we can't keep. Tantric vows are very difficult to actually keep. And Geshe-la's story said that Rinpoche, with a very straight face, answered by saying, look, you're going to hell anyway. When you get to hell, you'll be able to say, I'm not here because of all the ordinary ways you get to hell. I'm here because I couldn't keep my tantric vows well. And it sounds like a joke. Geshe-la's point was, Rinpoche was not joking.There's something to be said about that. To go to hell because we couldn't keep our tantric vows means that it's still beneficial for us to get our tantric vows and try. I don't understand it myself quite, except that maybe what you're going to do as your hell realm being is going to be a whole lot different. And so maybe that's not a bad thing. All right, so that was supposed to be an uplifting class. The next ones will be a little better, I hope. It was very uplifting, dear Lama. Good, I'm glad to hear that. Because in conclusion, we have to continue trying and trying to keep our virtue and our morality. And that we are in the perfect circumstances. Right. We're in the era of the hundred. Right. So it is very uplifting. Thank you. Right. Yeah. Good. So remember that being that we wanted to be able to help at the beginning of class. You may or may not ever teach them a class like this. That's fine. But what we've learned, we will use to help them stop their suffering forever someday. And that's an extraordinary goodness. So please be happy with yourself. And think of this goodness like a beautiful glowing gemstone that you can hold in your hands. Recall your own precious holy being. See how happy they are with you. Feel your gratitude to them, your reliance upon them. Ask them to please, please stay close. To continue to guide you and inspire you and support you. And then offer them this gemstone of goodness. See them accepted and blessed. And they carry it with them right back into your heart. See them there. Feel them there. Their love, their compassion, their wisdom. It feels so good. We want to keep it forever. And so we know to share it by the power of the goodness that we've just done. May all beings complete the collection of merit and wisdom. And thus gain the two ultimate bodies that merit and wisdom bank. So use those three long exhales to share this goodness with that one person to share with everyone you love, to share with every existing being everywhere. See them all filled with happiness, filled with loving kindness, filled with wisdom. And may it be so. Okay, thank you all again for the opportunity to share.

Vocabulary Class 9

CHIWA MITAKPA death impermanence

CHIWA GOMPA death meditation

CHIWA DRENPA GOMPA death remember  meditation

CHIWAR MAGOMPAY NYEMIK Disadvantages/problems of not cultivating death awareness

CHIWAR DRENPA GOMPAY PENYUN Advantages/benefits of cultivating death awareness 

CHI-LO JITAR KYEPA What kind of death awareness to develop

NGEPAR CHIWA death is certain

NAM CHI MA-NGE PA Time of death is uncertain

CHU MA TOK MI PEN nothing but the Dharma helps

All right, welcome back. We are ACI course eight, class nine. How about that? May 30th, 2025. You know, next class, we're Friday; on Monday, at the start of class, I'll assign the final exam questions for you guys to teach me. So be sure to be here for class to get an assignment All right, so let's gather our minds here as we usually do. Please bring your attention to your breath until you hear from me again. Now bring to mind that being who for you is a manifestation of ultimate love, ultimate compassion, ultimate wisdom. See them there, gazing at you with their unconditional love for you, bless. Bless. Bless. Smiling at you with their holy great compassion, their wisdom radiating from them, that beautiful golden glow encompassing you in its light. And then we hear them say, bring to mind someone you know who's hurting in some way. Feel how much you would like to be able to help them. Recognize how the worldly ways we try fall short. How wonderful it will be when we can also help in some deep and ultimate way, a way through which they will go on to stop their distress forever. Deep down, we know this is possible. Deep down, we know this is what we're meant to be. And so we turn our minds back to that precious holy being. We know that they know what we need to know, what we need to learn yet, what we need to do yet, to become one who can help this other in this deep and ultimate way. And so we ask them, please, please teach us that. And they're so happy that we've asked. Of course, they agree. Our gratitude arises. We want to offer them something exquisite. And so we think of the perfect world they are teaching us how to create. We imagine we can hold it in our hands and we offer it to them, following it with our promise to practice what they teach us using our refuge prayer to make our promise. Here is the great earth filled with fragrant incense and covered with the blanket of flowers, the great mountain, four lands, wearing the jewel of the sun and the moon. In my mind, I make them the paradise of the Buddha and offer it all to you. By this deed, may every living being experience the pure world. I don gurura namandala kaminiyo tayami. I go for refuge until I am enlightened to the Buddha, the Dharma, and the highest community. Through the merit that I do in sharing this class and the rest, may we reach Buddhahood for the sake of every living being. I go for refuge until I am enlightened to the Buddha, the Dharma, and the highest community. Through the merit that I do in sharing this class and the rest, may we reach Buddhahood for the sake of every living being. I go for refuge until I am enlightened to the Buddha, the Dharma, and the highest community. Through the merit that I do in sharing this class and the rest, may all beings reach their total awakening for the benefit of every single other. 

In looking at the quiz, I don't think I did a good job explaining how long the length of time of one great eon. So just to get it clear, the reason we want to know how long is one great eon is because it takes three times 10 to the 60th of those to reach our Buddhahood once we get bodhichitta. 

[sound issues]

So remember the thing about the first humans, their lifespans are indeterminately long, meaning a specific time, but really, really long. And then they get non-virtuous and it drops down to 80,000 and then down to 10. So one great eon for a brand new planet, its first great eon is the time it takes for that long, long, long, long, long, long lifetime to go down to 10 is one great eon. But then the next great eon is the time it takes for the lifespans to go up from 10 to 80,000 and back down to 10. That's another intermediate eon. And then as it goes through the 19 of those, it gets to the 20th and then it goes down and back up again. No, you must go, I don't know. I don't know what happens at the end, but 80 of those cycles is one great eon, right? Each of those cycles is an eon. An intermediate eon. 80 intermediate eons is a great eon and three times 10 to the 60th great eons is how long it takes Sutra to gather enough goodness to purify and make merit. It's like E Gads, all right. So maybe that's how long we've been at this, in which case finishing our ACI, getting our certificates is no sweat, right? Let's just do it. Get our initiation and get on with this. But we're still alive. So that means that we're doing something good, isn't it? Absolutely. And we're human, we're not that mosquito. Right, right. Yay. Yes, Kongli. Teacher, regarding the drawing that I have the other day, I found that there are some number of years there. I can't hear me. The drawing that I have, yeah, I mean, there are age and years there.Maybe I can share, but this one is towards desire realm and then the formless realm and form realm. So maybe, but I cannot share it here. Where should I put it so that everybody can see? I think Victor also can have some info about it. But that one, I still haven't figured out. How about if you email it to people? Can you do that? Kongli, you can pass it to me. I can email to all the classmates here. I have the email list. Yeah, no problem. But another problem, it is in Chinese. Sorry. But I mean, it's a drawing, actually. I mean, pretty clear, you know, so maybe can have a look at it. And then, you know, so just get a picture. Yeah. Okay, thank you.Thank you. Sorry, teacher. Regarding the, I mean, these are one great eon timeframe. Actually, I think the quiz, what teacher explained last time is correct. But the quiz is like, it put like, for the formation, there is 20 intermediate eons. And then the continuation, 20, another 20. And then the destruction, another 20. But then the quiz mentioned after the destruction, there's another 20 intermediate eons. So that sum it up to be 80 exactly. Right. We just don't know what's going on in that. Yeah, yeah. It won't mention, yeah. Right. Yeah.Okay. Okay, so all of this course about the realms has been, if you recall, so that we understand better who it is that we are pledging to help stop their suffering. Since we're saying, I will bring all beings to their total enlightenment. And then the second reason we study it is to clarify for us the possibilities of existence that would mean possibilities for our own selves. Why do I keep getting that? For future lives, which is probably a little scary, right? Or a lot scary. Not because Buddha said so, but because our growing understanding of karma and emptiness. If it's true that my nature is blank, then the nature I perceive myself as having is forced on me as ripening results of imprints made in this consciousness by what it has seen, it's been aware of itself, thinking, saying, and doing towards other from any of those lifetimes from before up until this moment. And every experience I've ever had has been those ripening results. And every interaction with those ripening results has imprinted this mind that will be future results. And that process is constant. So if I've been aware of myself being, in any way cruel, it is possible. For me to ripen seeds of others being cruel to me. And we go, yeah, of course. So somebody's mean to me on the bus. But if one of those cruel seeds is the one that pops out at that crucial moment that's called the end of this life, not just when the body dies, but when the mind finally makes this final shift, then that seed colors the whole next existence, not just moment by moment. Other seeds fill in the details, but that one is the one that goes. And so now that seed planting that we do moment by moment now, it becomes pretty important because we realize that it'll be like a numbers game, that moment of death. Unless we're really, really highly trained, we have no, no control over that process. And so if we've got 2 trillion kindness seeds and 5 unkindness seeds, the likelihood of an unkindness seed popping is pretty remote because we've got so many goodness seeds. But the reverse is also true, right? And then if we're like pretty 50-50, then it's 50-50. We get a higher or a lower birth. And then as we're understanding more and more about our spiritual life, we don't even want a form realm birth or a formless realm birth. They're just dead ends in a suffering realm. They're not desire realm anymore, but there's still suffering. That what we want, right, is to finish the transformation before we lose the opportunity or at least another human life, but then a human life that's one that has our faculties, that's in the Dharma, right? It's like we're getting pretty specific, which means we need to plant our seeds in a pretty specific way a lot or really powerfully or both, really powerfully and a lot. So Geshe-la ends this whole course with a very quick introduction into the death awareness practice. So it comes in the Lam Rim very, very early. In the Lam Rim, just to get into the Lam Rim, something has woken us up. This world is there's something broken about it. This isn't working. We go searching. We find, we find a teacher. We ask them to teach us. They say, get the essence of your life. What do you mean by that? Look at your opportunities that you've got. Oh my gosh, they say, right? And we learn our leisures and fortunes. And then if we don't figure it out ourselves, oh my gosh, I could lose those at any moment. Then you go back to the teacher and they go, well, how'd that go? Yeah, I really see. I am really, really, really fortunate. Great. And they go, yeah, right. Think about it. How old are you? Do you still know everybody you've ever met? Are they still living? Have you lost anybody in your life? Oh, don't you think it could be you? Oh, right. So really the next thing they say is, okay, impermanence. Go investigate impermanence. And I don't know, I remember years ago when I was first learning impermanence. Yeah, everything's gonna end. The bad things are gonna end. So not to worry, right? Just do your best. It's gonna end. Good things are gonna end. So don't get so attached to them. Change is gonna happen. It helps us cope, right? To say, yeah, yeah, this too shall pass. My mother used to say that. And it's helpful. And that is a realization of impermanence, but it's not deep enough. It's not deep enough to motivate us. It's deep enough to go, okay, I can chill about this upset that I'm having. But it's not deep enough to light the fire under us to do this karmic gardening with the intensity that's necessary in order to close the doors to lesser rebirth. And technically close the doors to higher rebirth and make sure we're funneling our being towards at the very least more human life in the dharma. And that's pretty specific, right? That's a pretty specific seed. All right, so this class becomes this, and next class are the death awareness practice. Where's my share? Eight for class eight. So in my groups that I've started from course one and gone through sequentially, we've already done this death awareness meditation. But I have to admit, I don't remember with this group, if we started from one and went through or has this group accumulated along the way? My question is, has everybody done that death awareness practice module? Yes, yes, yes, yes. Okay, okay, so then this is review. So we're on the lam, the path study of impermanence, mitakpa, chiwa mitakpa, here it is. Chiwa mitakpa means death. So you would think chiwa mitakpa would mean death impermanence, which in English would mean, you know, even death will pass, right? It's impermanent, it's temporary. It's like, it doesn't really, it's not meaningful in English. It's like the only, right, what is that phrase? The only sure thing in life is death and taxes. So this would contradict that. What this means is the chiwa mitakpa is a special topic within the lam topic of impermanence. And it means my death. My death reveals my impermanence. You know, there's no my in the term, but we could study a death awareness practice and apply it to our, you know, grandma or our dog or cat, but that's really not the point. The point is it's about our own being, our own death is to bring this home so that the conclusion of the practice strikes us in a way that motivates us to choose our behavior so much more carefully than we were doing before we met this teaching. So chiwa mitakpa literally means death impermanence, but it's this becoming aware of my death so that I become aware of my own impermanence. Another way to say this is chiwa gompa. Do you remember the word gompa? It means meditation, but meditation with the connotation of getting used to something. And so we think of meditation, you know, oh, I'm on my cushion, my mind single point of focus, et cetera. But then there's the gompa of when you're out walking around, the gompa in being kind, right? Even when everybody's in your face. So getting used to meaning something becomes so familiar, so ingrained that a certain behavior would be automatic. So chiwa gompa is this idea of getting so aware having this certain state of mind, state of heart, of awareness of my own imminent death, that it colors my choice of behavior. So chiwa gompa really more literally says death meditation. In Je Tsongkapa's Lamrim Chenmung, he calls it chiwa drenpa gompa. Drenpa is that also a meditation term, which is that quality of mind that keeps you on your object. It's called recollection, but recollection sounds like object's gone, I go and I get it back. Like that is baby drenpa, but full-on drenpa is when you've got your mind tethered to the object, right? The elephant is tied to the post and we can't get off the object anymore is when our drenpa is full on. We're recollecting our object all the time, meaning holding it all the time. So Je Tsongkapa says, look really the connotation of chiwa mitakpa is chiwa drenpa gompa, meaning having this recollection, getting used to having a recollection of my death moment by moment. Somebody who was getting taught this said, oh, it's the idea, I die today. And that's absolutely correct. Like when you wake up first thing in the morning, wow, I didn't die yesterday, I died today. And when we first hear this and maybe the first 50 times we hear this, our minds go, no, no, she means maybe I'll die today or as if I'll die today. And technically it doesn't mean that, it means growing this attitude of being convinced that today's our last day. And it doesn't mean, oh, well then, I'm gonna get sick and weak and I can't do anything today. It's like, it's as if you are as vibrant as you are now, but then at the end of the day, done.And how would that influence what you choose to do, how you choose to interact with whoever arises? All right, Chiwa Drapagompa. So, just imagine today and what you were planning on doing today after class. And then you get a call from your doctor or your pastor or somebody and says, you know what, I'm so sorry to tell you, but at midnight tonight, you're gonna die. I don't know how to tell you this, but I know it's gonna happen, so be prepared. Would you go do the same thing that you were gonna do today? No, you'd do something different, right? Because your criteria would suddenly be different for what's important. And you would make every moment of this day count, wouldn't we? And we say, oh, that's so dramatic, but technically we don't know, do we? We think we do based on sort of statistics. I've lived this long. Average lifespans are such and such. I'm actually getting close to the average lifespan, right? We have this assumption that because we've lived this long, we've got some amount of time in the future. And so we are willing to put things off, right? We have criteria and we decide, you know. And even after we've heard and done the death awareness practice, we still, right, we're at a different level than we were before, but we still get complacent. We still, we still, anyway. Chihuahdrampa gompa. It really is true that we could be dead in any four minutes. Because if something were to happen, that our orifice for gaining air gets plugged, it only takes four minutes without oxygen for the brain to die in ordinary circumstances. And we don't know, do we? So Jetson Kappa teaches this four part practice to train ourselves in our death awareness, our own death awareness, not others' death awareness, our own death awareness. He gives it to us in these four parts. Chiwar magompay nyemik. Chiwar drenpa gompay penyun. Chi-lo jitar kyepa. And the fourth one, how to do it. Look how good our Tibetan's getting. Sounded like English to me. I don't have the, I don't have the Tibetan for the how to do it part. So these are the four steps of the death awareness teaching. And then in the how to do it, there are three principles and three considerations for each principle. Remember that? So the chihuahdrampa gompa nyemek means the problems of not, gompa means not meditating on death, but it doesn't mean not sitting on your cushion and meditating. It means not having this gotten used to, today's my last day state of mind. The problems of not cultivating that state of mind. Chihuahdrampa gompa nyemek. The first one is that without this awareness, we'll continue to concentrate on gaining small pleasures of worldly life. As our main focus of life. So ordinary human life, nothing bad about it necessarily to wanna grow up, get a job, get, have a family, take care of those family's needs, pleasurably, nicely, take them on vacations, educate the children, keep them fed and dressed. You know, right? It's like nothing wrong with that. That's what it is to be human. And then we die and they die and we lose it all. So included in that is things like, you know, things we do for our reputation, for our own health, right? Everything involved in a usual worldly life. It will just go on like that. Nothing will motivate us to do anything different. Second problem of not cultivating death awareness is that we're just complacent. We're complacent about even those things in worldly life. Really? Oh, I've got enough time and I'll finish my ACI. Homeworks and quizzes later. Oh, I'll do that later. The later never comes if you've noticed, if you've lived long enough to notice. With death of strong death awareness, we'll prioritize those things. And maybe they are something to just put off for later, but maybe they're not. Master Shantideva emphasized that he was, he knows our mind resist putting in the effort that it would take to really live with a keen death awareness. And, you know, our Kachik says, come on, you know, nobody can really live with that intensity all the time as if they're gonna die four minutes from now. And he goes, look, if I ask you to carry a bowl full of oil that's like so full up to the meniscus, you know, carry that bowl of oil across the room and don't spill a drop. You'd go, I can't do that. And he said, yeah, but if I hold a knife to your throat and say, carry that bowl of oil across the room and don't spill a drop, could you do it? Yeah, okay. I don't know how long it will take. It doesn't matter, but I could be so careful to save my life, right? He goes, right. And it's funny. A keen death awareness is like that. I'm doing this to save my life. And the death awareness is not about saving life or not saving life. It's about the intensity of the focus and the choice of behavior. And that was Shantideva's point. Your intensity of focus would increase a lot if you thought your life depended upon that intensity of focus. And guess what it does? Not this life, but the circumstances of future lives depends upon the intensity of focus that we have moment by moment because it's through that that we choose our behaviors instead of stay on automatic pilot. So without a keen death awareness, we just stay on automatic pilot is the point. So these first three are about staying on automatic pilot. Third problem. Even if we do have some Dharma practice, we're still doing that Dharma practice for some worldly reason, some selfishly involved reason for our reputation or some other worldly benefit. It's just the ordinarily normal self-involved state of mind that we're trying to grow our wisdom to overcome. But if we haven't yet, it's still in there and it's still coloring our perception of situations and it's coloring our choices of reactions to those situations. Even when we're trying to choose a different response, our choice is still covered by colored by this. How is it going to impact me, my reputation, my needs, et cetera? Geshe-la shared that in that Jeytob Yeshe, the aftermath wisdom of your direct perception, one of the awarenesses that becomes real is how up until that, those moments you have never done anything that has not been stained with this self-interest. He said, it's just one of those really disturbing ahas that you come out with. Although you also know that now that that cycle is over, you won't be replanting things in that way anymore. So that even our highest spiritual practices are still stained with some underlying, how do I look, what do other people think of me, et cetera. It's not that we're bad, it's that we're stained. Our mind is stained. So death meditation helps us become more aware of this pollution, Geshe-la called it pollution. It doesn't make it stop, but we become more aware of it. The fourth problem with not cultivating death awareness is that without death awareness, even our spiritual practices will become like on automatic pilot. I have to confess, I'm there. And they then are susceptible to worldly distractions. When we get into that space, we're dangerously close to giving up, like to losing our seeds to stay engaged. If when we sit down to do our daily sit, we had this keen awareness, this is my last one, would its intensity be different than, okay, now I do this, and now I do that, and now I do this. If this was my last chance, I don't know, part of me goes, why would I bother if it's my last chance? The other part of me says, I would sit down and meditate and knock it up, right? Forget the rest of what I need to do today. I'll get in there and do my sadhana all day. Again, we hear this teaching, particularly when we hear it for the first time, and we think, oh, it means pretending. When I sit down for my sit, I can pretend, all right, I'm gonna die, I'll increase the power. And they insist, no, no, it's not just pretend you're gonna die today. It's know that you're gonna die today. But to hear myself say that to myself, I get, it's like, no, I don't know that, right? I mean, yeah, it's possible, but I don't wake up in the morning thinking, okay, today's my last day. And they say, and that's a shame. Our practice would be more effective if we did, not in a sense of terror or fear or frantic, but in this really healthy sense of awareness that this me that I think is going along the same, doing what I do, I've got time, oh, you know, I'm doing this well enough. That complacency is not enough to guarantee that what a next life, that the next life would keep me in the Dharma necessarily. Okay, so there's really this different state of heart from maybe I'll die today to convincing ourselves to live, knowing today's our last day. You don't go around saying to everybody, today's my last day, you better hug me. But I would go around, right? You know, I go to line dance on Fridays and at the line dance, hi, see you on Monday, right? Everybody have a nice weekend because I assume I'm coming back on Monday. If I really were convinced that this is my last day for line dance, first of all, I would have more fun. Second of all, before I leave, I would go and hug everybody, you know, and they go, what's up with you, Sarani? I might scare somebody doing that, but we would be different, wouldn't we? People who've had near death experiences, it impacts them so dramatically, mostly, not everybody, because again, none of it is in it from it. All right, we're still going through the disadvantages of not having keen death awareness. Without death awareness, we get more and more attached to life, meaning the things of life that we think we need for our comfort and survival get more and more important the older we get. You know, when you're a young person, you can put a 50 pound backpack on your back and have a great time going hiking in the woods. And then, I don't know, by the time you're a certain age, it's like, no, I need a tent. And then, no, I need a hot shower at the end of the day.And then, no, I can't carry the backpack, right? We just, our criteria changes for what's necessary. You know, is a hot shower necessary? No, not any more so than it was when we were a kid. But our perception of things that are wants turn to needs. And, you know, not because we've gotten sloppy or lazy or more selfish necessarily, it's just the nature of what our mind does as we have this complacency about life. The sixth problem with not becoming aware of our death awareness is without having lived with it, as we die, that experience includes this intense regret about the life just lived. Apparently, all those stories about going through a life review are accurate, that somewhere along the process, before all the withdrawal of the elements, there is a time where you like see everything that's happened. I can't really conceive of what that would be like, but you have this recognition of how you've been in this life and the things you accomplished. And you have this keen aware of the things that you wanted to do, but never did, or did that didn't mean to do. And there's a regret for things done that you wished you'd hadn't. And there's a regret for things not done that you'd wished you'd had. And apparently in that frame of being, that regret is really, really painful. So in our tradition, regret is the only unpleasant state of mind that's a virtue. Here they don't talk about whether in the dying process, whether that regret is virtue or not. I'm guessing it still is, but it's really painful. It's really unpleasant and it's really distracting. So it's going to color what the mind is attending to as it's going through the rest of these withdrawals. So because we're losing this consistency of experience that we are ripening as humans, we're losing that. The mind's getting freaked out because it doesn't have the brain to tether it anymore. And it's just open to any kind of action reaction that's going on. And all those regrets about life, it's agitating for that mind, which puts us in this not so great position at the moment, the final end of that life and the next projecting karma come up. Whereas if we have this life review and it's like, right, right, right, right, right, right. You don't have that agitated regret that is so disturbing that as all of that is dissolving away where we don't have the, oh, but, oh, but, oh, but state of mind that we would have if those regrets are still, if those regrets are in there. So then step two, penyan. There's the word. Chiwa drenpa gompe penyan. Penyan means the benefits. So the benefits of getting used to the awareness of our death, the benefits of growing this healthy, educated, I die today attitude. First one is our practice will be pure, they call it. So without it, our Dharma practice is still infected with this self-interest. We talked about that as one of the problems of not cultivating death awareness. With death awareness, our practice becomes more and more important to us, more interesting than worldly things. Yeah, I guess. It would influence us such that we would probably quit doing some things that we had been doing regularly. I remember when we're teaching this originally, we might say, no, if you have a bunch of buddies and you go out to the bar every Friday, and then as your Dharma practice grows, you're recognizing like this, that I really am not interested in this anymore. I love my buddies, but we just don't have anything in common anymore. And we're all making such rotten karmic seeds while we're here that I just, I don't wanna go anymore. And so then your dilemma is, do you sit down with them and say, look guys, I can't do this anymore for this reason, this reason, or do you just make excuses? Yeah, sorry, I'm not gonna be there today. Sorry, I'm not gonna be there today. And finally they quit including you. I don't know, you have to choose, right? Which they're ready to hear. The point is not, you don't have to sit down and say, no, I don't wanna be involved in this anymore. But people in life that we connect to in pre-Dharma ways, we won't connect to necessarily anymore. And it's okay to let those relationships go. You don't need to make them go with you. You don't need to even necessarily tell them why. You can just fade away, or you can sit down and say, I love you very much, but my life's going in a different direction. So I won't see you very often anymore, right? However you wanna do it. But the benefit of a death awareness is actually that. And it sounds like that's not a benefit, right? That's a problem, but it's not a problem, it's a benefit. The problem was staying in those relationships that kept us in that worldly pattern. All right, second one, our practice will gain power. So similarly, it's just a building on the first benefit is that when our practice becomes greater and greater priority, when we are working with our practice, our meditation, our tracking our vows, our study, our service, all of it increases in intensity. Oh, Keshala said, if you're visualizing your holy being and today's session is the last chance you're gonna get to do that, would your visualization be more intense than it has been before? Yeah, you'd take the time to really get them clear and know they're there and beg them for their help. No, please, everything would increase in this realness of it, the need of it, that meditative quality called intensity would increase a lot Third benefit is the phrase is it helps us get started. So meaning when we're having the doldrums, right? We got the lazies and we need to kickstart our practice again. A good place to kickstart it is to go back through this death awareness practice, right? Because it increases the sense of urgency, a healthy urgency. Fourth benefit, it keeps us going strongly. So everyone's personal practice runs in waves. It's going really, really well. And then, you know, life happens and things sink and gets a bit sloppy or complacent again.And then something will hopefully wake us back up again. If we find ourselves in a doldrum, we can wake ourselves up by shifting whatever practice we were, you know, dully working on. Go back to death awareness practice. Go through the nine again, come to those three conclusions and it'll perk us back up, get us back on track and then use it for a while to keep us going strong. To have the death awareness, you don't, once you have it, you don't need to keep repeating the practice, but we revisit the death awareness to strengthen it back up. And when we have it strong, our practice will stay strong even into those times that ordinarily would have made us like sink. Our practice will stay strong. And then the fifth one is, it will keep you going till the end. So I think you've heard Geshe-la say that in any project, when we get about 75% through, it's human nature to slack off. It's like, we've worked really, really hard to get there and then we're losing interest a little bit. And it just, other things are coming. It's very, very common. It's common in retreat. It's common in a project. It's common at vacation, you know, at 75% of the way, it's like, all right, let's get home. So in our practice, we don't want to slack off at 75%, we want to recognize the 75% and then crank up the juice for that last 25% to finish spectacularly instead of dropping off. And having a keen death awareness, that 75% slump will not happen. So it'll keep us going strong. With any project we're dealing with technically, even if you had a project at work, if you went to work each day, this is my last day to work on this project. You know, I'm going to get it really fine tuned today so that if I don't come back tomorrow, somebody else can pick it up and finish it off. There's a sixth one. A sixth benefit is we die with satisfaction. So that life review reveals the satisfaction of knowing that the choices we made were favorable ones. Not always perfect, of course, but always well-considered and well-attempted. You know, we made hard choices for different reasons than ordinarily. We chose virtue, we chose dharma, we chose things that we're trying to be kind. We were trying. And when our life review is, yeah, at least once I met the dharma. Up until then, not so much. But then, yes, I really did try. We have this intense satisfaction that we lived our life meaningfully. You know, as meaningfully as we could. And not having that regret then. Kesala says, if you have devoted your life to dharma for some period of time, probably you'll recognize that the people that thought you were nuts, you know, when you left the worldly life, to whatever extent that was, as we all get older, Kesala says, at some point, those people will recognize, oh, no, you did it right. That they're already having some kind of regrets. And they see that the person you've become is different than, in some way, than the person they've become. And they recognize something about what they thought was crazy choices wasn't so crazy after all. Kesala's speaking from his experience, no doubt. But, you know, that's, I don't have people close enough to me to have, to know me in that way. But it's, the benefit is, at our own death, we don't have that agitated regret. Because our life review is like, yeah, that was worth it, that was worth it, that was worth it. So death awareness gets us to this point that influences us, even in worldly life, with this awareness that we have this sense of satisfaction, that we have a little better understanding of where things are coming from, and a better understanding about how my interaction with those things is creating not just my future, but the future for everyone. And that given any situation, I'm gonna do my best to plant my seeds in a way that could make things better, eventually. And so this keen death awareness increases this sense of satisfaction with ourselves on our path, not satisfaction as in, so I can stay put, but satisfaction with, yes, being on my path is the right way, right? It's for me, the most powerful thing that I can do with my life. Benefit of growing our death awareness. Okay, let's take our break. We'll do three and four. Adoption, pause, record. I don't remember where I was reading or listening to that. Just one moment or one second of a doubt when you're dying, it can kick you off of your opportunity for clear light. Just one tiny doubt. Right, right. But I think that that means, no, yeah, I don't know, okay. You know, certainly if there's, if the projecting karma has teeny doubt, that recognizing clear light's not gonna be included, right? In what comes next. Yeah, because at the end, it's that, the karma imposed on you, so. Exactly, exactly. Yeah. That we can be working on this right now, really getting it, really having a conviction of, yeah, this is my last day, I'll do my best. I'll cultivate kindness, I'll cultivate joy in everybody's heart. I mean, so many things, but at the end. Yeah, but that would be so much, that would be so much better than any of those things you could be contemplating that would take you into like a Yiddish life or something. So we, don't think it's not worth it. No, it is worth it, but at the end it's, you don't know what's gonna ripen. Oh, no, that's right. Right. But that's what, I guess that's what we have to cultivate our faith to. Yeah. Yeah, we've been taught that at some point along our path of preparation, our understanding of karma and emptiness is clear enough or close to accurate enough and strong enough that we close the door to lesser rebirth. And so it's like to study, you know, mantle seeds and the no self nature, nature of things. At some point has our whole foundation consciousness colored in that growing awareness that the full on selfishness, self-existent selfishness, unkindness seed that could push us into a hell realm birth either can't be the one that ripens or can't push us into a hell realm birth because of our understanding of karma and emptiness. It's like the goodness of understanding karma and emptiness at a certain level is enough to keep those projection karmas from sending us lesser than human or pleasure being. Now we know pleasure being result only happens from seeds done in deep meditation. Anyway, just like we're gathering all this information to cogitate about so that our understanding of the things that we've learned through the ACI, like it's like, oh, I see that deeper meaning. Oh, I see what they were saying, which I find such an advantage of going through these ACI courses again and again and again. Like if I weren't sharing them with somebody else, I would put them on a shelf and go on to something else. But to go over them again and again and again, it's like, oh my gosh, I didn't hear that the first five times through. And now I'm seeing it in this other way. No, it's such an exercise in emptiness and karma, right? It's like they're full of great information and they're still full of great information, new information. Okay, so the third piece of that becoming aware, growing this attitude, I die today, is the chilojitarkepa. So this J sounds like a S-H when Geshe-la says it, chilojitarkepa. Chilo means death awareness, chilo mind, death mind. Sitar means what kind of, and kepa, what kind to develop. So this third section is what kind of death awareness are you talking about? And then there are two sections in this. The first section is the death awareness we're not talking about. And the second one is the death awareness that we are talking about. The death awareness that we're not talking about cultivating is the learning or practicing the process that we'll go through in death. So one might mistake a death awareness practice as being one where you are sitting down and imagining you are on your dying, on your deathbed, losing awareness of your material world, losing awareness of your people, losing awareness, like imagining that your organs are all shutting down. It's not that, the teachings describe all of that. They describe the terror that you have as everything is decompensating and deconstructing and it's disorienting, it's emotionally and physically painful. You're losing familiarity with everything, you're losing all orientation, your brain shuts down. So the mind that's been using the brain to give concreteness to its experience all of a sudden is without it. It's like you're driving along the highway and all of a sudden your car disappears and the highway disappears. And like everything is disappearing and finally your own body disappears and your own, your personality, your identity disappears. Like if you were in a dream and in your dream, you are having no, you lost your personal identity. Like that would be scary. I mean, that would be a nightmare, right? Like who am I? What am I? What's going on like that? Dying is like that. And then it gets beyond description and it's terrifying and it's painful and it's awful. And cultivating death awareness is not about practicing that or getting used to that. They say that will come naturally, you don't need any practice. So this is not that. This awareness practice is a practice intended to motivate our moment by moment living, to enliven our living, enliven our living. And so, if you ask a meditator, not in our tradition, not in Buddhist tradition meditator, why do you meditate? Most likely they're going to say, oh, for stress management, right? To be happier, to be able to face life a little easier. And that's not even, that doesn't even qualify as a Buddhist practice, right? Even if you were to ask a Buddhist, why do you meditate? And they were to say, oh, to cope better. It's like, okay. And then at the very minimum, for any practice, meditation or anything else to be considered Buddhist, I'll get to that in a minute. We need to be concerned with our future life. This life is the arena in which we are creating the circumstances for future lives, not just the next one, but all of the next ones. And if our concern, even our concern for our new kinder behaviors are to get a result in this lifetime, that's living by wisdom, that's great, but that is not spiritual practice. That is not Buddhist, right? So we don't care if people are Buddhist religion or not, but for our growing wisdom to be moving us towards our nirvana or Buddhahood, our concern for our behavior now needs to be because of our future lives, right? Not this one. Lesser scope, Buddhist motivation. It's more complicated than this, but at one level, lowest scope is I want to close those doors to lesser rebirth. Medium scope is I want to close the doors to lesser rebirth and I want to stop all my mental afflictions forever. I want to reach nirvana. Highest scope is I want to close those doors to lesser rebirth. I want to stop all my mental afflictions and I want to reach that omniscience through which I can help everybody do what my teacher, my angel Buddha is teaching me to do as well. So death meditation is cultivating this keen awareness that this opportunity that we have to create the circumstances of our future are not guaranteed. It's not guaranteed that we will stay interested in the Dharma. It's not guaranteed that it will stay available to us. It's not guaranteed that even our practices of them are powerful enough to protect us in this lifetime. None of it's guaranteed. And we go, yeah, yeah, we know that. But we think, but it's guaranteed for today. Because here I am and it's gonna last at least until tomorrow. And if we check our own minds, it's like, how long would you put a timeframe on how long you think it's gonna last? You're being in the Dharma. Well, until my body gets too sick or my mind gets too sick. And I'm still thinking, that's at least 20 years away. And it's like, we don't know that, do we? And that's the purpose of going through this sequence of the death meditation in which we come to this conclusion. Oh my gosh, I have this moment of opportunity. And then next moment, oh my gosh, I've got this moment of opportunity. And then this one, and then this one, and then this one. And be in this moment, doing our best to keep our mind on what's most important to us. And it's our own responsibility to decide what's most important to us. When our death awareness is clear, we will be using every moment of life's circumstances as a tool for at minimum closing the door to lesser rebirth. And at best, achieving this highest goal of becoming the one standing on a billion planets, helping everybody. So you don't have to start with closing the door. You can aspire to the highest. And what we do to reach the highest will close the lower door, will bring us to nirvana, and will help us reach that omniscience for everyone's benefit. But it'll only happen in our this moment interaction with everybody. Okay, so the last section, the fourth section of the teaching on death awareness practice is how to do it. In the how to do it, we have those three principles of the death awareness. And each of those three principles has three considerations to help strengthen the principle into a realization. So realization means it has become real for us, part of our personal experience. Gaining realizations happens in deep meditation. And so each of these three has contemplations to consider on and off your cushion so that when you do death meditation on the cushion, we can get to that deep aha. All right. So here are the three principles. Nye-par-chi-wa, nam-chi-ma-nye, and chu-ma-tok-mi-pen. I was trying to get that class 10 out of the way and I made it worse. Forget that stuff at the bottom. Nye-war-chi-pa means the words mean death is certain. But I like to say it, my death is certain. Right? Because it derives at home. Death is certain goes, yeah, everybody else's is certain. But that's not the point here. The point is my death is certain. Nam-chi-ma-nye, the time of death is uncertain. I like to say my time, the time of my death is uncertain. And chu-ma-tok-mi-pen, when I die, nothing but the Dharma can help me. And then again, I like to fine tune that. When I die, nothing but my Dharma can help me. If you remember when we learned that, it sounds like nothing but the Dharma can help me means, oh, you know, when I die, just put a Dharma, put the Heart Sutra on my chest and the diamond cutter under my head and the Dharma will help me. And it's like, no, honey, it doesn't work like that. What it means is that what I learned about the Dharma will help me. And it's like, well, no, honey, it doesn't work like that either. It's how I interacted with others as a result of what I learned from the Dharma is what will help me, right? How I learned to override my belief in things, natures and qualities in them, how I learned to override my blaming others for stuff, how I learned to train myself to care more about others' needs, others' wants, to care more about my impact on them, how I behaved as a result of what I learned from the books and the teachings and et cetera. Chuh ma tok me pen. When I die, nothing but my Dharma practices will help me. Our Dharma practice guides us in what kinds of behaviors will plant the seeds in our minds, any one of which can be the projecting karma at the end of this life and will be okay. The circumstances of the next life will be favor, why can't I say that? Favorable. Imagine dying, having just learned about projecting karma and just learned about karmic seeds, but not had enough time to work with it. And then imagine dying, having learned all of that and worked with our purification practices and worked with our kindness and going into that dying process, knowing you did your best, you've got your mind as full of Dharma as you could. I'd even just imagining it, we can feel the difference of what a different experience it would be if we go into it really convinced that whatever seed pops at the moment will be great. The whole process of dying would be completely different. One could have seeds in one's mind such that the people around your bedside would be seeing you dying, but you, your experience, your personal experience would be completely different. It would be one of transformation, not even qualified as dying. Change, this dramatic, extraordinary change. It is possible. And that's the promise of Tantra is this transformation instead of dying. So each of those three principles, my death is certain, the time of my death is uncertain. And when I die, only my Dharma can help me. Each one has three considerations. So for the first one, my death is certain, the consideration number one, that the phrase is the Lord of death is unstoppable. So we're supposed to use this instruction to analyze and investigate our beliefs that are blocking us from the realization, my death is certain. So the Lord of death is unstoppable is saying that when the time of our death comes, there's no existing power that can stop it. Buddha can't stop it. God can't stop it. The best doctors can't stop it. The best medicines can't stop it. When the Lord of death comes, when the end of life, when we run out of karmic seeds for this life, nobody, you can't say, wait, wait, wait, stop. I'll pour some more seeds inside there. No, no, no, stop. Let's, you know, let's chop them up. Let's make more, too late. It's sort of like one of these circular arguments. When the Lord of death comes, that means you're dead. When you're dead, you're dead. You can't become undead and stop it. But somewhere in that process of the dissolution happening, you are in it so far that there isn't anything that's gonna stop it. And our argument is, no, no, you know, I'm having my heart attack. I get to the emergency room. They sweep me in there. They give me the TPA. They stopped my heart attack. They saved my life. And if we think that through, it's like, no, actually, you weren't, you weren't, you weren't ripening the seeds for dying. You thought you were. You were ripening your seeds to have a heart attack stopped. And so they did. If you were ripening seeds for dying, they'd have given you the TPA and it wouldn't have worked. And you would have died anyway. So to get to the realization my death is certain, and we wanna look at our belief. No, no, people's lives are saved all the time. And really work that through to see if when somebody's life is saved, was their life really saved or were they ripening something different? I mean, it is miraculous and wonderful when somebody's life is saved, but it isn't technically that their life is saved. There's their seeds for having not killed somebody when they could have helped someone who was hurting that could have gone on, right? Do you understand? So it does take some cogitating to come to that. Second principle, we can't add time. The phrase is life is continuously leaks away.Remember the image, the image for the first one is that snarling beast chain to the wall. The image for this second one was the, what do you call it? The glass thing with the sand running through, what's that called? Senior moment, you know what I mean. The clock? No, it's got two sections. The sand is on the top and it's droning through to the bottom and then you turn it over and it drips through, what's that called? It's a clock, I don't know what it's called, but it's like a time clock. Yeah, I know it has a name. But I honestly don't know what it is. I want to call it a sand dial, but that's not right. Anyway, you know what I'm talking about? This thing's on the table, half the sand has dribbled through, but it's a sealed container. So you can't like, oh, I'll add more sand. It's like, no. Life, we're using life seeds up from the moment of conception. You remember that teaching? You're dying from the moment you're conceived. And it's like, right, because we're using up the karmic seeds for this life, the instant this life starts. And there's going to be a last one. And all the life saving practices that we do are not adding more sand to that thing, whatever that's called. It's not adding time to this life. But well, so why do we do them? Just to add time to future lives? We are accumulating virtue in protecting life. It will have effect because any protecting life that we ever did, seeds, they get added to. So it is true that things we do in this life have an effect on this life. The reason we do them though is different. We think, yes, we can too add time. I can take vitamins and I'll live longer, right? There's always a feed on my phone. Life extension practices, do this to make your telomeres longer, do this to increase your apoptosis, do this. And then they give you the figures. They did a study and 40% of people who did this got results. And so see, and it's like, yeah, but that means 60% didn't. And that means it didn't actually have any effect whatsoever. But it's, right, we do them for other reasons. Dilemma? Yes. It is called a sand, a sand glass or a sand timer or an hourglass.Hourglass, that was the word, hourglass. And it was from Egypt and Greece before Christ in the year 1500s. An hourglass, thank you. My pleasure. How did they know how much sand to put in and give an hourglass to make a whole hour? And was it really an hour or was it just however long it took? It says here that it symbolizes the passage of time, mortality and the fleeting nature of life. Exactly. It's a perfect example. Okay. So as we are considering this consideration to prove, to show ourselves that my death is certain, we're wanting to look at this concept of how our mental seeds are ripening moment by moment. Like every seed that ripens, it includes in it, me alive, me still alive, me still alive. And you know, not in so many words, but it's part of each ripening because here we are. And there's only so many of those seeds. We're not, as we experienced them, seems like we'd be replanting them because me alive, me alive out, me alive in. But there's something about the ones that are coming out that are different than the ones going in, right? We're burning them off with every 65 per instant of this life. And there'll be a last one. And we don't know when the last one's coming and we can't add to it. There will never be a not you in the sense of your subject side, but there will be a last moment of Sarani. There'll be a last moment of Kongling, but the subject side, right? There's never a last moment of subject side, but there's never a moment where subject side is the same two moments in a row either. So we can't add time. Third factor in considering my death is certain is the consideration that says, even when we decide to practice Dharma, there's not enough time. This third consideration is there's never enough time is the phrase. And I still don't feel like I've quite wrapped my mind around the significance of that. There's never enough time. Life does feel like that. Like both there's too much time and there's never enough time. Our attitude in worldly life tends to be, we get our careers, we get our families, we get all the things we need to do to keep up the house and the family needs and et cetera. And somewhere in the back of our heart or our mind is what we really wanna do. And we think, well, when I get this all taken care of, then I'll go do what I really wanna do. And we never really quite get there. Or when we think we do, it's like, even as we're doing that thing, it's like, well, really, I'd really like to do something else. We're never in that space of what I'm doing now is what I really wanna do. For me, except when I'm doing this, delivering a class. But most of the time I'm doing this, but I really wanna be over there. I had it through my career life. I love our house and our gardens and so forth. And when I was there in the garden, it was like, yeah, but I love being with my patients and I wanna be at work. And then when I was at work, it's like, when do I get to go home? I was never really satisfied with where I was. And it's human nature to be like that. And it's human nature to do that in the Dharma as well. No, and I'm guilty of making you do it, right? We're gonna start course nine, not even two weeks from now because I need to get you through this. But we do that. It's like, we take a teaching, we're fully there, we really enjoy it. And then we go home and we're back in our worldly life. And then we take another teaching, right? And we just go from one to the next to the next and we don't take one teaching and then go into retreat and cogitate on it for three months. I mean, life isn't like that. We don't get to do that. And it's like we've built in this life where there never seems to be enough time. It's not that there's not enough time, it's that we're not satisfied with what we're doing in the moment for that to be exactly what we wanna be doing, right? There's plenty of time when you're doing what you really wanna do. If that's all you, if all you do is what you really wanna do, then you have got plenty of time to do it all. It's the attitude of, I wanna do this, but I have to do that. And it's like somehow inside there is helping us gain this realization, my death is certain. That's the part I haven't quite connected with this last one. There's never enough time. On a superficial level, right, there's never enough time because I'm gonna die soon. But that's just too superficial. But I don't quite understand it any deeper. Okay, so what do we have? We have the four factors of death meditation. The problems of not cultivating our death awareness, the advantages of cultivating our death awareness, the death awareness to be cultivated and the one that's not to be cultivated, and then how to do it. How do we do it? We've got three principles. Principle number one, my death is certain. Principle number two, the time of my death is uncertain. Third one, when I die, nothing but my dharma will help me. Nothing but the behaviors I chose guided by what dharma taught me will help me because those are the only seeds that any one of which that pops as my projecting karma, it will be okay. In the first one, my death is certain. To come to that realization, consider the Lord of death is unstoppable. I can't add any time to this life. And in the time of my life, there's never enough time. Anyway, there's not enough time to do the things I wanna do. Once you find the Jim Croce, there's never enough time for even dharma. Why is there not enough time? Because it takes three times 10 to the countless great eons to gather enough virtue to become a Buddha. There's not enough time in this lifetime to even do the dharma. That's why we need tantra.Got it? Next class, we finish the last two with their three principles each and then get the icing on the cake, right? Oh, therefore, which I love so much when we teach those. All right. Yes, Victor. Unmute, please. When we talk about this three principle and three consideration, this consideration number two, we can't add time to this life. I see a question about this one because from what we learned, it's like everything is right depending on the seeds. So if we plant enough seed for my longer life, like protecting life, we should be able to add life just like same as like if we plant enough seed for the money, then we should have well, or we should gain more material things. Yeah, it does seem like that. Yeah. But apparently not. But it is, keep considering. Yeah, but then, I mean, if this, if we agree with this principle or with this consideration, then we are thinking like, OK, then nothing much I should do. I mean, we'll go to another extreme because everything is already fixed. The length of my life is already fixed, whether I kill more or I don't kill, I still die at a certain age. Right, right. Right. And, you know, in one sense, the conclusion would be, OK, it doesn't matter what I do. And in the other sense, it shows us a little more clearly what they mean by. In our spiritual path, we don't do anything to benefit this life, we do it all to benefit future lives. Right. And you just touched on that. Because if the conclusion is, well, it doesn't matter what I do in this life, then because it's not going to make any difference. It's like, right. That's the point. We're doing everything we do in the Dharma for future life benefits because we can't extend this life. Well, teacher, because when we learn about law of karma, you say when, I mean, when a deed is done, you should get a result. But you did not say that you will get a result in next life. So what I mean is like, if I did a seed to protect life, to save more people who fall sick, I should increase my lifespan in this life or maybe next life. All right. Or any life after that. Do you remember that teaching? Karma can ripen. Yeah. But I mean, so literally it should be, we should be able to increase the lifespan of this life. I mean, from that understanding slide, I have provided enough seed. What does it take to get a seed planted today to ripen fast enough to see the connection between what I did today and that result? Yeah, we do coffee meditation. Yeah, that's one. And then we keep adding on the similar type of seed. Right. To do a lot of it. Yeah. Powerful karmic objects. Yeah.And I level of awareness. Yeah. And then we reduce the power of those bad seed we did by using for power.Yeah. Right. So in order to add life, my own life, I would have to repeatedly save the life of a really powerful karmic object and rejoice like crazy that I did it. And I'd have to stop killing any other being in any way. Wouldn't I? Yeah. So theoretically, you could add life. Yeah, but practically speaking, apparently not likely. Because can we stop killing? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, not not in a I mean, accidentally way. I mean, after learning all this, we still step on the ants or kill the insects flying. Right. You'd have to maybe go into deep, deep retreat. No, and eat just flower petals. And but I don't know, we still poop, you know, and there's bacteria in the poop that can't live outside the body. Every time you breathe, you breathe in. Right. Right. And yet and yet, right. Lifespans can do get longer. So there's beings like they say, you know, Arya Nagarjuna, they don't know how long he lived. They say 600 years. Right. And it it's like, well, wait a minute. So was he born with 600 years worth of life seeds or did his practices extend his life? And, you know, according to this teaching, you must have had 600 years worth of life seeds from a lot. Oh, teacher, teacher, maybe my understanding, even if we add life, we are still a step closer to death. So we cannot. Yeah. So I mean, no matter how long you add to it, we are a step closer to death. And then, you know, it's not like Buddha or, you know, Bodhisattva. They have their long life, you know, forever. So to me, it is like, you know, it cannot add time means that we are still a step closer, nearer to death, nearer to death. That's right. And Victor's point was, but if in my every step closer to death, I'm saving lives, shouldn't that like somehow override? If it's true that by giving money away, I can get wealthy in this life. So maybe normally, if let's say we don't save life, we have 17 years of age. And if let's say we save, maybe we have 75. So, you know, we still have to die. Yeah. Keep contemplating. You know, maybe your contemplation will go, no, no, I can add life. My death is not certain. I'm going to live 80,000 years. I've got enough time. Will that, will that help your Dharma practice or will that make us more complacent? It's just a matter of whether you really want to practice. If let's say you don't practice, I give you 8,000 years. I mean, I know. Yeah. So to me, that to me. Right. I mean, technically, what difference does it make how long this body lives? Hey, the continuum of you, the subject is, it's immortal. Hey, it's our identity with this thing. That's the problem. Yeah. Yes, Chris. Yeah, sorry. I'm still wrestling with the Eon thing. There's like the, okay, formation and then there's the 20 Eons and then there's the destruction, right? And then Geshe-la was saying that he thinks that the great Eon is four of those. So does that, would that mean that there's formation, the 20 and then destruction, formation 20 and then destruction forming? Or is it a great Eon where there's no destruction in between? You know, does that make sense? Yeah, it does. I think that he was, yeah, he was wondering if it was 80 cycles of the three that makes a great Eon. Well, I don't know in the, cause it's not clear. In the notes, it says he thinks, he thinks that, that a great Eon is four Eons of continuation. Cause there's 20, 20, 20 and 20 that makes, so, and cause there's, there's 20 in an Eon of continuation. And so a great Eon would be four Eons of continuation. But what I'm wondering, that's what it says in the notes. Yeah, right. But it's unclear because you can't have four Eons of continuation without the formation and destruction. Well, that's what I was wondering. Is it, is a great Eon, four of those cycles with the destruction in between could be? Yeah, yeah. It doesn't mean it has to be continuous, right? I mean. Well, except we're talking about a period of time it takes. Well, yeah, if we're just, if we're just talking about a period of time, trying to define a period of time, how many times around the clock, right? So you start with formation, you do your 20 and then it all goes, all goes. Whatever time it would take to do that. And then you start with formation. And then, so, because at first I was like, oh, four continuation, that's it. But then wait a minute, where's the destruction? So it's almost like the whole thing that you have to go through that whole cycle, all the way down to, to dissolve. Right. And then revive, we start again. Right. We start again. I don't, you know, it gets, it makes me go, I can't get it. I can't get it. Because the time I want to draw a picture, you know, but I don't get it. The point is a real long time. The point is the really long time and these cycles of virtue of self, of lessening and worsening selfishness. Because it's all samsaric. So beings, even at the 80,000, they're still believing that they have their own nature. Right. The earth they eat has its own nature. They're, they're just have ripening seeds of a lot of protecting life. Lot of moments of not killing when they could have been killing. Lot of not lying when they could have been lying. That make these lifespans that are so long. And then it's not that the selfishness arises anew. It just grows and grows and grows. Yeah. Okay. And again, remember that's Abhidharmakosha level, which is all this existing stuff has some nature of it's not self-existent, but is existing stuff. And from highest worldview, yes. And it's all projected.And so it's real. Right. And somewhere in between we go, oh, okay. Because it's projected is just a story about how it might be. And it isn't real. So I don't have to worry about it so much, but that would be a wrong conclusion too. Right. Our projections make it such that there are these eons and right. Aye, yi, yi. Yeah. I had that almost heated discussion with a friend about the, you know, she was, she was on the, but science, you know, science is this science. And I said, I'm like, science is just the way we're looking at things right now. You know, that doesn't mean invalidate that the Abhidharmakosha. I mean, that's science, right? Because it was the science then doesn't and ours doesn't invalidate it because, you know, 20 years from now, somebody is going to look back and go, oh, those ignorant fools, you know? Right. Exactly. Yeah. Cool. I just wanted to comment on Arya Nagarjuna. Well, when he was born, they thought that he wasn't going to make it even up to the age of seven years old. Right. Remember? And they were, their parents were told that if they would do offerings and if they would do the mantras and all those things to the Bodhisattvas and the Buddhas, that he would get to live at least to seven years old. And then they did a pilgrimage around India. And they arrived at Nalanda. Nalanda is the monastery. And then they said, okay, let him take vows here and leave him here and see if he can live longer than seven years old. So in certain ways, it's not known exactly his age of death, but believe that 600 years, it's a long, long, long, long life. Right. And even when he died, he kept on talking, saying, I'll be back. You know, how his head was in one place and his body on the other place. He said, I'll be back. I'll put my head back together and I'll be back. So that's beautiful stories about Nagarjuna. But let's keep faith and thinking that our prayers, our mantras and our studies are really doing something wonderful for all of us. Talking about coming back, our teacher was saying that, you know, our next Buddha is Maitreya and that there are still 100 more to come. And I'm quite interested in that. Yeah. So who's coming next? See whether I have the chance to, you know. So, yeah, 100, you know, 100 is, you know, quite a long, long time. And then it's quite interesting. Yeah. Great. Virtue, make virtue, purify, make merit. Name of the game. That's what we're doing here. So remember that person we wanted to be able to help. We have learned a lot that we will use. It will motivate us to do what we need to do to become one who can help them in that deep and ultimate way. And that's an extraordinary goodness. So please be happy with yourself and think of this goodness like a beautiful glowing gemstone that you can hold in your hands. Recall your precious holy being. See how happy they are with you. Feel your gratitude to them, your reliance upon them. Ask them to please, please stay close to continue to guide you, help you, inspire you, and then offer them this gemstone of goodness. See them accept it and bless it. And they carry it with them right back into your heart. See them there, feel them there. Their love, their compassion, their wisdom. It feels so good. We want to keep it forever. And so we know to share it by the power of the goodness that we've just done. May all beings complete the collection of merit and wisdom and thus gain the two ultimate bodies that merit and wisdom. So use those three long exhales to share this goodness with that one person, to share it with everyone you love, to share it with every existing being everywhere. See them all filled with happiness, filled with loving kindness. And may it be so. Thank you.

Vocabulary Class 10

DZAMLING TSE MA-NYE lifespans are not fixed in this world

CHI KYEN MANG SUN KYEN NYUNG lot of things can kill us, not many keep us alive

LU SHINTU NYAM CHUNG our body is extremely fragile/delicate

NAMDAK see the purity (in everything)

Okay, for the recording. Welcome back. We are ACI course eight class 10. It's June 2 2025. Let's gather our minds here as we usually do please bring your attention to your breath until you hear from me again. Now bring to mind that being who for you is a manifestation of ultimate love, ultimate compassion, ultimate wisdom, and see them there with you. Gazing at you with their unconditional love for you. Smiling at you with their holy great compassion. Their wisdom radiating from them. That beautiful golden glow and encompassing you in its light. And then we hear them say, bring to mind someone you know who's hurting in some way. Feel how much you would like to be able to help them recognize that the worldly ways we try fall short. How wonderful it will be when we can also help them in some deep and ultimate way. A way through which they will go on to stop their distress forever. Deep down we know this is possible. Learning about karma and emptiness. We glimpse how it's possible. And so we can grow our wish into a longing and into an intention. Then we turn our minds back to our precious holy being. We know that they know what we need to know. What we need to learn yet. What we need to do yet to become one who can help this other in this deep and ultimate way. And so we asked them please, please teach us that. And they're so happy that we've asked of course they agree. Our gratitude arises. We want to offer them something exquisite. And so we think of the perfect world they are teaching us how to create. We imagine we can hold it in our hands. And we offer it to them. Following it with our promise to practice what they teach us. Using our refuge prayer to make our promise. Here is the great earth filled with fragrant incense and covered with the blanket of flowers. The Great Mountain or lands wearing the jewel of the sun and the moon. In my mind, I make them the paradise of a Buddha and offer it all to you. By this deed, may every living being experience the pure world. I go for refuge. I'm enlightened to the Buddha, the Dharma and the highest community. To the merit that I do and sharing this class and the rest, may we reach Buddhahood for the sake of every living being. I go for refuge until I am enlightened to the Buddha, the Dharma and the highest community. Through the merit that I do when sharing this class and the rest, may we reach Buddhahood for the sake of every living I go for refuge until I am enlightened to the Buddha, the Dharma and the highest community. To the merit that I do in sharing this class and the rest, may all beings reach their total awakening for the benefit of every single other. I keep getting my internet's unstable signs. So sorry. I don't know what to do that I'm hooked directly in. So it means it's the system. Rejoice in our good communication that we've ever done. Okay, hang on just a sec. I listened to you perfectly, dear Lama, but your voice was different as if you were spitting and speaking so so fast. Really? Yeah. So that's why I even turned and looked at you and go Oh, that's not her. I admit I was distracted, but I didn't think I was flying. Okay, okay. So last class, we were studying Jetso Gapa's teaching on impermanence, which sounded a lot like the death meditation practice, which it was, of course, because the point of the lump of realizing impermanence is to realize our own personal impermanence. Meaning this, this lifetime's impermanence, because technically, your subject side, your mind is not impermanent, is it? In fact, your mind is forever. The thing is, it's never the same two moments in a row. But it's never not subject side state of mind. And then that subject side state of mind's nature is that it has no self nature, which is its emptiness. And that emptiness of our own mind, right, it is already. And that's the emptiness through which we will become fully enlightened beings. That's why we can become that. So yes, we need to realize this life, this body, and all this stuff that goes along with it. From this immediate moment, me and my world out to the furthest reaches of universe. It's all unique to this one, unique to those ones. So to learn about impermanence is to learn about our own personal impermanence. And then rather than getting scared of that, we get motivated, motivated to transform our perception of what's me and my world. So he taught us that there were problems, if we don't study, practice, realize our death awareness.And he taught us that there are benefits if we do cultivate this death awareness. And he taught us what death awareness is not, and what it is. And he taught us is teaching us how to do it. So last class, we talked about the first of the three principles. So in how to do it, he gives us the three principles of the realization of one's own impermanence. And each of those three principles has three things to consider to prove it to yourself, to show it to yourself. So the three principles, the words are death is certain. I like to use my death is certain. Principle number one, principle number two, the time of my death is uncertain. Oh, third one, when I die, nothing but my Dharma helps. Right? Again, the words are death is certain. The time of death is uncertain.When when death comes only the Dharma helps. But those English words, you leave them on the surface like that. Yeah, yeah, right. We can leave it at arm's length, which is why I like to make it personal. My death is certain. I don't know when it's gonna happen. And when I died, nothing but my Dharma practice helps. So we need to get there. In this class is these last two. The first one, my death is certain. Those three reasonings to use. The first one you recall, the words are the Lord of Death is unstoppable. Meaning when you are ripening your seeds of dying, there's nothing no one that can stop it. It can look like you're ripening your seeds of dying. But in fact, what you're ripening is your seeds to have a heart attack stopped. You have the heart attack, you get the care, it gets stopped, you don't die. It looks like you are on track to dying and somebody stopped it. But that's wasn't what was happening. How do we know because you didn't die? It's like, wait. So if you died, the Lord of Death is unstoppable. And if you didn't die, the Lord of Death was not involved. That doesn't sound so logical to me. That kind of sounds like, you know, I want to go to Chinese food because I want to. It doesn't sound like logic, but we're supposed to cogitate on that. Then the second one that hourglass, we can't add time to life. It's not really new and different idea. It's, you know, if we could add time, nobody would be 71 years old. Okay, we'd all be 25 or 32 forever, because we would just keep adding time and you just stay there. Then third one, there's never enough time anyway, never enough time to do what we intend to do. I still haven't quite realized what they mean. I understand there's never enough time, but I don't quite understand how that proves that the my death is certain. Anyway, second principle. So we're on to this class. Second principle, the time of my death is uncertain. So there are three reasonings to consider. The first one I need the screen share, because bigger. So my death is certain. Why do you say that? Because some link say money a dumpling is short for Dumbo Ling, which is the name of our continent. In Mount Meru and the four continents, we're the southern continent called Dumbo Ling, because the trees that live on the end of Dumbo Ling's ocean drop their fruit into the water and they go Dumbo. So with a whole continent, get that name. They're on Dumbo Ling. So this is one of the reasonings to consider, to show ourselves at the time of our death is uncertain. It's a my God, it's like, you're saying one thing, and it's implying something else. So the implication is that, in other places, beings lifespans are certain. Meaning, they, they know how long they live, like everybody lives 500 years in this other continent. And, you know, I don't know, this is an omniscient being telling us stuff. I don't have any way to confirm it. That but there are other places where beings, once they show up there, to show up there, wait, I've lost you there, you're back to show up in that place. The karma to show up there is just this much karma for this much time. And everybody knows it. So it would be a whole different state of mind, wouldn't it? To just know from the instant you're born, that you've got 75 years, that life would be so different. If we do that. But here on our planet, hello, come back here on our planet. We don't know that our experience is, we expect that the ones who are born first should die first, right? The older ones should be dying, not the younger ones.But that isn't what happens. Old people do die. Young people do die. Kind people die young, kind people die old, icky people die young, icky people die young, icky people die old. It seems random. Right? You're out to lunch with somebody. And the next thing you know, you know, so and so died. Wait, I just saw them. Like, as if there's any guarantee for any of us at any moment. That's the point here. We, we think that because we've lived as long as we have, we're going to live that long again, I guess, you know, it's really irrational. They explain that the karma for human ensemble Ling is a karma that fluctuates. Again, kind of implies that there are places where karma doesn't fluctuate like ours does. They this fluctuation, what they mean by that, though, is that fluctuation in the average lifespans, right of the whole batch of us that 80,000 down to 10, and back up, based on come back the 80,000 down to 10, and back to 80,000, based on the level of virtue of the individuals, right, all the individuals level of virtue makes a kind of a group virtue level. And that's reflected in the average lifespans. The morality, the level of morality, just a couple points out that on a day to day level, as well, this karmic fluctuation contributes to this apparent randomness of death. But it's not that our lifespan is predetermined. Well, it sort of is. But it's not like when you're born, you know, in the somewhere, it's imprinted, Serani will die on November 10, 2035. And it's just kept secret from me. It's not like that. But there is a certain amount of karma for this life, certain power or certain strength, or I don't know how to really quite describe it, that I'm using up as I go along. And in terms of how well my past me's have taken care of life in the past, is in inside the influence of how my seeds are ripening and how I'm behaving now is all impacting this lifespan that I have. It's impacting as well in the in the not being able to know how close I'm getting. You know, even if we have a terminal illness, and you know, the doctors say so sorry, nothing we can do, we don't know, is it going to last two weeks or six months or three days? We don't know there's something about our karma to be these humans with it's such goodness and such not goodness. That this is the experience we have. Right? Not because Buddha said so. But because it's part of how we created these very lives as humans, the perfect, the perfect combination of suffering and not suffering, to put us on a spiritual path to the end of the whole cycle for everybody. But again, it's past life, past life behaviors, more than this life behaviors that are contributing to this, what will end up being my lifespan, that I don't really know what it is, until this one's done. So unfortunately, being kind and it will definitely impact our future lives. Here in Zamba Ling, lifespans are not fixed. The second reasoning is chi ken mang soon ken yin. Chi ken mang soon ken yin. This ken means, sorry, chi ken and soon ken. Chi ken means the things, things that can kill us. And soon ken means things that keep us alive. Mang and yin. Mang means many, it kind of looks like many, right? Mang means many and yin means not many. So it's not really like many and not many, but yin is few. And mang is many. So this is saying that the things that can kill us are many. And the things that keep us alive are very few. As the reasoning to show to ourselves that the time of my life is uncertain. Right? This one makes a lot of sense to me. Consider all the things that can kill me. And consider the things that keep me alive. There's a whole lot more on the can kill me side, than on the can keep me alive side, or that support my life. So Jetsun Kappa divides the things that can kill us into living ones, and inanimate ones. So living ones that can kill us, you know, wild animals, not wild animals, animals, other people, viruses, bacterias, parasites, right, all that kind of stuff that is living stuff. And they can have their effect on these physical bodies that can be fatal. And then inanimate things that can kill us. There are those that are outside of us meaning outside of our physical body. And those that are inside of our physical body. Those inanimate things that are outside of our physical body that can bless is just about anything. So the obvious ones, guns, knives, you know, weapons, but so can the ladder that you use to get up on your roof, right, you fall off it. And we would say all the ladder, right, the ladder rung broke, and down I went and I cracked my neck and that, right, anything, just about anything, our car can kill us. Now, technically, right, we know, highest worldview, none of those things actually do the killing. It's our own having used something to kill somebody else that makes some outer factor and agent in what happens. But this is from Abhidharma school, ladders exist. They have their own causes and conditions. So they don't exist. self existently, that would be absurd. But there are ladders and ladders function in a certain way. And when they malfunction, we can get hurt, we can get killed. So when you really think about it, anything could be the agent that sets in motion some situation that we don't survive, then the elements that are inside of us, he's pointing out are those four basic building blocks of physical matter, earth, water, fire, and wind. We've spoken about those before. They're names of energies that make up our physical body and its function. Earth referring to our solidity, our form and structure, the water referring to the moisture and fluidity, the parts of us that are wet. Fire is the element of metabolism, temperature. And wind is the element of movement and dissipation. So these four elements are in this constant flux within our system. They, they interact with each other in response to our outer circumstances, and in response to their own response, so that each one has a job to keep the others in check.And it has the job to do its own job. So each one supports another element, and overrides a different element. And each one is doing that in such a way that they're all in this constant dance. And the quality or the relative amount and function of each one of those five, the state of the state that they are all in determines like our how we're how we're feeling how we're functioning at any given moment. But they're all struggling with each other in the sense that each one is trying to be the only one. I don't, I don't agree with this explanation. But when this system of keeping each other in check fails, one of them will go unchecked. And when any one of them functions unchecked, that's incompatible with life. So you can die of too much fire, you get a fever of 106, you don't live very long, you can die of too much water, you can die of not enough water, you can die of not enough earth, you right, it's like, when they get significantly out of balance, that won't sustain life. So these four elements, although they are, they are the process of this body being alive, they are actually the involved in our death as well. Okay, and at any moment, you don't know when their ability to stay in this delicate, intricate dance together will fail. And when it does, wait, we can't sustain these bodies. So in a way, that those four elements is what makes up this physical body. And so they say, look, if, if no outside, other living being gets you, and no outside inanimate thing gets you, your own body is going to get you. Because this delicate dance of the four elements is eventually going to give out. So there's nothing we can say, couldn't be the cause of our death. And we don't know when, right, we don't know the factors that are happening, because we don't know what karmic seed is going to ripen out of our karmic pocket at any given moment. Because in zamboling, zemanye, lifespans are uncertain. All right. Then Jetsun Kappa also says, in his text, remember, we are at the end of one of those calpic cycles, where lifespans are decreasing. And due to our own past non virtues, that in this lifespan, where time times are going towards shorter, shorter lifespans, the way that manifests is that the things, these outer things that can kill us get more and more powerful. The few things that can support us get less and less able to support us. So the few things that support us is food, air, water, shelter, within shelter is clothing. We learned, right? Hope sustains us, contact sustains us. But compared to all those other things that can kill us, not so many things sustain us. We could put, you know, herbs and medicines and that sort of thing. Also in what sustains us vitamins, etc. At from this school's level. And then what he says is that when we are in this time of degeneration, that's characterized by the fact that those things that are supposed to sustain life are losing their power to do so. So even in his time, he was pointing out the foods we grow are not as nutritious as they were. When lifespans were 1000 when lifespans were 10,000. Food is not as nutritious. herbs and medicines are not as powerful in their healing ability. Water is not as pure air is not as pure. And we've seen right in my own lifetime. I've seen that all apparently worsen. You know, according to what I read, I don't can't really say from my personal experience. My death is the time of my death is uncertain. Right? We're, we're living under a belief that, oh, no, no, I can get medicine. Oh, no, no, I can get care. Oh, no, no, if I just exercise, right, I'll be protected. If I drive carefully, I'll be protected. And it's, it is. It can be useful to do those things. But those things in and of themselves are not protected. All right. But the third consideration to show ourselves, my death is the time of my death is certain. Lushin tune young chin. We know the word shin to it means really, or extremely loom means body. Yum chung means fragile and delicate. Like it's too. It's yum is fragile chung is delicate, seems redundant, but they're wanting to drive home how very fragile these things are. Not not like how very fragile life is. Whether you call it this thing or not. Our bodies. No, I'm sorry. It is our body. We're talking about here. Our physical bodies are extraordinarily delicate and fragile. And I don't know, we don't think so. Do we tell you get a certain age? That the reasoning Jetsun Kapo points out or a way to consider this is to look at things, things, things that could cause death can be as apparently minuscule as a thorn, a thorn in your foot, you know, you just you're walking along barefoot and you feel the brick and you pull out the thorn and you get a little bit of blood and it's like, Oh, well, and the next day, well, that hurts a little bit there. And the next day, it's sort of red. And the next day, you've got streaks. And the next day, you've got fever. And the next day, you go to the doctor and they go, Oh my gosh, you've got that MRSA bacteria. You know, we'll put you on Brazilian antibiotics, but we're so sorry, your bacteria is resistant. Right? Day later, you're dead. That fellow, Jim Henson of the Muppets comes to mind. You know, he was only in his 50s. He gets a pneumonia. You know, everybody gets pneumonia from time to time, you go for antibiotics, and he was dead the next day. You know, it's just, it can go so fast. From some minuscule somebody coughed on him, you know, and he picks up that organism and his body couldn't fight it. And so our bodies are so fragile. And the conclusion isn't to go live in a glass box, you know. But the conclusion we're getting to it, they want, they want us to be like, Oh, man, you know, am I really gonna survive today? They want us to wonder, not to scare us, but to motivate us, we just haven't gotten there yet. They point out that they point out that these physical bodies, that if we block these three orifices, for only four minutes, this body will die. That's how, that's how close we are to the end of life at any given moment.Geshe-la said it's really amazing that any of us are still alive. And when I wrote my notes for this the first time, I have written down 53 years old. And it's like, I'm 71 now. So it's like, wow, that long ago, I wrote these notes and started teaching these classes. And I thought it was amazing. I was 53 at the time. Now like extraordinarily amazing. Extraordinarily amazing. That almost 20 years later, I'm still here. Whereas back then, I didn't even give it a thought. You know, of course, I'd be here 20 years from now. And now it's like, I can't really say, of course, I'll be here 20 years from now. Right? That'd be in my 90s. Not guaranteed. So every time we wake up in the morning, it's a miracle. You know, and I love there's a, the, the, it's been published, the prayer is holiness, the Dalai Lama supposedly says every time he wakes up, and it's like, wow, I woke up, I have another day where I can, you know, try to help people, I forget how it goes. It's a beautiful prayer. But it starts with this, wow, I woke up. And I don't know about you, but I will wake up and I go, oh, you know, I check in, my body hurts, and it's still tired. And it's like, I gotta get out of bed instead of Wow, it's another day. Another miracle that we have. I try doesn't work. Okay, so third principle, when we die, nothing but the Dharma helps. And it sounds like, you know, put it put the Heart Sutra on my chest as I'm dying, and that will help me. But that's not what it means. Of course. It means that the Dharma, a lot of stuff that we put into our consciousness, we put into our mind, everybody frozen again. And what's going to go on with us go on as us technically. And so what we learned from our Dharma study and practices is the only thing that can help us at death, is it gonna save our life? If our seeds for dying is already happening? No. But as we'll see, it's what guides us in the seed planting. So that it saves us in the sense that the seeds we put in, guided by our Dharma training, are all seeds, any one of which can be the projecting karma, and we'll be okay. We'll have a next life that will help help us move along our path. The circumstances will be okay. Will they be perfect? No, there's no such thing as perfect circumstances. They're every perfect circumstances, exactly what's ripening at the moment, the opportunity to plant new. So it will be perfect in that sense. Probably not perfect in what you might want, but perfect in what we need. Only our Dharma training teaches us what to take up and what to give up. So that we can fill our minds with the karmic seeds that will carry us along on our path from lifetime to lifetime. Right? This school is not talking about reaching your Buddhahood in this lifetime. But the same principle applies. I clearly only the Dharma can help us do that. So when I die, only my Dharma, only the Dharma can help meaning only my Dharma practices will help. So there are three reasonings to help us can get to the depth of the meaning of that principle. Look how good your Tibetans going. You can read that right? Your people can't help you. I don't have it in Tibetan, but I wanted to write it down. When I die, nothing but the Dharma will help. Why? I do say that. Because number one, when your people can't help you, and we think that they can, right? So, you know, consider, oh, this is too close to home. I'm sorry, Pia. Consider the old guy. You know, he's on his deathbed. The family's all around holding his hand. Oh, father, please don't go. I don't know that people do that anymore. Like, I don't, we don't beg them to stay so much. But we wish that they could write though. Please don't go. Please don't go. He can't not go. It's not his choice that he's dying. Nobody would choose to die, I don't think.He's not able to choose. Probably, at that point, he's not even able to be aware of you as his family anymore. Because his process as is moving so swiftly in this direction of the mind. The body is breaking down such that the mind's relation to it is so different than what it was before the dying process actually happened. So from our side, they still seem like they're there. But from their side, their awareness is like, totally colored with this breakdown of the elements. And they're going through this process of hallucinations that sort of start from the outside and work their way in as these outer factors fall away. So they can't, they're, they might still hear voices, but they're not, they're already beyond the state of recognizing you as their family, or them in their home. Right? We still see them there. But they're past that already. That the people that have been attending and loving, and they can't help us, they can't help us as we're dying. It doesn't mean okay, let them go. I'll go play tennis. It does not mean that at all. It means from our side, the dying person's side, we want to consider, right, if we think having the person there by our side, patting our hand is going to make death nicer, where we have a, we will be sorely disappointed. The people, we don't take them with us either. When we're in our shift to Bardo, and then next life. Even if we were somehow miraculously to get reborn into that same group of people. We don't remember, it's very rare to remember past lives. There you're gone again. It's very rare for people to remember past lives for little ones. Yet, when we are alive, and with our people, our relationships are such that we do things on behalf of all those people. We do kind things on behalf of those people. But we also do unkind things to other people on behalf of our close people. Right? We're willing to do what we have to do to take care of our people, because our people are the most important people. And those things that we do on behalf of our people, are seeds that are planted in our minds. And those seeds go with us. The people do not. So it kind of reminds me of you know, that Jewish mother syndrome, right? After all I've done for you, extremely like that. It's sort of a character, characterisation of the Jewish grandma, which I don't know any Jewish, my goodness, I keep losing you. The point here is not that. The point is not that people can't help. The point is that what we do on behalf of those people goes with us, the people do not. So when I die, nothing but the Dharma can help me is is shown. Its power is shown by recognising that what I do on behalf of other people is the, you know, would it help my internet if I shut my video off? Might it make it more stable for you? Let me let me try that. Do you mind just listening? Yeah, teacher, you can try that. So that the data on the bandwidth will be reduced, then you'll be more stable. Yeah. Okay, I'm going to stop share. Let me stop my video. Okay, let's try that. But now somebody has to stay on video, because that's how I tell whether I'm blanking out is right, you freeze. So I'm watching carefully. So the, so the point, my death is certain. How do I know that? Because my people can't help. We need to take that deeper. How does Dharma help me when my people can't help me? It's because Dharma teaches me don't ever do a non virtue on behalf of helping somebody you love. Ouch. Because you plant the seed for the non virtue. And that goes with you. The person you love can't doesn't go with you. Doesn't mean don't love people. It means do kind things on behalf of those people. So that we have seeds in our mind that do go with us even though the person does not. Number one, second consideration. When when I die, none of my stuff can help me. You would think this would be the first one, but it's the second one. We talked about before. Oh, you know what, let's stop. Let's take a break here.Break time. Then do that. Share pause, pause. Okay. Recording. Okay, we're so we're talking about the second reasoning in the third principle, third principle, when I die, nothing but my Dharma practice will help me.Why do I say that? Because my people can't help. My stuff can't help me. So again, we surround ourselves with stuff. We write we need stuff to stay comfortable. We accumulate stuff, we have stuff. And we have stuff that's important to us. And we have stuff that's not so important to us. Anybody feeling that burden. And then of the stuff that's important to us. You know, we believe that it has some importantness in it, that we want somebody else to appreciate, and then to take care of it something that needs to be taken care of. We think having those things around us will, I don't know, somehow influence us or comfort us or keep us from dying irrational. But then when we are starting into the dying process, we're concerned about that stuff. And if you wait until you are involved in the dying process to think, Oh my gosh, I wish my niece could have my mother's diamond ring. It's too late to do anything about it. But then when you're actually into the death process, when the Lord of Death has come, and you're going through these, they call them dissolutions, your awareness is shifting such that very quickly, you're what you're, the information you're getting from eyes is shutting down the information you're getting from ears, tactile, it's all shutting down. So that even if you're holding your mother's precious diamond ring in your hands, thinking it will give you some comfort as you die very quickly, you are not even aware any longer of having hands holding mother's precious diamond, right? That's just gone from your ability to contact. And very swiftly after that, it's gone from your ability to even cognate my mother's diamond ring. The stuff can't help. And yet, as we're getting to that place of the withdrawal, we don't have contact with any of that stuff anymore. Yet we still have the mind movement that was clinging to having material things as our comfort. And now your mind can't contact any of those material things. So what it relied upon for comfort is not contactable. It's not in your awareness. It's gone. So if we rely, you know, you've got your favorite blanket, you can't sleep unless you have your favorite blanket. And then suddenly, you can't even be aware of whether you have your favorite blanket or not. But you still have the craving, the desire for whatever it that feeling was, that we called my favorite blanket, you still have that craving, you still have that wanting, you just can't call it right, you don't know what it's just so disorienting, they say. So if we're relying upon, you know, having the perfect circumstance to lay down and die in very quickly, that perfect circumstance is beyond our contact. And it's, it's not going to help us as we die. So to accumulate things to have things to rely upon things, they're just gonna actually interfere with a peaceful dying. Because we've spent our lifetime doing karmas to get and keep those things as our source of comfort. And then in the end, they betray us. We don't get to take those things.But what do we take? The karmic seeds we made on behalf of accumulating them, getting them, keeping them, etc. Right. So how does my Dharma practice help me? It teaches me, don't do an unkindness to get or keep your stuff. Right, give, share, help, right? In order to get and keep your stuff, you give it away. Wait a minute, I won't have my mother's diamond ring if I give it to the first person I pass. Well, don't give it to the first person you pass. Give it to your niece now. Like I'm talking to myself. I haven't worn it in almost a year. Why is it in my jewelry box and not given to her? Right? If she wants it. I don't really know if she does. I would find that out first. Because maybe somebody else wants it. Who didn't even know my mother. Right? It's just a diamond ring. So you get the idea. We have these attachments. Because of our attachments, we do things we make karma. The karma goes with us the stuff does not. Third reasoning for when I die nothing but the Dharma will help me is not even our body goes with us. And it's like duh. But there's a significance to digging into that, that we first of all, even as we recognize Oh, yeah, I know my body won't go with me. We are still thinking that the me that we associate with this body is going to go on. We're thinking that there's this me personality and that when I die, I lose everything around me. But my me goes into the bardo and my me goes into the next birth. With when we get more and more clear in these processes, we'll see that that me that me that we're talking about here gets left behind also, like our personality me. So Ronnie gets left behind. The subject state of mind goes. But by the time it's into a certain place, moment of death, once the body is gone, with the body goes the personality. So by the time we get to the body dead, but the mind not even left yet. There's no Sir Ronnie in there anymore. For them. Mind. It's something else entirely. And that's why it's so disorienting and scary. Because if we're not familiar with this, not not not me, me, right, not Sir Ronnie me, then it's like you don't know what what you don't know, it becomes so unstable. But what does go on is all the karmic seeds that Sir Ronnie made on behalf of Sir Ronnie, taking care of this body. Trying to write trying to get its needs met at the expense of others. Mostly, right, the negative seeds, the selfishness seeds that we make. All the seeds go on the body does not the personality does not. But our moment by moment behavior is colored by right what's what's safe for Sir Ronnie was Sir Ronnie need what is Sir Ronnie need, even in terms of doing Dharma, right? It's like what is Sir Ronnie need to do the Dharma to plant the seeds, it's still selfishly involved. And it, as long as our selfishly involved Dharma choices are guiding us to choose greater kindness, greater caring, greater sharing, then the seeds that go on with us will be helpful seeds to keep us going on our path in whatever the next life circumstances are going to be. It's the karmic seeds that go with us, not our people, not our stuff, and not our bodies and personalities. That's the purpose of the investigation. That's how we investigate to come to the realization that my Dharma practice is the only thing that can help me. But do you see the connection? Because the Dharma practice teaches us what behaviors to give up and what behaviors to take up within this lifetime, in relation to our people in relation to our stuff in relation to our own physical body and being to plant seeds so that any one of which will be just fine. If it's the one that projects our next lifetime, only Dharma will help us in that way. Dharma being teachings that teach us about virtues, right? What's virtue, what's not? What is kindness and what's not. And so we can see how all the details that the ACI coursework give us is all building this picture of how to live life as a human in order to influence our death and lives beyond. And in the process, we become kinder and so theoretically happier people in this life, regardless of our circumstances. No, it won't matter so much to us whether we get the raise or don't get the raise. If the situation of earning the raise gives me opportunities to be more and more helpful in my workspace with others, because the seeds I plant in my mind will be seeds I'll be happy to take with me when I go. All right. Keshavas says, when we've trained ourselves to have virtuous instincts, no, avoid those 10 non-virtues, do the 10 virtues. When that's our instinct, it'll be our instinct as we're dying as well. By instinct, it means that we're so full of those virtue choosing seeds that it becomes just natural. And we have so many more virtue seeds in our mind, that the likelihood of one of those going off at the moment of death is greater than one of the selfishness seeds, just because of numbers. And then because of that influence on our mind, that whole death process is also experienced differently, can be experienced differently. And whereas ordinarily, it's chaotic and disruptive, when the mind no longer is tethered by the functioning of the brain, if we have nothing but virtue seeds, that same situation doesn't have to be experienced as unpleasant. Right? Same chaos, but not unpleasant. It's hard to grapple with, that we could even learn to transform that very process into the one that will take you to your enlightened being, not directly through a bardo. And that's the process of the diamond way. Wait, I lost you again. I guess it wasn't. Are you back? All right. Okay, so we've got our three principles to gain that deep realization of our own impermanence. Our own impermanence. My death is certain. My death is certain. The time of my death is uncertain. When I die, nothing but my Dharma practice will help me. Je Tsongkhapa goes on to say, so when you've got that realization, you will pretty naturally come up with these three resolutions.And the three resolutions relate to each of the three principles. Knowing that my death is certain, I really want to start my Dharma practice seriously. Like now I see that the Dharma teachings really can help me in this way, to plan what to not plan. By starting my Dharma practice, that means renunciation, bodhicitta, correct worldview, understanding suffering, that it is and where it comes from. Generating compassion, learning about emptiness and karma. Everything else fits in these three categories. Second principle, knowing that the time of my death is uncertain. I want to devote myself to Dharma only I want to quit my worldly work and devote myself to my Dharma practice now immediately. It sounds like, you know, we're gonna quit work, leave our families, right? Get divorced, go live in a cave somewhere. But that's, that's not what it means. It's a state of mind. It's an attitude. Lost you again. Hello, come back. Hello, come back. Hello, come back. Okay, it's an attitude. I'm so sorry about this. But we're wanting to quit our worldly attitude towards our people, towards our things, towards our jobs. Change our reason for taking care of those things. Change our reason for supporting our families through our work life. Change our work life from work life to my Dharma laboratory. Work life is our perfect Dharma laboratory. Our interaction with others is how we plant our seeds. So it is our Dharma practice. It's our state of mind. We're wanting to grow this color of our lenses. As we're interacting with everything, be this is my Dharma arena. This is where I'm planting my seeds. So it's meaning and quit our worldly attitude and our worldly priorities. Not quit life. Geshe-la said to his students, just try, you know, to go live in the forest on your own, you'll be back in five days. No, and apparently somebody did it. They moved out of their apartment and went and lived under a bridge. And it only lasted a week. And they were looking for another apartment. I can't imagine. But you know, that's not what Dharma is about. And technically, the Diamond Way Dharma was meant for busy people. It was taught originally to the kings and the administrators, who were the ones in charge of taking care of people. Because imagine if you're the king, the karmas you're planting, moment by moment, you know, you're in charge of everybody. So your karmas are huge. Everything you plant. And so to run a kingdom based on Dharma, you'd be a quite a different king than to run the kingdom based on personal gain. It'd be quite different. Geshe-la went on to say, in terms of this, I want to quit my worldly life and do Dharma immediately. He said the way one might orchestrate that is that, you know, if you're looking for a career, he said, and you have trouble with, or not trouble, it's like you, you have vanity, right? You, you care a lot about what you look like, then you might want to take up a career where you help others look beautiful. No, so if you yourself are a vain person, that's something that you would be working with, karmically, put yourself in a position where you make other people beautiful. Right? And what's going to happen? Karmically, right, that beauty is going to come back, you're going to see beauty all around you, you're going to see beauty. If you have a problem with pride, put yourself in a position where you have to serve people. You know, it's the last thing you would want to do, you want to be the one in charge. But if you want a Dharma laboratory career, choose one that makes you override your personal main mental affliction every day at your workspace. If you're already in a career, see where your own personal favorite mental affliction is coloring your input, and use your interactions with others to do the opposite of that mental affliction. It's the perfect arena. He says any other reason for working is meaningless. Because technically, we say I'm working to earn money to support my family. Technically, your work is not where the money comes from. Is it? Right? It doesn't mean quit work, and expect money to show up in your bank account. But it is the two really are not related in the way that we think. Third resolution, since nothing else can help me, I will devote myself solely to my Dharma practice. And again, it sounds like, oh, I'm going to give everything else up. And I'm going to study and meditate and do retreat in my family's on its own. And again, that's not what it means here. It means that as we are reprioritizing our worldly lives through our attitude, we are designing our life to include the time we need to study the time we need to meditate daily, and the time we need to get into retreat. None of that happens without the karmic ripening for it to happen. And so if we were just starting in our Dharma careers, and we could step in, like knowing everything that we need to do, from the beginning, then what we might do would be to spend the first year doing a four steps, you know, for each one of those pieces. Who is it that wants more time to study? How can I help them get the time to study? Who is it that wants to learn to meditate? How can I help them learn to meditate? Who is it that wants the time to go on retreat? How can I help people get into retreat? And don't worry about your own practice at all. Just right, if we really knew, we'd set it up at the beginning of our Dharma career, to plant the seeds, so that when we turn to our family and said, you know, I need an hour in the morning to myself, they'll do your karmic seeds will ripen as they'll say, fine, right? We'll adjust our lives around you, right? It could happen. But it isn't how our our Dharma practice tends to grow. We learn little bits at a time. And so it all happens a little bit more long term, and slow. But now, even looking back, if there is a place in our life where I just, I can't possibly imagine getting time to go and do a two week retreat by myself, then set, start planting the seeds. Now, to see a life either later in this one or next life, be one in which retreat time is built in. So it's like, everybody takes a month off twice a year to go do deep retreat. It's like built in to society. It, it won't happen by itself. It gets created. So our priorities for our seed planting grows into this attitude of, like, I'm planting, planting, planting constantly more interested in the planting than we are in the result. That's the purpose of these three resolutions. Life circumstances don't need to change. We don't need to change our jobs. We don't need to switch friends necessarily. We switch our attitude, our own attitude. And that's what it is to be a Dharma practitioner. Frozen again. Are we back yet? Okay, so then lastly, in all of this, then our minds are gonna say, well, if all that's true, then what's the highest Dharma? I just want the highest Dharma. And you remember in the practice module, right? I love that image, you're in the turret room, you've gained these three like resolutions, and you turn and go, I want the highest Dharma. And you point your stick to that peacock blue door, that the highest Dharma is exchanging self and others. But here, in this class, Geshe-la shares that the key factor or like the one highest thing to devote ourselves to, with these three realizations, is this idea, Namduk. N A M D A K, Namduk. Namduk is the practice of seeing the whole world as something pure. It's a high holy practice. It's difficult. It means every every, okay, on one level, it means every moment. And every experience is exactly what we personally need to become the one who will help others stop their suffering forever. Like every moment is exactly right. That's one way of seeing as pure How is that true? Well, every moment is my own ripening. Can't be any other way. Every moment pleasant or unpleasant. If it's unpleasant, I'm burning it off. If it's pleasant, an opportunity to share it. There's nothing else we need to do. Burn off unpleasant, share pleasant. On a deeper level of understanding. If there are Buddhas, fully enlightened beings, omniscient, the omniscience is ripening results of their huge, huge, huge merit made through their love and their compassion that was propelled by their understanding of the empty nature of subject objects and interactions between then those omniscient beings love is manifesting as exactly what I need at any given moment to show me what to give up and what to take up. Because that's all a Buddha can do for anybody is to guide, teach, inspire, can't make us do it. So if that's true, then everything that I am experiencing is a Buddha's emanation there to help me. And I'm the dunce that can only see it as no, the person driving too fast. I'm the one who makes that judgment of what I see is really what it is. I can also learn to make the judgment. It looks like that to me. My seeds are making that nature be that but its nature from its side is blank, empty, could be an emanation. Not just could be, it must be. So it must be for my benefit. And how would it benefit me? If I would just care. Maybe the person driving too fast has an emergency at home. No, maybe they are just driving too fast. But may they be safe instead of why are you driving too fast? Right? Just my attitude, in my reaction to things, to see things as pure. Right on another level. Oh, it's a Buddha's emanation looking like that ficus tree, looking like that nasty person looking like that beautiful blue sky. And walk around in the arms of enlightened beings, because they're everywhere. It can grow into, well, I'm an emanation for you. So can I be Buddha's emanation for you? And you see how dangerous that is? Because we could convince ourselves, yeah, I'm a Buddha's emanation for everybody. So that means I can do no wrong. Wrong, right? It'd be true, you could not do anything wrong. If, when you are a Buddha's emanation, because whatever you do is exactly what the other person needs. But when we're doing this as a practice, it means that me, for them, is like this emanation of love, emanation of compassion. How can I help them? How can I support them? Really dangerous, but powerful. They are exactly what I need. And I am exactly what they need. And as a result, let's all be kind, right? Let's love each other. Let's help each other. What a different world it would be to see the world as pure, right? Different levels of that practice. So, ideally, that's where a death meditation realization will take us. From, oh my gosh, I want every moment to be Dharma, to, oh my gosh, I want every moment to be walking amongst emanations of Buddhas. No matter what it appears to be, to me, right, within the empty nature of all those me's and others, is this purity, through which I can interact. If it seems unpleasant, just burn it off. If it's pleasant, share it. And that's really all we need to do. Okay. All right. Class. Course 8. Class 10. Done. Well done, everyone. So, you know, you'll be teachers next class. And then I am so sorry for pushing us into Course 9 so fast. But I want to get us done before the July's Five Houses. And then we'll be gone for all of August. So you will get your, you'll get six weeks. Sorry to do that to you again, also. But in that six weeks, please go back into this course. And you know, of all the meditations that we did, this death meditation is the most important.Please spend some time with it. The next course is going to be the Vinaya, which is mostly lists about vows. And we can see why it comes next. Because now that we know more about our suffering world, and we know that it's all created purely by ignorance and selfishness. And even we know that even our ability to change our behavior to less selfishness and less ignorance is also pushed by virtue, by kindness. The more we can learn about how to gather greater goodness, the better. So we learn about ethical life through learning about the vows and the processes. So it's not so philosophically challenging as it's just lists and learning. So even still the death meditation, this would be a good time to drive that home if you don't have anything else that you are waiting to work on. But we'll talk about it before I leave you in July. So then that said, for the class nine, because I sprung it on you, if you have other things in life that are pressing, and you can't get your homework done in between each class, I'm okay with, right, you letting it accumulate, but it's dangerous, right? You don't want to leave the whole thing to do on your own, you know, try. But if you can't get your homework done before class, don't worry, right? Do the best you can. Okay, so done. Remember, though, that being we wanted to be able to help at the beginning of class. We've done more than you think, to set in motion the end of their suffering someday. And that's an extraordinary goodness. So please, please be happy with yourself. And think of this goodness like a beautiful glowing gemstone that you can hold in your hands. Recall your own precious holy guide, see how happy they are with you. Feel your gratitude to them. Your reliance upon them. Ask them to please, please stay close. To continue to guide you, help you inspire you, and then offer them this gemstone of goodness. See them accept it and bless it. And they carry it with them right back into your heart. See them there, feel them there. Their love, their compassion, their wisdom. It feels so good. We want to keep it forever. And so we know to share it by the power of the goodness that we've just done. May all beings complete the collection of merit and wisdom, and thus gain the two ultimate bodies that merit and wisdom may. So use those three long exhales to share this goodness with that one person, to share it with everyone you love, to share it with every existing being everywhere. See them all filled with loving kindness, filled with the wisdom.And may it be so. All right. Thank you, everybody. I apologize again for the rough internet. Okay, see you on Friday.