ACI 9 (Mon/Fri)

Vocabulary Class 1 The Meaning of Vinaya

• nirvana Mental state where there are no more mental afflictions

• samsara cycle of suffering

• sherab wisdom (referring to the direct perception of emptiness)

• tingendzin, ting-nge-dzin (tb), samadhi (sk)      deep state of single pointed concentration

  • shi-ney is the highest evolution of samadhi. In samadhi, one can hold the mind on one object briefly. In shi-ney, one can hold the mind on one object for a very long time

• tri pitaka the 3 baskets (extraordinary trainings)

• tsultrim morality (ethical living)

• kongyur words of the Buddha

• dulwa vinaya (sk) ethics, discipline

• dulwa taming or training as in a wild horse

• do  (tb)  sutra (sk) words of the Buddha, (can also mean ‘short book’)

• Abhidharma wisdom

• dulja the one being trained, our own self or mind

• ngulchu Dharma Bhadra

• nyomong

• klesha mental afflictions

• dulwa ni ten dang tunpa ngu yin “If the Vinaya is taught, I the Buddha am there.”

• gelong pay “pa yi” sotar gyi do sutra of the freedom vows of a fully ordained monk

• gelong may “ma yi” sotar gyi do sutra of the freedom vows of a fully ordained nun

• dulway do / vinaya sutra (sk) 4 explanatory Sutras about Vinaya by Loppon Yun-Ten U (550 AD) (sk: acharya Guna Prabha) short book on the ethical life.

• dulwa gyatsoy nyingpo The Heart Essence of the Ocean of Discipline by Je Tsongkapa (1357-1419)

• nyin je Day Maker, commentary to Je Tsongkapa’s text by Loppon Ngulchu Dharma Bhadra (1772-1851)

• yishin norbu Wish Fulfilling Jewel by Choney Lama Drakpa Shedrup 1675-1748- from Sera May. Commentary on the Vinaya Sutra

• ngawang drakpa tsako wangpo disciple of Je Tsongkapa

[Class Opening]

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 just by way of you thinking of them. They are gazing at you with their unconditional love for you, smiling at you with their holy great compassion, their wisdom radiating from them, a beautiful golden light encompassing you in its warmth. 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. Maybe they help, maybe they don't. But either way, they go on to have some other distress. 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. And 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 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 to the benefit of every existing 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.

Course Introduction

Okay, so last class we left off with gaining realization of our own impermanence by way of:

• My death is certain.

• The time of my death is uncertain.

• And when I die, nothing but my Dharma practice can help me.

And we got to that consideration because we had been studying about all the different kinds of beings in the Desire Realm and all the kinds of horrible sufferings that they experience.

And we got to that because we had studied the Bodhisattva vows in which we were pledging to reach our enlightenment for the sake of all those beings.

And we got to that because we had studied Diamond Cutter Sutra, where the question was, what's a Bodhisattva to do? And the answer was, bring to Nirvana all sentient beings.

Do you see how this sequence has gone? So we're learning who all the sentient beings are that we're going to bring to Nirvana. And we of course are one of them. So in order to know, become a being who can know, what those others need to give up and take up, we need to do it ourselves. So, you know, we're plodding along this Lam Rim through the monastic training. But it's giving us the information that we need to make these changes.

So then what changes do we make? That's the ethical life. That's what the ethical life is about, is what actions to take up and what actions to give up. So this course is all about ethics and vows, and what it means to have vows, and what kind of vows there are, and like more detail than you ever really need to know about an ethical life, but all of it designed so that we can be more, what's the term His Holiness uses, educated Buddhists. So that we can conscientiously make our behavior choices, to plant the seeds in our minds, such that any one of them could go off as our projecting karma at death, and we'll know we're still on the right track.

The very minimal motivation is to close the door to a lesser rebirth. Beyond that, we can use our ethical life to, they say, escape samsara, get out of samsara. But it implies that there's a samsara there that we have to break out of. And, you know, it's like, well, where would samsara be? Tucson in June? No, downtown LA right now? Like, samsara isn't a place. It's a misunderstanding that then surrounds us, that we then experience the results of, in a physical way and in a mental way.

And then we say, oh, I want to escape samsara so I can reach nirvana. Again, if you ask, you know, people what's meant by nirvana, if they weren't ACI Course studiers, they would, you know, we get as many answers as there are people that we asked. And nirvana, we've learned the detail, but basically, it's that reaching that state where we are incapable of our mind being knocked out of its peacefulness. And it's like, can we even really conceive of what a peaceful mind would be like? A peaceful mind would mean, you know, calm, happy, not like weee happy, but calm, happy, content, satisfied, regardless of what's going on. Right? If we think nirvana is, oh, I finally live in paradise. The weather is perfect all the time. The birds chirp all the time. Food is delicious all the time. It's like, that's not nirvana.

Nirvana is this state of mind that regardless of what is happening, our minds are peaceful. Like King of Kalinka in Diamond Cutter Sutra. He wasn't rocked from his love for the King, even though the King totally misunderstood what was going on and is cutting him up, cutting him up. And then, in the end of that story, right? He does that act of truth. If it's true, you know, that my name is Mr. Patience and I love you, Mr. King, then may all my parts come together and they jump up and pfft, right? And I don't know, the king must have flipped out.

But what is nirvana and what is samsara takes some understanding. And in that understanding, then we see how it's created by misunderstanding. And if we stop the misunderstanding, we can stop recreating the circumstance of the suffering of samsara and be creating the circumstance for the ripening result of a mind that's incapable of being rocked from its peace of mind. Not just, our willpower so strong that we don't let ourselves be rocked, but incapable. So we understand that that the state of samsara is, has a physical nature and a mental nature. The physical nature of samsara is our physical body, our physical world, where it's doomed to failure and it's doomed to end because the causes that made our physical body were stained with ignorance. And because of the ignorance, they're stained with selfishness. And because of the selfishness, it's ending, it will end.

So the ignorance, as we know, is the belief that the natures and qualities are in the other, are in the thing, are in the experience, are even in the body. And the misunderstanding is that it's, that it's not true that those natures and qualities are in them, from them. It is that whatever nature and quality they seem to have is a ripening result of how I've seen myself interact with others in the past. It's all karmic results of past behaviors, right? We know that punchline. We're applying it now. So these very physical bodies are results of seeds that are stained with ignorance and selfishness. And as a result, it will come to an end. It will kill itself if something outside of it doesn't kill it first. We studied that before. 

The other part of samsara is the mental factors, all those mental afflictions that upset our peaceful state of mind. Main ones are the fact that we are, our minds are incapable of being satisfied because of the way we plant our seeds. Our seeds ripen with this always wanting more, never satisfied, right? One of those six unique sufferings to humans and pleasure beings, right?

Then another part of the mental samsara is this fact that we can't rely on anything. Anything we do to cause another thing to happen, it may or may not work because it's not the real cause of the thing we want to happen. And, you know, we're so used to that fact that we have for lifetimes just said that's the way it goes. You know, every time a lion goes out to hunt, they don't catch something. You know, every herd that migrates across Africa to find greener pastures doesn't always find greener pastures. Every time we turn the key to start the car, the car doesn't always start. It does most of the time. And we think that's a good thing. Ultimately, it's not a good thing because it lets us be complacent in our belief that, yeah, all I have to do is turn the key, have gas in the car, it'll start. It's reliable to get me to where I need to go.

But we're all under this false belief that what I do in the moment brings what comes next. We're under this false belief that what happens in the moment brings what next pleasure or displeasure happens next. When in fact, all of it is being generated as a result of how we responded to situations in the past. And we can't see that directly. We can't experience directly the true cause of anything that we are experiencing. We are so blinded by the fact that we think that the immediate action before is the cause of what happens. And intellectually, it's like, no, no, I understand that that's not the cause of starting the car. The cause of starting the car, you know, is like all the bazillion parts in the car and my need for the car. But yeah, having a key is a pretty critical part.

So that this expectation that the things we do will bring the next thing actually fails us in the end, it fails us in the end, because this thing, our own body, that is the tool that we use to do all of that, it's gonna fail us in the end. There'll be a day you can't get in your car to start the car to drive it. Right? Sumati’s already there. I mean, physically, he could do it, but he knows not to, for safety reasons. But there'll come a day when physically, we can't do it either. And we just like, no, that's so far in the future. I don't need to worry about that now. And technically, that's true. But every time the car works, we confirm our misunderstanding, unfortunately.

And yet, if we had a life where absolutely nothing worked, and everything was a huge big struggle, we would be under, we would be in survival mode. And it will never occur to us to question, where does this all come from? Because we'll be, you know, too focused on survival. So we're in this happy, medium place of having enough leisure and fortune, enough goodness, and enough unpleasantness to wonder to question. And then we have extraordinary goodness to have been one of the ones who met the pen and had our minds go, whoa, there's something significant here. Because many people hear the pen. And it's like, big deal. No, so extraordinary goodness that we are riding upon. You know, we're replanting it. The question is, are we replanting it fast enough to keep to keep going? You know, spiraling upward in our transformation?

Ethics to reach Reaching Nirvana & End Samsara

This uncertainty, and this dissatisfaction, those amongst all our other mental afflictions, characterize this state of mind that we're in, that's called samsara, this vicious cycle of hurting others and ourselves, trying to get what we want to be happy. Nirvana then is defined as that permanent cessation of any state of mind that would upset our peace of mind. Due to the ‘individual analysis’, remember that code word, which meant due to having perceived ultimate reality directly one time, at least a first time, because we'll do it more than one. And as a result of that, went on to burn off all the seeds that were stained with selfishness. And plant seeds not stained with selfish, well not stained with ignorance anymore, to move ourselves along the process of reaching the place where we have no more mental afflictions. Because there's no more seeds for mental afflictions. It requires that direct experience of the fact that our own nature, the nature that we thought we had, that was our own, in us, from us, is impossible, is not there, was never there. The absence of our own self-nature, which then by extension reveals the absence of any other beings self-nature, and any other things self-nature. As we study the self-natures, we study things. And then we study others, before we actually get to recognizing, oh my gosh, my own self-nature is the same, just as impossible.

But when we actually experience it directly, they say, first you witness the fact that your own mind is making the identity of the outer object. But as you go through the layers into your direct perception, that first, the direct perception of emptiness is your own emptiness that you perceive. So this lack of self-nature, lack of self-existence. We have all these words that we've loaded with meaning. But every time I hear myself say them, I know how I've loaded them with meaning. But I'm not quite sure how the person I'm talking to has meaning, right? So it gets really difficult to convey. I think I know that you know what I'm talking about. But even then, I have to say it again, and again, and again, in different ways. I get to say it again, and again, and again, in different ways, trying to see if I can say for you exactly how, for you, you'll go, ‘ah, right,’ something deeper. Which is why I'm repeating myself again, and again.

It takes seeing emptiness directly to reach Nirvana, the end of all mental afflictions. And we will reach Nirvana, the end of all mental afflictions on our way to Buddhahood. Buddhahood is omniscience added to Nirvana. The omniscience comes about as a result of having reached Nirvana, motivated to become a being who can help everybody reach, at least, Nirvana. Because we've come to such a direct experience of the suffering nature of Desire Realm, Form and Formless Realms, and it breaks our heart to see or to know that that's all a big mistake, and is unnecessary. That the beings around us all are not even aware that it could stop. So in order to become who can help them, we really need to have the realization of these ideas that we've been studying and living by because we believe them so clearly.

To believe it is one thing, to have experienced it directly takes that belief from belief, like faith, to I know it's real, I know it's true. I know it's an explanation of where happiness and where unhappiness come from. All right, we can't use the word truth for somebody else, right? Look, look, let me tell you what's true. Because it's only true for me. Even the pen thing. Yeah, everybody sees it unique to them. True. But impactful for someone else? Not in the same way it impacted me. So we really, really, really, really need to go through that doorway of direct experiences of these ideas, these concepts, these explanations of where happiness comes from, so that we can be this living example. And being a living example, then opens others' minds and hearts to learning about it as well.

So we really do need to go through that experience of ultimate reality, experiencing ultimate reality. And to be able to do that experience of ultimate reality can only happen in a very deep state of meditation. We study about it, not in meditation. We meditate on it a lot. So our intellectual, excuse me, our intellectual understanding of it goes up every time we re-explain the pen thing to ourselves or somebody else. Every time we think about it, we understand it a little bit better, a little bit more deeply. But that's like watching every video that's ever been made about riding a bicycle, right? The intellectual study of emptiness. We can get really, really, really knowledgeable about it.

But until we get on the bicycle and ride it, we don't know what it's like. So with emptiness directly, that getting on the bicycle and riding it happens in deep meditation. So we need to be able to also reach this deep platform of meditation, where our mind going out to sensory objects has turned inward such that no interest in any sensory input that's coming. Geshe-la says a bomb could go off next door if you're in shamatha meditation and you would be unaware of it. That's how shut down you are in a deep level of meditation one is at the level to see emptiness directly.

So it's not that you have to be getting to that level meditation for hours at a time, always, but we need to have the skill to get there when it's time, when the seeds ripen to see emptiness directly. If we don't have the skill of being able to sit our body down and forget it, like park it so still that we don't need to pay attention to it and withdraw our focus of attention into something that holds our attention so vividly and avidly that as we are approaching an absence, an experience of absence, we won't get freaked out. It takes deep level meditation. Deep level meditation we can learn the skills, we can train in the skills and we need to, but to have the result of the success of the training and to have the result of the success of an emptiness meditation taking us into it directly, that will be a ripening result of some extraordinary kindness because it's the most important thing that we can experience in this lifetime. It's the best thing we can do for others and ourselves. So it can only be a result of some extraordinary kindness.

 So we could meditate, meditate, meditate and go on being horrible selfish slobs in life. And maybe seeds So we could meditate, meditate, meditate and go on being horrible selfish slobs in life. And maybe seeds from some previous lifetime of goodness would ripen as deep meditation, but the ongoing seeds of selfishness in this lifetime would make it such that we wouldn't be able to use that deep meditation. We wouldn't be able to get into this altered reality, this higher reality, because we don't have the karmic goodness to ripen us into that. So our direct perception of emptiness is going to be a karmic result of something extraordinary. Our ability to get to the platform of deep meditation that we need to even launch into the direct perception of emptiness is itself going to be ripening results of extraordinary kindness. So it seems like kindness is the key, isn't it?

So there's this third factor in reaching our own nirvana, let alone nirvana and Buddhahood for the sake of all sentient beings, which is creating the causes for the depth of meditation, through which our both intellectual and then direct experience of emptiness can happen. That foundation is behavior, kind behavior, avoiding harming others, helping others, doing both under the influence of our bodhicitta. Those are the three levels of morality. In the three levels of morality, the foundation one is the learning how to avoid harming others in obvious ways and in more and more subtle ways.

The 3 Baskets: Wisdom, Concentration, & Ethics

So these three factors,

1. Growing our intellectual understanding of the marriage of karma and emptiness into the full-on wisdom from the direct perception of emptiness, is one factor that we're growing.

2. The second factor is the training in meditative concentration.

3. And the third factor is the training in our behavior, ethical way of life, which builds the karmic goodness through which the other two can flourish.

So these three factors, growing our wisdom, growing our single point in concentration and growing our ethical behavior, when they are done under the influence of bodhicitta are called the three extraordinary trainings. The Tripitaka, the three baskets, not to be confused with the three turnings of the wheel.

Je Tsongkapa would say to his students that in their time, the teachings of Buddhism in Tibet were focused on the tantras. And people believed that once they got their initiation and they had their tantric practice, that ethics didn't matter anymore. That specifically studying wisdom didn't matter anymore, because now they were tantricas and they would do this transformation. And Je Tsongkapa said, you know what we're seeing is that people's tantric practice isn't working and they're getting discouraged and they're quitting. And he says, and it's because they're going into tantra without a strong foundation in their wisdom and meditative concentration, but mostly because they're going into those without their strong foundation of ethics. Which means they had the karmic goodness to reach tantra, to be met and taught tantra, but not the foundation in this life for the behavior that would sustain that goodness. So they used up their seeds without replanting. And so the tantra was losing its power. The power is not in tantra, the power is in the practitioner and the karmic goodness that the practitioner brings to their tantric practice and then uses tantra practice to perpetuate. But if you don't understand the power of ethics, tantra can go sour very fast.

So these three, the three baskets in their Tibetan names are sherab, tingendzin, tsultrim. Sherab is wisdom. Technically, the wisdom you gain from the direct perception of emptiness. Tingendzin is single pointed concentration. Here, that's just the foundation for reaching the platform of Shamatha at the level of the first causal level of the form realm so that we could experience emptiness directly. And tsultrim, the ethical life, behavior choices, how to train in behavior choices. The three baskets, Tripitaka, the three extraordinary trainings. Tripitaka is the Sanskrit word.

 So this whole course is about tsultrim, an ethical life. Buddha spent half of his career teaching ethics. He was teaching what to give up and what to take up. He taught ethics mainly by stories, telling stories. There was this person once upon a time, and they did this deed. And as a result of that deed, 17 million lifetimes later, this terrible thing happened to them. And then they did this other deed, trying to stop that terrible thing. And then 17 million lifetimes later, this other terrible thing happened to them. And he traces this story through from this original minor selfishness or something. And then the punchline is, and look, that guy, that was me. I made all these mistakes, even after my heart wanted to stop the suffering of all beings. And I came to realize that that was all mistaken behavior. And like, I don't want you to make the same mistake, learn from my mistakes.

So he taught about them. And it evolves into this whole teaching of ethics. Like if he could have just said, this behavior makes this result, this behavior makes this result. He's basically saying that. But there's 84,000 wrong deeds we do. You know, that'd be a long list. We understand that the detailed workings of karma are deeply hidden reality, more deeply hidden than the empty nature of reality. It takes omniscience to see directly cause and effect. What exact thing I did to make this orange and gray pen that always gets a little extra glob of ink at its tip, even though I'm not using it, right? The details of this object were created by me in some very specific way.

A Buddha mind, a fully enlightened mind sees that directly. You know, sees that, I don't know, you know, eons of lifetimes ago, this mind stream did something for someone else that had to do with having some object that to use as a demonstration that has good parts and pleasant parts and unpleasant parts. That mind would say, don't you remember that time where you were trying to help so some person and you inadvertently stepped on the foot of that other person. Don't you remember that? And it's like, uh, no, actually. But they say, that's what's causing this circumstance to be pleasant, but with some unpleasantness going on, this specific pleasantness, this specific unpleasantness. We cannot see that until we are omniscience. Not even those in Nirvana can see directly cause and effect relationship. Buddha's do, and they want to help us. They know we can't see it directly. They know we're colored by wrong belief.

And in that wrong belief makes our belief that “me.” Me needs that, for me, for success, for me’s survival, for me's happiness. And they know that that “me” is not yet capable of caring enough about the other to make the right choice of our behavior about where our own happiness satisfaction comes from. They know that, right. And it twists their heart because they see that it's just a mistake that our own happiness is so much closer when we give up that selfishness, but our selfishness can't see it that way. So they teach the guidelines in behavior. And it sounds like Buddha's saying, restrict yourself, take vows, do what I say. Right? And it sounds very restrictive and authoritarian when in fact it's educational and, uh, helping our choice making be easier.

Ethics/Discipline

(45:12) Once we have vows and use our vows, it means certain behaviors are just off the table anymore. So if we can identify them in ourselves, we just choose to stop doing them. We can't always follow up with that choice depending on the situation, but it's not like in every given situation, we have to stop and think, do I do this? Do I not do this? Right? We can get our ethics even onto a certain level of automatic pilot. Probably we are all on that automatic pilot of kindness level already. And then our task is to crank up the power of it in more and more subtle ways.

All right. So these three - wisdom, single-pointed concentration and ethics, they then tie together in this subject matter called dulwa. Dulwa is the Tibetan, vinaya is the Sanskrit. It's the teachings on an ethical way of life, tsultrim. But dulwa, that term means how you, what you do to a wild horse, to make them into a serviceable animal, to make them into your pleasure ride horse. A wild horse into the pleasure horse.

Dulja is the one who's being tamed. So it of course refers to ourselves. The disciples of Buddha are dulja and our task is to dulwa ourselves. To tame our selfish impulses. A wild horse does what they want when they want in order to survive. A wild “me” thinks that what I do in the moment is where my happiness comes from. I want another cup of tea. I'll go get a cup of tea. It should bring me happiness. It should taste delicious. Maybe it does. Maybe it doesn't. If somebody gets in my way of getting my cup of tea, right, I'll get upset. It's that ingrained me and mine versus you and yours. And there's going to be conflict because of the misunderstanding. So we're learning to tame, tame that impulse.

The impulse is driven by what we see, hear, smell, taste, touch, right? Our sensory perceptions are that through which we contact what we think is our outer world. And so it's through those sensory impulses that are, I want, I don't want arise. If we don't see something, right, it's not there to grasp, to get. I mean, yes, we can think of something and want it. That's a contact as well with an outer object. So it's our, it's our sensory workings that seem to be happening on their own, that we then react to by way of, I want, I don't want, right? You can see how the heaps go. It's the heap of form and then the thumbs up, thumbs down, and then the discriminating between, and then the, all the other factors with the consciousness of all of it going on all at the same time. So in this practice of taming ourselves, we are training ourselves to be more aware of the sensory input that we then react to that triggers our grasping or avoiding, that triggers our choice of behavior. The taming is to become more keenly aware of that process happening and to choose our behavior more wisely, to avoid harming, to help, and to do both in order to reach total enlightenment. Yes, Roxana.

Roxana: Thank you, Dear Lama. I just need to clarify here in your explanation. You said Dulja are Buddha students?

Lama Sarahni: Dulja is the one who's being tamed. Okay. So if we're talking about a horse trainer, it's the horse. We're talking about us. So the disciple of the Buddha.

Roxana: Oh, okay. Thank you. But it's not the word disciple Buddha. Thank you.

Explanation of Discipline

In studying Vinaya, there’s a teacher named Loppon Ngulchu Dharma Bhadra, we'll meet him more specifically later.

He gives an explanation, not really a definition, but an explanation. He says, we call Vinaya, Vinaya, because the subject matter of the scriptures on Vinaya, which is the seven rules and all their friends, function to discipline the mental afflictions and also functions to discipline the sense organs. So I'll say it again in more English. We call discipline, discipline, because the subject matter of the scriptures on discipline, which is the seven rules and all their friends function to discipline the mental afflictions and functions to discipline our sense organs. So I'm going to say it one more time because it's actually your first homework question. What did Loppon Ngulchu Dharma Bhadra have to say about discipline? We call discipline, discipline, because the subject matter of the scriptures on discipline, which is the seven rules and all their friends, function to discipline the mental afflictions and function to discipline the sense organs.

It doesn't seem fair to use the word discipline five times in an explanation of what discipline is. If I did that in third grade, they would have flunked me. You can't use the word you're trying to describe, but he got away with it. So the key factor here is the seven rules and their friends. Like what's he talking about there? The script, the scriptural, the scriptural discipline is about these seven things. And when we train in these seven, that's how we discipline our mental afflictions, meaning stop acting from them and discipline our sense organs, which also means stop acting according to what they're showing us. It doesn't mean stop acting at all, but it means we're getting off automatic pilot.

So as I said, only Buddhas can see directly the 84,000 mental afflictions that cause 84,000 harmful behaviors that make the seeds that perpetuate samsara. 84,000 is too much to learn. So he boils it down to 10. The 10 main mental afflictions are the 10 main non-virtues that we do because of our unbridled mental afflictions and our unbridled sensory perceptions and reactions to them. We know those 10, there are three of body, four of speech, three of mind.

• three of body: killing, stealing, sexual misconduct,

• four of speech: lying, divisive speech, harsh speech, useless speech,

• three of mind: jealousy, ill will, wrong view.

And we've studied those and we've seen that it's not that there's something self-existently in all of those behaviors that's so bad. It's that the result of any of those behaviors comes back as unpleasant. And that's what makes them wrong behaviors. That's what makes them wrong. Non-virtue is because they plant seeds in our minds for perpetuating suffering. So if we avoid these in really, really subtle ways, we will be avoiding them in their grossest way as well. So we learn about them and then we think about how to avoid them in more and more subtle ways.

I like to flip them over into the positive. And how do I do their positive? Because if I'm doing their positive, I am not going to do their negative. And so of these 10, discipline is called discipline because the subject matter of the scriptures on discipline is talking about the seven, meaning the three of body and the four of speech. The topic of discipline is how we act and how we speak. But it's like, wait, that's all motivated by how we think. Why isn't thinking included in discipline? And it's not that it's not included. It's that we take our vowed behavior up into the mental realm in our Mahayana level practices.

So once we take on our bodhisattva behaviors and our bodhisattva vows, those are addressing jealousy, ill will, and wrong view to a much greater extent. The early teachings on ethics are about what we do and say based on our interaction with our outer world. Our thinking about it was changing the way we think about things will of course happen, but it's not the focus in our study of Vinaya, our practice of Vinaya. So the seven means killing, stealing, sexual misconduct, lying, divisive speech, harsh speech, useless speech, those seven. And out of those seven come a whole host of other behaviors that are subtle ways that we are doing those seven. And that's what discipline is addressing.

And what makes us behave in those seven ways is our mental afflictions, our misperceptions of what's going on that makes us react badly, that makes us want to kill, steal, sexual misconduct. So the slightest mental affliction rocks our peaceful mind. And that rocky peaceful mind then can't make a clear decision about what to do. It's making a decision based on the disturbance, not based on the stillness. So we perceive some factor happening, we get upset over it in some way, and then we act from the upset. If our mind is like this still lake, and we throw a, you know, some perception is as if we've thrown a pebble into the still lake, and there's some ripples that go out. Then we act, the ripples are our action. If you throw a boulder into the lake, you know, kaboom, there's a big splash, there's big waves. Our reaction is bigger. So the idea is to be able to, you know, pebbles and boulders can get thrown into the lake. But our response to the pebble and the boulder doesn't have to be based on the ripples on the surface. Our response can come from deep down, right? The wise understanding, state of mind underneath. And we would grow into this being that's behaving in certain ways, kind of disconnected from what's actually, what seems to actually be going on, on the surface. We'd be responding in these loving kindness ways, regardless of the circumstance, right? That's where nirvana is taking us. Circumstance can still be icky, but we're peaceful underneath there.

So keeping our morality is about stopping these seven main negative behaviors that we do in more and more subtle ways. When the kids first enter the monastery and start their study, they're usually about seven years old. So the little kids, the first thing they're given to memorize is this short verse.

dulwa ni ten dang
tunpa ngu yin

Dulwa means discipline, vowed morality. Ngu yin means ‘actually is’. Tunpa means the teacher, capital T, meaning the Buddha. And ten dang means the Buddha's teachings. So what this is saying is

If Vinaya is taught truly anywhere,
I, the Buddha, am there.

If Vinaya is taught truly anywhere, I, the Buddha, am there. Meaning the Vinaya scriptures themselves represent the entire teachings of Buddha. Buddha is saying to us in this verse, if you study and practice Vinaya, you can say that I, the Buddha, am still in your world. I am there with you. Buddha is there with us when we are studying and applying our Vinaya efforts. Remember as we were talking about the eon of destruction and the realizations are diminishing and the interest in the Dharma is diminishing. It's like the way we stall that process is to study and practice Vinaya. It keeps the Buddha in the world. You know, I don't see him walking around in his red robes, but Buddha is here with us because we are checking our behavior. We are keeping our vows. We have vows. We take vows. We keep vows. That's Buddha here with us.

So first he's saying all the Buddha's scriptures are keeping Buddha alive in the world. Secondly, he says as long as anyone in the world is truly studying, practicing Vinaya, then I, the Buddha, am still alive in the world. It's like, we can think of our vows as Buddha, as our companion, right? Buddha is there with us. Yeah, you had a question or comment, Roxana?

Roxana: Yes, dear Lama. Just that His Holiness, our great Dalai Lama, he just requested for us to start making small groups in our communities, small Sanghas, to continue the teachings of Lord Buddha because precisely we're in degenerative times.

Lama Sarahni: Yeah, we're doing it. 

Roxana: So it's a big rejoicing that we're still here. So, just wanted to share.

Lama Sarahni: Thank you. Thanks. Thanks, everybody, for showing up.

The Lineage we are Studying

To show that our study of ethics is authentic, there are two main Buddha’s sutras about Vinaya, and then there's a collection called the Four Explanatory Sutras as well. So we understand the word sutra usually means the words of the Buddha, right? Buddha didn't write stuff, he spoke stuff, and then his students wrote the stuff down after he passed, and those became the Buddha's sutras. In Tibetan, they use the word do, but do and sutra can also mean a short book, so it'll get a little confusing a little bit later.

Here, there are two main Vinaya scriptures, sutras, one's called Gelong pay sotar gyi do, the other is Gelong may sotar gyi do. Gelong pay means fully ordained monk’s, like apostrophe “s”, and gelong may means fully ordained nun’s. Sotar is their word for the vows of freedom, Pratimoksha. And gyi do means ‘the sutra of.’ So The Sutra of the Vowed Morality, the vows of freedom of a fully ordained monk, and the sutra on the vows of morality of a fully ordained nun. Some of their vows are the same, many are different. So these were the freedom vows as taught by the Buddha, which came along as a result of situations in the Sangha where somebody did something that upset a lot of people and so then he had to make a rule. So it's not like he sat down one day and taught all of these, but by the end of his career it had been compiled.

Then there's another set of Four Explanatory Sutras, I don't have that in the Tibetan, Four Explanatory Sutras that are also sutras about behavior guidance. Those all come to us from the Kangyur, which is the words of the Buddha, right? We know that.

And then what we're studying for this course is also coming to us from a text called the Dulwa Do, or the Vinaya Sutra, put that down there. Here do and sutra are meaning a short book because this text, the Dulwa Do, or the Vinaya Sutra, was written by someone who in Tibetan is called Loppon Yun-Ten U, but if we see his dates 500 AD, we see he is not a Tibetan person. Buddhism was not in Tibet yet in 500 AD. He's an Indian man, his Indian name, his title is Acharya Guna Prabha. So Master Guna Prabha wrote this ethical life in a nutshell book. That's not its name, but that's what its contents are. We're going to study it in some depth, Vinaya Sutra. You know, in Geshe-la's book, The Garden, one of the special beings that came to him in the garden was the one about ethics. It was this fellow, Acharya Guna Prabha.

Roxana: Can you please repeat, dear Lama, the name of the sutra that he wrote, please?

He wrote the Vinaya Sutra, Dulwa Do, Vinaya Sutra, that's the name. Master Guna Prabha wrote a text called Vinaya Sutra.

Roxana: So what was it, the name that we receive in English?

Oh, we didn't get one in English. It's Ethical Life, the Sutra on Ethical Life.

Roxana: Okay, thank you.

A Short Book on Ethical Life. I don't ever hear it called that. I always hear it called the Vinaya Sutra.

So then we will also be studying from three commentaries, commentaries to different things. And Je Tsongkhapa, our hero, 1357 to 1419, he wrote, sorry, I'm confusing myself. He wrote this text called dulwa gyatsoy nyingpo. Dulwa gyatsoy nyingpo is The Heart Essence of the Ocean of Vinaya.

Nyingpo is heart essence, Gyatsoy is ocean of, Dolwa is the Vinaya. So Je Tsongkapa wrote this text called the Heart Essence of the Ocean of Vinaya, which is a summary or a commentary on the Buddha's Four Explanatory Sutras. This is just a very short, succinct summary of the Four Explanatory Sutras. And so we could read it and memorize it, but we would need a teaching on it to know what it's really referring to. It's really concise. The Dulwa gyatsoy nyingpo.

So along comes Loppon Ngulchu Dharma Bhadra that we heard about “the disciplines called discipline, because”- his dates are 1772 to 1851. He's a big Lama in our Vajrayogini lineage. So if you go on with Geshe Michael's Diamond Way, you'll hear about Loppon Ngulchu Dharma Bhadra more. In this context, he wrote a text called Nyingje  Nyingje means sunshine, Day Maker and it's a commentary on Je Tsongkhapa's dulwa gyatsoy nyingpo. So The Heart Essence of the Ocean of Vinaya, this short, succinct teaching. Day maker by Loppon Ngulchu Dharma Bhadra is a commentary on it. You'll have it in your reading.

Then we have Choney Lama Drakpa Shedrup, the Sera May textbook writer, 1675 to 1748, whose writing is so much easier to understand. He wrote this text called Yishin Norbu, The Wish-fulfilling Jewel. And this text is a commentary on Master Guna Prabha's Vinaya Sutra. Choney Lama's dates are, as I said, 1675 to 1748. Apparently, these texts that Yishin Norbu, The Wish-fulfilling Jewel and the Day Maker text, when Geshe-la taught this in the 1990s, these texts had only recently been found in the St. Petersburg library by what was ACIP at the time. So they were newly translated, just quite extraordinary. And now they've been available and used, of course, by even the monasteries didn't have access to them until they were found. And returned. Well, not returned, but scanned and then remade.

Okay. So we have our texts that we're going to be studying from, so that we know where our lineage is coming from. Then, we know Je Tsongkapa had many disciples, four that went on to become important in our lineage. Two of them, Gyaltsab Je and Kedrub Je are the ones we're most familiar with. His two other main ones were Gendun Drup, who went on to be recognized as the first Dalai Lama. And then a second one, whose name is Ngawang Drakpa Tsako Wangpo.

Ngawang Drakpa was the fellow that after they had finished their training, I'm not sure you ever really finish a training, but they got to this point where Je Tsongkapa had said, man, I've taught you what I've got to teach you. Now we need to have monasteries built and people ordained. Let's go spread the Dharma. I've taught you what I can teach you. Go out and spread the Dharma. Who will go and build monasteries and ordain people? And most of his students look the other way. And this guy Ngawang Drakpa, he goes, I'll do it. So he leaves being close by his teacher and he goes out into the hinterlands of Tibet and he does establish different monasteries. So the first one that he established, he gets established and he has ordained his first batch of monks, new monks, probably not little kids, right? At this point, these are adult monks and he's writing to Je Tsongkapa regularly. Je Tsongkapa kindly writes back. And as Ngawang Drakpa writes his rejoicable, his offering, I offer that I've just ordained my first set of monks. Je Tsongkapa writes back, great, you know, this is how to instruct them. And that's where the dulwa gyatsoy nyingpo came from, right? The short, succinct review of what Lord Buddha would teach his new ordained people.

We know Ngawang Drakpa because this correspondence that went back and forth between them, out of it also came the Three Principal Paths and I think Source of All My Good. And so a lot of beautiful writings from Je Tsongkapa came from this correspondence with his student who was far away from him. All right. So surprisingly, we've finished class early. Funny, my last night's class didn't finish early.

So be it. So we'll launch onto our study of Vinaya so that we can build our three baskets, right? Build our ethical training, so our meditation can go higher, deeper, higher, so that our wisdom can grow, so that our Vinaya choices will come more easily. So our meditation will go deeper, so our wisdom will grow. It's a beautiful upward spiral.

All right. So remember that person we wanted to be able to help. We have learned stuff that we will use to help them in that deep and ultimate way and that's an extraordinary goodness. So please, please be happy with yourself and think of this goodness like a beautiful going 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. And may it be so.

Vocabulary Class 2

• yishin norbu The Wish Fulfilling Jewel by Choney Lama, commentary on Vinaya Sutra

• Vinaya sutra written by Master Guna Prabha

• Three levels of reality

  • nyun gyur - obvious reality (reality perceived by samsaric beings by their sense powers)

  • kok gyur- hidden or subtle reality (can’t be perceived by sense powers, e.g. emptiness)

  • shintu kok gyur- deeply hidden reality (karmic correlations)

• Four parts of the explanation

  • tsen gyi dun the meaning of the title

  • gyur gyi chak obeisance by the author

  • gusok chu shi statement of purpose

  • dompa matopppa topje - actual commentary to the text

• Khenpo abbot

• Khensur past abbot, ex abbot

• knen rinpoche precious abbot

• Loppon- master

• toppa mi-nyampar  - how to protect our vows

• ne lama mentor

  • sojong, confession ceremony to clean up vows

  • yarne, summer retreat season practice

  • galye, 3 weeks of “vacation” after summer retreat

• gokang du korway korlo o

• cha ngapar ja o  “Put the five-part painting of samsara’s wheel in the foyer”

• cha nga 5 parts of the desire real

• Bardowa beings in between

•  duk sum 3 poisons

• yenlak chunyi 12 links of dependent origination

• tamche mitakpa nyi kyi sung     put the whole thing in the clutches of impermanence

• Dawa the moon

• Tsikche at the 2 verses

Usual Class Opening

Review Class 1

Ready, welcome back. We are ACI Course 9, Class 2. It's June 13th, 2025

So, last class we learned that the meaning of vinaya or dulwa is to tame the wild horse of our minds and their sense organs, to bring them under control, to make them useful tools. So, it was termed dulwa, which means taming our minds of the seven wrong deeds and their associated behaviors. Seven out of the ten non-virtues, deeds of body, deeds of speech, actions and words, and all the things we do as a result of what those seven propel, right, or inspire is the wrong word, but make us do.

Then we learned that the relationship between Buddhist discipline and Lord Buddha and his teachings is that the subject matter of ethical behavior actually constitutes the highest of Lord Buddha's teachings, which is curious because we think of it as the beginning. We think of it as the Hinayana, you know, not derogatory, but the lesser capacity practices is the vinaya. The vinaya is about learning how to avoid harming others in gross and subtle ways. And then we go on to Mahayana and then we go on to Diamond Way as if those are higher teachings.

And he's pointing out that, no, in fact, the ethical life is the highest of teachings. If we could live according to the ethical life, those other things would just evolve. They really are the foundation. And then he said it's true for two reasons.

1. One is that the essence of the instructions on vinaya represent the entire instructions that he ever gave.

2. And secondly, that because those rules of ethical behavior illuminate all the teachings, everything we need to know, they are Buddhist teachings and they are the Buddha present, which gives us a clue into what a Buddha is.

You know, are we still relating to Shakyamuni Buddha as some guy in the flesh that was here for a while and then gone? Or are we relating to Shakyamuni Buddha as, I don't have words, some being who for some period of time cloaked part of that being in a physical form so that they could walk, they could be, they could interact with the others. Now, if we don't need the physical form for Buddha to be Buddha, then of course, the teachings on ethics are them. So, you know, we hear this teaching. I remember hearing it when I first met it. It's like, okay, of course, the ethics are Buddha because Buddha is all about karma and ethics is all about karma. But then as I learn and I share and, you know, my own mind is changing. It's like, oh my gosh, there's so much juicy insight in these supposedly beginning foundational courses. So Buddha is still here with us as long as ethics is being taught, studied, practiced.

Then third, we learned about the role of the extraordinary training of ethics in the development of the other two trainings. Remember in Je Tsongkhapa's time, apparently, people's karmic goodness was such that they were able to leap right into Diamond Way. And then for some reason, their Diamond Way wouldn't work very well. And then they would abandon it. And Je Tsongkhapa recognized the pattern. He said, you know, it's because people are misunderstanding that reaching wisdom, which is what the Diamond Way is based upon, it isn't coming out of doing your Diamond Way practices. It's coming out of the karmic goodness that you make. That's ripening as the Diamond Way practices being successful. Well, if the goodness that we make can make Diamond Way practices successful, it can make any practices successful. But we have to have this foundation of the ability to make the karmic goodness to create the results that we're intending to create.

So, if our goal is to experience that ultimate reality directly, that can only happen in a deep state of meditation. So we need to be able to get into a deep state of meditation. And a deep state of being able to get into a deep state of meditation, if that's a good thing, it can only be a result of goodness, of kindness. We have to plant the seeds for it. So the way that we plant the seeds for deep meditation, deep enough to be able to turn our mind to the ultimate reality of whatever our object is, is we have to learn how to plant those good seeds and stop planting the negative seeds, the harmful seeds that are blocking our ability to concentrate, that's blocking our ability to understand emptiness, even intellectually better, but for sure directly.

So people had forgotten the fact that you won't reach wisdom unless you have a strong foundation in ethics so that you can meditate better so that you can see emptiness directly. Those three are like a braided rope.

Then we learned that the commentary on Vinaya that we'll be studying from is the book called Dulwa Do or Vinaya Sutra, by Master Guna Prabha, which is not a Buddhist Sutra, but is Master Guna Prabha's synopsis of everything that Buddha taught in this topic called ethics, all compiled into one place because Buddha taught it in lots of different places. And it's helpful to have it all in one place and Vinaya Sutra is long and complicated so Choney Lama wrote a commentary to it to help us be able to use it and understand it better.

Then lastly on your quiz was what motivation should we have while engaging in our study and practice of Buddhist discipline? I think it was Je Tsongkhapa. This is from his Epistle on Ethics. He's pointing out that renunciation is the attitude that we want to hold as we study our ethics. So renunciation is being sick of perpetuating this mistaken world by way of doing mistaken things to get the things we want and avoid what we don't want. Or doing things in a mistaken way, maybe as a more accurate way, because it's not so much the things we do. It's our expectation that what we do will bring what we're doing it for. Right? I expect the key turning to start the car. And then when it does, my mind goes, yeah, see that deed got that result, but it didn't. That wasn't the cause of the key starting the car, but I fell for it again. And that perpetuates in my mind, the belief that when I push the ‘on’ button on the water heater pot, that's where my hot water comes from. Right? And it's those little things that they're not harmful to anybody, but me, because they let me perpetuate my misunderstanding of where things come from.

So like, I don't even want to say it, but my mind says, say it. If I really got it, got understood, it was like, I would almost want things to go wrong. Like pushing the thing on the pot doesn't heat the water to show my mind that it really doesn't work. But that kind of life would be the kind of life where nothing works. I can't stick. Right? It's so weird. We don't want things to go wrong. We do want to wake up to the fact that when they work, it's because of some way I helped somebody else. We're learning to connect that dot. We have to do it by thinking as we're doing something. So the only reason to change our behavior is because we're sick and tired of our old behavior, just going wrong, always going wrong. Renunciation, our own personal renunciation of our own personal suffering is what will get us on the path of our personal behavior change. That's necessary to become the one that can help others do it too. As we all have the seeds for being attracted to the Mahayana. Oh, that selfless bodhisattva, they do everything for everybody else. But if we don't really include our own samsaric “me” in that we're not quite ever going to get to that bodhisattva state deeply enough to make the transformation we want. Our tendency is like, oh, my “me” doesn't matter. It will go along for the ride. No, my own suffering is the platform that should get us started. Admit we are suffering and it's unnecessary and we can stop it so that we'll do what we need to do to become the one who can help everybody stop their suffering too.

So renunciation is our own pain. We're learning ethics to stop our own pain. It is not selfish to say that because how do we go about stopping our pain? We stop hurting others. That's the only way to stop our own pain. So everybody's going to benefit by way of our renunciation. And that's how it ends up turning our renunciation onto others. And oh my gosh, I can do this for everybody. But please take a hold of “your own you is valuable and worthy of being fixed.” Okay, that's Vinaya class.

Yishen Norbu, The Wish Fulfilling Jewel

So this class is covering Choney Lama's Yishen Norbu commentary on that Vinaya Sutra. We're going to go through the outline of the Yishen Norbu. And then the rest of the classes, we go into some parts of it in greater detail. So Yishen Norbu we learned last week, Vinaya Sutra we learned last week.

In the Yishen Norbu, its first chapter, it's not really laid out in chapters, but its first part is its preliminary overview. And in that preliminary overview, it reviews Buddha Shakyamuni's life, like the story of his process of gaining enlightenment. Now, the process of Buddha Shakyamuni gaining enlightenment was not limited to his life as Prince Siddhartha, of course. That's the one that he manifested, you know, in that time period for that group of people that were in his world at that time. But his process to enlightenment, you know, was happening over a long, long period of time before that, as we learned last course, three countless great eons, long, long time from when he first gained his like heartfelt thought, oh my gosh, everybody's suffering. I want to help stop it until he gained his omniscience. So through that period, that process, he went through three major stages of spiritual life.

1. First, the things he had to do to gain what's called the first bodhisattva Bhumi, which means experiencing ultimate reality directly with bodhicitta in his heart, right? Motivated by bodhicitta.

2. Then his second stage was perfecting the six perfections.

3. And then the third stage was gaining omniscience.

So this text Vinaya Sutra, of which we are getting a commentary, is talking about all of those things that need to happen. In Choney Lama's commentary, he goes back and checks into the different sutras as well, to help him understand what Vinaya Sutra is telling us. And so this part of Choney Lama's text, Geshe Michael says, it's like a literature review, you know, reviewing what's in all these different pieces from Lord Buddha. And he shows how it is that Lord Buddha established that the whole of Buddhism is contained within the Vinaya, that those teachings can stand for the Buddha himself.

And in this section, he also offers the obeisance. So remember at the beginning of a Buddhist book, a Tibetan Buddhist book, at one point, the king said, look, when you translate or write a new book at the beginning, offer your obeisance to the enlightened being who is the specialty of the topic of your text, so people know what the book's about. It's a good idea. And so when you're translating or writing a commentary, you can add that to it. So Choney Lama does this obeisance to Shakyamuni Buddha, which tells us that his text is a text on Vinaya.

We see obeisances in texts to Lord Manjushri, and it tells us the text is a teaching on emptiness. We see to Chenrezig, where it's a teaching on love, compassion, or the Bodhisattva deeds, that kind of thing. So if we know those correlations, when we see who or what they bow down to, we know what's coming. So Choney Lama and Vinaya Sutra spend so much time on Shakyamuni Buddha's life, because Shakyamuni Buddha's life shows us the details of how behavior affects our reality, just not in the moment. So many of Buddha's Vinaya teachings have to do with stories about him not a Buddha yet, and things that he did, that now that he is a Buddha, he sees how those things that he did caused these other lifetimes that were problematic. And at the time he did the things he didn't realize, but he was connecting the dots as he went through all these experiences of all these lifetimes.

And so he'll tell this story of there was this monk, you know, and he disrespected these other monks and that caused a schism. And then as a result, that guy dies and he goes to hell and loses his life. There's this long story. And then the punchline is, and you know what, that guy who did the wrong deed, that was me. You think the good guy in the story is going to be the Buddha. And he always fesses up and says, no, no, I was the one that made the mistake and it delayed my progress so terribly. I'm telling you don't do that. So from personal experience, right over many, many, many, many lifetimes in many, many forms, Lord Buddha connects the dots, take this up and give that up. And so what he wants to do then is to help people not have to reinvent that wheel. Like he figured it out. And now he wants to give us the shortlist, you know, you don't have to make all these mistakes I made. Don't do this and do this. And your progress will be smoother. And that's Vinaya.

So, and that Vinaya is then the study of karma and its consequences. So Buddha Shakyamuni's career path to becoming Buddha Shakyamuni is really about karma, karma and its consequences. So Vinaya is really about karma and its consequences is the whole point is coming to that realization that all those things and others that we blame for either our distress or our happiness are not coming from them. The experience we're having is forced on us by ripening results of ways we behaved similarly to that to others in the past. Like we know the punchline and yet I still blame my cup of tea, right? For giving me some comfort as I drink it. And that perpetuates this state of mind of samsara, which is what the Vinaya practice is about stopping. They call it getting out of samsara, but it means stopping perpetuating the state of mind that is creating samsara. Alrighty. We can come to recognize that our behavior now is what's creating our experiences of the future. Not just now and then, but moment by moment by moment, we are experiencing the results of our past behaviors and we are behaving and that's creating the circumstances of our future. When? This life, next life, anytime thereafter, all of the above. We don't know. And that's the pain. Part of the pain of not being omniscient is we don't know what karma is coming out of that karmic pocket next. At any moment, we don't know. Okay. So Vinaya is this study of what is a harmful deed and what is a helpful deed because it's based on the result we get, not on what we do. Okay.

3 Levels of Reality

So that leads to the study of the three levels of reality, which we've heard before, but here it comes again. nyun gyur, kok gyur and shintu kok gyur. Nyun gyur refers to obvious reality, which refers to the reality that we experience through our sense organs, our sense powers, the reality that we see is obvious reality, right? Here's our friend, the pen. We're seeing it. It's obvious. But if one of us were blind, then this visual object, the pen would not be obvious reality. The things we hear, smell, taste, touch, tactile, they all are said to be obvious reality, but only if you have the sense power to contact them in that way. So obvious reality is not established by the object. It's established by our experience of the object.

Then kok gyur is hidden reality, things that we can't perceive through our sense powers, but can still experience. The classic example is emptiness. The emptiness of anything is not something that we see with our sense powers. We don't experience it directly in that way, but we can still experience it directly. We can experience it directly intellectually, and we can experience it directly, directly in deep meditation. And when we are in a deep meditation and having the direct experience of emptiness, then at that moment, emptiness is not hidden reality, it's obvious reality. It's your experience of the moment. You're not using sense powers to experience it, but it is your current experience, it makes it obvious during that time. When you come out of it, it's no longer obvious. It's hidden reality again. So again, it's not the object that's determining what kind of reality it is. It's the way we are experiencing it.

And as difficult as a direct experience of emptiness seems to be, to have, it's only hidden reality. It's not deeply hidden reality because we can reach it. Deeply hidden reality is the subtle workings of karma, meaning the details of the behavior correlations that explain every detail of every moment of every experience. Like every crack in the sidewalk that passes by your house has a karmic behavior that we did that is creating that result of that crack. Not just one karma for all the cracks in concrete in the world, but specific. And every time you see that crack and step over it, karma is ripening, something specific. We can intellectually understand the principles of karma and the general-purpose karmic correlations with enough specificity to help us fine-tune our behavior.

But the actual thing that I created, like this pen has this gray section to it and it's got these little indentations so that you grip it better, you know. And like Shakyamuni Buddha, if I could hear what he's saying, he would say, you know, Sarahni, don't you remember like October 25th, 16 eons ago, some monkey you, reached over and helped your monkey friend grip its potato better because the monkey friend, it was slipping out of their hand and you grabbed the potato and you turned it so that the other monkey could hold it better. And that's what created the little dots on this gray thing for you. Don't you remember doing that? And it's like, I go, no.

What it is to be omniscient is to, they say see, but it can't be visual. To know those karmic details, not just about your own life, but everybody, like it's wild. We can't even conceive of what omniscience is going to be like, but that's what we're, that's why we're studying karma and its consequences, because even intellectually, we can't come to see it. We can't even in a deep meditation, come to see those directly. We can see the truth of it, which we see by way of reaching the direct perception of emptiness, but until we're omniscient, we can't see it. Those direct correlations, specific karmas and their consequences. Shintu kok gyur, deeply hidden reality, which is why we need to study Vinaya, because we can't see it for ourselves.

We can't see, we would never come up with on our own, how telling a little white lie, which is perfectly acceptable in our life and society, would bring about an experience of nobody believing what you say, and you not believing anything anybody else says. Like we would, the little white lie was a perfectly acceptable thing. There's nothing wrong with that, but all those others who are lying to me all the time, they are wrong. That's bad, right? We would not connect the dots. It would take us a really, really long time to figure it out, like three countless great eons.

So Buddha spent half his career teaching about behavior modification called Vinaya. And it comes across as Buddha gave all these rules to limit us, to discipline us. You know, maybe he was this big authoritarian and he wanted to just rule the world and be the, you know, not like that. But it can seem like that, that the rules on discipline are restrictions and avoid this, avoid that. They're not restrictions, they are guidelines to help our task be easier. If we had to stop and figure out each detail of each behavior, like we'd be frozen in life. You know, do I turn the key in the car today or don't I? Is it really the best thing? I'm going hurt people by driving. You know, I'm going to crush a bug. I can't drive, but I got to get to the grocery store. You know, I need to feed people, right?

So we get guidelines to help our choice making be easier. Years ago when Sumati and I decided to become vegetarian, I think I've told you this before. You know, I was in a line of work where you're making decisions all day. And when I get home, it's like, I don't want to make another decision until tomorrow. And then if you went out to dinner, you know, you got this menu with all these things on it. Oh man, a whole other decision. When we became vegetarian back in those days, you know, you had like two options when you went to a restaurant, this or that. It was like, okay, let's go out because it was so much easier, this or that, instead of having to decide all these other things. So like, it seemed like a restriction, but it just made life so much easier, like that. Our Vinaya is like that. You don't have to agonize over what to do and what not to do. It's laid out for our benefit, not for our restriction.

Okay. So all of those apparent restrictions are designed to help us stop creating a future in which we harm others trying to get what we want. And then from that, we will go on to also make a future in which we can create the goodness that creates the perpetuation of the upward cycle to the omniscience through which we then can help others in that deep and ultimate way. We'll help others in deep ways before we're omniscient, but the deep and ultimate way, it means helping them reach their own enlightenment.

Four Parts of the Explanation

• tsen gyi dun    the meaning of the title

• gyur gyi chak  obeisance by the author

• gusok chu shi statement of purpose

• dompa matopppa topje - actual commentary to the text

So how are we doing? Next, Choney Lama goes into the actual explanation of the root text, and this has four main parts. And Geshe-la gave us the Tibetan for these four main parts. So in keeping with planting seeds to help this language stay accessible, I give them to you. So here's the four main parts. Tsen gyi dun, gyur gyi chak, gusok chu shi, and dompa matopppa topje.

Tsen gyi dun is the meaning of the text. So first, in the actual explanation, you start with the meaning of the title, which the title of the root text is Vinaya Sutra. Vinaya is called Vinaya because it's the subject matter in which we learn to control those two things, our mind and our sense powers, in order to stop perpetuating the wrong, the harm, the thoughts that perpetuate suffering.

The second section, gyur gyi chak, it's an explanation of the translator's obeisance. So we already talked about that.

The third section, gusok chu shi, gusok means the goal, etc. Sok is etc. Chu Shi is the four points, the four points of the goal, etc. So we've learned before that a Buddhist book will have a section where it points out its subject matter, and I'm blanking out on all four, how the subject matter of the text, if it's, when it's studied and practiced, it will bring us the result that we need. Like it reviews those four factors about a Buddhist text that shows us that it is worth spending our time on. In the old days, you didn't go just buy your own copy of a book. You had to check it out from the library, and you could only have it for a short period of time. And so what you would do would be to memorize it so that you could give it back to the library because you're not going to get it again. And then your use of the book would be you review your memorization of it, you pick out a section of it, you review your memorization of that, and you think about it. You know, nowadays we can take the book off the shelf and reread that page. But if you had to spend so much time to memorize it, in order to then have it available to read, in your own mind, and reuse different sections to help understand it deeper and deeper, you would be investing a lot of your life on using a book to help us. And if we're going to spend that much time on a book, we want to know it's valuable. We want to know it's worth it. So if in the first few pages of your memorization, you're memorizing this explanation of it, we can decide, yeah, okay, that's where I want to spend my time or not. So we still have access to that. That's what gusok chu shi means, those four points.

The next section, dompa matopppa topje, it's the actual commentary. Dompa means to restrain. So it's the word for vows. Matopppa topje means, if you don't have them, how you get them? Matopppa, I don't have them. Topje, how do I get them? So this is a three-part section explaining about how we get vows in a pure lineage, how to get vows properly.

So, we would need to know why I would want vows. We would need to know how do I prepare myself to get vows? Who am I going to get the vows from? What happens when I get the vows? How do I ask? How am I sure I know I got the vow once I get the vow? What do I do with them once I have them? All those details we should be asking. I don't mean you and I should be asking, but a student would want to know all that. And here it is all laid out for us.

Why do we want vows? Because we've learned that to do a given behavior, that's a kindness will create a given pleasant result. To do that same deed out of a vow, to do the deed, the seed planted gives a better result, a more, not necessarily more pleasant, but a result that is more powerful. And then we also learned that the advantages of having vows to avoid behaviors means that every moment we are not doing that behavior, we are gathering the goodness of keeping the vow. So it's a very smooth way of increasing our merit accumulation. It seems like a funny idea, but we're increasing our goodness, right? Even as we're working on some other behavior, we're keeping all our vows.

Okay. So we'll learn about the proper way for requesting vows. We'll learn who it is we can request to. Geshe-la explained that in Shakyamuni Buddha's day, when there was someone who was attracted to his teachings and had been following for a bit, and Buddha would at some point turn to them and say, so, are you ready to leave the home life? And if the student said, yes, Buddha would just go, okay, bunk. (taps her forehead) And their hair would fall away. Suddenly they'd be shaven. They'd have their robes on and they were ordained just like that. Nowadays, it's a process. It's a ceremony. It's a ritual that one goes through. It's become all formalized because our minds need that formality. It was the goodness of the people at the time that Shakyamuni Buddha could just ‘bunk’ you and ordained. And so in these instructions upon getting our vows, this is for ordained vows, there are the instructions on who can give those ordination vows.

And so Geshe-la gave us this vocabulary just so that we can be clear on the term. So the term khenpo means abbot. The abbot of the monastery is the head guy. And in the Gelugpa monastic traditions, at least as far as I know with Sera Mey, they'll have an abbot who's requested by His Holiness the Dalai Lama. But then the monastery apparently does vote on them. And it's a temporary position. I don't know how long it is, four or five years. So there are many who have been abbots in the past. When you're done being abbot, the title shifts to khensur, past abbot, ex-abbot. Khen Rinpoche means precious abbot. And we hear the term Ken Rinpoche used in our community. And it's almost always referring to Geshe Lobsang Tharchin, who was the abbot of that Mongolian monastery in New Jersey. He did a stint as abbot of Sera Mey. I think we've heard that story. If not, we will someday. So he's also khensur of Sera Mey. But right up until he died, he was the khenpo of that Mongolian monastery, right? Just one little place in New Jersey, but still abbot. So khenpo. But that means any place that there's a monastery that has the head person, that person is the khenpo. And their people might call them precious abbot. So when we hear the term Khen Rinpoche used by somebody not within our own lineage, we have to ask, right? Who is your Khen Rinpoche? Our Khen Rinpoche is Geshe Lobsang Tharchin. Now I don't remember his name. Right? He's like 16, 17 years old. So the term Khen Rinpoche isn't specific to a person. I think Geshe-la was clarifying that in his time and still pertinent. So in a vow giving ceremony, the one giving the vows is considered the khenpo. I think that when new full monks are created, it's the khenpo who does it. The high monk, the highest monk of that monastery ordains people.

Loppon is the word for master, meaning someone who has mastery over a particular subject or activity. Master. And in the arena of a vow giving ceremony, there will be a sidekick to the khenpo, the one who actually does the organizing, makes sure that the disciples have the altar all set up, makes sure they're placed in the right way, makes sure they know they're in the right position, makes sure they're the one that does the details of the ceremony as the khenpo is doing the words and the actual tasks. So that loppon who's serving as the loppon for that ceremony doesn't necessarily mean their loppon term is used for them later on. It's just during the ceremony there will be a loppon so that we have it clear if and when you ever take your vows. 

Okay, so this section of the text goes on to talk about all the different kinds of vows, of Pratimoksha vows, individual freedom vows. We'll talk about it more. In the Vinaya there are eight different sets of vows one can, well, eight different sets of vows we'll learn about. And then it goes on to a discussion of the measurement of time. And the reason it goes into detailed measurement of time is that when we have vows there's a component then of respecting your elders. And now by elders we don't mean chronological age elders, we mean those who have had vows for longer than ourselves. So there could be a 95-year-old person who takes their ordination vows today and two days ago a 25-year-old took their ordination vows and now the 25-year-old is senior to the 95-year-old. And you need to know what time you got your vows so that you can know, right, where you are in the pecking order. That seems really weird to me because you would think there wouldn't be a pecking order or that that would be perpetuating samsara. So there's something about it I'm clearly not understanding. But we have it in our bodhisattva vows as well, right, to honor and respect those ahead of us on the path. We have it in Diamond Way as well. And there's some deeper significance, of course.

You know, back in those days there weren't clocks. Now we've got clocks. But it does say, you know, we should mark, we should know when we got our vows. And I didn't know this when I was getting vows, you know. And so I'm sure I have it written down somewhere. You know, I remember vaguely September 2010, but I don't remember the day. I don't remember the time. But I do know who got ordained before me, like even two hours before me. There were some people that got their vows and then I got mine. And then there were others who came after, you know. And so, you know, the younger ones will treat you with respect. But then you, as the older one, right, you need to set the example for the younger one. Right? So it becomes this symbiotic relationship.

 Roxana: Dear lama, any kind of vows, refuge, bodhisattva?

Technically, this is specific to ordained vows because the ordained people are all living together. But it is true in bodhisattva vows as well. We don't really hear it mentioned in the Diamond Way, but I think it's because by the time you get there, you should know this about vows.

OK, so then the next section of the text is this toppa mi nyampa. Toppa mi nyampa means once I have the vows, how do I keep from breaking them? Which would include in it, if I damage them, what do I do about it? Right? All these details. So there are four parts to this, the toppa mi nyampa.

The first part is about instructing us to rely on an outer support. An outer support means a mentor. Because we take our vows from the abbot, we don't have access to the abbot to ask him, you know, I'm having trouble keeping this vow. How do you think I should behave? So we are instructed to take what's called a neylama. Ney means crucial point or place. So here it means that the the lama who's there in the place with you, that you have access to, to help you with your learning, to keep your vows, to help you restore them when you damage them, etc. So they call it a neylama. Apparently, when you first take your ordination vows, you're supposed to rely on your neylama for everything for the first 10 years. And it's like you don't get your full ordained vows until you're after 20 or 21. So from 20 to 30, you're supposed to be relying on a neylama. And it's like, aren't I grown up by then, and making my own decisions. So there's a component of learning how to keep humble, as we're making our progress. So then, of course, the text lays out the qualities of a neylama. So that when you pick one, you pick one that will mentor you in the right direction. This section also talks about the qualities of the student, and how the ceremony should be performed. So you know what's going to happen in the ceremony, so you can be there to do it. And then the second section is how to rely on an inner support. So the inner support is that intention that we had when we took the vow. So we had some intention that made us want the vow. And we are growing that intention to where we asked to receive the vows. And then we continue to grow that intention all the way to the ceremony of the vow. And we're supposed to have that intention strong at the moment we're doing the repeat after the abbot in getting the vow, so that that intention is strong the moment they snap the fingers in the vows, like turn on, snapping the fingers is like flipping a light switch. So the idea here is our inner support is recalling that intention, the feeling of the intention. So we're encouraged to have this intention strong, and then revisit it as in daily, so that we can rely upon it as our inner support for keeping our vows, for tracking our behavior, for choosing our behavior according to our vows instead of according to our own automatic pilot selfishness driven. Um, okay. The third factor is gaining a good understanding of the factors that work against the vows. So once we have vows, we want to learn them. We want to learn their parameters, we want to learn what it means to damage one what it means to really break them. Like those are all the nuances of having vows as we've learned, learning bodhisattva vows. It's, it's, it's not a black and white picture. There's a lot of gray areas. So we study and practice. And that's a really, really big part of the Vinaya Sutra is learning the details of the vows. And in that text, he teaches five different kinds of vows within the Pratimoksha vows. And we don't get to go into the specifics of that part of the book, because most of it has to do with ordained vows, monk and nun vows, which you're not supposed to know what they are before you take them. It's like deciding to leave the home life. There's a power in taking the leap, you know, whatever it means to leave the home life. I'm willing, that's how unsatisfactory it is to be a householder. But you're not supposed to exactly know what it is you're signing on for. However, there's a secret. And that is if you go to an ordination ceremony, and it's done in a language you understand, they speak all the vows in the ordination ceremony. So you can hear what that person is taking on. For a, what's the word? For a beginner monk or nun, the vows break down into 36 different aspects. And so you can hear what the 36 are for. I'm escaping in that name. A rabton, a not fully ordained person, ordained but not fully ordained, like my level. And then it's a different ceremony for getting fully ordained. And then they go through all the fully ordained in a full on ceremony. So you can hear that you can hear them by going to an ordination ceremony. And then you can see, well, maybe you live like them anyway. That's what happened to Sumathi and I. It's like we heard a ordination ceremony and we went home and it's like, we already live like that. Maybe we should get credit. So we asked, you know, Geshe Michael Lama Christy, we already live like that. Can we get credit? And they said, sure. But then we were teaching in El Paso and that group in El Paso was part of a bigger group that were very traditional Tibetan. And we didn't feel that they would be able to understand that it does not break an ordained vow to still be married as long as you're keeping the vowed behaviors. But because there's nothing in the vows that says you have to be divorced to get ordained. Typically, the Lama will say, no, no, you have to separate before you can become ordained because you're leaving the home life. But in the context of Diamond Mountain, it's like, no, it's very clear that you can leave the home life and still appear to be living in a home life because leaving the home life is an attitude, not a place. So we said, well, you know, we want credit for living as not householders, but can we keep it secret because it would upset the minds of our sangha in El Paso for them to know that we've gotten ordained. So it's like crazy because you're supposed to wear your ordained out open and you're supposed to keep your diamond way secret. And at Diamond Mountain, that just seemed like that got flipped.We were keeping our ordained vows secret. And the fact that we were there doing Tantra was like so obvious because that's what Diamond Mountain was all about. And it's just like crazy. Not to mean our lineage is carrying that forth, but we don't see our ordained people wearing robes constantly. You know, it's beautiful when they do at ceremonies, but they don't shave their heads. They don't, you know, live in a monastic community. The way the Vinaya of ordination is meant to be circumstances just don't allow that anymore. But it doesn't mean that ordained vows are not useful. All right. So let's go on here. Another section of how to protect our vows has to do with conflicting vows. So as we grow our sets of vows, there are some Bodhisattva vows that seem to conflict with our freedom vows as ordained people. Geshe-la gives the usual example. Ordained people are not supposed to own anything. But when we take our Bodhisattva vows, we are instructed to be willing to keep stuff that we don't need in order to have it available to give it away when somebody else needs it. So it's like, what's a monk to do? It looks like they're breaking their monk's vows to keep those extra robe materials that they've been offered by a sponsor when they don't need robes. Their vows say, if you get cloth, make your robes within 10 days or give the cloth away. A Bodhisattva monk, you know, would store up bolts and bolts and bolts of cloth and take care of it until it was time to send that cloth to a new monastery, right, to clothe all the new monks there. So what do you do? How do you not break one vow and keep the other? There's a method to that. And then there's a prioritization, learning how to prioritize our vows. Then it goes into the 17 main monastic practices. And of those 17, there are three primary ones, Sojong, Yarnay, and Gayay. Sojong means the confession practice, the cleaning up our vows practice, where twice a month the ordained gather and they do prayers and they do a confession prayer. And they're supposed to go through the details of their behavior from the last two weeks, confessing any of the vows that were broken or damaged. Apparently, nowadays they just read through the ceremony. You know, I have to admit Samadhi and I mostly just read through the ceremony. And it happens formally on full moon and new moon are the Sojong days. It's not that you wait until Sojong to do confession when something needs confessing. And it's not that you only do your four powers at Sojong, right? You're doing them all the time. But you formally go and refresh things twice a month. Sometimes Samadhi and I will light a little fire in the barbecue that we don't use for anything else but this. And we'll take a dish of sesame seeds, which are black, mustard seeds, which are brown, and rice, which is white. And we'll get out our booklet of all our vows. And we'll read a vow. And we'll think of things we did against that vow. Hold some sesame seeds, blow it in, throw the seeds into the fire. If we did things that kept that vow, we would take some white rice. If we had obstacles to keeping that vow, we would take some mustard seed. And we would go through each vow and decide, did I damage it? Do I have obstacles to its opposite? Did I keep it? And it feels so good at the end of that to have reviewed every single one in some minor way. It takes a lot longer than reading the Sojong prayer, but it's really nice. It's really nice. I think it's time to do that again. Thank you for reminding me. Then the second of those 17 is Yarnay. Yarnay means the practice of summer retreat. Summer retreat in India in the summertime, they get monsoon season. During monsoon season, there's many, many, many more bugs. And in Buddha Shakyamuni's time, he was concerned that although walking around they did to go begging for their meal, they couldn't help but walk on things and kill things. And so he decided in the summertime during monsoon, we'll go into retreat. We'll stay in one location. Apparently they had meals brought in. They didn't go out begging. They studied, they meditated, they did practice for the three months of monsoon season. That's called Yarnay. Then at the end of that, when monsoon season passed and you came out, you got Gayye. It's not Galye, it's Gayye. And that's three weeks of vacation where you could play games and go to movies and listen to music and sing and dance and throw flower petals in the air. You get to cut loose for three whole weeks a year. And then you go back to your monastic life. Why so delay my three weeks? Like, I don't know, like cut loose. Yeah, I guess because you're dealing with a bunch of teenage men who've just been deeply restricted and they need a vacation. Why three weeks, not two, not four? I don't know. And you know, I don't know the extent to which this is followed at all. I don't know. So then next comes this section about how to restore one's vows once we've damaged them. How and how to repair damage amongst us Sangha. And it's an important section, of course, because the reason we take vows, the reason we leave the home life is because we're broken, because we have mental afflictions, because we can't seem to motivate ourselves on our own. We feel we need to commit ourselves to the practice under the surveillance, right? I don't mean surveillance, under the guidance of teachers ahead of us on the path. And so we devote ourselves to that practice. And we go live in with a group of other people who are doing the same thing, who also are broken and have mental afflictions. So if we go into a monastic lifestyle, thinking, oh, the monastics, they're already perfect. That's why they're monastics. It's like, you'll be surprised. It's like, no, we're the broken ones. So there will be damaged behaviors. There will be broken vows. Stuff will happen. And the whole method of Vinaya is to fix it and start again, right? Dust yourself off, clean it and move on. And as a monastic community, we're supposed to do it together. And unfortunately, in the West, we don't have monastic communities like that anymore. They were supported by the public. It doesn't happen. It doesn't seem to even be so much in the Christian traditions that had it. It's losing support, unfortunately. We take vows to learn how to control our behavior. If we can control our behavior, we don't need vows to do it, although it's still helpful. So then lastly, there's a section called ancillary points. In the ancillary points, it describes how the specifics of how a monastery should be constructed, its location, like how far away from a city or town, its shape. And in that instruction, there's a quoting Lord Buddha that says specifically, there should be in the foyer of the temple of that monastery, an image of the wheel of life. And the sutra on discipline is where that wheel of life picture is described as what it should include. That wheel of life image describes how all of our suffering is created, and so how it can be stopped. If we know how to read it, all of Buddha's teachings can be derived from it. All of the teachings are not drawn there, but what's drawn there? If we follow the train of thought and logic, we can derive all of Buddha's teachings from it. So the painting, the image, of course, was designed by Lord Buddha himself. There are two stories about how it came to be created. The one Geshe-la shared with us here was that in Buddha's time, one of his disciples was a man who was inclined to leave the home life, to follow Buddha as an ordained monk. But he had an exceptionally beautiful wife. And he was so attached, attracted to his wife, that he was like, I don't know, I don't think I can leave my wife. She's so beautiful. She's amazing. Ordained wife, ordained wife, ordained. He couldn't decide. And Buddha said, okay, let's go on a trip. And he took the guy on a trip through the various levels of the desire realm. He showed him hell. He showed him hungry ghost realm. He showed him animal realm for what it is. He showed him jealous God pleasure being, and then came back to human realm. And I guess when the guy got back, he's like, okay, I'll leave the home life for me. And then Buddha said, and draw what you saw. And it becomes what we call the tongue of the wheel of life. It has seven components that I'm going to explain to you now. And the Choney Lama gives us the Vinaya Sutra quote from Lord Buddha. Gokundu, Gokung, du korwe korlo'o, chana parja'o. Gokung means, or Gokundu means at the foyer, meaning of the temple. Korwe korlo'o. Korwe means samsara. Korlo is the wheel. Ja'o means make it. Chana par, make it have five parts. So Lord Buddha himself says, any temple you build in the foyer, put this wheel of samsara with its five parts, of which there's actually seven. All right, so we'll see. Dear Lama, can you please explain? It's just that as we were writing, you were explaining, and it's a long... Gokung means at the foyer. Gokundu, at the foyer. Korwe korlo'o is the wheel of samsara. Chana par is five parts. Ja'o means make it. So make the wheel of life with its five parts and put it in the foyer of the temple, says Lord Buddha in his instructions about building a monastery with a temple, or any temple. So the study of the wheel of life, which has been done in detail by Mixed Nuts and Sugen's translation, is really a study of karma and its consequences, and how we plant the seeds and ripen the seeds, and how that spins the wheel when we do it in a mistaken way. And Geshe-la did give a weekend teaching on the wheel of life multiple times, but it never quite made it as to one of the formal ACI practice modules. And Smriti and I have given it a couple of times as well. It's an interesting teaching. There's not enough time in a weekend to go into very much depth, the way they've gone into the depth of it with Sugen's text. But there are the recordings of Geshe-la's teachings of the wheel of life that are really useful in understanding the principles of how that wheel turns. So I get to explain it to you for the rest of class, and I need my prop. So I'm going to finish the vocabulary so I can get rid of this share. So make that wheel of life, show the wheel of life with its five parts of which there is actually seven. Here they are. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven. Right. Chan-na is the five, the five parts. These five parts refer to the five different kinds of suffering beings in samsara. So we'll see it. I'm going to go back. I just want to define these terms and then I'll tell you about it. Second section is the bardoas, also called zuke. Do you remember the term zuke? Zuke means miraculous born, which means born complete, which means not baby bardoa grows up to adult bardoa and then goes on, but just boom, bardo, being complete. Third section is duksum. Duksum means the three poisons. Du is the four dunyo, the three things that perpetuate suffering. There's a section in the Tanka about the three poisons. The next section, yin lat ch'ni. Ch'ni means the 12. Yin lat ch'ni is the 12 links, the 12 links of dependent origination. Tam ch'y mi takpa ni ki sun means tam ch'y is the whole thing. Mi takpa is impermanence. Ni ki sun means in the clutches. Make the whole thing in the clutches of impermanence. Dawa is the moon and tsik-tsik means two verses. Put two verses at the bottom. Okay, got it? Can I get rid of my chair? Yes, Raksena? I'm still writing, Dear Lama. I'm sorry. Give me a second, please. Yeah, yeah. It's in the chat. Thank you, Chris. Thank you, Dear Lama. Got it. Okay. Got it. Thank you. Yes. Now, last night I learned how to pin myself. I know, kind of silly, the little things that, yay. So I hope this makes it easier for you. So here's our painting of the Wheel of Life. Now we're going to zoom in. The five, have the five parts. Here's the five. Sometimes there'll be six in the five because they separate the jealous gods from the full-on pleasure beings. But these five are the five different levels of desire realm. Hell realm. Hungry ghosts. Animals. Human. Pleasure being. Of the desire realm. Not form formless. We're not talking about that. So in these pictures, there's an animal realm. There's a hell realm. There's a human realm. I think human realm is this one. A pleasure being. Curious, they're fighting in pleasure being.Here's the five. Then inside the five is the bardo. Show the bardo. In the bardo, the beings in the bardo are linked in a chain, and half of them are right side up. Their heads are up. It indicates those bardoers are going to a higher rebirth. The other half, they're linking the chain. They're headed downwards. There's this guy saying, come, come, like a hell guard. They're headed towards lower rebirth. So technically, these guys, when they end their pleasure realm being time, they're going to go here. Then they're going to end up in one of these lower realms because they're lower. But we've heard probably they've burned off so much goodness without doing any goodness that where they're going to be going is the hell realm. I think it's this one. No, here it is.Hell realm. So these are the only two options. Up or down. Then this is the bardo. Then it says in the middle, the hub of the wheel, that around which it all spins or because of which it all spins, like the motor in the center of the wheel is... Can you see? There's a bird. It's supposed to be a pigeon. There's a snake. And that dark thing at the bottom, it looks like a dog to me, but it's supposed to be a pig. And if you look carefully, the tail of the snake and the tail of the bird are coming out of the pig's mouth. In some versions, the pig eats the tail of the snake. The eats the tail of the chicken. The chicken eats the tail of the pig and it's in a circle. They're both accurate, but apparently this one is more original from Lord Buddha. Who's the bird? Who's the snake? Who's the pig? The bird, they usually use either a pigeon or a rooster because they're so horny. This is dove mating season when we've got doves all over the place. And they're just after each other constantly, representing ignorant liking, desire. We call it desire, but we understand if we just say, have you been overwrought by desire today? We would probably say, no, it's been about 30 years since that happened. But have I ignorantly liked something? Oh yes, I have. I expected that I would feel better about coming to class if I warmed up a corn tortilla and had a cup of tea before class. That's like my ritual. And I anticipate being more comfortable and happy in class because I did that. And it's just like ridiculous, you know, do it for another reason. You're welcome to do it, but don't do it because you think it's going to bring you some pleasure. If it brings pleasure, it's because I warmed up a tortilla for somebody else before, but nobody else is up with me at four in the morning. I'm the only one. Great. Enjoy it, but enjoy it in the right way. Do you see? So did I have ignorant desire today? Yes. Right. Already multiple times. The rooster, the snake is ignorant, dislike, aversion, hatred, fear, you right? Willingness to hurt somebody. Have I had that? No, not in a really long time. Have I had ignorant dislike? Absolutely. So snake, are we willing to do some kind of unkindness to avoid unpleasantness or to get what we want? We have to admit probably yes. In gross and subtle way. Why do we do all of that? Because of the pig. That's why they're coming out of the pig's mouth. The pig represents the misunderstanding that believes that the pleasure I get is coming from the tortilla and the cup of tea instead of recognizing that any pleasure is a result of having helped somebody. And so there can be pleasure and I can enjoy it. And I will want to share some with somebody as soon as I can, which hopefully is a little bit in class. The misunderstanding of the pig is even thinking that what I do in the moment brings what comes next. Whether it's pleasant or unpleasant or whatever, it doesn't, that doesn't matter so much. Just believing that what I do now is the cause of the next moment is also the pig because that compels us to keep doing what we've always done to get what we've always wanted. And we keep doing though, we keep doing it wrongly. We're not necessarily doing the wrong thing. We're doing it wrongly, wrong state of mind. And that wrong state of mind is what turns this whole thing, keeps it going. No, it's not just the ball bearings. It's the motor, that rotten pig. So if you can bring a halt to this, stop the motor, the whole thing stops. Something else happens instead. All right. So put the three poisons in the center, says Lord Buddha. It's showing us the necessity of ethics, behavior, behavior choices. Ethics is behavior choices. All right. So then put those 12 links around the outside. So around the outside of the wheel, for instance, is where the tire meets the road, right? So it's where things happen. These 12 links, you're probably familiar. The one at the top is the blind guy, which represents us under the influence of our misunderstanding. And then the blind guy plants seeds. Those seeds ripen. We go through those 12 links of the process in which a seed planted sometime long before pushes us into this life, which pushes us into awarenesses, which pushes us into contact between things, which pushes us into judgment about that contact, which pushes us into grasping and craving, which pushes us into action, which pushes us into another rebirth. And so the whole thing really is describing at least three lifetimes. But it can also be read as what's happening moment by moment by moment when we understand that those 12 links. And then we understand that if we can put up, right, jam a rod between one of these links somewhere, that would be a way to stop the motor in the center. Stopping the motor in the center is what it is to jam something between the links. And when we learn about the links, it's like, yeah, you stop this one, you'll stop that one, but you haven't completely stopped this one yet. And right there are different places that we can influence it. But the bottom line is you've got to give the blind guy eyes that work. The pig has got to wake up. And when the pig wakes up, I don't know, the snake becomes a good guy and the rooster becomes a good guy. It's not like they go away. Our wanting pleasure and wanting to avoid displeasure doesn't stop. We don't become robots when our wisdom grows. We become a snake that's wisdom, a snake that's helpful, a rooster that's helpful. And then the whole thing becomes different. Then Buddha says, show the whole thing in the clutches of impermanence. So look what impermanence looks like. Lord of death, things end. But you know what I like about this impermanence is this guy's feet. He's not standing on any solid ground. He's hanging out in empty space. Like that's how solidly grounded impermanence, our death is not. So we can take care of that guy. It says then, it just says the moon, put the moon. But what it means is show Lord Buddha outside the whole cycle. And Lord Buddha is pointing to something important, which where is the moon? I was looking at the clouds. There's the moon. The moon represents compassion in the pair of wisdom and compassion. The sun is wisdom. The moon is compassion. So it's a clue. You want to overcome this impermanence by way of stopping the turning of the wheel of life. He goes, rely on the moon, compassion. And actually we're going there in Bhojjampa class. Master Kamalashila is going to say, you want to deepen your meditation, cultivate your compassion. Here it is again, the importance of compassion, even for Vinaya. So the compassion at Vinaya level is for this one. I'm suffering and my suffering is unnecessary. I'm going to do what I have to do to stop it. What do I have to do to stop it? Stop hurting other people. So everybody's going to benefit from my trying to make me happier, right? It's not selfish as long as we don't do it selfishly, right? Which won't work because you can't do your Vinaya selfishly. All right. Lastly, he says, put those two verses at the bottom. So here are the two verses and I can't read them, but you've seen them now. And what those two verses say is take it up and give it up. Enter the teachings of the Buddha. Smash the Lord of death like an elephant smashes a reed hut. Take it up and give it up. Enter the teachings of the Buddha. Smash the Lord of death like an elephant smashes a reed hut. Take it up means take up practice, practice of the Dharma. Take up your ethical way of life. Give it up means give up samsara. Renunciation. Enter the teachings of the Buddha. Smash that impermanence as easily as an elephant smashes a reed hut. So, you know, a reed hut is like a hut made out of sturdy grass. The wind could blow it over and along comes this elephant and they just walk right through it, you know, as if it's another bush and the thing collapses. It's not like the elephant has to struggle or right that Buddha is saying this whole thing comes to a screeching halt with as much ease as an elephant smashing a reed hut. When we take it up and give it up according to what Buddha has taught. Hmm. Why? Because the study of ethics is about taming our minds and our sense desires in order to teach us how to stop perpetuating our mistaken world. How to stop interacting with other in a mistaken way. And it becomes so easy once we catch on. Right. Easy doesn't necessarily mean fast and easy doesn't necessarily mean always pleasant. But easy means. We can do it. So then the very last part of the Vinaya Sutra is the concluding remarks that talks about how the author came to compose the writing and where he was when he did it and when it was when he did it. And we have that from Vinaya Sutra and then Choney Lama does it for his commentary as well. All right. Perfect timing. Yes, Kongli. I think I did ask, but I forgot the three animals. So why these three animals represent ignorance and then ignorance, dislike, disliking and ignorance, liking. I think. Because the rooster is always horny. The snake is out to kill you and the pig just eats anything. The pig is just has no discrimination whatsoever. It's just. I think they choose this animal with purpose to represent this. Absolutely. Right. Very purposeful. OK. And regarding the 12th Wheel of Life. So happened, I think, during MCO, the first Lamrim that I attended online, Lamrim 35, it explained the 12th Wheel of Life to choose. And I like it. The first class I attended was Patong because I was a little bit late and I like very much. Yeah. Well, maybe that could be your specialty. So remember that person we wanted to be able to help. We learned a lot that we will use sooner or later to help them in that deep and ultimate way someday. And that's a great, great goodness. So please be happy with yourself and think of this goodness like a beautiful, glowing gemstone that you can hold in your hand. 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 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 wisdom. And may it be so. All right. Thank you again for the opportunity to share.

Vocabulary Class 3

Pratimoksha (sk) individual freedom vows

SOTAR GYI DOMPA (tb)

OM DE LE SU GYUR CHIK May all living beings achieve temporary happiness 

and permanent buddhahood

NGYENJUNG SAMPE GYUJENE SHEN NU

SHIDANG CHEPA LE DOKPA refraining from hurting others and from the basis of 

hurting others and doing so for the reason of renunciation

NGOWO DANG the basic nature of vows

NI RABJE DANG the categories of vows

SOSOY NGUNDZIN the individual sets

KYEWAY TEN the basis from which the vows come about

TONGWAY GYU DANG how the vows get lost

PEN YUN the benefits of keeping them

Vaibashika Abhidharma Lower School, Detailists, 1st turning of the wheel

Madyamika prasangika Implication/Consequence School

…PONGWAY SAMPA GYUNCHAKPA SABUN DANG

CHE YINNO SHE… some people say, that the individual freedom vows are this mental 

intention to give up the physical deed along with the propensity that

is carried along in the continuum of the seed

Sutrists Sautantrika

Chittamatra (Mind Only)

Madymika svatantrika Independent Middle Way

NYEN NE One Day Vows

GE NYEN PA Lifetime lay men’s vows

GE NYEN MA Lifetime lay women’s vows

GE TSUL PA Novice monk vows

GE TSUL MA Novice nun vows

GE LOP MA vows for the 2 year period for a novice nun 

before taking full ordination

GE LONG MA Fully ordained nun vows

GE LONG PA Fully ordained monk vows

For the recording, welcome back. We are ACI Course 9, Class 3, on June 16th, 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 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. 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 it's possible. Deep down we know this is what we're meant to become. And so we turn our minds back to our precious holy being. We know 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 me 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 imagine the pure 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 practice. 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. IDAM GURU RATNAMANDALA KAM 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. We are studying Vinaya vowed morality, meaning learning how to live ethically, meaning learning how and why to live more conscientiously to avoid harming others in obvious ways and in more and more subtle ways. Because my guess is we are already people that go out of our way to avoid hurting others. But there are still ways that we do so, by accident, inadvertently, or in ways that we don't recognize are hurting. Because we're not quite in that mindset yet that's constantly checking, what will it be like when somebody does that to me? And using that as our criteria. But then that can go off in the wrong direction too. Because what if you were hearing this and you were alcoholic? And it's like, well, you know, I want somebody to just be the constant source of my addiction, whatever our addiction is. And so to make that happen, we would be the constant source of somebody else's alcohol. And it's like, wait, I think that's making the seeds for getting what I want. But what I want is going to hurt me because giving that to them intoxicates their mind and they go on to do something, you know? So it's like the system, what I do for others comes back to me. It is the explanation of how existence works. And it works for pleasant things and unpleasant things, which is why an ethical life is important. Because even when we inadvertently do something, we're trying to be kind, but we see ourselves hurt somebody, it's going to come back as somebody hurting us, trying to be kind to us. And that happens, right? So we learn the guidelines of behavior because the subtleties of the connection between what we do and what we get are so subtle that only an omniscient mind can connect those dots. And so then to help us, they say, look, here's the bottom line. Take this up and give that up. Smash samsara like an elephant smashes a reed hut. They just effortlessly walk through it. Our practice can become so effortless that we're smashing samsara as we experience it. That's where we're going. We're not already there. So in this last class, we went through the chapters of Choney Lama's text that was a commentary or a review of the Vinaya Sutra that was the sutra written by Gunaprabha that was a survey of the Buddha's teachings on discipline. This class and the next couple is Jetsun Kappa's commentary on all of the Vinaya scriptures, not just the Vinaya Sutra. So his text, if you recall, is called Gelwe Gyatso Ningpo, the Essence of the Ocean of Discipline. So we have a lot of Tibetan in this class. Not that you need to know it, but to help plant the seeds for the language to stay and for our Mixed Nuts translators to get really good at translating, which I was really impressed with Wordsmith's class on Saturday. And the people that they called on to read were also able to do some translation. And it's like, wow, people are really, there are people who are learning how to translate. I was just so impressed. Can't remember who, Oscar, Duoduo, a few others. Like I had no idea they were so knowledgeable. So, yay, I'm rejoicing. Okay, so we are studying Pratimoksha level morality in Tibetan Sotarki Dongpa. We'll get to it. Individual Freedom Vows. In Jetsun Kappa's text, his opening line is OM DE LEK SU GYUR CHIG. OM DE LEK SU GYUR CHIG. You know, we hear the Tibetan greeting TASHE DE LEK. This is the same DE LEK here. OM DE LEK SU GYUR CHIG. In our study days at Diamond Mountain, every time Lama said OM, they were talking about a mantra, they'd go, OM means OM, and they'd go right on with the rest of the explanation. So I'm going to do it too. OM means OM. But what OM is, is the sound, the vibration that represents enlightened body, speech, and mind. So it represents enlightened being, represents Buddha. But when I say the word Buddha, don't think just Shakyamuni Buddha. Think any Buddha, all Buddha. Buddha as not a person, but Buddha as a state of existence, which is knowledge, love, and power. Meaning, ultimate love, ultimate compassion, ultimate wisdom. So within the vibration, OM is three vibrations combined together, the AH, the OO, and the OM. And they represent enlightened body, enlightened speech, and enlightened mind. So when we say OM, we are speaking the vibration of the paradise body and emanation body. I like to say paradise being and emanation being, because the word body just automatically makes me think of something like this. And I think that really limits me in my imagining what a paradise body would be like. So I like to use the word paradise being. It makes it a little bit vaguer and more open to being, wow, indescribably beautiful and amazing and blissful. And then the emanations, which are the way that being appears, compelled by its compassion and love to show up to any being who's ready for them. I mean, I think technically they're showing up to everybody everywhere, but only the ones that have the karmic seeds to know that emanations could be appearing to me would be aware of them. And then how they look to the person would be unique to the person. And how they look from their side is unique to them, right? So anyway, it's all in OM. Then the holy speech is the way they communicate to the one they're emanating to, to be able to help us. So we've learned all a fully enlightened being can do for us is teach us, inspire us. And they can teach and inspire by their actions without saying anything. But for us to really benefit, they are going to need to tell us stuff, right? They're going to need to communicate to us. So they use their speech to do that. And then, which is really the only way they help us in that deep and ultimate way. And then the holy mind of the Buddha, which is their omniscience, which includes the fact that they are experiencing directly the empty nature of themselves and all existence and the appearing nature simultaneously. That is the omniscience. And the emptiness that they're experiencing is the Dharmakaya, the emptiness of their own mind. So in this word, OM is all of that. That's what we mean by it with that word, which is why the Tibetans didn't translate it into another word to use. They just use OM. So when one says OM, we are essentially invoking Buddhas. So Je Tsongkhapa is using it in that way to start his book with OM. It's like he's calling on all the Buddhas to help him witness what's going on, guide him, speak through him. They say he's channeling Manjushri in his writings, right? So maybe this is a clue as to how he turns that on when it's time. So OM means OM. De lek sugir chik. De lek, de means, what does de mean? De means happiness and lek means goodness. Let's go on. I'll come back to those two. Sugir chik means let there be. Let there be, sugir chik, happiness and goodness. He opens his book. Buddhas, please let there be happiness and goodness. And then he starts this survey of Vinaya. So happiness and goodness, those two words, the day, happiness, it can be referring to the happiness of reaching that level where you've closed the door to lesser rebirth. If we're human and we have awareness of these things and we've reached that level in our path of preparation that we are living really pretty well by karma and emptiness, we can close the door to lesser rebirth even before we've seen emptiness directly, technically. And that would give a level of satisfaction in life. No? Not that you would slack off your practice, but it would help encourage us in our practice. So if nirvana was our goal, then day would be the happiness of closing the door to lesser rebirth and lakh, goodness, would be code for reaching our goal, nirvana. So if there were such a thing as a level of a practitioner who believed that reaching nirvana was their highest goal, then when they hear om de lek sugir chik, they would hear Jetsun Kapi saying, oh, may beings close the door and reach nirvana. If our goal is Buddhahood, then the day, the happiness of day, is code for nirvana. That state of mind where we are incapable of having a mental affliction incapable of being upset in any way, in any way, even the most subtle way. It's like hard to even comprehend. You know, there's that, I, you know, I, my body hurts all the time. And so there's this constant, you know, resist or me. My life is perfect in every other way. But there's this underlying, ow, ow, ow, right? With every movement. And it's like, I can't even imagine not having that. And that wouldn't be nirvana. It would just be a little bit of, you know, end of some distress. But nirvana is having burned off and damaged all seeds for any level of response that would come back to be unpleasant. So we're incapable of having an unpleasant response no matter what's going on. So reaching nirvana does not mean all of a sudden there's no body pain. Or all of a sudden there's no just, there's no unpleasant things happening to us. It means we can still have that body, that world that's causing, that appears to be causing negative things, unpleasant things. But our reaction to it is, is, is not, you know, avoid, I don't want, react. And so we can reach that state of nirvana and still have a body that's gonna get sick and die. But, like, okay, bring it on. Right? Like the King of Kalinka story. The guy who's getting all caught up and he's just loving the king more and more as it happens. So, day, Desangkapa is using the word because he's Mahayanist, may all beings reach their nirvana by way of my book. Then, in that context, lek, the goodness of lek is code word for reaching total Buddhahood. Having the loving compassion combined with the wisdom that's coloring our every interaction so that we are not just reaching that state of incapable of any mental affliction, but we're going on to clear out the obstacles to our omniscience. Our ability to become one who knows directly what other beings need to give up and take up in order for them to smash the reed hut of samsara as effortlessly as an elephant does. So, Desangkapa is saying, through the power of this book, may all beings reach dalek, nirvana, and Buddhahood. Or at least, close the door to lesser rebirth and reach nirvana. Which technically, a Vinaya text, Pratimoksha vow instructions, is directed towards one's own personal nirvana. That's what Pratimoksha means. Individual freedom vows. Moksha means freedom. Prati means the individual. Which is what Sotargidampa means. The So is the Prati of Pratimoksha. The Tar is the Moksha of Pratimoksha. So, Tar means freedom, and So means the individual. We know the word So-So-Kewo, that being who's not seen emptiness directly yet. So-So-Tar, it's the same word. The individual. Dampa means vows. Right? Vows. So, individual freedom vows is what Pratimoksha means, Sotargidampa. And it's what we're studying when we study Vinaya. Now, of course, when we go on to our Bodhisattva vows and our Diamond Way vows, what we've learned about vows still holds to be true, of course. And both of those vows require the foundation of some level of work with our individual freedom vows. So, we're learning the foundation upon which our higher vows will be built so that we can have and keep those strongly and powerfully. So, Jetsun Kappa makes this prayer, May everybody benefit from this book in this highest way. And then he goes on to state his topic, Sotargidampa. We're going to talk about individual freedom vows here. And somebody must ask, you know, why are they called individual freedom vows? And Nolcha Dharmabhadra, he gives us an answer. I'm looking to see if that's the Tibetan. It is, but not Nolcha Dharmabhadra. He says, individual freedom vows are called individual freedom vows because those individuals who keep them will reach freedom and those who don't, won't. Anyway, it's meaning it's an individual matter, meaning we personally need to make the effort. We personally take the vow, keep the vow, nobody else can do it for us. It also implies that it's for our personal benefit, which of course it's for our personal benefit. As we get to the Mahayana level, however, we've been saying, no, no, my personal benefit doesn't matter anymore. I'm in this to help everybody reach their freedom. And, you know, we probably had the seeds to jump right into the Mahayana, right? I was attracted to Mahayana Buddhism, not Hinayana Buddhism. Is that true? I met Hinayana first. I just didn't know the distinction. But our tendency is, oh, yeah, here's a whole spiritual path, you know, about becoming one who can help everybody in that ultimate way. I love that so much. Forget about me. I'm just going to become that for everybody. Yet our me is part of all sentient beings. And if our me doesn't gain those freedoms, then our me really can't ever become this being everything for everybody. Because we need to pass through that doorway of recognizing even the me I think is going to become the one who can help all beings, I'm misunderstanding. And as long as I'm misunderstanding that me, I'm not ever going to become that. So we don't deny the me to become this beyond words being. We need to understand that me. And in order to be able to understand that me, we need to gain the goodness of working with how its perception of itself blocks our ability to understand the me well enough to transform it instead of get rid of it. Right? If we stayed at Hinayana level, we'd be thinking, oh, I need to get rid of my ego. I would need to get rid of my self-existent me. But in fact, in the long run, we need to identify it really clearly and transform it, right? Whatever it is that we call me is what's going to get transformed into Buddha me. We're not trying to disappear a me to become Buddha, right? I don't know if it's coming across. So it is still Mahayana to work at the Vinaya level of my individual freedom vows for the individual benefit of creating a state of mind that can not have a mental affliction, not just by willpower can't have one, has no more seeds for mental afflictions. So we really want to at some point look at ourselves and ask, you know, is my me really, what am I trying to say? Is my me important enough to apply the vowed behavior to improving it? Or have I just been trying to push it away and become this different being? Do you see the difference? We can't push one away and make a new one. We need to take the one we've got and retrain it. Like if you have a misbehaving dog, you don't say, okay, I'm going to fix this dog, give him back to the pound and I'm going to go get a dog that's already trained and see, I trained that dog. It's like, that's what our Vinaya vows our individual freedom vows are about.We train this dog and then we can use it to do the bodhisattva behaviors and the diamond way behaviors. We can't just throw it out. So long story short, individual vows are called individual vows because they're about the individual, you, me, and my behavior towards others in order to change my me into a being that's incapable of a mental affliction and then go on from there. So Pratimoksha vows are the first ones we meet as we are deciding, I am going to determine to live in this different way. All right. So Jetsun Kapa gives us an actual definition because Nrtya Dhammabhadra's wasn't a definition, it was an explanation. Jetsun Kapa's definition is this one that Geshe-la gave us. Let's start from the back. Le Dokpa means refraining from. Shennu Shidong Chepa. Sorry, Shidong. Shennu, let's go to Shennu, means hurting others. So refraining from hurting others, Shennu. Shidong Chepa is along with the basis. So we have refraining from hurting others and along with the basis of that. Sampai means motivation and Gyuzhenne means the reason why, but the reason why refers to the Shennu. Gyuzhenne Shennu means the basis, which is the reason why. We do the avoiding harming others or the harming others. I'll get there. Nyenchen means renunciation. So the individual freedom vows are defined as refraining from harming others and also from the basis of harming others and doing so for the motivation, the sampai, of renunciation. So we saw it in the last class. One of our homework questions was, what's the motivation for studying vows? It's out of renunciation. That's what defines individual freedom vows as individual freedom vows because renunciation is that state of mind of being absolutely sick and tired of everything going wrong, always. Even good things go wrong, either right away or over time or we just lose it all in the end anyway. So renunciation is an individual thing. When we turn our renunciation on to others, what is that? Our bodhichitta. So when we see the power of renunciation and we gain glimpses into how samsara is all driven by a big mistake and we see, oh my gosh, it's really unnecessary. It's terrible and it happens and it's a big mistake and it's true for everybody that it's a big mistake. Ah, you know, I've got to stop my mistake so I can help others stop their mistake and the way I stop my mistake is trying to help others stop their mistake and then I can really stop my mistake so that I can really help them stop their mistake. Do you see how it goes? So even in our renunciation level, I need to stop my mistake so that my suffering can end. To do that, we still have to stop contributing to the suffering of others and that's the level of our individual freedom from vow behavior that we're learning about. So the vows we learned last week that we take are directed towards our actions of body and speech but we learned that the mind moves to motivate those bodies and speech and that movement of the mind is also movement that's samsaric so of course we need to tame those as well and so the vows include training or of learning to avoid those states of mind so that our choices of behavior can stop being the ones that perpetuate samsara. So the actions of harming others is the shen yu the movement of the mind that propels that action is the yu jian ni shi deng qi pa shi deng qi pa, the basis. So I'll say it again because it's a homework question. The vows of individual freedom are refraining from hurting others and also from the basis of hurting others and doing so for the reason of renunciation or motivated by renunciation because renunciation is an individual thing that's what we're talking about. Renunciation is turned on my suffering and I want to end it. Yes, Kong Ling? Yes, GQ, sorry. Yeah, just now you're saying the refraining from hurting others this is one and then also from the basic of hurting others these two are different. Right, right. Okay, so the first one I'm not that clear refraining from hurting others. Yes, right. That would be killing, stealing, sexual misconduct, lying, harsh speech, divisive speech, useless speech. Those seven. Uh-huh. And all the things that are like those seven. And the basic of hurting others? Jealousy, ill will, wrong view that turn our mind in such a way that we would be inclined to hurt somebody. Oh, different. Okay, okay. Right? Which means? Mental versus physical. Oh, okay, okay, okay. Yeah. Okay. Okay. So in order to get our vows when we're you know, in our position and in the ceremony in order to actually get those vows we need to have some level of renunciation in mind. Right? Otherwise, whatever is happening in that ceremony will not result in having the actual vows. We'll talk about that in a moment. In the olden days, there are reason for taking vows could have been to want to get out of something. So in referring to ordained vows here maybe more than individual or in lifetime lay vows. But if you took ordained vows in the olden days it meant you really did give up the home life and you went to live in a monastery. And once you're in the monastery, right? Anything having to do with your home life, you know your family business, your responsibility to your family. It's all gone. You in the monastery, right? You're responsible for your monastery work. You own nothing, right? You have a begging bowl and your robes and apparently a water filter. And that's all you own. Everything else, right? Is in community. And so in the olden days there could be the case where maybe you are a businessman and you're, right? You own a bunch, you owe a bunch of loans and your family's not doing well. And to get out of it, you say, I'm going to go join the monastery. I'm going to become an ordained person. And you just ditch out of your personal responsibilities. Right now, technically, I think if the monastery knew that was your motivation, they'd say, no, but right. Theoretically you could avoid life's stressors by going to the monastery. And, you know, if you did that and with that kind of motivation, when you took your vows you wouldn't get vows anyway, but it could happen. Nowadays, when Westerners take vows, take ordained vows there isn't the system set up where you go and live in a monastery. So it's pretty bold actually of Westerners to take ordained vows and then still live as householders but not be householders, right? In that process, it's extraordinarily, right? You just, it's a different thing. And so nowadays they say, well, Geshe-la was saying our motivation for taking vows is probably not so that I can ditch out of life because you don't get to but if our motivation is, wow, it would be it would make me somebody special, right? Amongst my community, it would draw attention to myself or, you know, if it somehow fed your ego to be an ordained person because you were so bold to shave your head and put on those weird robes, you know like wrongly motivated ordained vows don't become ordained vows. You may think you have them, but, right? They wouldn't have really come on because the renunciation wasn't really there. Okay, so anyway, keeping our vows of freedom the result is reaching that state of mind of nirvana because that was our intention when taking them. I want to stop perpetuating samsara for me so that I can do it for everybody. So Jetsun Kappa is pointing out that although the Vinaya it is generally speaking a guide for our speech and action we need to be clear that our mental processes that give rise to those speech and actions is what really does all the damage, right? The actual words of the vows are not about stop coveting, stop ill-willing, stop wrong viewing. The words of the vows are about the behaviors that those states of mind push us to do because we can work at the behavior level and that's what will help us work at the mental level change the mental level. It's much harder to work at the mental level from a vows perspective. So Jetsun Kappa goes next into six categories like six different aspects that we need to understand about individual freedom vows. So he's describing the six topics he's going to cover in this text. He calls them the six categories but then we get the word category again in a moment it got a little confusing in last night's class. So here's his six. It's a verse in his text but I separated it so that we could see the six but this is all one sentence. It goes like this. No means basic nature. Dong is and. So topic number one, the vows basic nature. Topic number two, the categories meaning the eight different kinds of Pratimoksha vows. There's a grouping of vows and within those vows there's multiple vows. There's eight different groupings that have multiple vows inside each one. Ni Rab Je, the eight categories. The categories of which there are eight. The number eight is not in that. So we have vows basic nature. We're going to talk about this Jetsun Kappa. We have the different categories of vows. So Soy Nun Zin, the individual sets. So he's going to give us the eight categories and then he's going to talk about the different vows within the eight categories. Ge Wei, Ge Wei Dan. Ge Wei means arise. Ge is arise. Sorry, Ge is born and Wei is arise. So I don't know why it takes both together. Arise or born. Ge Wei Dan, the basis from which the vows arise. How do they come on? How do we get them? How do we get those vows? Ge Wei Dan. And then Dong Wei Gyu is how they are lost. So separate topics. How do we get them? How do we lose them? Dong Wei Gyu. Dong means and. Pen Yun is the benefits of keeping them. So basically everything we need to know about our vowed behavior career. From not having them to wanting them to getting them to what they are to how to keep them and the benefits of doing so. And then part of this section, he apparently also pledges to complete the book, which is typical in a commentary, right? The author says at the beginning, I'm going to finish this or die trying. So he starts with the basic nature of Pratimoksha vows. What are vows made of? You know what? Let's take our break a little early because this is long and complicated and we'll start fresh. So I'll pause the recording. So if we think about it, what do we think a vow is actually made of? We're talking about we don't have vows. We learn stuff. We decide we want vows. We go to someone who has vows. We ask them, will you give me vows? You know, they say, blah, blah, blah, blah. Okay. And then you're doing this ceremony and you're on your knees. You've got your vow taking hands. You're repeating after them. Your state of mind, your state of heart is strong renunciation. They finally say something and snap their fingers and you get your vows. It's like, it sounds like I'm talking about something very tangible, doesn't it? But like when you have all, you all have vows of some kind. What do you, what do you think of when you say to yourself, I have vows? Like it's, it's like slippery, right? I'm definitely different, but it's not this tangible thing. But, but it has to be something because I can break them or I can add to them. They can diminish and they can grow. But what are they? Are they a physical thing? Are they an existing thing? Yes. Remember that org chart of all existing things? Are they changing things? Must be because they say I can break them. Uh, are they a changing thing? That's a physical thing. Are they a changing thing? That's a mental thing. Something which is clear and aware.Are they a changing thing, which is neither physical, neither mental, but still an existing, changing thing. What is these vows? And so, Jason Kopp is asking the question as well. And it's a long investigation. and in the end, he's going to say more than once, this is actually really confusing. So if you feel confused by the end of my discussion, you know, we're in good company. It's one of these things that I've got parked on the shelf that I figure when I'm getting closer to omniscience, I'll understand it better. But I understand it well enough to say, okay, I believe in vows. I'll take them all live by them as best as I can. But it's worth working it through. So if we said our vows, mental, physical, or something, an existing thing that's neither, our answer would need to be, you know, it would depend on what school you're in. Because we're talking about a functioning thing. And whether a functioning thing has its, what kind of existence a functioning thing has. So curiously, the lowest school, meaning the school with the most basic understanding of dependent origination and emptiness, and the highest school, meaning the one that has the most subtle understanding of the meaning of dependent origination and emptiness, both of those schools say vows are actually physical things, but they say so for two different reasons. And then the schools in between say, no vows are not physical things, but it, at least for this class, they don't come right out and declare what they think they are. Which you will, we'll investigate it a very little bit. So I didn't give you the Tibetan, but Jason Kappa writes, that phrase means, in answer to his question, what do we think vows are? His answer is some people believe that these vows of body, speech, karma are something physical. So that statement, some people believe that the vows we take of body and speech are physical things implies that some people think they're not. And that starts his discussion of who believes they're physical things and why, and who believes they're not physical things and why. That help us figure out where we fall in that continuum on any given day, actually. And then how that's going to help us in our understanding of getting vows and keeping vows. So it goes like this. The first level school is Detailless Abhidharmas. I thought I'd write that. Here it is, by Bhashika, also known as Abhidharmas because they rely on the book, the Abhidharmakosha, but they're not named Abhidharmakosha book because what they're studying, they call it higher knowledge, but they're not actually referring to the higher knowledge in the same way that the higher schools are referring to. So anyway, they're called by Bhashika Detailless. It's the first level of understanding of dependent origination that says, look, nothing self-existent because everything exists in dependence upon its causes and conditions. So we could say, you know, of course, we already know that nothing profound about that. That's like science. Everything depends on something else. We are all interconnected. That's all true. Ah, so this school says, then, that these Pratimoksha vows as existing things, they consist of the colors and shapes moving around like the vow is something physical that permeates our bodies, our color and shape that moves around. Our vow is something that permeates these colors and shapes moving around in similar to how oil permeates a sesame seed. So if you cut a sesame seed in half, right, you can't take it and pour the oil out of it. But if you crush a sesame seed on a piece of paper, you get the oil stain out of it. So, you know, the oil was in it, but it wasn't like in it, like a capsule of liquid. They say further that our vows are like the fire in a forest fire, like the forest, the fire makes up the forest fire, right? You get a little fire and the wind blows on it. And suddenly, you know, one tree is ignited and the wind blows. And suddenly all the trees of the forest are ignited. They're all on fire. There's fire everywhere. When it first comes on and then it's everywhere. So in those two ways, our vows, like go everywhere in our in us. And then it permeates our us in the same way that oil is in a sesame seed, right? You can't, you can't see it directly, but it's in there. So they say, because those vows are vows to avoid actions, physical actions and speech actions, then the vow itself must also be physical. And it's like, I don't quite get why the vow has to be physical just because it's directing or impacting or impacted by our physical deeds. But there it is. If our, if it takes a physical deed to break the vow, then the vow itself has to be something physical or they can't touch. Right. Arya Nagarjuna, not that Vaibhashika studies Arya Nagarjuna, but if it takes a physical deed to break a vow, the vow must be physical in some way. Physical and speech. Yes, Roxanna. What would it be, Dharama, if it depends on our five heaps, what the senses are telling us in our mind, for them to be physical or not, to respond? Right, right. And that's highest worldview talking. Okay. So here, when we talk about Vaibhashika and Abhidharma, are we just, the detail is school, you said. Right. So we don't mix it with, with, with the five heaps with. Right. No, detailists believe in the five heaps and they all have their own existence. Right. But from highest worldview, we have our five heaps and they are all projections. And so they all have their existence, but they don't have their own existence based on their own causes and condition. Of course. Yeah. It gets slippery in our, in our language to be able to distinguish. Distinguish. That's right. Thank you. But of course you may in the bottom line, our vows, our projection, but are they projections of physical things? Are they projections of mental things? Are they projections? And why does it really matter? It matters because the better we understand, or maybe even the better, we don't actually understand the better. We understand that we don't actually understand the, the better, the better we can keep them. The whole idea is that the more we understand about vows, theoretically, the better we can keep them because our motivation won't be relying on because some authority told me to, if we rely on that, if the authority, if we lose faith in the authority, everything else breaks down. So Galupa tradition says, I want you to know everything there is to know about this stuff so that you can make your educated decision about whether to follow it or not. It becomes an individual thing. To learn as much as we can. When you've reached the place where it's like, I've learned enough, right? I'm convinced. Well, then fine. You can just study the rest for fun, but we keep going until we really have the big picture enough. And as we do our, like our automatic pilot of response really does shift, no. And it's kind of like, you know, I don't know how to keep my vows any better. And as soon as you say that, something happens, right? That you say, oh, okay, I guess I still can't, but that's why we're learning all these details. Even if we find that, oh my gosh, there's no like real answer, but of course it would be like that. Wouldn't it? That it's the, it's the, it's the doing this that helps us really understand better what we're dealing with. And ultimately we are dealing with the projected nature of every, every, every moment of every experience and how it's nothing but ripening results of how we respond to it. This constant dance, right? Of subject, object interaction between, and, and then the, what we do in the interaction between that influences the subject and the object in this beautiful dance that's constant. So we, we let ourselves go through the different levels of, I believe everything has its own existence dependent on its own causes. Now, from that level, what's a vow going to be, it's going to be really something that I get something that I actually own. Something to take care of, to protect, right? That I could break, I could damage. It becomes a real thing. Whereas if we go into it as, Oh, my vow is nothing but a projection, right? Do you see how it could be less important to us if we don't understand clearly what we mean by projection is that projection makes it real, makes it the most precious thing I could have, right? So we're dancing between these different levels of understanding. Intellectually, we get the highest one, but in our deep reaction, I'm often back at first level school, you know, these things have their own existence and how I react to them is going to help or hurt. Right. But I don't know. It's every time I go through these schools, it's like more clear how amazing it is that they pointed out to us again and again, because we are just, I am floating between these different schools constantly all day long in, in what, how I, how I believe in the reality of the thing, mostly in that lower school, to be honest with you, because it's so automatic. Things are in them from now. Yes.Conley teacher. Just now I tried to say, which we, we, we, we need to understand the Vinaya first. Okay. The wow. First, then only decide whether we want to keep it or we want to keep on studying it. Is it. So first, first, we really have to understand what wows are about. Right. Right. Right. And so even if we already have our Vinaya vows, which most of us do. Right. And it's like, Oh, now I understand better. It can, it helped me a lot actually to go through this. So lowest school believes that vows are physical things and they go on to say, and, and look there when you're first getting your vow, people, other people can actually see that it's happening. So you're, we're actually, we're actually communicating. The karma is communicating to other people. When you're in your vow, taking position and the Abbott is talking and somebody's watching, you know, if they understand what's going on, what you're doing, the karma you're making in those moments is communicating to the other person says this school, this person's getting vows right now. Technically the person watching can't know the motivation of the person. So we don't technically know for sure whether they get the vow or not, but the whole situation is communicating karma. And the person taking the vows, apparently a subconsciously or consciously, I don't know, is aware that the vow taking happening is communicating karma. So those seeds are planted with some kind of communicating karma. And then if the week later, the same person that saw the person getting vows sees that person, they, that the karma of the vow is no longer communicating. So the person that sees the person with the vows can't see the person's vows because the karma of the vow is not communicating anymore. Like why that's important is one of those things I've got on the shelf. I don't understand, but they use it as part of the explanation for why it is that the getting the vow that we get at that time must be a physical thing because somebody can see you do it. You know, as I'm watching somebody get vows, I don't see the vow, but I see that they're getting it. So, so somehow, right? Something's happened with my eyeball that I've seen something that doesn't register as color and shape, but registers as an existing thing. I don't know. Vaibhashika says, so therefore vows are physical things. It's helpful to think of it that way. Something we have something to take care of. Something to check on, something we can break or we can grow. Then highest school, Madhyamaka Prasangika. Madhyamaka means middle way. Prasangika means consequence group or, you know, you can say a one liner and the consequence of the person hearing that one liner, if they thought about it deeply enough, they would figure out Karman emptiness. Like they would come to the conclusion you wanted to say to them, but you knew if you just said it to them, they would reject it. So you give them this other sarcastic remark. And if they just think about it, they come to the conclusion you wanted to say. But if you said what you wanted to say to them, they wouldn't understand it. Whereas if they figure it out themselves, they understand it in a deeper way than you could ever have conveyed it. And you middle way know that. So you answer in these sarcastic one liners instead. Middle way. Madhyamaka means middle way.The middle way between believing that things exist with their identities and qualities these in them. The one cliff. And believing that if things don't exist in that way, then they can't exist at all. Which is the other cliff. The middle way is things don't exist in the way that they appear to as in them from them. But they don't not exist at all. Things do exist in the way my mind projects them. But they don't exist in them from them. The way my mind projects them. Right? So my mind is projecting things as having their identities in them from them. Right? An ignorant mind included in the projection is the things identity in it. That doesn't make the thing a thing with an identity in it. It makes the thing my projection of something with its identity in it. And there's the rub. Because by projecting it with its identity in it, I've already replanted a seed with its identity in it. How do we ever break the cycle? We take vows. Amongst other things. So middle way. They also highest middle way. Right? The school of Nagarjuna, this Gelugpa school. They also believe that vows are physical in nature. But they give a different reason than the detailists do. Detail is said, vows are something that permeate our physical body. And so therefore they are physical. And so therefore, when our physical body dies, so die our vows, right? Our individual freedom vows are for this lifetime. Middle way agrees. They are physical things, but for a different reason, this one's really slippery. Middle way says our vows are a conceptualization of the behaviors of the vows. Which are vows of form. So the individual freedom vows are vows to avoid. Physical and speech. Things that we would ordinarily do that now we're saying we will avoid doing. Even when we visualize.Ourselves. Doing or not doing. A physical thing. That conceptualization. Of the. Of that event. What I have written down is also a physical thing. The conceptualization is not a physical thing, but the visualization, the idea. No, I'm getting myself in trouble here. To think of a physical action. And have this mental movie running. Of a physical action. Is actually. Planting subtle seeds for physical action. Even though we're not doing physical action, we're just watching the imagined movie. So the imagined movie still has. Mental parts and physical parts. Says highest school. And so therefore. When we take a vow to avoid. Killing. Then. Anytime we. We, we have in mind. My vow to avoid killing. We get some kind of picture in our mind. Of being in a situation where. We could kill. And we choose not to. So we get some kind of picture of some physical action. That we don't do. That we could have done. And maybe even that we do something different. Instead. And all of that. Picturing in our mind. Has a physical component to it. They say. So the vow. Is this. Conceptualization. Of the behaviors that we will avoid doing. Like we get a vow to not kill. And like in our mind is all the different ways we might. We could kill somebody. And our determination is I won't do that. I won't do any of those. And, you know, we can't. We can't, we, the specifics. Haven't happened yet. It's all conceptualization. Conceptualization of a physical thing is a physical thing. They say. Conceptualization of a mental thing is a mental thing. They say. Because everything is conceptualization. Right. This one. And the vowed one. Even though we can't see it with our eyes, our ears, our nose. Right. We think of it as a physical thing. And so it is a physical thing. Like, I don't know. I like the story better. Okay. Physical thing. Something I have. It permeates me. I will try to relate to it. And, and have it guide my like color, my. Choices. This one's so much harder. A conceptualization of a physical thing is a physical thing. And our vows are conceptualizations to avoid physical actions that harm. And so they're physical. When you figure it out, you let me know. Okay. The other two schools. They, they believe. Vows are not physical things. Their belief, of course, is based on their level of understanding of dependent origination and emptiness. So Jetsun Kappa. Says. Pongwe Sampa Gyunchakpa Sabun Dangche Yinoche. Yinoche. Some people say. Gyunchakpa Sabun. Sabun is the mental seed. Gyunchakpa is the continued intention in the mental stream. So. This phrase Pongwe is to give up this. Pongwe means to give up. What we're giving up is those seven. Killing, stealing, sexual misconduct, lying, harsh speech, useless speech, divisive speech. Giving up those seven. The intention. Continuing along in the stream. The intention continuing along in our mind stream. Those mental seeds. Continuing. Some people say. So some people say that the vows. Are this. Continued intention. That's carried along in the mental stream. To avoid. Those seven behaviors. In this. When the circumstances arise. That we could. Like. Yeah, that sounds right. That sounds like high school, doesn't it? The vows are this continued intention carried along in the mental stream in the seeds. So once we've planted our seeds with vows. Then theoretically every seed we plant thereafter has the vow in it as well. And it's continued along. So the vow. Is a mental seed. It's part of our mental seed. So now is it physical? No. Is it mental? Is it self-aware? No. Like what are our mental seeds? Are they physical things? No. Are they themselves aware? No. Are they changing things? Yes. Are they existing things? Yes. So they must be in that category of existing changing things that are neither physical nor mental. No, which they used to say facts, right? There isn't. When Geshe-la offered this first. It's like it sounded like there was almost nothing in this category. Of. But as we study more as I studied more, it's like there's more and more things in this category of things that are neither physical nor mental. And my own personal opinion is everything actually is in there. But. Another day. So these other two schools are saying no, no. Your vows are these continued intentions in our mental stream. They say they're not just the intention. Because you can have the intention to not lie. And not automatically have the vow to not lie. So we actually have to do put in some special intention.For. The intention to be avowed intention versus run of the mill intention. And then that vow carries on from moment to moment to moment. Which is why our behavior. According to it would help it grow. And our behavior opposite of it would damage it. And that we could do behaviors strongly enough or often enough that we could have eventually damage it completely. And then not have that vow running in our mental stream. Mm hmm. Yes, Roxana. Of course, our seats are stained with misunderstandings. Right. But it kind of gets to my mind. The idea of like taking the vows. It's like a protection to that, like a coating to those seats. Like either when they ripen. Like that coating. Like a cover like they're covered like they're like there's a protection that.Ripens that are triggers to do a good behavior instead of a bad behavior. That's what comes to my mind when you take the vows. Could be something like. It could be like that. If you're consciousness aware, of course. And. Right. You have the karma to identify it. Right. Right. And thinking of it like that, it would take me a while to work it through. It feels like what gets coated in that way or imbued like the oil in the sesame seed would be the subject side. Right. Within each seed, you know, because it doesn't. It doesn't coat the situation. No, but you have the knowledge to respond. Right. Your subject side is colored in such a way that it's impulse to act in the old way is somehow lessened. And the new impulse to act in the new way is somehow strengthened. But if it were automatically in those seeds, it wouldn't take us any effort to apply. To apply our new choice. And maybe that's how as it grows stronger and stronger, the coding gets stronger, you know, in this analogy. So that are keeping our vowed behavior becomes so automatic. Right. That it there's no struggle to keep it anymore. And then we would take it to a more subtle level. Right. It's like, yeah, I'm not going to smash the ants on the sidewalk on purpose. You know, I'll step over them. And then maybe I'll go across the street to avoid even scaring them by stepping over them. Right. To what extent do we avoid harming might just gets more and more subtle as our coding gets stronger and stronger. Yeah. That could be a good way of thinking of it. And also, could we do like, you know, an offering for those who we've stepped on? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. What else do I have to say about the other two schools? So this whole phrase is saying some people say that the individual freedom vows are the intention to give up the wrong deeds and words, along with the propensity of that intention, which resides in the mental stream. So before we take vows to avoid those seven, we don't have any strong intention whether to avoid them or not avoid them until we get in the situation. And then we hopefully make a choice, but probably act on automatic pilot. Once we take vows, we have this intention to avoid those deeds, however, they show up in life. And that's a new intention that we didn't have before. And now that intention is in there and it's carrying on in our mental stream. So they call it a mental habit. We're growing a mental habit. They say it's the Sabun. It's the mental seeds. So there are not mental things, but they are not physical things. They are this category of them in Duche, apparently. So just for completeness, Geshe Michael said, the Sutras, also known as Sautrantika, they say vows exist as a continued intention to avoid certain things. So they act to have you think, oh, I shouldn't do that when we're about to do something. The vows act to remind us. Then Chittamatra, Mind Only School, they also say vows must exist as a mental seed because they can be broken even in meditation, they say. Now it's like, wait, meditation, I thought, was one of those times when you really can't make bad karma because you're sitting on your cushion, you're in your mind, you know, you don't act on anything that arises until you're done. But Chittamatra says, no, you can break vows even in meditation. So they give this example that, I don't know, in your ordained life, you have vows to do certain tasks, apparently. So suppose that you're the monk whose vowed task is to air out the mattresses once a week. And so you've hauled the mattresses out into the sunshine, and then you decide they can stay there for a couple of hours, so I'll go do my meditation. And while you're sitting in your meditation, a thunderstorm comes up and it rains on all the mattresses. And so now you haven't protected the mattresses, which is what your vow was, and you've broken the vow of taking care of the mattresses while you're in meditation because the rainstorm came. And it's like, what? So Mind Only School says, see, vows must be a mental seed. I don't get that conclusion, to be honest with you. But Mind Only School says that the me and the whatever I'm experiencing, they come together for me to experience them coming out of my seed. So even our vows have to be coming out of my seed, so of course they have to be seeds in our mind that are carried along. Because in Mind Only School, everything is seeds in our mind. That's true of Highest School too, but Middle Way means it in a different way than Highest School does. Okay, so the point, says Geshe Michael, is that in fact, some Buddhists have vows and others don't. And there is a difference between them, that if we've got them lined up, we can't look at them and go, oh, some have vows and some don't. Although we would say, no, no, there are some wearing robes and some not wearing robes. But even then, we can't know for sure whether the ones wearing robes have vows, you know, maybe they're faking it. Or maybe they think they have vows, but their renunciation wasn't there. Or maybe the ones not wearing vows are ones that have ordained vows, they're just not wearing their robes today for whatever reason. Yeah, you know, it's like we can't know by looking at somebody whether they have vows or not. And even as card-carrying Buddhists, when we get our original refuge, we get refuge advices. They're not actually vows, they're advices. And we would have to go on specifically to decide, I want my five lifetime lay vows. And then go on specifically, I want my ordained vows, if one does that, and go on specifically. And what if in your own Buddhist training, you never learned about a thing called bodhisattva, or you never learned about a thing called five lifetime lay vows? There are some traditions that don't have those. It wouldn't occur to us to ask for them as vows. You see, so to be Buddhist in a lineage that teaches about vows and offers vows, really it's special. Because we understand that the power of having vows is a way to increase the strength of the seeds planted in avoiding those behaviors. It's one thing to say, I'm going to avoid lying. It's another to take a vow to avoid lying. Yeah, we've heard that before. When we take a vow to avoid lying, we have that vow, whether we are in a situation to lie or not lie. Which means that every moment we're not lying, we are keeping the vow. Well, are you lying right now? No. And how about now? No. And how about now? No. So you're keeping the goodness of your vow to not lie every moment you're not lying. Whereas if you just determine I'm not going to lie, the only time you're keeping that goodness is when you have an opportunity and you don't. So all this keeping the vow of not lying supposedly is strengthening, no, supposedly is damaging the habit of lying when we'd be in a situation. Because of all the moments we're gathering the goodness of not lying when we're not even inclined to. Right. So theoretically.Our ability to avoid those negative behaviors that used to be habitual by taking a vow. It will become easier to break that habit because we're gathering the goodness even while we're not tempted. You see. I heard somebody once say once they figured that out. Taking their their ordination was a no brainer. They said because they wanted as many vows as they could get. And they became a fully ordained monk eventually and has been for years because it's like they connected the dot. It's a way to gather goodness that I couldn't otherwise do. Because there aren't that many opportunities to not lie. To be able to gather enough goodness to wipe it out. Of my world. Cool. So lastly for this class. Really quickly. Jetsun Kappas gives us that eight categories of individual freedom vows. So his second chapter in his book or not second chapter, but second section of the eight sections is this eight categories of individual freedom vows. The eight different groups of vows that one could take. Not that we have to take all of these. Nobody says you have to take vows at all. So. One of them is called Nye Nye. Nye Nye is the one day vows. One day vows means for one 24 hour period of time. I take vows to avoid a certain set of behaviors. Basically, it's deciding to live like an ordained person for 24 hours. Geshe-la says deciding to learn to live like someone who's in nirvana for 24 hours. Kind of implies being ordained person is nirvana sizing. And we think I would argue that. But you determined to avoid specific behaviors really, really, really intentionally for one 24 hour period of time. And we'll learn the details of that.Genyanpa and Genyanma are two more categories of vows. Genyan means lifetime lay person. So lifetime lay man's vows, pa. And lifetime lay woman's vows, ma. We've heard them. We know them. There are five vows. And they're the same vows for men and women. A category of vowed behavior that we can take on. Getsopa and Getsoma are two more categories. Getso means novice. Novice monk and novice nun. So this is the level where you are declaring yourself a left the home life person. But it's at the beginner level where there are 36 different vowed behaviors to avoid. And they're the same for the men and the women at this level. Next category is Gelopma. Gelopma, ma means it's a woman's vows. Apparently, when a Getsoma, a novice nun, asks for full ordained vows, they say first you take these middle level vows and you live according to them for a period of time. I think it's two years. And if you can do that well, right, if you can keep these vows, then you can go on to get your Gelopma, which is your fully ordained nun's vows. And then Gelopas, apparently the monks don't need this interim period. They can go direct from their novice monk to their fully monk's vows, provided they've kept their novice vows well. And how long, how that's established, that's between the student and the master, of course. So in the Gelopma vows, there are 364 vows. In the Gelopas vows, there's 253. And usually people's reactions are, why do women have more vows? Like there's something bad about that. When we learned about vows, like the more the better. It's like, oh, women get more vows. So their practice is going to skyrocket faster. All of those vows have to do with how to live in a community amongst a group of people who are broken, who have mental afflictions, who don't know how to really get along. And for both, their interaction with the opposite sex is a big part of where things are broken and misguided and trigger misperceptions. And so for women, we have how to get along with each other and how to get along with the opposite sex, ordained or otherwise, in a way that keeps both parties not tempted in any way. So because women's bodies have some extra needs over men's in terms of menstrual cycles and all of that kind of stuff, there are these additional guidelines for behavior to help it be easier. So that there's less conflict in that community, so we can keep our vows better. So Chris, you had a question a bit back. I think you answered it because it was like there's 111 vows difference. It's like, what category are those in? And I think you just explained it. Yeah. Yeah. All right. So in our next couple of classes, we'll go through these different, the specific vows within these different categories to the extent that we can. We can't talk about the ordained vows specifically, but the others we can go into some depth. So that's the task of the next couple of classes is to dig into these different vowed behaviors to try to understand them better. All right. So that's our class three. So remember that person that we wanted to be able to help at the beginning of class. We've learned a lot that we will use to help them in that deep and ultimate way someday. And that's a great, great 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 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 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 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. So thank you again for the opportunity. I always learn stuff. It just amazes me. I mean, I gave this class last night and then I gave it today and I heard stuff different. Wow. Thank you so much.Thank you. I'll see you tomorrow.

kyimpay chok kyi dompa

rabjung chok kyi dompa

nyen ne

  mi tsung chu

  ma jin len

  sok chu

  dzun ma

  mel che te

  chang tung

  gar sok treng sok

  chi dro kase

tekchen so jong

ge nyen

ge tsul

tsawa shi

yen lak druk

lang de sum

Okay, hello, welcome back. We are ACI Course 9 Class 4. It is June 20th. Welcome to the solstice, 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 before you is a manifestation of ultimate love, ultimate compassion, ultimate wisdom, and 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, 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 become. Growing our understanding of emptiness and karma we glimpse how it's possible. So I invite you to grow that wish into a longing, and that longing into an intention. Then with that intention, turn your mind back to that precious lowly 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. Idam gururatnamandala kongne liyatayami. We 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. 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. We are studying the Vinaya, the ethical life. The term Vinaya implies that we are at the beginning level of our spiritual path, beginning in the sense that our renunciation is for our own suffering and our goal is nirvana. And so we study the behaviors to avoid technically in order to reduce our distractions so that our meditation can go deeper so that we can spend more time in deep meditation and stop the period of time in which we are subtly recreating samsara and get a few minutes of relief from all of that suffering and grow our understanding of where it really comes from so that we can do what's necessary to stop perpetuating our mental afflictions and reach that state of mind where we are free of mental afflictions forever, not just when we're in meditation. So Vinaya implies we're at Hinayana level, not derogatory lower path, not like that. But our beginning foundation of motivation is that we personally recognize life is suffering and nothing but, and then somewhere along the line, maybe it's even at the beginning, we realize, well, in fact, others are suffering, you know, way worse than me. Even ones that are more fortunate than me, they're suffering worse than me because they don't know they're going to lose it all. They don't know they're suffering while they're enjoying their stuff. You know, it's like the more aware we become of the mistaken nature of our world and our experiences, the more our heart opens to what we see we've created in the world, right? From our ignorance. And we want everybody to get free of ignorance, even the gnat, right? Even the slug, right? So that then inspires us to take our morality, right? Our ethical discipline and crank it up. We take it more subtly and we turn and it's like, well, what can I do to help? So we turn to things that we take up involving having, helping others, et cetera. And then we're doing our Vinaya morality, but with this different motivation, the same behaviors that we avoid, but now done for a different purpose, avoided for a different purpose. We still get the advantage, of course, of our meditation going deeper. So our realizations can go deeper or realizations don't go deeper. We can gain more realization. And our motivation is that we're doing so so that I can be a better help to others to help relieve the suffering everywhere, not just mine. So in studying the Vinaya, we need this platform, this strong platform. So we learned last class that the individual freedom vows, Pratimoksha vows, they're called that because the individual who gets them and keeps them reaches their freedom and the ones who don't won't. So clearly we have to do it ourselves, number one. And secondly, without stopping harming others, no amount of I want to help all beings is going to work if we just keep going on the way we habitually go on. So we personally have to change us personally in order to see those changes in our outer world that we want, whether it's individual level, Hinayana level or all sentient beings level Mahayana level. You know, a deeper piece of that is that the individual freedom vows results is nirvana. It's an individual benefit, not just if I don't do them, I won't get there. What I get to is my individual freedom, nirvana.So we don't say then that, oh, I want Mahayana because I want Buddha, because nirvana is along the way. It's part of the Buddha mind, of course. So it takes both the Pratimoksha and then built on top of the Pratimoksha will be our Mahayana behaviors added to it, not separate from it. And the reason I'm bringing it up is that there is still, you know, this misunderstanding between Hinayana and Mahayana apparently, right? Our training is so good and I don't see any other groups, so I don't really know. But to have this, oh, I'm Mahayana, right? You're Hinayana. It's just misunderstanding the whole thing, right? So then Je Tsukapa gave us that general description of those vows by quoting those. It's Vinaya is a turning away from harming others and its basis caused by an attitude of renunciation. So just talked about that, meaning the turning away from harming others is the behavior we pledge to avoid. But the basis is the attitudes that make us do that, that would propel us to do those behaviors in the first place. So the behaviors are the first seven of the ten non-virtues that we're pledging to avoid. And then the basis is the coveting, ill will and wrong view beliefs or reactions to our beliefs that compel us to kill, steal, cheat, lie, speak badly, etc. So the vows aren't to avoid those mental states because we could never actually do it. But it's to work on the behavior that the mental states propel, which is how we go about working on the mental states, right? By not acting from them, we take some of their strength out and slowly, slowly we can chip away at those mental afflictions. All right. So this class goes on, Je Tsukapa is going to give us a little bit more specifics about the eight different kinds of vows. So we learned about all these different factors about vowed behavior, vowed morality. In last class, one of those was that eight different kinds of vows one can take, not specific vows, but categories of vows. So today and next week's class is going through those different eight categories. They can be divided into two groups. So I'm getting my screen share here. The Kimpei Choki Donpa and the Rabchung Choki Donpa. Choki Donpa means type of vow. So Kimpei type of vow, Kimpei is the word for householder. So someone who's a human, who's living ordinary worldly life, even extraordinary worldly life, but still immersed in worldly life, at home with a family, going to work, doing what we do, family or no. Rabchung is Choki Donpa, is the type of vows for someone who's really come out. So Rabchung literally means to really come out. It's the term they use for left the home life, left the family life.So when one, it refers to ordination, taking ordination. So in the old days, when you took ordination, you would go and live, you go, you would leave your home, leave your family and go live in the monastery. And technically any ownership within that home or family that you had, it's just all given away. Right. It's like, it's just not yours anymore. I suspect you have to deal with giving it away. But I also suspect there were cases where, you know, people just walked away and yeah, someone else just take it. But you're in the monastery, you don't own anything. You're reliant upon the monastery for everything. And you need to do your part in the monastery at whatever that part is. And then, and that's what they mean by leaving the home life. And then it was like, yeah, you still have a mother, father, you still have a wife and kids, but your relationship with them has just been like not abandoned necessarily unless you went to the monastery wrongly motivated, but they write your practices, how you help them better. So you're really devoted. In the old, old days, like Buddha's days, they didn't even have monasteries yet. So if you are one who comes across the Buddha, you hear a teaching and oh my gosh, I need to follow this path. You know, you left the home life and you followed Buddha and you lived wherever the group was, you know, wherever Buddha was and maybe there was a roof over your head and maybe there wasn't. And it's like your devotion to that teacher was it doesn't matter where we are, what we're doing. Yeah, so definitely left the home life. Now in the West, at least, you know, there aren't the monasteries. So there really isn't this distinction between left the home life and not left the home life One can have ordained vows and still have responsibilities in a work life. And it makes for a different kind of ordination for sure. But it's been being done for some time. And there must still be some advantage to it because there are still people having monastic vows not living in monasteries. You know, a sign of degenerate times that there aren't monasteries to go to. But anyway, or not as many. There are, of course, some. So the difference is the vows of discipline that we take as a householder versus the vows of discipline that we take as someone who's left that household. They're going to be different, obviously. But based on the same principles, the same basic behaviors that we're trying to avoid. So Je Tsongkhapa is going to go through the different kinds of groups of vows that we can have as a lay person and the different groups of vows that we can have as an ordained person. Lay person. Sorry, I lost my place. One type of lay person vows that we can take are called the Nyen Ne. Nyen Ne means one day vows. The one day vows is a set of vowed behaviors that we pledge to avoid for one 24 hour period at a time. And typically what happens is when we get our first one day vows, we would do so with a preceptor, someone who has the one day vows. You ask them, you know, would you give me one day vows? Sure. You would set up a day and that you get up before daylight, like in the dark still. That person will convey the one day vows through this ceremony and then take you through what it is to keep those one day vows for that one day, like they'll stay there and you'll do it together. And then by the next morning, when it's light enough that you can see the lines on your palm, those vows are gone. You don't have to do anything. And so for that one 24 hour period of time, you're living highly conscientiously according to a set of eight different behaviors to avoid. And they say it's like living really intentionally like an Arhat would live. And then we see that these eight vows are also the eight basic behaviors that the monastics avoid. So in another way for a householder, it would be for one 24 hour period, I'm going to live like a really, really pious monk or nun. No, I'm going to be really, really, really harmless for one 24 hour period of time. And so one does it from time to time to decrease all the distractions of our ordinary worldly lives for one 24 hour period of time. And the idea is for it to help us increase the power of our meditative concentration so that our wisdom can grow so that our Vinaya during our worldly life can grow. So we would use these 24 hour periods of time from time to time to reset and recharge our practice. Once we've done it once with a preceptor, then anytime we want, we can give ourselves those 24 hour vows by going before an image of a Buddha and doing the ceremony that you were given by the preceptor and then organizing your day according to those eight vows. And then they're done after 24 hours.So it's totally up to the practitioner how often you want to do it, on what days, etc. So they're really, really useful. So here are the eight. They have four primary vows and four secondary vows that we commit to for 24 hours. And by committing to the vow, it means I'm committing to avoid doing these behaviors in obvious ways and as subtle and subtler and subtler as I can for just 24 hours. That's why it's so powerful because come on, we can do it for 24 hours. Don't ask me to do it for two days in a row, but 24 hours, okay. So here's the eight. The first four are MI TSUNG CHU, MA JIN LEN, SOK CHO, and ZUN MA. So the first four are the primary vows, meaning they're the strongest, the most powerful. MI TSUNG CHU, MI TSUNG, the words literally mean not clean. So MI TSUNG CHU is not clean activity. So all of these are, I will avoid, blah, when we say the ceremony. MI TSUNG CHU is the term they use for sexual activity. So for one 24 hour period of time, I agree to avoid any and all sexual activity. In our one day vows that we're probably familiar with, the vow is I will avoid committing adultery, right? Very specific thing. We'll talk about it later. Here, any sexual activity for 24 hour period of time. And then, well, does sexual activity mean actually intercourse? What about hugging and kissing? These vows for 24 hours, stretch out the subtlety. Maybe it's like we won't even look at a magazine that has some kind of suggestive photos in it. Maybe we just put anything away that would have anything to do with any level of arousal. We're really trying to go overboard here for just the 24 hour period of time. Second, not because, so let me go back. They called it, MI TSUNG CHU means unclean activity. They do not mean by that, that sexual activity is unclean in and of itself. The reason they call it that is that all that goes along with sexual activity is so laden with mental afflictions that it's unclean in the sense that it's used in an ordinary human way. We are just perpetuating suffering in our pursuit of pleasure. So again, they're not saying, oh, it's a bad thing. We should avoid it. It's the misunderstanding about how we use our relationships and what we expect out of them. That is what is being called unclean. We make so much negative karma around sexuality apparently. So second one, MA JIN LEN. MA JIN LEN means not taken, given. MA JIN, not taken. LEN means given. Given. To take the not given. So stealing, it's the word for stealing. Obviously you break into somebody's house and take what's theirs, that's stealing. Obviously we cheat on our time card to get the company to pay us more money because we do overtime and they don't pay us for overtime and they really owe it to us anyway, but there's no way to get it legally, so I'll just do that. That's stealing. Cheating on our taxes, that's stealing. For this one day vow, we're wanting to take all of that more subtly, to take something that is of value that has not been given or offered to you. We perceive that as stealing and the seeds that get planted mean we're going to get stolen from. We're not going to be able to get our needs met when we want them. And then all the baggage that goes along with that. So for this 124 hour period of time, we want to be really exceptionally sensitive to whether what I am utilizing, what I'm procuring, what I am having, was it ethically procured. So maybe we have that habit of now and then taking a pencil home from work, and it's like we don't think anything of it. And then maybe it happens a couple of times a month, and then after five or ten years we look back and like, oh my gosh, I've actually taken, you know, a hundred pencils from work over all this time. And we still might think, you know, it happens. Versus one day you just gather up a hundred pencils and walk off with them, right? Clearly taking the hundred pencils all at one time would be stealing, right? But what about the pencil here and there that's accumulated over time? Isn't that stealing too? And the subtleties of our behavior for this 124 hour period of time, we're wanting to like go that far. Third one, sok chuh. Sok chuh means to cut life. Sok is life, chuh is to cut. So it's the term for taking life, killing. Killing or being the cause of someone else killing, contributing to somebody else killing. So for one 24 hour period of time, we pledge to be exceptionally sensitive to situations to avoid killing anything. So in our five lifetime lay vows, the first one is to avoid killing, but it's very specific. I will avoid killing a human and a human fetus. Something we could actually probably achieve barring unforeseen circumstances, you know. But for this one day, I'm going to pledge not to kill anything to the best of my ability, which maybe that means that if I've got a lawn and I know there's all those bugs in the lawn, and maybe I might crush a bug if I walk on the lawn for 24 hour period of time, I'm not going to walk on that lawn, right? When we just have five lifetimes lay vows, I don't mean just, you know, our vow behavior doesn't include avoiding walking on the lawn. We might still choose to avoid doing that, but it's not the vow for 21, 24 hour period of time. We're going to say, I'm going to be really, really careful. Fourth one of the main ones, dun ma. Dun means false and ma here is to speak falsely, so lying. We've heard that the worst kind of lie is to lie about our spiritual practice and the worst of the worst is to say or imply that we've seen emptiness directly when we haven't. And Geshe Michael always adds, when you see emptiness directly, there's no doubt about it. So if you have had an experience that now that you know about emptiness directly and you think back and go, gosh, I wonder if that was it. It wasn't. It was something special and extraordinary, but it wasn't the direct perception of emptiness because you would know it. Whether you call it that or not, different story, but you would know it. So he says, you can't lie about seeing emptiness directly, right? Either you say it and it's true or you can't say it at all. You won't say it at all. And then they say, even when you have one of the things, you realize that if you do say it to somebody, they can't confirm it. So there's no advantage to telling them that. So you won't say it unless there's some extenuating circumstance that it would be a benefit to do so. So here though, for one 24 hour period, we are pledging to be exceptionally careful with our speech, to give accurate perception with our speech. And really when we get more and more and more subtle, we can never actually speak accurately because the words we speak, because they are perceived by the way the other understands them, we can never know for sure, can we? Right? I mean, there really is no such thing as speaking truthfully for others. We can only speak truthfully for ourselves. So for 24 hour period of time, we're going to say nothing but the truth. And there's a silly movie called The Invention of Lying or something like that. And it's so quirky. It's not what you think, because you'd think, you know, anyway, it's a great Dharma movie, I thought. Because of this idea of, we lie when we don't say exactly what we're feeling at the exact moment we're feeling it. Right? Because we're hiding that. But if we did say exactly what was going on in our mind, every moment, it would be like E. Gads, right? And that's what the movie is partly about. So to avoid false speech, really, really carefully for one 24 hour period of time, many people decide, well, for this 24 hour period of time, I'm just going to go into silence. And I'm not going to say out loud anything but my prayers, my recitation, my mantra, because that protects my speech. But doing your 24 hour vows in silence is not a requirement. Although traditionally, it's done that way. For this reason, because you can't lie. When you don't say anything. Somebody in the last night's class said, well, what if you're lying to yourself? What if your own self talk is lying? And I didn't have an answer. Like, I don't know. Do you make karma with yourself? They say you don't, but I think you do. Do Ma. Excuse me. So the next four are the secondary vows. So primary vows are the means they're stronger. Is that right? More serious if they're damaged than the four, what do they call secondary? The secondary vows. But both of them for 24 hour period of time, come on, right? We can keep them. Okay. So the four secondaries are melchete, chongtung, garsok, chungsok, and chidrokase. Melchete means seats or beds too costly or high. So for one 24 hour period of time, I will avoid the seats or beds too costly or high, meaning the use of luxurious items. Now, what luxurious items means to you is up to you. In the old days, if you owned nothing, then anywhere you went, you didn't go home to a house full of furniture. And then in those old days, if you even did have a home, maybe you had enough resources to buy food for your home, right? And whatever you needed for your work life, right? The yarn for your loom, but you didn't have savings accounts and you didn't have extra. So you didn't have money to spend on having somebody build you a table and six chairs for your dining room that you didn't have, right? You just sat on the floor inside and outside. Then as some prosperity is gained, you know, wow, I have extra money. I can buy a chair. And then it doesn't matter whether that chair is really fancy or the chair is pretty minimalist. The fact that you now have a chair, right? It's a luxury. So for you taking your one day vows, you would say, okay, for today, I won't use my chair. I will. I will behave as a arhat, as a ordained person, arhat, and avoid use of all those things that represent worldly success, worldly prosperity, worldly, right? To just for 124 hour period of time, overcome those attachments to things, right? We're talking about a householder who has stuff, accumulates stuff, right? We're all householders, me sort of, and we have stuff, right? And some of that stuff, when we first became adults, we just had hand-me-downs and everything. And then finally we got prosperous enough to get our first like new set of furniture. Everybody go through this? For David and I, it was like 1981 or so. We both had jobs finally, jobs that actually earned a little bit of money. It seemed like a lot of money to us then. Now, it's like, how do we ever live on that? But we went and bought a set of dining room furniture and a living room set. We spent a lot over a couple of weeks.And then this dining room table and its eight chairs, it was our pride and joy. And we took care of it and I oiled it every year. And then over the years, we moved it and it went to Diamond Mountain. And when we went into three-year retreat, we just left everything to Diamond Mountain. And by then it was 20, 25 years old. And we'd come out after three years and the things all banged and stained. And it's like, wow, after three years, it got worn more than... Because it just wasn't taken care of. And even though I had given it away, I was still a little hurt. Our beautiful table. And then again, it was like, nah, we gave it away. But then long story short, ends up, we swap furniture with Diamond Mountain and we get it back. So we have our dining room table and chairs back again that I still am so attracted to and fond of. If I'm not me and I look at it, it's just an old banged up teak table. But to me, it's still my malchete, right? My luxurious stuff, right? Because it was so special to me. So for my one 24-hour period of time, I would say, okay, I'm not even going to use my dining room table. Not because there's anything wrong with using a dining room table, but to get off the automatic pilot of it's important, it's precious, right? It reflects who I am. It reflects that I'm prosperous, right? All that baggage that goes with that dining room table. And then what about my sofa? It's like, oh man, maybe that sofa has that criteria. Maybe it doesn't. If it doesn't, you can use it. But it gets more and more subtle. We do have a sofa in this house that was left behind by the previous owners. And it's a dirty old thing and I have it cleaned up, but covered so you can't see. But I don't have the attachment to it like I have to my other sofa, right? So I would say if I'm going to use this sofa, I'm going to use that old clunker that's covered. And I'm not going to use the one that's still special to me, even though to somebody else, it looks like a clunker too, right? So my point is, it's not, oh, I will avoid somebody else's high throne, right? But my old stuff, I'll continue to use normally because for 24 hour periods, I want to get off automatic pilot. So you might just decide, no, I'm not going to use any of my furniture. Well, then what about your bed? Are you going to sleep on the floor? You know, maybe, maybe not. What imprint do you want to make in your mind for your 24 hour vows? This is personally driven. We're at individual freedom here. Okay. Mel Chayte, Geshe Michael said, for that one 24 hour period of time, you don't watch your big screen TV and you drive your VW van to work instead of your Mercedes Benz. I thought that was funny. It's like, yeah, right. Then Chong Tung means, how are we doing? Chong Tung. Chong means Chong, not Chong. Chong Tung means to drink. Chong is beer. So I will avoid drinking beer. But here beer means any kind of partaking of substance that is meant to intoxicate our mind. So alcohol and other intoxicants are partaken of because they have this effect on our mind of relaxation. We call it relaxation feel good. In fact, it dampens our responsiveness to things, which means it dampens our ability to maintain this high conscientiousness about our behavior. And so intoxicating our mind puts us in a position where even if we still think we're able to think through a response, we won't think it through with the same kind of clarity we would if our mind was not influenced by that stuff. And so the danger is that the end result of our thinking through an issue is we will choose based on what's best for me, because that's our habit. We will fall back into habit when we intoxicate our mind. So to take intoxicants damages our conscientiousness. And that goes on to damage our ability to think deeply in our meditation. And that goes on to block our ability to get deeply enough to recognize the, I want to use the word truth, but it's stalling in my mind because it's not quite right to gain the meditative platform to reach the realizations that we are aspiring to reach. So for one 24 hour period of time, I pledge to not partake of anything that will intoxicate my mind and not contribute to anybody else's intoxicating mind. So suppose you've already taken, I will avoid alcohol. But you're in a situation where everybody's drinking it and somebody at the table says, will you pass me the wine? And ordinarily we would be polite, we would pass it.Our judgment is for me, I won't take it. I'm not serving it to them, I'm just passing it to them. I'm being polite.Otherwise I'll upset the apple cart. For your one 24 hour period of time, we're not even willing to pass them the bottle of wine for them to serve themselves. That's how subtle we're wanting to take our one day vows. So again, it's like, well then maybe my one day vows would be best done all by myself, because then I don't have any of these conundrums that I would have. And because I've taken a vow to avoid taking alcohol or contributing to others, every minute I'm not doing it, I'm gaining the goodness of the vow. So we don't have to say, no, I have to be in this situation to avoid doing it, to get the goodness. There is an advantage to putting ourselves in those situations and seeing ourselves respond differently, wisely. But for 24 hour vows, we're using the goodness of having a vow. And then to make it easy for ourselves, maybe you just do them on your own. Okay. So then you can be in silence and avoid alcoholing, right? Your mind or somebody else's with ease. Okay. The next one, gar sok, tren sok. Sok here means et cetera. So gar, et cetera, and tren, et cetera.Gar means dancing. Dancing, et cetera. And tren is flowers, et cetera. So dancing, singing, playing music is the gar, et cetera. And related activities, whatever those might be. Flowers, et cetera, means using flowers to adorn our appearance. So flowers in our hair, flower garlands on our head, right? Jewelry, cosmetics, you know, all the ways that we adorn ourselves to look more attractive to other people for one 24 hour period of time. Not going to do it because they say all of those little ordinary worldly behaviors there, they create distractions in our meditating minds when we sit down to meditate. And it doesn't just mean, oh, you went to the dance the night before and now you sit down to meditate the next morning and you'll be forced to remember the dance the night before. Not really necessarily like that disturbing our mind. Just all of that sensory input is contributing to the habit of experiencing or needing sensory input. So that when we go into deep meditation, our mind is still going out for entertainment. And it's not able then to sink deeper, deeper, deeper, deeper to where what's going on is being directed by our meditation efforts. Topic. So this one, the Garsok Drangsok, is specifically about for 24 hour period of time, stop going out to these sensory objects for entertainment, for verification, for whatever the things we go to our outer world for, for 24 hour period of time.Relate to your outer world in a different way. We call it strict. We call it severe. We call it, what's the word? Austere. Austere. Live austerely for 124 hour period of time. And those 124 hour periods of time accumulate their goodness so that we don't technically have to live austerely forever, all the time. If we apply our 24 hour vows in a way combined with our five lifetime lay vows, which is our coming up, we can make progress. We can make good progress. We don't have to become ordained. There's advantages, but there's also disadvantages in the sense of where we are in life. All right. Last one, Chidro Kase. Kase means food. Chidro is afternoon, food in the afternoon. So I will give up taking food in the afternoon. So this is keeping this tradition of eating once and putting everything away and being done with it. It says I'll avoid eating in the afternoon, which is literal. They say afternoon, literally no more food. But what it doesn't mean, you know, eat three meals between when you get up and noon. It means have one meal, have it finished by noon and all cleaned up and done. And then forget about needing to eat, prepare, clean up. It's all done. So in Buddha's days, there they are out living in a forest. You know, they get up in the morning, take their begging bowls. They go to town. They receive whatever they receive and then go back to the park. I'm guessing that if somebody didn't get much and somebody else got a whole bunch, they probably shared. I hope so anyway. And then they all ate, cleaned up their bowls, put them away and they were done for the day. And it left the whole rest of the day for their practice, right? And their study and Buddhist teachings, etc. So I don't know now in the monastery if they all do one meal a day anymore. But here for one 24 hour period of time, we're pledging to do that. One meal finished before noon. You can finish at seven in the morning if you want. You can finish at, you know, 1145 if you want.Up to you. But just done and put away. Yes, Chris. Unmute, please. This is the one I negotiate with myself the most because I want to make it like intermittent fasting or some other worldly thing. So would you say that the spirit of it was kept because it's like I work till two, right? And I don't want to have my one meal at work. So you would say have one meal in the morning. But what if you did a thing where you did one meal at two, say, and that was your only meal for the day? Would that still be keeping the spirit of what you think this one day vow is? Right, right. So if you're doing the one day vows for the greatest power, we would want to choose a day when we are not actually going to go to work. Okay, so that we could stay with the right specific instructions and have my meal before noon. Yeah, if we're wanting to approximate these in our daily life, a like someone who's ordained but not actually living in a monastery, who then who has to earn a living, so they have a job. So you know, they don't have this luxury of being able to eat in the morning and be done that there. There is this what are they called exceptions to the rule where you ask your preceptor, right? I have in this situation, I need to eat my meal this day, or I even need to eat three meals a day, because I need to feed my body, right to do my work. So yes, you can keep the meaning of the practice by eating your one meal, you know, in the afternoon when you get home, or in the evening, you can keep it for your one day vows. Yeah. Because I think I remember Geshe-la saying that the whole time he worked as you know, an executive that he did the one day vows. And so I think I had that impression about it was a way of being out in the world and still staying more within, you know, the practice, but I'm hearing a whole different thing, which is great. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, so let's take our break. I'm pausing the recording. For this Chidro Kase, liquids are acceptable any time of the day.But they say not liquids made with milk or milk products. So no yogurt, you know, no milkshake, no like that. But you could technically, you know, may have have fruit juice, and tea and, you know, vegetable juice if they don't even specify clear liquids. They just say liquids are okay, but just not milk or yogurt or that kind of thing. But then, even still, if we're gonna have that what we're trying to do is reduce the need to be fiddling with things to get our needs met. So for the 24 hour period of time, we would need to have our meal planned out, right? You don't have to make it ahead of time, but you need everything that you need for that. In which case, during that time, make the juices or the stuff that you're going to drink all day, so that you just if you need it to sustain your body, you can just go get it to use it and you don't have to distract yourself to make it. Do you see? So the idea is solid food done, liquid food if you need liquid food to sustain yourself, have it pre-prepared so that you can just go have it. And again, if for any reason that this one needs to be accepted, like you would say, for instance, Chris, you would say if you're going to do your one day vows on a day that you do have to go to work, then when you're taking vows and you get to the one that says, you know, I will commit to avoiding eating afternoon, you say, and I won't be able to avoid eating afternoon today. So this one is accepted, right? So you don't take all the vows and then let yourself break that one. You don't assign yourself that one for that day. So that can be done. But then it's a little hard to do the not killing in the subtle way we're trying to not kill if we still have to commute to work, right? So, right, it's really these vows are for our use and we can fine tune them according to what we believe that we can keep, that we can actually achieve, number one, and then use to push the envelope a little bit harder, push the bar up. Right. The frequency with which you take them is up to you. The motivation for the nye nye is renunciation. I want to stop my suffering to do that. I need to get deeper meditation so that I can gain wisdom. And so I will take my 24 hour vows to gather the goodness and decrease the distractions of worldly life so my meditations in the future will go deeper. Then those same one day vows and the same ceremony used, almost the same ceremony used, is called Takchen Sojong. Takchen means Mahayana. So means repair. Jong means to purify. So Mahayana repair and purify. One of those practices, well this is the Takchen Sojong, the 24 hour vow practice used by a Mahayanist is a method of purification. It's like an antidote and then a 24 hour period of restraint. So it's the same eight things to avoid, the same ceremony that we set it up with, but the motivation is our bodhicitta. I want to reach Buddhahood for the sake of all sentient beings because they're suffering so terribly. I understand that it's my seeds to see all that suffering. I have to clean my heart in order to help all of that suffering and someday to clean my heart I need to avoid these behaviors to a great more subtle level. And so I'm going to take vows to avoid these behaviors on a more subtle level for just one 24 hour period of time. And I'm using it to help clean away all my ignorance and selfishness that makes me do all those behaviors that I'm trying to avoid for 24 hour. And in cleaning those out and not replanting them for one 24 hour period of time, I'm gathering this goodness that I dedicate to my deepening meditation so that my wisdom can grow so that I can help others stop their suffering. So just that one little bit of additional factor bodhicitta changes the whole 24 hour vows, practice, seed planting that it does. Same considerations, same behaviors, same ceremony. You just don't call it yunye, you call it takchen sojong.So if you received your 24 hour vows, I think the Diamond Mountain did it as part of the Medicine Buddha sessions at one point, you receive takchen sojong. You didn't technically receive the yunye, even though it's the same practice. So takchen sojong, typically people do those on those days when our merit is already being multiplied. So on Sagadawa, Wessek, well no Wessek doesn't count, I mean it does, but from Mahayana, Sagadawa, first turning of the wheel day, that two weeks of miracles at the turn of the new year, all of those time periods are commonly times when a householder, a Mahayana householder would do their takchen sojong day, 24 hour period of time. Because you're already multiplying your merit and now you're doing your 24 hour vows, which is like a huge merit making thing. Like you can just like rocket fire your goodness seed accumulation by doing that. But you can do them anytime. There's still extraordinary goodness to do it one day vows day, anytime you want to assign it to yourself to do. Alrighty, now let's move on to the lifetime lay person's vows, the things they call lifetime lay vows. This nye nye, the 24 hour vows, it is householder practice. The other vows available to householders is the nye nye, the nye nye vows, here it is. You like wrap this into one word, nye nye. There are, these are the five lay vows. They call them, there are the five lay vows for men and the five lay vows for women. They are the same vows, but they're given in these two different categories.I'm not exactly sure why they're only five and the five are worded very, very specifically such that they're meant to be vows that we can actually keep like reasonably easily. We can keep them. They last for this lifetime. And when we reach the end of this lifetime, those lifetime vows are gone. Yeah. So the five, we know that I will avoid killing a human or a human fetus. So every moment we're not killing a human or a human fetus, we are gathering the goodness of keeping the vow, right? One day vow, I will avoid killing like harder to do technically, but killing a human, avoiding killing a human, human fetus. There are a lot of subtle ways we can contribute to that. As we're driving around, we could be sure that we and others are wearing their seatbelt. I can be really sure. I won't even look at my phone. I am driving safely. I will not speed up to go through that yellow light. I will check to be sure there's not somebody behind me, speeding up to go through that yellow light before I slam on my brakes or go through the yellow light, right? I will be really exceptionally careful in my moving around amongst others to avoid to the best of my ability, any situation that could set in motion the end of somebody else's life. Like we already do that. But once we have our lifetime lay person's vows, we can just have that more in our state of mind. I'm driving safely as part of keeping my vows. Yay. Right. That gets a little bit more tricky. I think we've talked about it before. You know, what if we have a parent and they're at end of life? Do I jump up and down and make them take the latest cancer treatment when they say, no, I've had enough? Or do we say, okay, I'll support you as you die? Are we breaking our vow to not make them live three days longer by force feeding them? It's difficult, right? It's difficult. Difficult situation. What about you? You know, it's like, I intend to have a do not resuscitate when I get closer, right? I'm not brave enough to put it on my record now.But am I breaking my vow by saying don't do everything to keep me alive? When I have my heart attack or stroke, right? These are not easy things. But as a general day to day, we can do all kinds of things that helps protect life. And it and we're not in the habit of killing people. So we can keep this vow. Second one is stealing anything of worth. So similar to what we talked about for the one day bow, anything not given can rampage, I would say, you know, think about the person who owns the thing. If you took it from them, would they feel stolen from or not as your criteria? And then you would have to say, well, if I were in that position, their position, would I feel stolen from if they come home and that thing is missing from their house? You know, maybe it's one of their 50,000 pencils, you know, and it's like, thank goodness, one of those is gone. Or is it there? I don't know their coffee table book on photos of Yosemite. That I you know, they don't really need that.They've seen the book before. I'll just take it with me and I intend to bring it back to them. And then they come home and it's like, where's my Yosemite book? And right, even though its value is probably nothing, it was valuable to them. But we wouldn't do anything like that. But the subtleties, you know, is is what we're looking at here. This vow is you decide other people's stuff is other people's stuff. And I'm going to ask before I use it, I'm going to get permission. You know, I'm not going to take it. It doesn't matter how much I think I need it. We become so safe around other people's stuff, right, that they're willing to leave their person wallet wide open in your care because, right, they trust you so much. So again, before we take our lifetime layperson's vows, we hear about these and we would need to like check our own heart. Like, am I careful enough about other people's stuff that I can take this vow and keep it? If we weren't, we wouldn't be inclined to take them. So when we do take them, and we're like, well, I'm not a person who steals stuff. Once we have those lay vows, we have this opportunity to be a little more conscientious about how we behave around other people's belongings. Simply because enlightened beings want us to create the seeds so that there's always abundance for us and everybody. And to be in the habit of taking things from others makes for us a world in which we can't get our needs met. So avoiding stealing anything of value. Third one, I will avoid lying about my spiritual life. So not just I will avoid lying, we're trying to do that anyway, but specifically, I will avoid lying about my spiritual life. I won't say I've seen emptiness directly when I haven't. I won't say, you know, I see Buddhas walking around. If I'm not, if I don't, right, we won't lie about our spiritual realizations. A fourth one, I will avoid committing adultery. So again, we're not pledging to not have any sexual activity at all forever. Just I will avoid interfering with someone else's committed relationship, which means if I'm in a relationship and the other person isn't, I'm breaking my commitment to my partner. If I'm not in a relationship and the other person is in a relationship, I'm breaking their commitment to their partnership. If I'm not in a relationship and they're not in a relationship, whatever you choose to do, that's up to you, right? It's not breaking your layperson vow to have sexual activity with someone married or not, right? That's not doesn't come into it. It's the interfering with someone else's commitment. So then, suppose then you uncommitted and them uncommitted, then decide, oh, like we're a couple now. You're not married or you didn't even, you know, exchange friendship rings. You're just, what do they call it? Exclusive. Well, now you're committed. And now, right, to be considering some other partner would be damaging that commitment. Why is it important? Because we want a world where people's commitments are reliable, not just sexual commitments, but any commitment. We want to work with a team where the people say they'll do something, they come through. We want reliability in our world. We, one of the main ways apparently that we interfere with reliability is through this human habit of interfering with others' commitments, our own and others'. So lifetime lay vows says, I will refuse to do that no matter what. Okay, we're not saying no activity at all, no adultery. The fifth one, probably the hardest, is that I will avoid taking intoxicants. And technically it's, I will avoid taking, intoxicating my mind or contributing to the intoxication of another's. And in the Vinaya text, Lord Buddha is quoted as having said, anyone who partakes of as much alcohol as a dew drop on a blade of grass is not a student of mine. So we might say, I know I can drink two beers and it doesn't affect my decision-making. I know that at the end of the third beer, I will choose a fourth beer and then, you know, I'm getting happy enough that I can't trust my decision-making. So I can drink two beers, Buddha, and be just fine. And Buddha is saying, yeah, you think so, but the effect that you're saying you don't get from the two beers, you're getting some effect from those two beers that you're liking so much that you rely on the two beers to take it. And that's going to shift to where you need three beers to get to that level. And then you're right. It's just going to build up and build up because your ability to say, oh, the pleasure I'm getting from this beer is not coming from the beer, reduces with every sip of beer. So he says, you serious about your spiritual path? You serious about needing to get to see emptiness directly, needing to gather the goodness necessary for your meditation to go deep enough for that to happen? Don't fool yourself into thinking you can use a little bit of coloring your mind with the outer substance and get a good result. Yes, Chris. So what's the thought on like medicine that's in alcohol, like a tincture where you're doing three drops of something that's in alcohol? I mean, I always thought, well, that the intention was different, that it isn't. Right. Right. Right. They do say, we understand there are medicines that are in alcohol and you may have to weigh the goodness of taking the medicine against the badness of the alcohol. And they say, but, you know, is there an alternative? Can you dilute the medicine with the alcohol? Right. So that the alcohol is too diluted to have its effect and still have the medicine? Some you can, some you can't. Can you write? Is there some other way to get that? You can never get as much as a dew drop. That's what I'm saying. It's like, yeah, you can do a tincture where you're doing three drops and it's it's got no alcoholic effect, but. Right. It would be up to you. Right. Again, Buddha's not going. Right. Buddha's saying, look, you want this result? Be aware of these different factors. So, yes, take the medicine with this tincture. Yeah. Unless there's some way right to get that tincture, you get the idea. Right. Right. Unless you're taking that tincture every night because it's like, who is the one, you know, I mean, exactly, exactly. And that would be where we would fool ourselves. Right. No, no, I need the medicine. But in fact, those three drops, we've gotten so sensitive that those three drops actually. Right. Do you have an effect on us now in it from it? No, of course not. We've we've been introduced to the practice of partaking of alcohol as a sacred practice because technically there's nothing in the alcohol that can affect our mind in that way. But so slippery a practice, you know, so slippery. All right. So this one's especially difficult because our society nowadays is so is so imbued with. The benefit of alcohol, even as we like see face to face its harms to people, we have this really perverted relationship with it that, yes, it hurts people, but it's so pleasurable that it's somehow worth it. And then we're expected. To not interfere with somebody else's use of it, and we're expected to participate in their use of it. So, you know, we're sitting around the table, the friends or family, they've got the wine. We're David and I have always been really fortunate when we say, you know, this is our belief. And so we won't do stuff. The people that are around us, they go fine. Right. Up to you if it makes you happy. They don't they don't give us a hard time. Ah, we don't impose it on them. But we also have the seeds that they don't go. Gee, I wonder why they might do that. Should I do it too? Right? They just okay, fine. We'll do what we do. You do it. You do makes it easy. But then suppose I have this vow. And then we're at the dinner table. The bottle of wine is on my side of the table. The person at the other side of the table, Sirani, would you pass me the wine? You know, my vow says to not even contribute to someone else. Partaking. Right? Would I take the bottle and hand it to them? Would I say, No, I'm sorry, I can't do that because I have vows. Would I pause and hope somebody else reached for it? Like it's it's really a conundrum about what to do. Do I break my vow to hand them the bottle? You know, I'd have to have my motivation really clear. And I have to admit, my surface motivation is I just don't want to rock the boat. So I hand them the bottle. I could go deeper than that. I don't want to rock the boat. They're going to take the alcohol anyway. That's emptiness. I could, this could be offering them nectar. Someday it will be I hand them the bottle. Or I could just hope that I could pause and somebody else will grab it and do it. But then I'm hoping that somebody else will take the karma. I don't know. Right. To be honest with you, I, I just automatically hand them the bottle. And then, you know, work on my vow in a different way. If this one gets slippery. Again, once we have the vow, it is not up to us to make sure that nobody else drinks alcohol. It's up to us to set the example of the advantage to our mind, to our heart, to our behavior of not needing to go to alcohol to celebrate or to enjoy or to have a meal complete. But it's not up to us to preach to somebody else until they ask us about it. Okay, and then they've opened the doorway. And then we're sensitive to how they respond to how we talk about the main thing with this vow is our willingness to swim upstream. I don't expect people to agree with you. Even expect them to fight with you a little bit about it because they're going to automatically think that you're judging them. So don't be judging them. You know, support without supporting. I don't know quite how you do it. To be honest with you. Our tradition says you want your lifetime lay vows, take all five or not at all. Other traditions say here are the five. You take the ones you think you can keep. And when you're ready to keep the others, we'll give you those then. Right? You can see there's an advantage both ways. But we're in a lineage that says all five or none at all. Right? Now, often the question comes up, what about being vegetarian, then, if I take my five lifetime lay vows, doesn't that mean I have to become vegetarian or even began? And the vow doesn't say that, right? The vow is I will avoid killing a human or human fetus. Right? If your meal time included humans, or human fetuses, yes, you would have to avoid eating those. But it does. The vow does not say you have to quit eating meat. Nowhere in Buddhism does it say you have to be vegetarian or vegan. It teaches avoiding harming others. It's totally up to our own view, our own position. And it's, again, one of those really slippery things. Oh, one's own decision. Like my mind's going about all those issues and vegetarianism. Buddha does not say you have to become vegetarian. He says, be as harmless as you can. And then it seems to me one really easy way. Now, with as as, as available as food is to us now. An easy way to establish I will, I will lessen my harmfulness in my world is by saying, I'm not gonna eat anything that somebody had to kill for me to get it. So, you know, beef, birds, fish, bugs, worms, etc. leads me down to fruit and vegetables, as long as they don't have bugs in them or on them. And then yeah, but what about all the bugs that get killed by the harvest of the vegetables? You'd like at some point, it's like, I know, you know, I do have to feed this body still. So at some point, it's like, all right. I've, you know, I need to accept those, you know, maybe I'll do organic as much as possible. So at least they haven't intentionally killed the creatures to get the stuff to grow. It's just fewer creatures killed just the ones during harvest. Right? I mean, like, we can't actually live in a sansaric world without contributing to killing in some way, but we can minimalize it to the best of our ability. Well, then what about veganism? Right? You don't, you don't kill to get milk or yogurt or butter, but it's, it's harmful in some way. It's up to us to decide, right, to what extent we decide we're going to stop contributing to that cruelty even. No. And nowadays, there, there are vegan versions of all those things that we seem like we absolutely have to have in our diet. But now we don't want I mean, I've got yogurt in my refrigerator. And it's not the made out of coconut or soy stuff. It's dairy. One vat last me a month, I justify it that way. Right? I'm not just sucking it down, just feeding the bacteria in my body with it. But it's you see, it's like I could take my next level and say, Okay, no, no more yogurt. It's a it's our choice. And our level. There were there were times when we could live in places where we could not survive as vegetarians. Because in the winter, there's no there's nothing to eat. No. And all you could get would be, if you were lucky, you could chase down a rabbit, you know, or a mouse. And, and that was all there was. But, but our goodness is such that that's not true anymore. We can get things year round, at least in our circumstances. But it's, it's up to each of us, right? Our, our spiritual path is not dictating your diet. It's dictating. It's giving us the guidelines to choose, choose our diet. And I've, I've heard people now nevermind. Okay, so lifetime. So vows for the householder are the 24 hour vows, either from the motivation of renunciation or the motivation of bodhicitta. And the five lifetime lay that those are the two options within which there are eight and five. Then for the left the home life person. The first level of leave the home life vows is called get so actually there's a before that level. I don't know the Tibetan name of it, but there's a level of commitment to or to ordain life that one makes before you actually take your get so that one can make before you actually take your beginning your novice vows, where you pledge to live according to having novice vows, but you don't actually have them yet. Like you're pledging to grow those vows in the future. And they have that level because when a young person goes to the monastery, you can't take full ordained, you can't take ordained vows, until you're 20 years old. But they enter the monastery at age seven. So from seven to 20, they have they take this ceremony when they're seven, to commit to living this way, but not with vows, because they don't, they can't get the vows till they're 20. Right. So that that's another level, but it's the same behavior that they learn to live by. When they're 20, and they decide to take the vows, which they don't have to. They're called the get so the get so meets the novice monk vows. They are also the novice nun vows at novice level, the monks and nuns vows are the same vows. There are 13 of those that when they get derived out, actually are 36 guidelines for behavior that make up the novice monk or nun vows. They're divided into three categories. Here are the three categories. So the 13 get so vows, novice monk nun vows are divided into the four primary vows, sawashi, the yanglak druk, which means the six secondary vows. And the long day soon, which is the three transgressions. So the difference between these three is to damage one in any of these categories has a different strength of effect in our mind and require a different thing to do to repair it and to reestablish it. So the most powerful vows to break are any one of the four primary vows. So for the novice monk nun, those four primary vows are the same four primary vows as for the 24 hour vows. I will avoid killing, stealing, sexual conduct, and lying. For the monk nun, they aren't the labors and killing human human fetus. I will avoid killing anything, lying. I will avoid all sexual activity or anything leading up to it. I will avoid all stealing. I will avoid all lying. Yanglak druk, the six secondary vows, those are the same secondary vows as the one day vows with a little bit of additional stuff. So avoiding dancing, singing, playing music, flowers, flower garlands, meaning wearing them, adorning our bodies, jewelry, cosmetics, using luxurious items, eating afternoon, partaking of intoxicants, and handling money, like having our own money, handling money. Then the third category of the 13 vows is called the three transgressions. Long day soon, which to do a transgression is, you know, less, less negative on our mind, easier to clean up, but still negativity being made, being repeated. The three transgressions are disrespecting our vow master, keeping our lay appearance, and failing to take up a monk's appearance. There are many exceptions to the lay appearance monk's appearance guideline in that we often see ordained people that we know are ordained, but they're not wearing robes. And again, if we didn't understand that they have this leeway, and they're not breaking their vows, they're not transgressing, because they know how to do it somehow. We can see them not in their vows and not think, oh my gosh, you're breaking your vows. Nowadays, if a monk nun has to, you know, take care of themself, instead of live in the monastery and get taken care of, you know, you're in circumstances where you can't wear your robes. You can still function as your monk nun you, but you just can't go to work in your robes. So you don't break your vow every time you go to work. You adjust your behavior in such a way. You know, maybe you wear something underneath your business suit that you know means for you, this is my keeping my ordained vow of dressing in a way that shows I've left the home life. You know, we find something for ourselves that tells ourselves that I'm still keeping my vow in how I dress. So you learn the details of the vows once you get ordained, and then you learn also how to clean them up and grow them. Lay people are not supposed to learn about the ordained vows, mainly because they don't want householders who are the supporters of the ordained, judging the ordained, according to how well the householder is perceiving them keeping their vows, because then the householder is going to give more or withhold their support according to how well they're perceiving the monks are following their vows. You know, that seems like it would be a good system to me. It would like make everybody work harder if I have to perform to get my support. But that's the antithesis of what we're trying to do is to get off automatic pilot by I do this, I get that. So they say it's a bad karma for the supporters to decide, I'll support you if you're doing a good job, and I won't support you if you're not. Like if we've pledged our support, we support. But wait, like what if they're taking our support and going and doing really harmful things? What's our job as the supporter of the monastery? Yeah, we do have a obligation to see that our support is used in a way that they're pledging to use it, right? Anyway, the it's not that their ordained vows are so secret. It's that they they don't want this negativity going back and forth. We don't know the mind of the monk nun who appears to be doing something that's breaking their vows. We don't know what's going in there on their mind. So don't judge them because who's going to get the result of judgment? Me, right? We heard that if you are me or one like me, you can judge another. If you're not like me, and you judge another, you will fall, not just fail, your judgment will be wrong because you're not omniscient. I'm talking to myself, but you'll fall to lower realms as a result of your judgment that you thought was right, that wasn't right, because I'm not omniscient, right? So there, don't judge the ordained. But then once we hear what the ordained vows are, this novice level ordained vow, and if you realize, oh my gosh, I'm mostly already living like that. I want credit, right? I want credit beyond the lifetime lay vows. Can I get credit? And then, you know, it depends on who you're, who your abbot is, as to whether they say, yeah, good idea, you get credit, or, you know, no, really, really not. So, ordained. So that's this class. We'll pick up more about ordained vows next class, about the categories and etc. Yeah. All right. I hope I got that across. So remember that person that we wanted to be able to help. We've learned a lot that we will use to change ourselves so that we can help that other in that deep and ultimate way someday. And that's an extraordinary 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 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 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 happiness, filled with loving kindness, and may it be so. All right, thanks so much for the opportunity to share.

Vocabulary Class 5

NYE ME PUNTSOK

GYENYEN MA 5 Lifetime Laywoman Vows

PARMA RABJUNG Commitment to leave home life for a certain time

GETSUL MA Novice nun vows (13 vows)

GE LOB MA Intermediate nun vows (12 commitments)

TSAWAY CHU DRUK the primary 6 things

JE TUN CHU DRUK the secondary 6 things

TSANG CHU NERNE KYI TSULTRIM Keeping morality/pure activity purely

GELONG MA Fully ordained nun vows

PAMPA defeats (to lose) (8 nuns/ 4 monks)

HLAKMA remainders/ leftovers (nuns/ monks)

TUNG JE downfalls (20 nuns/ 13 monks)

PANG TUNG give up downfall (33 nuns/ 34 monks)

TUNGJE BASHIK simple downfall (180 nuns/ 90 monks)

SOR SHAK (11 nuns/ 4 monks)

NYE JE did bad/misdeed (112 for nuns and monks)

SOJONG purify repair confession ceremony

Welcome back. We are ACI Course 9, Class 5. It's June 23rd, 2025. Let's gather our minds here as we usually do. Please bring your your attention to your breath until you hear from me again. Okay. Now bring to mind that being. Before you as a manifestation, you do your opening prayers on your own. I'll be back. Something does not want me to do this class. Teacher, let's do it. So last class, we learned about the individual freedom vows for the layperson. We learned one category of those vows was the 24-hour vows that we do from time to time.And those 24-hour vows had four primary vows and four secondary vows. And the four primary vows we learned were avoiding sexual activity, killing, lying, and I'm missing one, stealing. And in my answer key, it said not killing a human or a human fetus. And it said not lying about our spiritual progress. And I believe that that's an error in the answer key, because that's true of the layperson vows. But for the one day vows, we're asked to avoid killing at all contributing killing or contributing to killing at all, or lying at all for one 24 hour period. Come on, right? We can almost do that with not killing like we kill stuff when we breathe, I guess. But we could, right, we could seclude ourself, such that we don't walk on grass or drive our car or whatever. So we're being really, really strict in our discipline of avoiding harm in those specific ways for one 24 hour period of time. Then the secondary vows are those things that we do that so easily lead us to have the mental afflictions that make us do killing, stealing, sexual misconduct, lying, etc. So we avoid using seats or beds too costly or high, using intoxicants, singing, dancing, adorning ourselves, making ourselves look more beautiful and eating afternoon. So again, not that those things are bad, but they they do. They are arenas for mental afflictions. And so we're just saving ourselves the trouble on that one 24 hour period of time to put ourselves through a day where we just avoid things that could bring on mental afflictions, right? In the Vinaya level of practice, it's about avoidance so that we don't trigger those mental afflictions from which we act badly that makes mental afflictions in the future. So then we learn the five lifetime layperson's vows, where we decide for the length of my whole life. I will avoid harming in these very specific ways. And it's set up so that we can be successful. I will avoid killing a human and a human fetus. I will avoid stealing anything of value. I will avoid adultery. I will avoid lying about my spiritual realizations. And I will avoid intoxicating my mind or contributing to the intoxicated mind of others. And then there's the additional piece of the five lifetime lay vows, which is, you know, I will, I will follow my refuge advices. Like, that's the only way we're going to be able to do the other five is if we have some guideline for where our protection comes from. If it's not from these things that we usually go to protection from, you can't say to somebody, none of those outer worldly things work to do what you think they're going to do and just leave us hanging. There needs to be something else, right? And so we learn that that's something else is our understanding of the marriage of karma and emptiness. And so our refuge is in the ones who know, know that the ones who have taught it, what they've taught and the ones who are demonstrating it to us out in the world. So we live in ways to perpetuate our relationship with those. So this class is supposed to be or about the vows for the ordained person. And traditionally, we're not supposed to talk about the vows for the ordained person with non ordained persons. So Geshe Michael decided that he would tell us about the categories of ordained vows, not the specific ordained vows so much, and the process through which someone would use their vows to progress on their path in the sense of in the ordained pathway. There's, there's beginning vows, right? And then there's full vows. And for women, there are some intermediary steps. So in order, so anyway, Geshe Michael posed this question. He said, if you were a woman, and decided you wanted to reach Nirvana, what are the steps you would need to go through to commit yourself to reaching that goal? Now, he says Nirvana, because we're studying the vows that are at the level of personal freedom, meaning the attainment for personal freedom, we learned is reaching our own Nirvana. We're the ones that have to do it. And we're the ones that gain the benefit. So we're at the individual individual freedom. So maybe that woman really has in mind, I want to reach my total Buddhahood. Or maybe somewhere along the way, she goes, Oh, beyond Nirvana, there's stuff. But if Nirvana were her goal, this is what she would do. And there, it's a topic called Nyeme Punsog. So let me get our screen share here. Nyeme Punsog. Punsog means perfect. Nyeme means no problem. No problem. Nyeme. Nyeme Punsog means then like faultless. What would be the faultless progression that she would go through in her commitment to reaching her Nirvana? There's an order in which you take your vows. And keeping the vows that you that you've got builds the foundation of goodness that then helps us both grow and maintain the next vows that we get. And that's true even outside of the ordination system. First, we take our refuge. Then we take our lifetime lay vows, if we're taking vows. Then we take our Bodhisattva vows. Then we take our Diamond Way vows. Because they build. You could take refuge five lifetimes lay Bodhisattva vows all while you in the midst of getting your Diamond Way vows. Somebody could do that. But then you see, they'd be they'd be relying on past lives, karmic goodness to be able to carry them. And who knows what their this life baggage was gonna bring to the party. So it's not ideal. It could be done. But this Nyeme Punsog is like the ideal way to grow to grow through our spiritual path of using vows to to propel our progress. Nyeme Punsog. So of course, she would have started with renunciation. To even reach the idea, I want to reach my Nirvana. She must have had some level of renunciation. Or who would like think of that goal, I want to reach being free of mental afflictions due to my individual analysis forever. She had to already have recognized that worldly life is about pain. Know about disappointment about trying to get happy and never quite getting it or even when you do get it, it doesn't last and like always disappointed, always wanting for more ups goes to downs to remember that list of human sufferings. Like when that's like full on in her face, and she says there's nothing in this worldly life for me. And she wants to commit herself to Nirvana. That's the start of it. Without that, even if somebody is inclined to go for their ordination, without that renunciation, their vows aren't going to take strong enough to be able to keep the behaviors well. So the first step is renunciation. I didn't even write it in here. Then she would start initiate this process of getting her her vows. So this is a woman who's decided she wants to go the ordained route. The first thing she does is take her Ganyan Ma. The Ganyan Ma are the lifetime lay woman's vows. So she hasn't left the home life yet. She's just declared herself to living according to those five lifetime lay vows and her refuge advices, promising to keep that vowed behavior for that whole lifetime. She's saying to her own mind, my hope and faith are now in ethical living. Like that's where happiness will come from. So my ethical living is my protection from perpetuating my suffering world. She's committing herself to behavior choosing, right? Intentional behavior choosing that will avoid things that would continue to block her from gaining the wisdom necessary to truly be able to stop perpetuating suffering. The goodness result of keeping those behaviors is sooner or later that direct perception of emptiness. So she gains the wisdom through which her behaviors can now actually be the causes for the nirvana that she intends to reach. So by taking her vows, she's committed her own mind to living in this different way. Are the deeds very different? No, probably she wasn't somebody that went around tromping on bugs, killing things to begin with. Now she's living with greater intention on purpose to gather the goodness to grow her wisdom. So the point of our lifetime lay vows is our refuge protection from perpetuating suffering through those specific behaviors, avoiding those behaviors and then doing their opposites. I will protect life because then I won't get close to killing a human or a human fetus. I will speak truthfully about everything and then I won't get close to speaking wrongly about my spiritual path, right? I will avoid interfering with any partnership in any way. I'll find out, you know, Pia, are you in a partnership? Like, do you have a partnership at work? Where are your partnerships so that I can help you strengthen those partnerships and not get in the middle of them? I mean, we don't do that, but we could.Stealing anything of value. How do I be so safe around other people's stuff? You know, other people's lives, other people's fears. How do I be so safe that they don't feel any fear around me? Those kinds of things, right? How do I keep my mind bright and clear? So next might come her decision to do this as an ordained person.And if so, she would go to a qualified person, qualified ordained person to serve as her mentor and vow giver and request vows. And then what she would likely receive first is called the Parmarabdham. It means, I don't know the actual, it's not an actual vow, but it's a commitment to leave the home life, which is like a test period for leaving the home life. And there's not a specific period of time declared, but between the person and the, let's call it the abbot, although it's not necessarily the abbot of the monastery, the vow giver, the vow master, they would determine how long would this period be. So it would be as if she's given up the home life, but she hasn't quite yet. So for the monastics, for the men, traditionally, a family would give one of their male children to the monastery. And it usually happened when the boy was about seven years old. And the seven-year-olds would go into the monastery and have this ceremony in which they get their Parmarabdham. They're probably called vows, but they're not vows. It's a commitment because you can't take a vow until you're 20 years old or older. It's something about the maturity of our mind to make that decision and have the strong enough motivation for vows to actually grow. So there's this 14-year period of time, right? Do I have that right? 13-year period of time for the young men where they wear robes, they live in the monastery, they do the monastic lifestyle, but they aren't technically monks yet. We call them monks, but they're not yet. They have this Parmarabdham. So for this woman, we're presuming she's already adult. She makes this decision. She goes to live in the nunnery. She wears her robes. She does the nun's thing, but she isn't technically a nun. So she could, after some period of time, decide, oh, you know, this is really not my path. And she could say at the end of her Parmarabdham period, no, I think that this is not for me. And you see, she doesn't have vows that she needs to give up. She can change her mind and it doesn't interfere with her spiritual growth. So it's a sweet system, really, to have this time where you can test it out. For an adult man, I'm not sure. They probably could do the same. I don't know how it works in that way. So she takes her Parmarabdham period of time. And suppose at the end of that, she's like, yes, I want nun's vows. The first level that she receives is the Getso Ma.Getso means the novice nun's vows. In the novice nun's vows, there's four primary, six secondary, and three transgressions in their most basic form. The four are the same four as the four primary vows in the one day vows. No sexual activity, no killing, no stealing, no lying. Now, for her lifetime, the six secondary vows are like the secondary vows of the one day vows. But they have an additional factor about handling money and something else. Two additional factors. How you dress. And then, how you dress is in the three transgressions.So there are altogether 13 vows of the novice nun. Same number for the novice monk. Yike, we lost Victor.Victor's back. So she can stay at her Getso Ma level if she wants. Or after some period of time, she can go to her vow master and say, please, please, I want my full ordination. And that the vow master, you know, will do whatever they do. There's, you know, some kind of evaluation that happens. And, and if it is agreed that she will go on, the next thing she would receive is what's called the Gelob Ma. Gelob Ma is the intermediary, intermediate nun's vows. So to the Getso Ma vows, those 13, is added 12 more commitments, not vows, but commitments for two more years. Those commitments are divided into two kinds. That's Tsawe Chudruk and the Jeitun Chudruk. Chudruk means six, six things. So Tsawe means the six primary things. And Jeitun Chudruk means the six secondary things. So again, primary and secondary categories of intermediate nun additional commitments for two years. These are the six primary, sorry, the, yeah, the six primary ones have to do with guidelines for behaviors. When, when she would find herself in situations where she's having to deal with other people, in particular, other people of the opposite sex, how to do so in a way that doesn't, you know, give wrong impressions, doesn't contribute to mental afflictions in the other person's mind, doesn't contribute to mental afflictions in our, her own mind, right? Specific behavioral ways for specific situations where mental afflictions arise. And then the secondary, six secondary are guidelines of behaviors to avoid that have to do more with everyday life within the monastery, how to procure and store food, how to eat properly, these kinds of things. So she gets a glimpse into the full ordained nuns vows through these 12 additional commitments to see, see how it goes. Again, presumably at the end of the two-year timeframe, she could say, ah, no, I think I'll say it Geltzoma, right? At novice level, or she says, yeah, yeah, I'm all over this. Let me go on to my full ordained nuns vows, right? Between herself and her teacher, they'll make that determination. So suppose she wants to go on further. Then the next level of vow that she receives is called Sangchu Nerneki Sotram. Sangchu Nerneki Sotram. Nerneki Sotram means keep the morality purely. Sotram is morality. Sangchu means pure activity. And this particular grouping is a grouping of vows that have to do with observing celibacy purely.And it's a little peculiar because our novice nun vows included no sexual activity. So that sounds like celibacy to me. And yet here's an additional vows grouping called keep celibacy purely. Keep that pure behavior purely. So there's something more to it that we wouldn't know until we got to that level. But it's an additional piece of gaining the goodness in powerful ways that increases our ability to reach the wisdom from which we can really stop perpetuating our suffering. So it doesn't say whether these vows are given for a certain period of time or not. It sounds like there are a level of vows we actually get when we choose to go on from Gelob Ma to Gelong Ma. And so we would carry those vows with us. So once we do decide, yes, yes, I do want my full ordained vows. And the vow giver agrees. She goes on to receive her Gelong Ma, fully ordained nuns vows. And they come in five groups of vows. So the Gelong Ma grouping of vows is called the Tungwa Dena. It means the five groups of downfalls. The monks vows are called that too. Tungwa Dena, the five groups of downfalls. Now before we start into them, in the Tibetan tradition, in the Tibetan lineage of the tradition, years, years ago, there was a, now let me start over. In the Buddhist ordination tradition started by Lord Buddha. So the instructions are given by Lord Buddha. It says, any place there are ordained their Sangha, four to five or more Sangha members gathering together to do confession ceremony regularly. That country that they live in is now a Buddhist country. Whether the country considers itself a Buddhist country or not, the practitioners can consider them living in a Buddhist country. So you get four or five ordained people gathering together on the new moon and the full moon to do their confession and restore all their vows. That makes a place of Buddhist country. In a Buddhist country, in order to convey intermediate nuns vows, Sangchu Nirneki Sultram vows and Gelong Ma vows, you need 12 fully ordained nuns and you need a qualified abbot, abbotess, a qualified vow master to convey those vows. And in Tibet, in some period of time, there was a king who hated Buddhism and he wanted to wipe it out. So he set about to kill the monks and nuns. And he managed to kill almost all the nuns and many, many monks before someone took it upon themselves to stop him. Right? We've heard this story. A high level Bodhisattva killed him. And you know, that's a different story with a different moral to the story. The purpose here is that there were no longer 12 fully ordained nuns to gather together to convey intermediate and above vows. So they could make novice nuns, but nobody could go any higher than that. And then whatever nuns were left that could do that, they passed on and you wouldn't even have full nuns left. So they say the tradition of intermediate Sangchu Nerne Kyi Sultram and Gelong Ma vows in the Tibetan lineage has been broken. Now there are full nuns in the Tibetan nunneries, but they had to have a habit from outside Tibet. They either went to them or, you know, I don't know who did who or what, but they had to go outside of the Tibetan lineages in order to receive their full nuns vows. And so they received from Chinese masters, they received from, you know, other ordained traditions to get their vows. The vows in the other Buddhist traditions are the same vows. So we do have fully ordained nuns. Jigme, Chuki, they're fully ordained monks, nuns, but they went right to another system to receive them. So technically these levels four, five, and six of vows are not available in the Tibetan system or can be received in the Tibetan country. When, anyway, in a non-Buddhist country, you only need six fully ordained nuns to confer intermediate nun and above vows. The woman has to already have her novice vows. She has to have her robes. She has to have her begging bowl. And then you just need a qualified vow giver. And one would need a six, six fully ordained nuns together. Since this, the time that this class was taught in the mid nineties, a lot of, I want to say progress, but that's a little derogatory to history. A lot of change has happened. And so I don't know within the Tibetan system, whether they are now back to conferring nuns vows through the Tibetan tradition or not. What I do know is at Diamond Mountain, Geshe Michael Lama Kristi conveyed full nuns vows on a few women by gathering together the ordained people within our lineage and Ken Rinpoche's lineage. And then later Geshe Michael went on to convey full vows to more women. And I don't know whether he had them go through the intermediate level or not. I wasn't privy to all of that. And, you know, I did cross my mind, you know, how can a monk whose vows are different, the full ordained vows are different. How can a monk convey full vows on nuns if they technically don't have those full vows? And then, you know, anyway, so the Buddhist literature, Buddha's Buddhist literatures, it says, it says if a monk changes sex more than three times, they lose their vows. So apparently what can happen is that through the goodness of our spiritual practice, especially at the higher levels, a balance is happening in our subtle body that may, before it comes to balance, it may swing from one relative extreme to the other. And our maleness or femaleness, we all have some level of both. For the females, our female qualities predominate. For male, our male qualities predominate. And as we're working with our subtle bodies, right, those predominances can shift. And apparently, they can shift to the extent that the opposite sexual organ can appear on the body. Right? Our subtle body work can make, can manifest as shifting sexes. And the literature says, if that happens once as an ordained person, no problem. If it happens a second time, meaning you shift back, still no problem. But if it happens a third time, you break your vows. And it implies that you have some, some control over the practices that that's making that happen. And I don't know about those so much. The point is that that's the clue to how it is that you could have what looks like a male ordaining females. If they're aware of the quality of male femaleness in their body, and they take on the aspect necessary to be able to convey those vows. So, you know, that's way beyond my level of perception and understanding. But so it is possible, then for what looks like a male preceptor to give vows to female practitioners, and it's valid in its takes. The ideal, of course, is to have a woman preceptor nun of high esteem, be the one who's giving the full nun's vows in the presence of 12 fully ordained women. In degenerate times, that's harder and harder to find. And so in an outlying country, you need at least six. And you need at least somebody who can confer those vows. And so it's happening now. We do have sojong happening regularly. I mean, we know that our sangha does it. And no doubt there are other sanghas that are doing it too in the United States. So technically speaking, the United States is a Buddhist country and now it takes 12 ordained people to confer these vows. And our group even can get 12 together. Our sangha has grown. They don't all live in the same place, which is a difficulty. But okay, if a gelugma, if an intermediate nun changes sex, she becomes a getsulpa. She becomes a novice monk, because the monks don't have this intermediate stage. So then from her getsulpa, she can ask for her gelungpa and go directly there. Whether that's an advantage or not, I don't know. Okay, so we're at the level of her receiving her fully ordained nun's vows. What she receives is her tumwa dena, the five groups of downfalls, five groups of specified behaviors that she's going to avoid. These are all I will, I pledge to avoid, blah, blah, blah. These categories of the five, they're hierarchical in their seriousness of damaging them from those that are the worst down to those that are just minor. They all qualify as vows to avoid, to stop perpetuating mental afflictions through which we perpetuate our suffering. The first level, meaning the level of behaviors that to do them is the worst, worst culprits for mental afflictions is called pampa. Pampa means to lose, to lose in the sense of your favorite baseball team lost the championship. Not to lose in the sense of, I can't find my car keys, I've lost them, but lose versus win. Pampa means to lose. It means to be defeated. We have been defeated by our mental afflictions when a pampa is committed, is done. So it's not that anybody else is defeating us. It's we have given in to our personal competitor, which is our mental afflictions. These particular behaviors damage our vows seriously. The mental affliction that has overcome us, it's not the same mental affliction for all of the pampas, different ones, but it was strong enough to have overcome us. Some traditions say, you break one pampa, you've broken all your vows. Our lineage, not just Diamond Mountain, but the Galupa, they say, no, you break one pampa, it's serious business. You have to work hard to get that restored. And it does damage the strength of all your vows, but you don't break everything by way of that one. Their logic is, if that were true, nobody would ever gain benefit from having their ordained vows. So these pampas, there are eight for nuns and four for monks. And mostly they correspond to those four root vows of the lay person, not killing a human or human fetus. Although they're not killing at all, but the pampa is more specific to the human, the high karmic, high karmic object killing. Hmm. Second level of fully ordained vows is called plakma. Plakma means remainder, like leftovers. You make a big pot of soup, you serve it to your family, and there's like two servings left in the pot. We have leftovers. Plakma is that. Here it means their behaviors that when we do the behavior we've pledged to avoid, there's still something left over that we can repair. So the pampas, we need to retake the vows. With plakma, we can repair those vows. And it's just a difference in what we do to make the correction of it. But so there are less serious damage to our mind to break one of the vows that's in the category of plakma. Bless you. There are 20 plakmas for nuns and 13 for monks. The next level is called tunje. Tunje means downfalls. They're called that because they make you fall down to the lower realms. Well, any of these done and not cleaned up would make us fall down to the lower realms. But these are more specifically behaviors that have to do with the behaviors that if that seed was our projecting karma would be a seed that sent us to animal realm, hungry ghost, or helping. Remember course eight when we learned about the specific factors right there. They have to do with that kind of thing. More specific. Within these tunjes, downfalls, there's two categories of them. The category called pangtung and the category called tunje basik. Pangtung means give up downfall and tunje basik means simple downfall. The give up downfall means that this is a deed that we did that damaged the vow. Where to restore the vow, we have to give up something to make up for it. So my example was suppose this nun had gotten permission to go visit her family like next month and then this pangtung damage happens and when she's cleaning it up she says to make up for that behavior that I did I will give up that privilege of going to see my family. So sorry family. I can't come because I'm giving up something to fix my vow. The tunje basik is a downfall that you can fix without giving up something. So just two different levels. The downfall where you give up something to fix it, there are 33 for nuns, 34 for monks. In the simple downfalls, there's 180 for nuns and 90 for monks. And again we automatically think why are there so many more for women, right? And it's not a bad thing. It's a good thing, right? There's more about women's bodies that need to be dealt with than men's bodies. Part of them have to do with that. There's the advantage of the having more vows is that there's more goodness that we're gathering every minute we're not doing those behaviors. So it's actually good to have more vows than fewer vows. Do you see? It's not some punishment. You're more restricted than they are. Anyway, you get it. It's just hard because our minds go, why do we get more, right? As if it's punishment, as if it's discipline. No, it's making it easier. Women have it harder. So let's make it easier. Let's give them more vows so they gather their goodness bigger, faster. Hmm. The next level of fully ordained vows is called sore shock. Shock means confess. Sore means individual. So these are downfalls that must be confessed individually to fix. So it seems like all of them need to be confessed individually to fix, but apparently these ones specifically would need to be said out loud to somebody in order for our own mind to be able to fix them properly. They're less serious than the previous. Still need to be repaired, of course. For nuns, there are 11 of them. For monks, there are four. The next level is called Nyeje. Nyeje simply means did bad. These are just did bads. I did a did bad. The sure shock and Nyeje, they're pretty minor verbal and physical behaviors that perpetuate, that are a result of mental afflictions that perpetuate mental afflictions, pretty minor ones. But minor mental afflictions are just as negatively impacting us as major mental afflictions. And maybe they're worse in the sense that because they're minor, we tolerate them. And then they grow into major ones. If we let them go, you know, Master Shantideva would say, you know, you can beat back your enemy and send them home, but they're just going to come back again. You can't, you can't let those mental afflictions survive. They've got to be completely destroyed. Which, you know, doesn't mean destroyed. It means transformed. Our reaction to things, people, situations, we transform them. To transform a mental affliction of anger into fearlessness or love, that means there's no anger left. The anger has been destroyed. But you took the power of the anger and you changed it into something else. Okay, so Nyeje, the did-bads, there are 112 for nuns and 112 for monks, and I don't know if they're the same 112 or not. So if you are a math whiz, then you just looked at all those numbers and recognized there are 253 monks vows and 364 nuns vows. Guidelines to live by through which we stop reacting from those mental afflictions. We stop perpetuating our mental afflictions. So let's take our break. I just have a little bit left of class. Let's get refreshed. Look at that word Sojong. That's the end of our vocabulary list. I'm going to stop the share and pause the recording. Okay, so how do we repair our vows? Either ordained vows, lifetime lay vows, any vows. We use something called Sojong. So means repair, jong means purify. So repair, purify, purify, repair. We get that as a confession ceremony, which for the ordained community, they gather twice a month, like it's established by Lord Buddha to gather twice a month, generally done on the new moon and the full moon, although different traditions can choose different days. They gather and recite the Sojong prayers. And they have a sequence, of course. And then the wording of the ceremony implies that each one confesses each thing that needs confessing individually. And in the end, it says, you know, has everybody confessed everything? To do a wrong deed and not confess it carries its own negativity, beyond the wrong deeds negativity. So confessing it doesn't always mean you have to go to somebody and confess it, right? We can confess it ourselves, meaning admit that we did something wrong. No, we need to confess it. And then, you know, mentally confess it before our being that we keep in mind or keep in our heart. But it's a powerful thing to, to witness ourself being in front of someone else, presumably someone we admire enough to care what they might think about us and our behavior, and to be able to say to them, I did this wrong thing. No, and we, and of course, we say I did this wrong thing. And our mind wants to justify why we did it and etc. And, you know, maybe you include that maybe you don't. But the the point being, we're admitting to ourselves, we're watching ourselves admit to someone else, I had this mental affliction, I did this behavior. And I know that it's impacted my mind in such a way that I am very likely to do it again. And so perpetuate my own unhappiness that I vowed to stop. So I regret it. Not shame, not guilt, not woe is me, I'll never be good enough. Just I regret it. And I need you to hear it. To help my mind say, puh, right, I will not do it again. That person who's being the receiver of one's confession, their job is to not judge you, right? We just said, choose the person as who you're going to confess to as someone that, right, that you would feel badly about how they would think about you from what you're telling them, right? But you know, that from their side, they're not going to think badly about you, because they're serving as your confessor, and their job is to just be this sponge, right? And your confession goes into the sponge. And at the end of the session, you know, they burn the sponge in a fire. So they're not supposed to remember what you've said, they're not allowed to hold it against you, right? They're not ever gonna tell it to somebody else. It's all in complete confidentiality, and non judgment. So it's a skill really, to be somebody's person that gets confessed to, it would be something we do out of great love, not out of arrogance, not out of, no, my purity must be better than yours, right, that kind of thing. Then from our side, the one who's using that person as a confessor, right, then we set up our parameters, please, will you please not judge me, not remember, keep this confidential, so that I can really spill my guts to you? Right? Will you please serve me in that way? It's a great honor to be somebody's confessor. And then we as the confessee, you know, want to be able to trust them. So both ways, right, we can play both roles. We are the confessor. And we can be the confessee, the confessor, meaning the one who receives, and the confess, you get what I mean, language fails. So, but in the Sojong ceremony, the way it appears to be done now, they gather as a group, they all say the prayer. And in the end, you know, do you see that what you did was wrong? Yes, I see what I did was wrong. Do you pledge to not do it again? Yes, I pledge to not do it again. You never actually say to the group, I did this, this, this, and this. Geshe-la said, you know, if you were a serious monk, as you're reciting the prayer, you're thinking through your vows, right? This, all these Pong tunes, all these, all these, which ones did I do? Right? I regret they, right, you're confessing in your own mind, each individual one, how you do that for 253 or 364 vows, while you're reciting a prayer, I don't know. Right? So I don't know how it gets actually done. When we understand about Sojong, it, it has built into it, the Four Powers. But when we just do the Four Powers as a recite the verse, you don't have time to stop and do the Four Powers. So for our own personal Sojong-ing, we can do the ceremony with other people. And it's useful, it's powerful to do a group purification like that. And we don't want to wait two whole weeks. From when we did our, even our just did bad, it's gonna grow in those two weeks, grow in its input on our own mind. So it's not that you can only do your confession. Every two weeks, it's good to have a regular time frame to do this ceremony to formally regroup. But we're doing our Four Powers daily, maybe multiple times a day, when we're careful with ourselves. Yeah.Oh, nuts. I just did one. Shoot. Right? I regret it. You don't really have to even think it so terribly through if it was just a teeny one. God nuts. Got me again. I regret it. I'll do this as my makeup. I will right now do 30 seconds of power of restraint. You know, and go on with your day. The Four Powers doesn't have to take long.It just has to be on our mind. I'm talking to myself here too. It's like I get on automatic pilot and think, ah, you know, I'm doing good all day long and not right, not watch the nuances. So Four Powers always twice a month. You know, sit down. You can do it before your altar and read through the confession ceremony and think about the last two weeks. How am I doing? You know, where do I want to increase my focus of activity? I think in your reading is the confession prayer. And if not, let me know. I'll send it. I'm sure I have it. So our ethical life is what drives the success of our spiritual practices. Like our ethical life is our spiritual practices. That's what they're all about. And so even tiny little things like, you know, idle speech is enough to interfere with our mind's ability to concentrate deeply enough that even while we're saying our prayers of purification, right, we could be all distracted, let alone in our meditation when we're trying to Mahamudra our way to the direct perception of the clear light nature of our own mind. If we've got all this rattling around because of our habits and behaviors, right, no amount of Mahamudra is going to get us to seeing our own true nature, mind's own true nature. So, you know, Buddha says we've got 84,000 mental afflictions. Like don't beat yourself up. That's a lot. And it's too much to work with. Even if we could do one a day and get rid of it forever in 124 hour period of time, that's 84,000 days. I can't do the math, but it's a long time. So, you know, we need a system. And Buddha and his wisdom and omniscience says, let's just boil those 84,000 down to the 10 main ones, the 10 main situations through which all these others are triggered. If we can work at that level, right, it takes the wind out of the sails of all the rest of them. And you don't have to fix all 84,000. You fix the ones that come out of these 10. What 10? Killing, stealing, sexual misconduct, lying, divisive speech, harsh speech, useless speech, jealousy, ill will, wrong view. Avoid those 10 like the plague and the other 84,000 things will not ever arise in our minds. 10, that's doable. Just 10, right? Work with them one at a time. Work with the ones of body first and then speak however you want to work on them. But work on them. How do we work on them? It's one thing to say, oh, I will avoid killing. And then, you know, march around in my world, you know, where do I have the opportunity to kill and I'm not going to do it. It's another thing to say, well, what's the opposite of killing? Protecting life. How can I go through my life protecting life? Because if I do that, I'm not going to get close to killing anything, right? I don't have to tiptoe through, oh my gosh, am I killing? We're walking through where I'm protecting life, protecting life, protecting life. And then it's minor things like wear your seatbelt, insist that the people in your car wear their seatbelt. Stop at the stop sign. Step over the line of ants, right? All these little ways that we can be more conscientious in our protecting life that increases our sensitivity to situations where we might be inclined or faced with taking a life or contributing to taking a life. And our own karmic goodness resources will kick in an alternative choice than to just do what the automatic pilot would say, kill that thing. Now, I had a snake in my heart yesterday. And snakes are startling. You know, first you get this startle reaction, and then you check, is it dangerous or is it not? And it's in this private part of my yard that I don't know how it, I mean, there's space where it could get in. But why would it come in when it's got the whole desert around us, you know, to go anywhere at once it comes into my bricked in patio, you know, and I'm watering the plants and all of a sudden I hear this movement, you know, and it's like, and it's this long, slinky black with yellow rings snake and beautiful, really beautiful. But my initial reaction is, ah, it's dangerous. What do I do? And then my instant next was, I just watch it, you know, it's not dangerous. It's not coming at me, right? This is perfectly safe. Let's just watch it and enjoy it. I didn't have the presence of mind to say, Oh, money, pay me home. Will you be my student someday? I was just watching it. And it slithered along, slithered around this corner, came around the compost bin, looked inside the compost bin from the little vent, stuck its head inside there, looked around, came back out, went past the shed around to the other corner of the wall, started to climb the wall. Like why would a snake climb a wall? I'm fascinated at this point. I see that above the walls up against the house and at the top two bricks, there's a gap between the brick and the wall. And I thought, I wonder if that snake's going to go up and go through that gap. You know, it was big enough if the snake squished itself and son of a gun, it went up. It was about five feet off the ground and it's just creeping itself straight up, goes in that hole and out the other side. It's like what in the world? But it's like the whole time I'm not flipping out. Oh my gosh, snake in my yard. I've got to kill it. I'm protecting the life of that snake. And the whole thing was fascinating. I enjoyed every minute, but the first instant, when it was slithery snake. And then fortunately, past goodness of protecting life kicked in. Instead of past, snakes are dangerous. I need to do something. And it's like probably all of us, snakes are not dangerous. But in the olden days, that snake could have been lunch, right? I might have reacted in that way. Ah, you know, lunch, if I was starving. So protecting life, we do it, even when we don't realize we're doing it. Because I had this opportunity to be mean to that snake or even, right, take its life and I didn't. So like that, take those 10 non-virtues, flip them around into the positive. I will protect life. So it'll reduce my likelihood of ever getting in this situation where I would take life. And then expand that to see what it looks like. I will protect others' property to the extent where people are so safe around me, right? They leave their open wallet in my care and know, you know, complete safety, leave their children in my care, complete safety, right? The protect others' property, protect others' relationships, not just sexual relationships, but your team at work, you have got the best IT guy, I wish he worked for me. Yay, you have the best IT guy, may you keep them forever. Instead of how can I get him to work for me? Yeah, not interfering with others' partnerships of any kind, even promoting partnerships. Have I got an IT guy for you, right? Promote relationships, still killing, stealing, sexual misconduct, lying, speak so truthfully, right? That we create the karma to be believed, to be respected, to be honored, even our own self-talk becomes so accurate, truthful, that our own self-guidance, right, gets stronger. Mmm, lying, harsh speech, speech used to be kind, to add to gentleness, to add to the beauty of the world, opposite of divisive. Praise other people to other people, say things that will bring people together, useless talk, speak purposely or not at all. It's okay to be silent, we don't have to be yammering all the time. Coveting is the word, being unhappy when someone is getting some success, technically, whether it's success we want or happiness we want, just being unhappy when somebody else gets some happiness, our mind makes us want to interfere in some way. So, the opposite of that is really being happy with others' happiness, being happy, helping others get the happiness they want, you know, moral, healthy kinds of happiness. Ill will is being, ill will is being, disliking others such that we don't care whether they get unpleasant things, right? Being happy when something unpleasant happens to somebody we don't like is ill will, even wishing something bad would happen to somebody we don't like. The opposite of ill will, it would be caring about the happiness of those who are having difficulty whether we like them or not. It's the whether we like them or not piece that feels powerful in overcoming ill will, doing the opposite of ill will. And then wrong view, wrong view is not believing karma and emptiness, not believing past and future lives, etc. But it ends up being competitiveness, you know, looking for entertainment in things that are actually harmful, right? Wrong view manifests in many different ways. So, the opposite of wrong view, of course, is right view, which would, like how that would manifest would be this really clear understanding of my interactions with others are what creates the future circumstances for everybody. Like I've skipped schools a little bit here. From the individual freedom vows level, my behavior is what creates the circumstances for my future. And how I interact with others is where I make those imprints that will become the circumstances of my future. And then for Mahayana, it's like, right, and that, and that's true for everybody in my future, whether they're going to be happy or not. But it's the same idea. So somehow defining what the opposite of wrong view is for us in a way that's, you know, doable, rather than theoretical, oh, I believe in karma and emptiness. I believe in past and future lives. Yeah, that we don't take that to the grocery store. That's theoretical. So somehow with our right view application, but it's important because it underlies all the rest, right? When we're convinced about this seed planting thing, that's our right view. That's now informing our decision making while we're interacting with the snake, while we're interacting with our coworkers. Our belief in mental seeds being planted by our behavior is our correct view, being on alert as we're interacting from these other perspectives of the other nine circumstances. Yes, Kong Ling. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you, teacher. Okay. Actually, this Vinaya, I mean, it's Buddha purposely teach for, I mean, the well-being of everyone, is it? So that's why he wrote another book or he teach. I don't think, I mean, normally he just taught, isn't it? He never put down in words all the teaching he has been taught, isn't it? He never write it. Okay. So that's why later, eventually, his follower then put it into words, you know, for the people, I mean, who want to read it later. Okay. So, which means that this one, because I see from here, there are many, many, I think like vows for different group of people. So the very fundamental one is for someone to have the basic 10 first, isn't it? Right. The basic 10 are behaviors to avoid.We don't actually ever take them as vowed behaviors because we can't, as humans, actually avoid them entirely. So the 10 non-virtues are these guidelines of behavior. And I think this, sorry, I think that this 10 is the very basic one that we cannot do somehow, you know, we cannot do it, otherwise it will be very serious, sick planted, isn't it? Right, right. Those 10 behaviors are the worst things that we could do if, if we do them with those all four factors, right? They're all negative behaviors, no matter how many of those four factors we have. But these are behaviors that if we do them with all four factors, that's the worst effect that we can have in our mind. Right. Of all the different 84,000 things that we can do wrong, do harmful, not wrong, harmful, harmful based on how they will come back to affect us. Uh-huh. And, and I'm quite, you know, curious that, you know, um, the, I think, I mean, the 253 at the, I mean, uh, who, I mean, who, who need to, if let's say, uh, 253 for the monk or for the nun? Monk, monk. Monk. 253 for monk. Uh, actually, is there any listing for this one? Because I think it's quite a lot, you know, 253, I mean. Right. Right. So traditionally lay people would not be shown those texts that shows that all the different vows for the ordained people, because the lay people are the supporters of the monastery. And they feel that if the lay people know the vows, they'll be judging the monk's behaviors according to the lay people's understanding of the vows. And so misjudging these high karmic objects such that the power of their offerings would not be so powerful for their minds. And of course, risking the loss of their support. So, you know, instead of saying to the monks, tell everybody your vows and live by them for crying out loud, they say, you know, maybe it's better for lay people not to know. And then fast forward to, you know, nowadays. Anyway, let me stop, hold that thought. If we attend an ordination ceremony, the vows are, are recited when the person takes their vows, they hear them, they say them, I will avoid blah, blah, blah, blah. So if we're paying attention in the vow ceremony, as non-ordained people, we can hear them. So, but still we wouldn't have it written down and who can remember 253, right? From hearing it in a ceremony. But Geshe Michael in the translator course with Alison have been working on translating that, you know, that text on vows in which they went through all the vows of all the different levels of vows that you can take. So it's been translated into English. It's not out yet, but they're finished it or very close to finishing it. So it'll be available in English soon. It's, it's only been available in Tibetan and Chinese. And I don't know what other languages. So, you know, if you can get it, you can read it. So they are available now, right? Is the long story short on that they are available through the Mixed Nuts translator. I forget the name of it, but it's Alison's, Alison's text. You can see them first. Thank you. You know, part of the danger of seeing them, if we're inclined towards them to see them first, you know, it's like we might look at them and go, Oh man, I'm not sure I really want to live like that.Right. And we get discouraged. Whereas, you know, if our motivation to be ordained is, I don't care what they are, but I want, I want to use that way of life to impact my mind strongly, right? Then, then it's better not to see them because we would self doubt before we even got started. So in a way, if we're inclined to want ordination, maybe go the way the system was designed of not knowing them first and then taking them. But you know, our minds don't think like that anymore. We want to know what we're taking the leap into. Right. It's a trade off. Okay. I understand. Oh, just curious because I mean, the bigger, bigger, why is 253? And then I just wonder, you know, I mean, what is inside? Yeah, I know. I mean, how could, I can't imagine even knowing 364 vows, you know, but when I look at my little book, I don't know, number, you know, 258 is that I don't know that, but I have a sense of all those behaviors and, and I've got, I don't know, I've got in the close to 300s and, and not even none with fully ordained nuns vow. So somebody else has the same number of vows as me. Plus they're fully ordained nuns vows. You know, they're in the 600 level of stuff. You can't track that every day. That's where the system of the six times book, right? You rotate them, you end up going through all of them, you know, in a year or so at least, but they're in groups of similar behaviors, right? It's doable. It's doable. So as we've heard that the, that the impact on our mind of taking a vow to avoid a behavior makes avoiding that behavior, a stronger impact than we just, when we just say, I will avoid it, right? To take a vow to avoid it is a stronger impact on our mind planting seeds. When we are in the situation of that, where that behavior could be an option, keeping that vow deliberately is a more powerful, positive karmic imprint that our natural inclination to be nice is seeds from past lives, mostly. And we're, we're using them up as we go. And assuming that my niceness will last my whole life, because we believe my niceness is a quality of me, not imprinted factors from past life that I'm using up. So the tendency is for someone not on their path is, you know, their kind and their kind and their kind on automatic pilot. And as they grow older, they're using up their kindness seeds and their world seems to deteriorate and things get harder. And then because they haven't really made effort to be nice, they just were nice. Naturally, it becomes harder to be nice, right? And a nice person becomes a grumpy old person. And you know, it makes sense. They hurt. They're tired, right? They can't do the things they want to do. There's all kinds of reasons why we'd be grumpy as an old person. But those are surface reasons. They're not the underlying reason was that they used up their niceness from past lives. Well, didn't they imprint niceness by being nice? Yes. But they weren't imprinted strongly enough to be ripening in this life. You'll still get another life where you're probably nice on automatic pilot. But we want to be nice on purpose, off automatic pilot, so that we are intentionally planting these seeds in a strong, powerful way by taking vows to be nice. You know what I mean? Specific vows for specific, avoiding specific behaviors where it's like I determine I will get off automatic pilot and do this niceness by choice from a Vinaya perspective so that I can stop all my mental afflictions forever from a Mahayana perspective so that I can help everybody stop their suffering because all their suffering is just driven by this big mistake that's perpetuated in our minds by staying on automatic pilot. But I can't just tell them, look, get off automatic pilot and you'll stop suffering because maybe I have the seeds for them to want to hear it and probably I don't because I didn't want to hear what they had to say to me in the past. All right, so does all this mean that in order to reach our highest spiritual goals we have to become ordained? No, not at all. We don't even have to ever take vows technically. Do you want to speed up the process? Yes. Then at least take lifetime lay vows as a human and keep them, right? Taking them and not keeping is not useful. Take them and keep them. Every now and then do your one-day vows on, you know, special days if you feel like that's not enough for your own mind and you really want to declare yourself as rejecting worldly life behavior, there's the option of taking ordained vows. Ideally, you would leave the home life and go live in a monastery. Ideally, that would be a monastery where the Mahayana is being taught also, right, if we're Mahayana. But even that isn't absolutely necessary for the ordained community, you know, in these modern times where we don't have communities of support to support the monastic community so that they can focus on their study and practice and say the prayers for the people, right? We're in a world now where people get to say their prayers themselves. They get to learn them. They get to do the practices themselves. We don't need to rely on the monastics to do it for us because we can read and write and practice now. So, in a sense, being an ordained person is harder because we don't live surrounded by other people trying to live in the same way. It's up to us to extrapolate how to live amongst other apparently non-ordained people from an ordained way. You know, probably they don't even know you're ordained, right? Our community doesn't know who Samanti and I are in this arena. But we still hold ourselves to those vows. And we fortunately have the kind of karma that, you know, when we say, you know, no, no, we don't drink, people just go, fine. They don't go, why? What's the matter with you, right? Do you think I'm wrong for drinking? They just like, okay, great. Let me just leave it. But people aren't necessarily always that kind. Okay, so one last thing is that when we do take our vows, when we take our lifetime lay vows, our motivation is supposed to have in it, I am doing this for my lifetime. I'm going to take these vows, and I'm going to keep them until this body dies. And I don't care, you know, if I'm 99 years old, and I'm living in a home, I still want to live according to my five lifetime lay person's vows. So wherever I live, I need them to know that and when they take care of me, right, I need them to take care of me in a way that doesn't put me in the position of doing any of my lifetime lay vows. That's a, that's a worry. That's a worry I have getting closer and closer to that. It's like, you put me into a care home. They don't, they're not going to know about my vows. And even if I have somebody who says, you know, she lives according to these vows, they'll go Yeah, yeah, fine. Right? We'll take care of it. But it's not their practice. It's my practice. And what happens when I get to the point where my practice can only happen in my head and not my body? Or the other way around in my body and not my head? What happens then? You know, it's like there aren't any old, old, old folks homes for spiritual practitioners. It's not even legal to restrict them in the United States to that if you want funding. But anyway, I'm going off on a tangent that if we have or are ordained vows, when we take our ordained vows, our intention is to keep them for life. We know those vows go when we die. But our intention is, these are for my whole lifetime. But maybe somewhere along the way, I don't know, circumstances change. And you recognize that, you know, maybe having your ordained vows, but living in the outer world, is negatively impacting your mind or other people's minds. Not that you can't keep your vows, and you quit, but that you're keeping your vows. And that and somehow, right, your impact on, on others is somehow limited in that way. Right? We could imagine it, that if you are a monk, wearing robes everywhere, and it was attracting attention, and you were getting, like, attention and fame. And like, that's the that's the opposite of why you became a monk, right? You became a monk to leave that home life and fame. But now because you're a monk, because of your goodness, you're attracting fame, you might say to yourself, gosh, it would be better for me to go back to be looking like an ordinary person. Probably they're still living according to those vows, but they might give back their robes. You can give back your ordained vows, anytime you need feel the need. We are free to do so. And there's a ceremony through which we do so. And, you know, it's an impact on our mind that will interfere in the future in some way. But it's not. It's, it's, it's not such a bad thing, that it that it isn't an option. For for those who might be aware of someone giving back their vows. The important piece is that we are very likely to judge them in some way. And do you remember, Buddha said, if you are me or someone like me, you can judge another and if you are not meaning omniscient, you're gonna fail in your judgment, you're gonna be wrong. And your wrong judgments gonna send you to a lower realm. So don't judge them. Right? Don't judge them negatively. Maybe even judge them positively, in the sense that gosh, they were honest enough with that themselves to see that that lifestyle that they had pledged to isn't right for them anymore. And they were honest enough to let the world see that. No, even if the world thinks they must have failed as a monk, right? The world doesn't know what they're thinking. So we do have the option, even with our five lifetime lay vows, we can give vows back anytime we want. There's a method to doing so. But the thing is, when we're taking the vow, and we're motivated to get my vow, if our mind is thinking, and if it doesn't go well, I'll just give it back. We won't get the vow. So we want this full on commitment when we take the vow. But if along the way, there's some reason, good reason, we need to give them back, we can do so. Right? Really, it's a system set up for success. It's quite beautiful. Vows are not restrictions. Vows are guidelines of behavior that are designed to make our lives easier, not harder. Because we don't have to stop and figure out what choice, just match the situation with the vow. And don't do what the vow says to avoid do the opposite. So once upon a time, I sat down with all my vows. And I wrote out what's the what would be the opposite of this one? Right? They're all don't do this. What would be the opposite? What would be the opposite? What would be the opposite? When I looked at all of those, with their different categories, they are all behaviors through which we would create a long healthy life, abundance, healthy, sustainable partnerships, the ability to speak and be heard and valued in our speech, so able to teach. What are Geshe Michael's five? Abundance, long life, partnership, inner peace, right? And save the world. So it's like, oh, my gosh, all these things I pledge to avoid, when I do their opposite, I am making the seeds for those five, and in the fifth, to be the one that guides others to it too. It's so beautiful when I piece that all together. It's like, it is meant for success. If we just go with the program, Geshe-la says it often, just go with the program. You don't need to know all these details. That's what Lamrim is for. You don't know the details. You just need to be inspired by the stories to go with the program. And if you can stay inspired by the stories to stay on the program, that's enough. If you need the details to keep you on the program, that's what this ACI is for. You know, our minds are different. So but either way, it's just it's like, oh, my gosh, it doesn't have to be so hard. Just go with the program. All right. So the program is taken, keep your vows at whatever level is right for you. So remember that person we needed, we wanted to be able to help. We've learned a lot that we will use sooner or later to help them in that deep and ultimate way. And that's a great, great 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 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 accepted and blessed. 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 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 happiness, filled with loving kindness, filled with wisdom, and may it be so. All right. Thank you for the opportunity to share. Thank you

Vocabulary Class 6

TEN foundation

TONG WAY GYU How to lose your vows

LAPPA PUL to offer your vows/to give your vows back

SHI PU to die and move on

TSEN NYI JUNG if the opposite sex organ emerges

LEN SUM GYUR if you change gender three times or more

GETSA CHE if you destroy the root of your accumulated virtue

NYI SHU MALUN DERSHE if you were younger than 20 yrs when you took the vows and 

still are younger than 20

TEN CHIR KE LANG to agree to have sex (nun with intermediate vows)

NYIN SHAK DE 24 hrs period passes (one day vow)

TSA TUNG JUNGWA breaking the defeats

DAMCHU NUPPA if the holy Dharma disappears in the land

BULUN NORNDEN SHIN to have a big debt but still be rich (referring to break a defeat)

NEKAP DREBU HLA MI closing the doors to lower rebirth

TARTUK DREBU JANGCHUB SUM to reach the three enlightenments

Je Tsongkapa the guy from Tsongka (the area he grew up)

All right, welcome back. We are ACI Course 9 Classics on June 27th, 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 are gazing at you with their unconditional love for you, smiling at you with their holy great compassion. Their wisdom radiates 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. Learning more and more about emptiness and karma, we glimpse how it's possible. And so I invite you to grow your wish into a longing and your longing into an intention. And with that 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 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 hand.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, 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 and sharing this glass in 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 and sharing this glass in 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 and sharing this glass in the rest, may all beings reach their total awakening to the benefit of every single other. The last class, we heard about all those different kinds of individual freedom vows and their numbers. And it was just lists, so I'm not going to go back over it. This class is what we need to know about taking and keeping those vows so that we can understand better. Yeah, how to how to use our vows. So we're studying from Je Tsongkhapa's commentary. And he says, first of all, there has to be a proper foundation, which is called the den. The foundation, like the concrete slab that the building is put down on, the concrete slab needs to be strong, firm, lasting. So there needs to be a strong foundation. But really what this means is for us to to get our vows when we actually take the ceremony, we have to be the strong foundation. It's a little different wording to say we have to have a strong foundation. We've been talking about that, the foundation of growing our motivation, learning about emptiness and karma, learning what the vows are. But here we need to be the strong foundation. Like some quality of our body mind, even beyond that, our who we say we are, needs to be the foundation that's strong as concrete that can hold a building up. So what makes us a strong foundation and who who can who can become that? Je Tsongkhapa is addressing. So he says we need to have this appropriate body and mind to become the foundation for our vows. And he says only humans have the capacity to be that strong foundation. So pleasure beings can't get it, can't get vows. And animals can't get vows. And anybody else but humans can't get vows. So meaning lower realm beings can't get vows. And higher than humans can't get vows. And it's not because Buddha decreed it. Only humans can get vows. It's because humans are are who can have this sent this mental state of renunciation. So we heard that our motivation for our Pratimoksha vows needs to be renunciation. And here they're taking that a little bit deeper and saying, you know, we become the foundation upon which the building of vows can be supported by being a human with renunciation. It doesn't mean that every human is the foundation for getting vows. Because a human with no renunciation, even if they're in the ceremony, right, and pledging, if they have no renunciation, the vows aren't gonna happen. Because you're trying to build vows on a quicksand. And so, but only humans have the capacity to develop this renunciation that makes us a proper foundation. So again, that renunciation is recognizing that everything in our experience has been suffering, is suffering. And everything we try to do to stop it, avoid it, get happiness doesn't actually work. And all the time we're trying every every everything to get happy and avoid what we don't want. We're using up our lifetime, and possibly our even opportunity of being human. Right? And it's like once we connect the dot, it's like ee gads, right? There's got to be another way. I've got to stop this just for myself at the individual a vows level. So strong renunciation makes us that strong foundation for receiving our vows, that lower realms are too much in survival mode for it to ever occur to them. Gosh, what I do to try to get happy doesn't work. They're just too on automatic pilot. It's the characteristic of those lower realms. And then the higher realm beings, they don't question either, you would think that they would. But just pleasure, pleasure, and more pleasure until the end. And then by the time you might get Oh, man, this isn't what I expected. It's too late for your renunciation to grow. It's too late to get vows for sure. So we're in this perfect sweet spot of being humans. Now, he goes on to say, and there are seven characteristics, which make a person a being, which implies makes a human ineligible for taking vows. First, he says, beings that who live on the northern continent, called the called the called unpleasant sounds. They, they, those are humans also. But they can't, they can't get vows. So if you recall that 37 pile mandala practice, and it's outlining the the four continents with their subcontinents. And in that extended teaching, it talks about the beings that live on each of those continents. They're all called human realms in those continents. They're not.They don't they look different than us, but they're still human. So it's not we learned, it's not, you know, continent of Africa, Euro Asia, Americas, it's not those continents that we're talking about. It's like our whole world is the southern continent, what we know of our as our world is the southern continent. And there's some similar place that beings live. That's the northern continent, east and west as well. So here he's singling out the northern continent. And what's unique to the northern continent, apparently, is that the beings who live on the northern continent, the humans that live on the northern continent, their lifespans are fixed. So do you remember that one of the human sufferings in our world is lifespans are not fixed. So the beings in that world, their lifetimes are fixed, fixed at 500 years, whatever period of time that is for them. But apparently, if our life spans were fixed, that precludes developing this sense of renunciation. To me, it doesn't quite make sense. I would think if I knew I had 500 years, and that's all. Like, I would think I would get renunciated really quick, say I need to do the best I can do because I've only got 500 years, right. But apparently, it's that circumstance that because you know, the uncertainty that we have about what's going to happen next. Without that, it, we don't question and don't seem to get this what whatever spurs a renunciation. So they live consistently for 500 years. And then in the last day or so they hear your time's up, you're gonna die. And that's the unpleasant sound that the whole place is named after. So I guess somebody's 500 years is coming up every day. And so somebody's hearing that unpleasant sound all the time. I don't, I don't know. But the point is, if our lifespans are fixed, we don't grow the renunciation. And so even if it occurred to you, during your 500 years that you wanted to take vows, you couldn't get them. You know, a lot, a lot of this, I mean, almost all of this explanation, I've got on the shelf, because it's like, wait, what about this? What about that? I have so many questions about it. And no doubt the answers are out there in the Tibetan language that I can't access, even though we have access to the database. And for me personally, I didn't feel I needed to really nail down those details. I understood the big picture. The message for me is, is my situation any of these seven? No. Right. And, you know, what can I do to help me stay in this category of not having these seven? So, you know, not to worry if it's like, what? So first, first of the seven characteristics that makes us ineligible to get vows is being a being who lives on the northern continent. Our uncertain lifestyle lifespan means that we could die at any moment before we've had a chance to clean out the negativities that we realize we have imprints for and make enough goodness to guarantee that we get another human life, not necessarily even higher than human life. Hmm. We heard recently Geshe Michael's Mixed Nuts translator class with Allison recently. He said, again, if you've heard the pen thing and not rejected it, you've already closed the door to a lesser rebirth. And I'm not sure that's exactly literal in the sense that you only need to hear it once and believe it. It's like, we need to hear it enough times that it impacts us such that we're actually choosing our behavior because of it. And hearing it once is the trigger for that to happen, possibly. But regardless, the level of study that we're doing, assuming it's influencing your behavior at all, we can rest assured that if we stay in this mode, that even if we do die unexpectedly, we don't need to fear going to a lesser rebirth. If we haven't logged a whole lot of meditation time on the level of causal realm of the form realm, we probably don't need to worry too much about going to the deva realm either. So what's left is human. Hooray. It's encouraging, but I don't say it to say to myself, okay, you can slack off. It's no, no, keep at it. Just feel a little reassured that our efforts are paying off, even if it doesn't seem like it maybe. Okay. Second characteristic that prevents us from getting vows is those who are sexually impotent are unable to be the foundation for individual freedom vows. So even if they have renunciation, there's something about their subtle body energy that isn't strong enough to do what it's supposed to do to contribute to having vows. There's something we're going to learn later. There's something actually physical about these vows. We heard about the sesame oil in the sesame seed, that our vows, right? They are something that we have in us, we carry with us, and our body needs to have sufficient sexual energy to be able to hold and sustain those vows. Again, one of those things, why sexual energy? It has to do with the drive, right? Our sexual energy is a really powerful drive. Not necessarily that it's what's driving us getting up in the morning, but you know when that sexual energy reaches a certain peak, there's just something you have to finish. And not finishing it, right, is just energetically chaotic, and it's a compulsion that comes on. So that force that we have as humans is the force with which those vows can be held and sustained. We're not using the sexual energy, like we're not using sex to sustain the vows clearly, but the force, that power, passion, you can call it, kundalini. So we need to have sufficient of it. And the way we know we have sufficient of it is that our bodies are physically capable of sexual activity. It's that energy that gives us the willpower to follow our vows, to live according to them, curiously. So then the third characteristic that makes us unable to get vows is if a person is a neuter. Neuter means they have no sexual activity, clearly male, or sexual energy, clearly male or clearly female. So I guess it's possible that a person could be born with non-functioning ovaries or testes. And then if that were true, they would never come to puberty, and they would never really have the energetic distinction between being male or female, regardless of what sexual organ was on the body. The sexual energy would never mature if you didn't have the hormones kick in the way they're supposed to. So all these questions, well, what if you get castrated, either surgically, hormonally, or physically? If you had vows, do you lose vows? Do they ask you before you get vows? Do you have your ovaries and testes intact? They kind of do, but nobody asked us that before we got our one-day vows. Nobody asked us that before we got our lifetime lay person's vows. And yet, it's a circumstance. Again, it has to do with the strength of that energy that defines us as male or female, that underlies our ability to have the willpower to choose a different behavior. It's just a curious connection that Buddha is pointing out in his Abhidharma level teachings, not Abhidharmakosha, but Abhidharma teachings, lower school teachings. Yes, Victor. Because talking about this point number three, because I know that there are many women, because of this operation, of this cancer, are concerned, so they like, maybe like take away the ovaries. I mean, so I mean, do they, does it mean that they can't take vows? Yeah, it's a great question. I've had it too. And I've never asked Geshe Michael about it. Because it implies that if they had vows, they would no longer be able to sustain them. And if they went to take vows, they wouldn't be able to get them. It sounds like that is the case. I don't want to believe it. Right? Because, I mean, my ovaries haven't been working since I was 40 years old. But, you know, my drive and passion, you know, not passion, but my drive to choose behaviors and change me is maybe stronger because of it, right? Because of all the other stuff you get when those, so I don't really know the answer to that. Take this literally. Yeah, because I think this is quite common. Actually, I feel family members, they've done this operation to take away the ovaries. Yeah. Yeah, common. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So my answer, I don't really know. Yeah, thank you. Yeah, fourth factor is, if someone is a hermaphrodite. So hermaphrodite means they have both sexual organs on their body or as their body. And again, the sexual organ, we would need to include the ovaries and the testes in the sexual organ, right? Not just the vagina and the penis, because those alone don't do anything, right? But play their part. It's the organs of the hormones that physiologically are the representation of the femaleness and the maleness that we're talking about. So if you have both, it means that your maleness or femaleness is not clearly defined, right? For you, it doesn't matter about what other people see. But you need to know, I'm male or I'm female. And to have both sexual organs, right? It's probably an extraordinary and beautiful balance, which isn't a bad thing. But in terms of Pratimoksha vows, it blocks our ability to be the foundation for those vows. So it sounds like a bad thing, but like in the end, Buddhas are both, like we're going to become both. But to get to that point, we need one or the other. Fifth factor, someone who has committed the five immediate misdeeds, killing father, killing mother, killing Arhat, trying to hurt a Buddha out of anger, ill intent, excuse me, creating a schism in Buddhist Sangha. So again, we've learned, thank goodness we can't do either of those last two, but the first three are possible. And we've learned that they're called immediate misdeeds because the karmic seeds are so strong of having committed that, that they will be the projecting karma at the end of that lifetime. Whether the end of that lifetime is three days later, or 50 years later, it doesn't matter. Those seeds are going to ripen at the end of this life and push us into bardo and then straight to the hell realm, lowest hell realm. So to have those seeds in our mind, even if afterwards we go, ah, you know, renunciation, I want my vows. We, we, we are not the strong foundation to be able to get and hold vows. And then of course, the question is, well, but what if you purify, you know, what if you, your renunciation would come up because you realize what a mistake you made and then you would have regret and then, right. Does that change? And Geshe-la didn't go into it again. And it's like, I, so I don't know if, if that precludes all vow taking, having made that mistake at some point. It doesn't make sense to me that those can't be purified enough, used as a trigger for our renunciation and then purified enough to become a foundation for vows. In which case, maybe they would, you know, make your vows even stronger because of what you, right? How motivated we would be to antidote those horrible seeds. So, but I don't know. The scripture just says five immediate misdeeds can't get vows, can't be the foundation for getting vows. It's the context we're talking about. Sixth is being an imposter. That means you're at the ceremony. You've asked for vows. You've been accepted. You're there in the ceremony. You're taking your vows, but really you're just pretending that you want vows. You're curious or everybody's doing it. Or, you know, if I go take my ordination vows, I can get out of that debt, that big debt that I owe my brother, right? Wrong, wrong motivation for getting vows makes us not the foundation for getting them. Even if we're there in the ceremony. And the seventh one is someone who doesn't believe in karma or past and future lives. Meaning if we don't believe that our actions, our actions bring consequences to us. If we don't believe that, then even if we're trying to take vows, first of all, if we didn't believe that, why in the world would we take vows? We wouldn't be on a path of discipline at all because it wouldn't matter. Our behavior doesn't matter in with this mindset that the consequences of my behavior choice is out of my hands. Then you're not going to get renunciation, even if you don't like what's going on. And we might call it having renunciation. If you don't really believe that your behavior choices influence your future, then, you know, even if you think you're taking vows, you're not a foundation for them. They won't happen. So as we're learning about karma, we're being so specific about what we mean by karma because different people use that word and they mean something different. Karma can mean duty to people. It can mean fate. It can mean, you know, the position you're put into. That's what you're meant to have. And you're stuck there. Oh, it's just your karma. We understand karma in a really specific way. And then we use the word as if everybody understands it in that way. And we would need to be clear how somebody else is understanding us using that word, just as an aside. For vow keeping, taking purposes, we need to understand this principle that the deeds I do today can bring me their results later in this lifetime. Can, aren't likely to, but can. Or in my next life or in any lifetime after that. And that means that the experiences I'm having in this lifetime moment by moment are coming from either something I did earlier in this life, something I did in the immediate previous life, or something I did in any lifetime before that. And to understand this continuation of our me, that's not properly said. The continuation of our awareness is a necessary piece for this thing called vows to grow and be sustained. And for it to go beyond this lifetime, and to see there's a connection between what we're calling past and what we're calling future. All right. So to have any one of those circumstances, that mind, that body can't sustain those vows can't get in sustained vows. So not having those qualities and being a human, not on the northern continent, suppose we get vows. Excuse me. Our individual freedom vows, one day vows, five lifetime lay vows, or any level of ordained vows we're talking here. How do we lose them? Once we have them, what kinds of circumstances make us lose them? Helpful to know. Tongwe gyu means what makes me lose my vows. Tongwe is the word for lose vows. Gyu is the word for cause. Keshala says, what makes us lose our vows? Tongwe gyu. There are two types of ways that we lose our vows. The first type is that there are five general ways of losing any of the individual freedom vows. The second type is that there are three specific ways to lose specific vows. So in this category of the five general ways of losing any individual vows, the first is called lapapu. Lapap means precepts. So it's another word for vows. Pu means to offer. So lapapu means to offer the vows. So one way to lose our individual freedom vows is to offer them back. And it's interesting that they say, offer them back, not just give them back. No, when we give, it's a good deed to give. When we offer, we can have some flowers. You can give the flowers to your neighbor. Or you can take the flowers and offer them to your neighbor. And like, what's the difference in your heart, in your mind? Does it feel different to just give them versus to offer them? There's some kind of honoring, some kind of holding them higher in your heart than to just give them, than to offer. So we don't just give our vows back. We offer them back. I think it's so skillful because to just give them back feels more mentally afflicted than to go to the trouble, to figure out, you know, these vows aren't right for me. I need to give them back. I need to give them up. But you go to the abbot who gave them, who conferred them on you, and you offer them back to them, right? Respectfully, honestly, specifically in a ceremony, right? So that it keeps it from being a big bad deed that we offer them back. So there could be circumstances where you got your vows, you had your vows, but something about circumstances has changed. And for whatever reason, you feel compelled to live without those vows anymore, whatever that might be. It's hard to imagine. It's hard to imagine that our renunciation would shift to where we wouldn't want the vows anymore. But maybe it's not so hard to imagine circumstances changing such that us having vows would somehow compromise other people or, in which case, giving back our vows, offering them back would save other people, right? From our vinaya, we're still concerned about our impact on others. Our vows are just for us, but we're still concerned. So Geshe-la said, you know, you can't imagine that if we are lay people with our five lifetime vows, there would be a situation where we would feel compelled to offer those vows back. But we can, right? If we ever get in that circumstance, and you need to, you can. Ordained, also, we go into our ordination vows, you know, for my lifetime. But there is this ability that if circumstances are such that it's just really not best for you and others to keep those vows, you don't have to go break them to get yourself out of them is the point, you can go offer them back. So ideally, you go to the abbot who gave them to you, explain the situation, and you do this ceremony and offer them back. If that abbot is not available, truly not available, you can sit before an image of the Buddha, consecrated image of the Buddha, and you can offer them back to Shakyamuni Buddha. So you can do it yourself. Best, of course, is to do it to the one, towards the one who gave them or someone who represents them. Lapa Pu. Second, of the five general ways we lose our vows is Shi Pu. Shi means to die, and Pu means to move on. Shi Pu means to die and move on, meaning going to the next life. Our individual freedom vows disappear with the death of this body. Five lifetime lay vows, one day vows, ordained vows. Third of the five, it's Sen Ni Jung. Ni is the number two, Jung means to appear, and Sen is the thing that if two of them appear on your body, you lose your Pratimoksha vows. So this Sen means name or mark, but here it's the word for the sexual organ. Mm-hmm. So it says if another sexual organ appears upon your body, I think they mean the opposite one, but I guess it would be the same if a second one of the same grows, because it means the maleness, femaleness of the body's energies is messed up. And we already said that that energy of maleness and femaleness having one clearly predominating over the other is a factor in our qualification for being the strong foundation. So if something happens that that energy distinction gets messed up, one of the ways that manifests is with another sexual organ showing up. I think when that happens, it's a second, it's the opposite one that shows up, but technically it could be a second. You know, I was in medicine for years. I never saw somebody grow a second sexual organ. I never saw them change. So it's like, I don't know how common this is, but this is from Buddhist teachings, his first turning of the wheel type teachings. So an omniscient being sees what happens. Maybe it was happening more commonly back then.We wouldn't have any way to know historically. So this isn't something like we might be doing, intending to come on. Anyway, if it happens, our vows disappear. Fourth one is len, len sum gyur. Gyur means to change. Len sum means three times. So apparently it's also happens that that your gender can change. So you get your vows as a female and then whatever happens, those energies shifts significantly. And I don't know if it's over time or suddenly, oh my gosh. Right now you've got the male organ instead of the female organ, not both one or the other. And they say, you know, if that happens to you the first time, it's okay. Like if it happens to a woman who has fully ordained vows, she's now a man with fully ordained vows. We heard earlier, if it happens to a woman with intermediate vows, well, she becomes a novice monk, because she didn't have her full nun's vows yet. Right. So it's like, it seems so weird. They designate these things. It must have been happening in time. So if you change sex one time, it's okay. If it happens a second time, so you go back again to your original, it's okay. But if it happens a third time, it means the energies are messed up in some way, such that the vows will be broken by the third time. So, you know, I don't know if people are setting about to do practices to make this happen. There's really no reason to do that necessarily, except remember the context before, before, before, I'm not sure when, the belief was you had, you could not get enlightened from anything but a male body. You know, there's the story of Tara, Lady Tara. She is this really high practitioner, and she's going to all the teachers teach me how to get enlightened in this lifetime. And they would all go pray for a rebirth as a human, as a man, right? Pray for rebirth as a man. And she just got madder and badder, because that's what she always got from everybody. And she finally said, No way, I'm doing it in this life. See ya. Right. And she went off and achieved her goal in that life from a woman's body with a woman's body. Because it wasn't necessary. But before you had somebody's determination like that, it would sound like if you were a female practitioner, you would have to change your sex in order to achieve your goal. And I don't know, right? Maybe they figured out how to do it. But do it three times and you're out of luck, where it's not practices we're gonna ever do. As far as I know, I've completed my tantric training, not my tantric practices, but my training and it was never in there. Here's the part where you change your sex. So not to worry. I don't think last one fifth of the five general ways, things that we might happen that make us lose the vows is get such a get site means our root of virtue. Jay means to cut to cut our root of virtue. Remember, we've heard about that cutting the root of virtue. And if we do a deed that cuts our root of virtue, our vows are part of that root of virtue, of course. So they're gonna get cut. Because what we've done is so powerfully negative that it cuts everything positive that we've ever done. And remember, cut means freezes it. Because when we get sufficient regret for having for whatever that deed was, right, we can purify and etc. And then, right, the bank account gets unfrozen. Thank goodness. Alright, so those are the five general factors that make us lose our vows. Let's take our break. And then we'll go into the specific causes of losing specific vows. I will stop the share and pause the recording. Next, there are three specific ways. We can lose specific vows like three more things to know. Specific, specifically, the first is Nisha, Nisha Malung Dershe. Nisha Malung Dershe. Dershe means found out. Nisha is the word for 20 years age, being 20 years old. Malung means not reached 20 years old. If it's found out that a person is not 20 years old, and wasn't 20 years old, wasn't 20 years old when they got their vows or thought they got their vows. No, if they were not 20 years old when they got their vows, and they're still not 20 years old, then they lose their vows. Well, technically, they never had them in the first place. So you have to be 20 years old, at least to get the vows that you've asked for and gone through the ceremony for to actually get the vows, you have to be 20. And it has to do with this sexual energy, right? It has to be reached a certain level of maturity and apparently that doesn't happen until you're 20. Maybe it still has some maturing to go, but there's something about the 20 years. So it seems funny. It's like, what did you lie about your age in order to get your vows? Yes, yes, I'm 20 years old. So I can get my vows. And then five years later, somebody figures out, wait a minute, you're not 20 years old, and you weren't 20 years old, and you lose your vows. That's hard to imagine.But recall that in the olden days, we didn't have birth certificates. You know, we didn't even have calendars. So suppose a mom, you know, you're mom's 13th child. And it's like, you don't know when you're an infant when you were born. And somewhere, right, somewhere along the line, they're celebrating our birthday. And we figure out, my gosh, there's this specific day when I was born. And then we know, like I was born April 2nd, 1954. But if nobody ever told me that, and nobody ever celebrated it, how in the world would I know how old I was? Right, we take it for granted. So suppose, you know, you're a really mature kid on their own. And you sign up to the monastery. And they say, well, you know, are you 20? And you go, I don't know, sure, I must be 20. And you get given vows. And then, I don't know, a year or two later, mom shows up. And mom goes, oh, wow, it's so great to see you. You know, I remember when you were born. And you end up being only 17 years old. You know, it's, we thought we had vows. Suddenly, we don't have vows. And it's like, oh, man, what's going on? No worries. Wait till you're 20. Now that you know, wait till you're 20, get your vows. But it must have been a circumstance that would happen. Or otherwise, it wouldn't be in the literature. Now it's sort of silly.Everybody knows how old they are. But did you ever stop to think about it? Like, how do you know how old you are? How do you know for sure that was your birthday? We don't really have any way to confirm it. Nishe malim dershe. Specific way to lose vows. Second one, ten shir kei long. Kei long means to agree to do something. Ten shir is a sexual activity. So to agree to do sexual activity. This is specific to an intermediate nun. She loses her vows if she agrees to have sex with a man. Apparently just agrees whether it happens or not. So remember, the category is got a novice nun who's wanting fully ordained nuns. She goes through this intermediate period with these increased commitments, instructions in how to relate to other people, in particular, people of the opposite gender, and then how to relate to food, etc. And so she's being very specific in her behavior of which avoiding no sexual activity is in her novice nun vows. Like, what possibly could lead to this situation where she would agree to have sex with a man that would make her lose all her vows? And you know, our judgment says, oh, she must not have been a good nun to begin with. But if we think of circumstances, there could be a kind of situation where in order to protect others or in order to help the nunnery, she might be forced to agree to sexual activity. And even just to agree makes her lose her vows. So it would be a big conundrum, wouldn't it? The third specific factor is Ngin Shuk Day. Ngin Shuk Day. Ngin Shuk means 24 hours passes. Day means the passes. Ngin Shuk is 24 hours. So 24 hours passes and you lose vows. Which ones are we talking about there? The one day vows. So you don't have to do anything at the end of a one day vows day to offer those vows back. But with the passing of the 24 hours, those vows cease. Okay. So next, Je Tsongkhapa points out that there are two additional ways to lose vows according to two specific schools of Buddhist practice. So there's the Sutras level of understanding of karma and dependent origination. And from that level, we study the Buddhist Sutras. We work with reasoning. It's a certain focus of practice Sutras level. And then there's the detailist level. And within the detailist, there are different factions. One of them's called the under the sun faction. I don't know what that means. But these two groups, the Sutras and the under the sun faction, they say, they say two things. First, Sa Tung Chun Hua. Chun Hua means if you break. Sa Tung is the defeat. So remember, we were talking about the full monks, full nuns vows. The first, the worst category of vowed behaviors was called the defeat. The doing a deed having been completely defeated by a mental affliction. That deed is the worst serious vow breaking deed. They were four, four men and eight for nuns, and they are related to killing, stealing, sexual conduct, and lying. So these two schools say, you commit any one of those, and you break all of your vows. So something happens and you kill a mouse. I found a drowned mouse in my rain barrel yesterday. Did I kill it? Right. So there are factors in our defeat about having the four intentions and all that stuff. But when a defeat is committed, these schools say all your vows are broken. Number one. Secondly, they say, Dam Chö Nüpa. Dam Chö means the Buddha Dharma. Nüpa means if it, if it declines, like not just declines, but disappears. Although the term is declines. If the holy Dharma declines in the land, you would lose your vows. So meaning, if, if the Buddha Dharma disappears in your land, your vows disappear with it. And their reasoning is probably, look, if the Buddha Dharma disappears, your vows are part of that Dharma, right? Of course, they're going to disappear too. Like by definition, they would disappear. And of course, other schools say, no way. Because anyone who is studying, practicing the Vinaya, Buddha is there, right? That represents the Buddha. So as long as there's one person left with their Pratimoksha vows, the Dharma maybe has declined, but it is not gone. So just declining Buddhism can't break our vows. And even if the Buddhism all around us is gone, we having our vows keeps it alive. A good reason for having vows, keeping vows. We can do our part. So our, our school's position is not that if you break one defeat, you lose all your vows. And it is not that if Buddhism declines in the world, you lose your vows. So Jetson Koppa says, we follow the Kashmiri Detailist School. And they say, bu le norn den shin. Let me get that higher here. Bu le norn den shin. Shin means metaphor. Norn den is rich man. Bu le n have a debt. They say, if someone commits one of the defeats, it's like being a very wealthy man with a big debt. So they're saying someone who has ordained vows, their vows are this incredible wealth that they have.And to do one of the defeats as serious as that is, it's, it's, you're having all your other vows still intact. Your, your wealth is still great. So you commit one defeat. It's like now you owe somebody right, a lot, but it's not more than the wealth that you have. Right? So suppose your bank accounts got $100,000 in it and something happens and you're responsible for paying somebody $50,000 $50,000 is a big debt, but you've got a hundred. So, okay, pay them the 50,000, right? You still have a big chunk. So our vows are so valuable. Those ordained vows, all of them that to damage one, even as badly as a defeat damages our mindstream. Our wealth is so great with the others that it doesn't destroy all our wealth the way the other schools think that it does. That's their argument. They become, we would become like a rich man with a big debt, but not a debt that's higher than their wealth. Now, admittedly, to allow ourselves to do a defeat, you know, might mean that some of our other vows are not so strong in our mind either because of the circumstances that might be involved. So it very well could be that all these other factors come into play and the defeat that we let ourselves commit does in fact break a whole bunch of our other vows as well. They're not all, you know, unique, individual, independent things. As we see with our five lifetime lay vows, as we see with our exploration of the 10 virtues, non-virtues, they interrelate. But overall, one defeat doesn't break everything. So next, Geshe-la goes into the benefits of taking and keeping our individual freedom vows. He gives us two benefits, surely there's more than two, right? Now we get back up there. The first benefit, Ne Cap Dre Bu La Mi. Mi means human. La means pleasure being. Dre Bu means result. And Ne Cap means short-term. The short-term result of having and keeping our Pratimoksha vows is a next life as human or pleasure being. So it really means we're avoiding a lower rebirth. So for sure, having and keeping vows during this lifetime is a factor in not being able to project a karmic seed at the end of this lifetime that would take us to a lower realm. We've said over and over, we really don't want a pleasure being realm. We want human. So having and keeping vows increases that likelihood of human. And then as we're learning about factors that are causes for pleasure being, we understand it's deep levels of meditation, not properly motivated or directed. And we're being carefully trained not to do those kinds of meditations that would lead to a birth in the form or formless realms. And similar would lead us to a pleasure realm being in the desire realm, right? So we really are being properly prepared to, at the very least, increase our chances greatly for another human life by way of our practices, even if it's not really in our mindset to think that, right? We're dedicating to Buddhahood for everybody. We don't have to specifically dedicate to making sure I get another human lifetime, although we could, right? We could add it to our dedication. So short-term benefit of having and keeping our individual freedom vows at whatever level they are, is that no lower rebirth. Second benefit is Dhar Tukdrebu Changchub Sum. Changchub Sum. Changchub is enlightenment. Sum is three. Three enlightenment. Drebu result. Dhar Tukdrebu. We know Dhar Tukdrebu as that completion factor.Geshe-la calls it ultimate. So the Nyekap was the short-term result. The Dhar Tukdrebu is the long-term result, the ultimate result. The ultimate result of having, keeping our individual freedom vows is one of the three enlightenments. And it's like, what? Three enlightenments? What do you mean? And we've heard it before. There's the enlightenment from our listeners level. There's the enlightenment from self-made Buddha level. And there's the enlightenment from Mahayana level, which we call total Buddhahood. And we learned in some earlier course that our tradition makes this effort to designate specifically our goal is total enlightenment for the sake of all beings so that we don't mistake our own mind into thinking that we're aspiring to either of those two enlightenments. Right? I have to catch myself from saying lower enlightenments because that's not fair. If our belief was that the highest state I personally could reach is nirvana, freedom from mental afflictions forever due to my individual analysis, and that my aspiration is not for full Buddhahood, my aspiration is for nirvana forever, then that's enlightenment for me. So the first two of these three enlightenments are both nirvana. Are they a different nirvana? Probably not. Are they achieved in a little different way? Probably so. It's the practitioner who's achieving it that distinguishes which enlightenment we're talking about. The big difference though is that of the three, one of them is total enlightenment. And the total means the omniscience factor that nirvana does not have. Apparently nirvana sized beings can emanate, maybe not to the same extent as fully enlightened, but the omniscience factor perceiving emptiness and appearing reality simultaneously all the time in all three times all the time is a factor of total Buddhahood that we've learned is a manifestation of our compassion for all beings, not leaving a single one out, combined with our wish for the highest state that I can reach. Those two, I want to reach total Buddhahood for the sake of all sentient beings, is the total Buddhahood that we're talking about here. The ultimate result of having individual freedom vows is these three enlightenments. Individual freedom vows are individual freedom. It is the factor in reaching nirvana, but it's also the factor from which we reach total Buddhahood is what he's pointing out here. We add to our Pratimoksha foundation other things that contribute to the development of the omniscience factor, but we still need our Pratimoksha level quality of behavior as the foundation for those vows that are the behaviors that help us grow the total enlightenment versus stopping at nirvana. So the Pratimoksha individual freedom vows are still the foundation, even if in this life we step in as Mahayanas, which if you're here you have. It doesn't mean, oh, you go straight to your Bodhisattva vows and then Diamond Mui vows and you don't need to do your individual freedom vows. Of course we do. And then there's this big advantage to focusing on those individual freedom vows for a while, even before we commit ourselves to Bodhisattva vows, even though our seeds are like, no, I want Bodhisattva vows, right? Because of what we're bringing from past lifetimes. So this is outlining how they're like a ladder, but from each rung of the ladder, we don't step up and leave it behind. We take it with us. And somehow the ladder still stays there, but we take it all up with us as we go. Okay. So lastly, your homework's going to ask you to explain the title of Jetsun Kappa's text that we're studying from and explain Jetsun Kappa's name. So we're studying Essence of the Ocean of Discipline, his explanation of a vowed way of life. So we know Jetsun Kappa, Lobsang Drakpa. We know Lobsang Drakpa, it means pure mind, Lobsang. Drakpa is widespread fame, something like that. And the term Jetsun Kappa, it's not a name so much as a descriptor or honorific for him. J means Lord, and Tsun Kappa means the guy from Tsongkhapa. So Tsongkhapa is an area of Tibet.Tibet's made up of like one valley after another, apparently. And inside that valley is a group of people. And it's so hard to get over the mountains that you might live your whole life in that one valley, big or small, and never go outside. So there wasn't really much interaction between the peoples for a long time. So Jetsun Kappa lived in this area called Tsongkha because it had the Tsong river flowing through it. But apparently the term Tsongkha means onion fields. So I don't know if those people grew a lot of onions or if they had wild onions in their valley fields. But it ends up that we call him that guy from Tsongkha, our lord, the guy from Tsongkha. Like Geshe Michael, holy guy from Rimrock, Arizona. And everybody would know who you're talking about. You don't even need to use his actual name. It's kind of curious. To me, it seems sort of disrespectful. All that guy from the onion fields. But it's a term of endearment and honor to call him that. Then the text. Essence of the Ocean of Discipline. The essence is saying that our Pratimoksha Vows are this essential core of our behavior training, the essential core of the Vinaya. So his text is, he's cutting to the quick, to the very essence of the Vinaya training, ethical way of life. And he's pointing out how valuable are these vows. To have the vows is better than having a wishing jewel. We hear about the wishing jewel again and again. You find this thing and you wash it all up and you prepare it in some way and you put it on a post and dress it all up and make offerings to it. And it becomes like your Aladdin's lamp. Anything you can think to ask for, it will bring about for you. And they say, wow, what an amazing thing you could have. You could ask for your neighbor's cancer to be cured. You could ask for all these amazing, wonderful things. What could be better than a wish fulfilling jewel? And then they say, yeah, well, even if you wished for enlightenment, what you believe that is right now is what you would get. But that's not enlightenment. Right? You would end up like in some form or formless realm because we don't really understand what we're asking for. So it's not good to have a wish fulfilling jewel because we don't really know what to really ask for because of our ignorance. But to have vows, Pratimoksha vows, now you've got something that will bring to us the result that we think we understand, but we don't yet.But it's going to bring you results beyond what you know you're creating. Better than what you know you're creating. Better than a wish fulfilling jewel. The essence, we're learning the essence of that. The ocean is that his text is going to give us all these fine details, like this vast and deep insight into what it is to live an ethical life. Everything we need to know. And they say that the ocean is the source of all the precious jewels in the world, like minerals, things that can be carved into beautiful jewelry, it all comes from the ocean. So in the same way, all the goodness that we will ever be able to experience comes as a result of our ethical life. And it is vast and plentiful, like the ocean. And then discipline is the door where this ethical life is about the taming of our mental afflictions and our sense organs. So it's like they're blaming our sense organs for automatically running out to the birds I hear outside, automatically running out to the colors and shapes I see outside, like they have a mind of their own. And in a way they do, right? It seems like it. You're sitting in meditation, trying to meditate deeply in the garbage truck goes by, you know, if it's squeaky brakes and your mind goes out there. And it only goes out there because that ear consciousness heard it. But it happens so fast, that we blame the ear for doing it. And if we could get the ear to stop going out there, you know, I don't mean the physical ear, but you get what I mean, then our mind wouldn't go out there either. So we're taming both not really teaching ourselves how to go deaf, we don't want to do that. We don't want to teach ourselves how to go blind. What we're training ourselves in is getting off the automatic pilot. If you hear a sound, your mind has to go out there to identify it. It's our mammalian brain, right? We're safety, sound, identify, safe, not safe, right? It happens so fast. And these teachings are saying that's a perpetuation of our misunderstanding and our ethical life. We are in dangerous, we could be in a dangerous circumstances. And so by keeping our ethical behavior, we're planting the seeds for that not to be possible anymore, sooner or later. But it's this circular effort to get ourselves safe, so that our meditation can go more deeply. Go out in the world and be safe towards others, so that we can be safe enough to go into deep meditation. That influences our mind so we can be safer towards others in the world. That influences our mind so that we can go deeper into meditation. If we live harmlessly, when we ask our mind to go into meditation, we're vulnerable. If you're meditating in the woods, the lion could come across you, decide your lunch. You're not going to go into a deep state of meditation. A part of you has to stay alert to protect yourself from the lion. And it's like no amount of benia is going to make it such that that lion will come and lay its head in my lap, we think. But it's not true, right? It's very possible that you could meditate as safely in the middle of a pack of lions as in a cave with a big rock in front of its opening. It's the seeds that we plant. So this text is like everything we need to know about our ethical way of life. How to live in such a way that we avoid harming others in such a way that we can create a mind and a body that is so safe that it can go into that depth of meditation necessary to experience ultimate nature. That's the first major goal, right? So this text is the essence of what we need to know. All right, that's your class six. And I'm going to put these extra minutes in the bank, because I'm going to need them probably next class actually. So next class is about the consequences of the 10 non-virtues. And it's a lot of material and it's long. And because of our time constraint that we have with wisdom in the time of chaos coming up, I really need to finish this course for you. So it may be that next class will go long. I try to avoid doing that, but I'm just giving you a warning. If you can allow your schedule to give me an extra half an hour, I don't think it's going to take all of that. But in case if you can't, that's fine. It'll be on the recording. But it is going to I want I don't want to rush it. It's such incredible information to that class and then possibly the next one. It depends how we go. So just please. So remember that person we wanted to be able to help. We learned a lot that we can start using now in order to help that other stop their suffering forever someday. And that's a great, great 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. Do 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 there can punch wisdom. It feels so good. We want to keep it forever. And so we know to share it. For 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 they to 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, filled with wisdom, and may it be so. Okay. Thank you so much for the opportunity to share.

All right, so for the recording, welcome back. We are ACI course nine, class seven.

I'd like to first announce that one of our students from the ACI evening classes, Tom B., she lives in Florida. She's a yoga teacher, very highly trained and skilled in many different aspects. She's offered to offer online yoga instruction, one-on-one or in group. I'm not exactly sure what she has in mind. She's offering by donation and she has an electronic flyer available for the asking. So I just wanted to share her announcement and give her email. You're welcome to ask her to see her flyer with no obligation, of course, and see what she has in mind. She's really, really skilled in yoga and she's learning the ACI. Her mindset is in that place. So, her email is tombk1991@gmail.com. So now it's on the recording to you so people can hear. All right. Thank you.

[Usual Opening]

Class 6 Review

The last class we learned about those five things that cause us to lose any of our Individual Freedom Vows.

1. One of them is giving them back formally. Of course we'd end up without them.

2. Second is dying and transmigrating. When this body dies, our vows stop.

3. Third, having both sexual organs appear on our body. So we won't do that, at least intentionally.

4. Fourth, changing our sex three times or more. So don't plan on doing that either.

5. And five, losing our store of virtue. So really the one we want to be careful about is losing the store of virtue.

The others aren't something that we do by choice. Maybe they're giving the vows back, right? We think about that carefully. But it's not like something that's going to happen swiftly like losing our store of virtue could.

Then there are two results of keeping those vows.

1. The short-term result is human or better rebirth, which doesn't mean short-term as in next week, right? It's short-term as in next-life influence.

2. And then ultimately, long-term influence is the benefit that it takes us to one of those three enlightenments, and we talked about it. They mean nirvana and better.

So the very basis of those Individual Freedom Vows, either Lifetime Layperson Vows or Ordained Vows, is keeping our ethical living, also known as moral discipline, which really boils down to avoiding those 10 basic deeds that come from and perpetuate certain mental afflictions, that when those mental afflictions get blown up, it becomes those whole 84,000 mental afflictions that we apparently are, can I say, imbued with? The habits we have perpetuate these 84,000 mental afflictions through which we choose our reactions to our experiences.

And, you know, 84,000, that's a big number to work with. So those omniscient loving beings, they boil them down to the top 10. If we work carefully on avoiding these top 10, we will automatically avoid all those other 83,000,989, right? Do I have that number right? Without having to solve every single one of them, right? The beauty of those 10 is work on that, and the rest, you know, take care of itself, like the onion skin thing.

The 10 are out, I don't know, how does the onion skin work on this one? There's 84,000 within the whole onion. If we work at the outside, the outer 10, the worst 10, all the rest of the stuff, we don't have to deal with so much. Onion doesn't work there. So, some other analogy, right? Where the 10 is out here, and all the rest is inside. And if you don't ever crack through the 10, you're not even going to have to worry about what's inside.

Introduction to the 10 Non-Virtues

So those 10, Je Tsongkapa goes into them in detail in his Lam Rim Chenmo, and he's drawing from two of Buddha's works, more than two, but two in particular called The Chapter on the True and The Sutra on Ten Levels.

So in there, like all of that combined, he shows us the karmic consequences associated with those 10, so that we can better understand what we experience, and the “real why” we are experiencing versus the “worldly why” we are experiencing it, so that we can more wisely choose our reaction to that situation, based on understanding what the deed we do as our reaction will bring us as a karmic consequence of it.

So, our experience in the moment is a karmic consequence of something that we did before, that had something to do with one of those 10. And then that experience brings up a feeling, and we act from that feeling. How we act plants new seeds that will be a future experience that has its unique features, based on all that's going on at the moment that we did the reaction to the current experience that is the result of some past reaction to a current experience, right?

So, we've heard the pattern, we know, and every time we hear about it, it sinks in a little bit deeper, how our power for change lies then in our moment-by-moment interactions with others. Because that's the only place we have to plant those seeds is now, and now, and now, and now. We're always in the current moment, of course.

And as ignorant human beings, we are almost always in react mode. And what we're trying to train ourselves to do is to get off react mode and be in respond mode. Respond, I make the distinction just by react means whatever automatically comes up, we follow it. Respond means I am aware of what automatically comes up as the reaction I want to do, bless you, and I decide whether that is the reaction I want to do or not. Maybe it will be, but maybe it won't be. When we make our conscious choice, we are creating for our future.

And, you know, we can think, well, I'm creating for my next week future, and then not actually see the result and get disappointed. Or we can say, I'm creating for my future whenever it comes about, or we can go land somewhere in between, right? I know I'm creating for my future, and I'm going to, if I have a specific future thing that I want to see come about, then I'm going to work really hard to plant lots of seeds directed towards that particular future event that I want. One just won't do it. But if we work concertedly on something that we want to see change towards high karmic objects, frequently done, right, all those factors that we've learned about how we can make karmas more powerful, we could set about to see a change in something within this lifetime.

And so that's the promise. But really, the goal is beyond changing our immediate worldly circumstances. Our goal in our ethical discipline is reaching nirvana and Buddhahood. And yeah, we could set it up to reach those, next month. But wow, would we have to get off automatic pilot to do that? So don't set us up for failure. Let's just say, okay, there's my long-term goal, and I'm going to work diligently towards it. We need the information, we need the details of the behaviors to avoid, and the behaviors to do, to step into that process, to set the ball rolling.

So this class is about the karmic results of the 10 non-virtues in great detail. And hopefully, this information along with what we learned in the karma course, ACI 5, and what we will learn from ACI 14, the Wheel of Knives, that has another list of karmic correlations. We can build our own little encyclopedia of karmic correlations that really gives us enough information to redesign our response repertoire. And then our task is to use it, to discipline ourselves to use it.

The 10 Non-Virtues

So let's start. We know those 10 non-virtues: three of body, four of speech, three of mind,

1. killing,

2. stealing,

3. sexual misconduct,

4. lying,

5. harsh speech,

6. divisive speech,

7. useless speech,

8. coveting or jealousy,

9. ill will, and

10. wrong view.

So each of those have a specific karmic result, a recognizable karmic result, with all kinds of variations, of course. And when we can recognize those nuances, that's when we're able to answer the question, what did I do to make this happen? Right? We reach a certain stage in our practice, and that's what we're doing. I get in a traffic jam. What did I do to make a traffic jam? And it's like, you don't really even need to ask that question anymore when we understand this database, when we've got it inside our hard drive.

It's like, oh, I obstructed people getting somewhere. That alone, I don't find all that helpful. Like, duh. But what do I do with it now? And what do I do with it later in order to reduce the likelihood of getting into traffic jams in the future? And so while you're in the traffic jam, recognizing these are my seeds ripening, I obstructed people's travel in the past, okay, I'll stop blaming the slow train, right? Yes, there's a slow train that's making the traffic jam, but that's not really where it's coming from. That will all help keeping me from getting so upset.

But if it's going to make me late for my doctor's appointment, that's a whole different issue. Like, if I'm late to the doctor's appointment, that sets off a whole new set of mental afflictions. Oh my gosh, right? They'll not let me see the doctor. They'll charge me for a missed visit. It wasn't my fault, right? That mental affliction goes off. Even while I'm saying, oh, I caused this obstacle to my getting somewhere by obstacling others. See, it really doesn't help me to know that when the real mental affliction is, I'm going to be late. And that means I'm not responsible. And that means, right… and all of that. So then we would need to do the same thing there. It's like, oh, you know, why, why am I getting so upset over the potential for being late to my doctor's office? You know, where does that come from? And I can do the same thing. I can look at, oh, you know, this, this kind of mental state.

So where I'm trying to go with that is sometimes the first level, what I did to cause this, is nice information, but it isn't really the issue we're upset about. And we can look deeper. And then again, find out, okay, so I made somebody feel like that. Again, I don't find that so helpful. But what is helpful is, okay, so where am I contributing to making people feel like that? Right? Where am I currently still getting in people's way that I will probably meet a traffic jam in the future?

Where am I imposing my, you know, ‘you have to be on time or not at all” (in class, right?) that's causing trouble, where can I change my behavior in the future so that I can ward off something like this in the future, future? You know, so if we have a situation where we are repeatedly meeting traffic jams, like morning traffic, then somewhere else that you might be making it difficult for people to achieve their goal to get where they're going. Where can I find a place where I can stay out of people's way and do that intentionally there in order to see less traffic jams in my world? Right? Yes, I can intentionally not go driving during traffic jam time. Right? Which I can do, retired, I can take no appointments before 10 o'clock. So I'm not out there with the crowd.

But when I'm in the grocery store, right, do I patiently wait for the person who's picking their can of beans? Or do I, you know, excuse me, reach around them get in their way? Do I grumble about being in the long line? For years after learning this, I intentionally chose the long line at the grocery store. And, you know, it took six, eight years before I started to notice, gee, when I go to the grocery store, there aren't long lines anymore. Nope. Or if there is one, and I get into it, I still do that. You know, when the new checker comes, and they go next person in line, please, they'll point at me, whether I'm the next person or not, they'll go, hey, come over here. It happens so often, that it's like, wow, right? It just took time, you know, five, 10, eight years. And now it's like, almost never obstructed in the grocery store. And very rarely stuck in a traffic jam that I either can't get out of, right by turning around, or even it just lasting very long. Sometimes we'll be in a traffic jam. And Sumati and I'll both think, you know, oh, another obstructing, and then it'll open up and be done.

So it's like, it's not because in the moment we act right, that everything changes. It's that we've been putting this into practice regularly for a while now, with enough frequency that now it's already starting to show its impact.

So let's go through these, first better understanding what the non-virtues are and then we'll look at their karmic correlations, of which there are four levels that they can ripen.

The Four Parts of the Path of Action

So remember, that with seed planting, there are four factors, they're called the four parts of a path of action. There are four factors that make a karmic seed be implanted with the strength that it would need to carry on to a result. And the extent to which those factors are present, as we plant our seed, determines this, influences the experience of that seed's ripening. So it's not that you can only make a seed with all four intact. It's the level to which any of the four are involved in the planting of the seed, influences the seed, which carries along and influences its result. So there are these variables for any given deed, how it's going to come back to us, but the underlying theme of the deed, like killing, will always come back having to do with the quality and length of our life.

So these four factors,

1. the level of premeditation done.

Something that's like fully, carefully premeditated is a stronger karmic seed than something that we do that's by accident. So premeditation, the level of premeditation.

2. Second is the level of correct identification of the object.

3. The third is the extent to which we are under a mental affliction when we do the deed.

What mental affliction and how much we're being colored by that mental affliction impacts the seed planted.

4. We actually undertake the deed, completing it.

So for instance, in an act of killing, the worst, the strongest karmic seed for killing would be totally premeditated. Clearly identified your object and the fact that they're a living being and they're the one that I premeditated about, clearly identified. We've got this strong mental affliction, like I hate this being and I know that I'll be happier when I take them out. I'm going to do this. Strongly mentally afflicted. And fourth, you go do the deed and you know they die as a result of it. Either at the moment or whenever later, you are aware that they die because of your action. That's like having your four intact, a strong deed of killing, a strong non-virtue of killing done. Any of these factors are minimally present. They're going to influence the way the seed ripens. So no circumstance is ever going to be the same because these four are always a little bit different in every circumstance. So all of our non-virtues, all of our behaviors have these four aspects.

You want a good behavior to plant a really strong seed, right? You do it premeditatively. You do it towards a really clearly defined object. You do it influenced with a mind of wisdom to our greatest extent. And we undertake the deed and see ourselves completed, right? The four steps of how to create something that we want. It's based on these same principles. So for killing, any way in which we participate in some living being ending up dead is a karmic seed, the consequence of which will be the result of killing. So whether we do it ourselves or enlist somebody to do it or just benefit from somebody else having done so, right? All of it is seeds of killing. And so when we like take that out to its extended impact, even paying our taxes, part of which go to support the military, which goes right out and hurts people in the name of protection, we're still gathering some of that karma. And it's like, yeah, but you've got to pay your taxes. There's no way you can't do that. So yeah, we're kind of stuck. That's what it is. That's what samsara is, right? We're stuck in a world where we can't just decide I'm not going to contribute. We can't decide it. We just can't really act on it well enough yet. But that's our karmic correlations as well. So that can be changed.Nagesha always says, just write a letter to your government and say, you know, I know I have to pay my taxes, but I believe in this reap what you sow thing really strongly. And I just want to state that I disassociate myself with the money that my tax is going to support killing in any way. And they'll send you back a letter saying, thank you for your correspondence. It doesn't matter, right? Their answer doesn't matter. You've seen yourself say, look, if I could not do this, I would not. But then, you know, other circumstances, we're the ones who decide at which level do I finally draw the line? You know, maybe we decide, okay, I'm going to stop eating meat, but I'm still going to use milk and eggs as long as the eggs don't have a rooster. Or maybe we finally decide, no, even that cruelty involved is too much. There's still killing involved, and I'm not going to do that, but I still have to drive my car, you know, and that still involves killing, right? We just can't get through life without killing something. But we ourselves are the ones who can decide, right, the bar, right, where we draw the line.And then don't impose it on anybody else, right? Your own choice. Other people will try to impose their choices on you, of course, because we've done that before. But, right, feel free to stand your ground. Second one is stealing. Taking anything of value that's not been given. And that includes cheating on any obligation, underpaying what's due, any shady business deal, right? Things that in our cultures say that's just fine. But fine is one thing. Culturally, what comes back to me is another. And that's what we're looking at here. You know, is it okay with me that somebody tries to cheat me out of, I don't know, something that they owe me? I won't be happy about it. And we're gaining more clear understanding that they won't be happy about the result they really get from that. They think they get the advantage. But in fact, they get to be the one that gets taken advantage of in the future. And you know what? That's unpleasant. Excuse me. Next one, sexual misconduct. Mainly, this is adultery, interfering with others' commitments, which, it seems like cultures nowadays are not finding adultery as being something that's so necessarily needing to be avoided. Probably just a phase we're in. The reason that sexual activity is even mentioned is that it's such a source of mental afflictions. When we get in a relationship that we call an exclusive relationship, all of a sudden, we've got these attachments and these expectations on this other person who has them on us. And we can almost never measure up, and they can almost never measure up for us. And we get all these mental afflictions. And then it seems like, well, then having this exclusivity just increases our mental afflictions. It doesn't decrease them. Why would you insist on this exclusivity? And you know, Buddha didn't insist on exclusivity. He actually insisted on leave the home life, like ditch that altogether, because it's so fraught with mental afflictions. And you know, there's also the Buddhist path where you step into your family life and use it much more conscientiously. But at the level of the Vinaya, we're at the avoid situations where those mental afflictions are going to come up until we have a better capacity for keeping that wild horse tamed, keeping that wild horse in check. So from that perspective, then the sexual misconduct in the scripture, it talks about any way in which sexual activity habits will lead to increasing desire for more and increasing expectation on the partner to be able to bring us those kinds of pleasures. And happinesses. So it gives specifics. The scripture says sex in the orifice not meant for it is a sexual misconduct with someone you are related to, with someone who's too young, right? Not a legal adult in the culture that you're in. With a woman who's menstruating, with someone who's ordained, with a woman who's more than a month pregnant, with a woman who's caring for a very young child, with any person whom it would hurt, with anybody with a sexually transmitted disease. Hmm. In the wrong location, meaning the physical location, not the body location. Too great a frequency. It even said in the daytime, sex in the daytime. Again, not because any of these are inherently bad, but because they all increase our mental afflictions. About those behaviors. So anything that increases desire makes us want for more is plant seeds that perpetuates those mental afflictions. So how sexual misconduct is going to ripen in our future, we'll see. Specialists have very likely, we hear things in this class that our mind will want to reject, right? Culturally, the things we're talking about, they're acceptable.Personally, we find them acceptable, maybe. And here Buddha is saying, you know, no. It sounds like he's saying no, bad deed, right? He's not saying that. He's saying deeds that perpetuate our mental afflictions through which we perpetuate samsara. Not good or bad, but perpetuating samsara. So, you know, if we meet up against teachings like that and we want to go, no, that's not for me. Put it on the shelf. Don't reject it. Don't accept the Buddhist teaching flat out. Just say, okay, I'll put it here and wait for more information, more circumstance, more wisdom to come to my mind before I decide. Okay, so we're on to the four of speech. The first one is lying. Giving someone a misimpression. A misimpression about something we've seen or believe or know. It's pretty difficult not to give misimpressions. You know, even when we're trying not to, right? There's a goofy little movie called The Invention of Lies, I think, that starts out with the society, people can't lie. Not just that they won't, but they can't. Which means they say everything they're thinking, every impulse that they have.It's disgusting, right? Like people are rude. It's weird. Can you still hear me? And then it occurs to somebody to lie about something, and then the person believes them, of course, because he's the only one who's ever made something up. And then it goes on from there, and it's very, very funny. Very dharmic. I don't know that it was meant to be, but I find it quite the dharma movie. So any way in which we give a wrong impression, of course, we can do so intentionally in order to deceive, right, with the four factors for it to be a big lie. Or it can be not with all the four really strong, variation of that theme. It's still going to come back to us as some way in which the result of lying shows up in our life, right? So we're getting there. Mostly we lie to get something, right? Or to avoid something. And then if we do lie to get the advantage of the deal, for instance, and we get the advantage of the deal, we think, see? Lying worked. And then we're willing to do more. Then another time we lie to get the deal and we don't get the deal. For some reason, we don't connect that dot and go, oh, lying doesn't work. We just think, it didn't work this time. I have to do a better job. Our minds are so slippery, right? Our self-existent minds. If we get the good result from lying, the good result is the result of the past helping somebody else get the good result. Lying is going to bring us something else. That's where we're going. Something unpleasant. Because is it pleasant to be deceived? Is it pleasant to be cheated? Is it pleasant to be lied to? Well, not mostly. Next one, divisive speech. Divisive speech means we say something to someone about somebody else that affects the person we're talking to in such a way that that person likes the one we're talking about a little bit less. So typically we criticize or we point out a fault or we tell our opinion of that person to this person. The reason we usually do that is that we don't like this person that we're talking about and we want to verify ourselves, justify ourselves. So we'll tell someone about that other person who we think doesn't like them so much anyway and that person, we expect them to agree with us. Oh yeah, yeah, you saw them do that. I saw them do such and such, right? And it verifies our belief that that person is bad and because now we have two of us thinking they're bad. And the end result is the other person I'm talking to likes that third person less, even less than they did before. And even if the person I'm telling this to likes the third person I'm talking about, my pointing out their faults, if the person I'm talking to, you know, doesn't have a strong heart, may be influenced by my negative words about that person and then they'll like them a little bit less, right? So we're concerned here with our impact of our words on another person about a third person. It's like, this is one of the top 10. We must be doing it inadvertently, frequently, maybe not premeditated with a clearly defined object, but we're still doing it. And it has karmic results, which once we see the karmic results, it's like, oh my goodness, I'm going to be more careful about that. Sixth one, harsh talk. Harsh talk means speech with the intention of being unkind. So it can include sarcasm. You know, typical, it's the swearing, calling somebody bad names. Any words that someone, if they even overheard you, would be offended, which that depends on who's overhearing you, right? It seems. But the willingness to be speaking in a way that somebody who could hear them could be offended, that that would qualify as this harsh speech. We can use harsh words fondly. I mean, even that in the end, you'll probably decide, I think I'm going to stop doing that too. But it's this variation on the four parts of the whole path of action to use harsh speech, but with the intention to increase our fondness, is going to come back in some weird ways that maybe in the end, we don't want to do that. Buddha's not saying you must stop this, you must stop that. He's saying you do this, you'll get that, you decide. Okay, so we're getting there. Fourth one for speech is idle speech, useless speech, meaningless chatter. They say even to talk to ourselves, or to talk to intimate, inanimate objects is useless speech, arguments, criticism, disputes, reciting non-Buddhist texts that the scripture says, reciting Buddhist scripts, texts, thinking about something else. That happens a lot in this mind. Useless joking, whining, complaining, any speech motivated by attachment, like that would be everything. Gossip, craving, movies, politics, sports, like what are you going to talk about? In the extreme form, useless speech is even useless Dharma speech in the sense of gossip amongst our Sangha, right? Where you're not hashing out a concept, you're just saying, did you hear what that blah, blah, blah person did? Right? It's just useless speech. A lot of what we call necessary speech, when we really look at it, we could say it much more precisely and quickly and get our point across. It would be hard to blend in with a society if we are strict about our speech in this way. And so Buddha, Geshe Michael too, was quick to say a bodhisattva's job is to blend in. So a bodhisattva's job, you get to interact with a casual conversation and your state of mind is, where can I throw in a one-liner that'll help everybody see this situation in a different way? Maybe you never get to throw in the one-liner, but on your mind, you're like watching for where you could turn the conversation to something more meaningful. In my experience, when people are going on about a circumstance of the day and everybody's sharing their take on what's going wrong, which is useful to hear these different opinions, but at some point, instead of just continuing to point out what's going wrong, how about having a suggestion, some kind of improvement that we could see happen? And so it's like, I've always got this, when can I jump in and say, let's think of a solution. And most of the time when I finally say it, it falls flat. People just look at me. And then the next thing that comes is, we go right back again, because it's really hard to shift the direction, the focus of a conversation with other people. We can try and I can't do it myself. I can't sustain it either. But so for a useless talk avoidance mechanism, you're like thinking, where can I try to shift it? Where can I decrease my own, but still stay involved with other people? From a Pratimoksha level, we would remove ourselves from that conversation to protect our ethical way of life. From a Bodhisattva perspective, you step into it, but with the state of mind, how can I add my input such that it will elevate this timeframe? Do you see? Okay. So let's go on to the three of mind. The first one they call craving or coveting. We use the more modern term, jealousy, which is this being unhappy when someone is getting some kind of success, which is really a little different than coveting or craving. Coveting is like somebody else has something and whoa, you'd like to have that. Not that you're necessarily going to go and take it from the other person, but it increases this desire to have that thing. You know, that coveting, like I want that. I want that too. It could be a physical thing, a material thing, or a quality or a characteristic. You know, maybe we see somebody who's really charismatic and then we'd like to be charismatic, but don't see ourselves that way. And as a result, instead of admiring them and trying to be like them, we go, ew, right? Like we somehow get in the way of their charisma because we don't have it and we would like to have it, but they do have it. It's this just perverted way that our samsaric minds act. Not always, of course, but when we're talking about this mental affliction, which we must be doing because it's in the top 10, it has these components. There are these five conditions that this state of mind they call coveting has. So the first is that you are attached to your own possessions or characteristics, whatever it is that's triggering this coveting. We have our own version of it and we are really attached to it. Second, we would like to accumulate more of it. Third, we learn that somebody else has something, probably something similar and a little better, right? From us perceived, what they have is a little better than what we have. And then it occurs to us that we would like to have those that they have. Like ours isn't quite good enough now, we need to step up to match theirs. It's not that we're willing necessarily to take theirs away from them, but because they have it, I want that or better. Then number five, that desire becomes overwhelming and we act in some way, the scripture says, shamelessly to get that thing, right? So the old scenario was keeping up with the Joneses, you know, you live in this neighborhood and the guy across the street gets the new fancy car and you've never bought a brand new car, yours have always been used. And then because he has it, it's like, oh honey, don't you think we need to buy a new car? And you don't really need one, but you justify it, even though you can't maybe afford it, just because he's got one, I want one in my front yard. Like I never really related to that so much, but I know people, I've seen people, like I don't know people personally, but I've seen people who that really did sway their behavior, you know, not about shiny new cars, but about other things, you know, the latest trend, ah, time for me to have it. Out of this comparing, comparing, comparing each other. And if I fall short, I need to have what's a little bit better than the other guy, right? So I get my new car, then that guy's new car isn't good enough for him. He gets a new bum or, you know, and then, right, somebody's always one upping the other one, and then it gets all out of hand, right? And you go into debt and et cetera. So craving, coveting, in, in terms of like qualities or characteristics, when we have competition, in, you know, suppose you're on a team, and there's a team member that's really good, and you're the second best. And that could really spawn a powerful, healthy competitiveness. Where you're helping each other get better, right? You're trying to get better than them, and they're trying to stay better than you. And so you both work really, really hard. Or it can trigger this unhealthy competition, where in your effort to get better than them, you actually try to interfere in some way with them and their workout, you know, and it can go really sour, that you get in the way, and they get hurt. And then it's like, oh, so sorry, you got hurt, right? That's ill will. It verges right on into the second of the 10 mental afflictions through which we perpetuate samsara. Ill will, when feeling happy, when someone we don't like has problems. So jealousy is being unhappy when somebody gets what they want. Ill will is being happy when somebody doesn't get what they want. It's really an ugly state of mind, and we all have it. You know, there's the bad guy. And they've got these bad qualities. And then it's really hard, even in our wish for things to change and get better, to not have some feeling of bad, may bad things happen, to get that person out of the way. It's really hard. Even when we say, well, you know, their karma is going to come back to get them, which is true. We're gloating about it. Instead of, ee, gads, when their karma comes back, it's going to be so horrible for them. And then wanting to stop this whole thing because of that. That's not the common state of mind, even when we go, oh, karma is going to get them. Ill will, to be happy that their karma is going to get them. And we can't help it. When it comes up, we go, oh, yuck. And that's enough that we don't plant the seed strong enough. Jealousy, ill will. Let's do the last one, and then we'll take our break. A wrong view is the last one. When we think of wrong view, we're so well trained to think, oh, believing the thing has its identity in it from it is the wrong view. But wrong view at this level is the wrong view that doesn't believe that our actions have consequences. And it's like, well, that's silly. Everybody knows that actions have consequences. You put the key in the ignition and turn it. The consequence is the car starts. So we believe that our actions have consequences, but we don't understand the real consequences. We don't understand that it's our behavior that creates the circumstances of whether the key turning the car starts the car or not, because we don't think it through, recognizing that son of a gun. Sometimes I turn the key and the car starts, and sometimes it doesn't. And when it doesn't, we blame the battery. And we're probably right, but we're still wrong because neither one, right, was a result of turning the key, whether the car started or didn't start, was coming from something else. That we don't understand. That's the wrong view. We call it not believing in karma. But do you see it? You could mean a whole lot of stuff by not believing in karma. It's very specific. And then for that, I don't know how to finish that sentence. The other part of wrong view is not believing in past and future lifetimes. Because if you said to somebody, is it true that you reap what you sow happens within the frame of your lifetime? They would say, come on, everything that you do in this lifetime can't come back to you in one lifetime. Suppose you're one of those kids that is a really great little kid, and then they reach puberty and they get in with a bunch of friends, and those friends, they end up part of a gang. And it's like, how can the karmic seeds planted by that little kid who was so good, good, good, good, all of a sudden, you know, be in a situation where they're happy to go, you know, whatever gangs do. So it's like, it can't be true, this seed planting thing, and be verified in one lifetime. There has to be past and future life. And so if you don't believe in past or future lives, then the karmic impact loses power. It doesn't make it untrue. It's just that you can't show it to yourself well enough to live by it. So hopefully, we've proved to ourselves the truth of past and future life. More likely, we have the seeds to believe it. But we should still go back and show ourselves why it must be true. And it was that argument that if I'm aware now, I had to be aware at the first moment of this life. And I had to have been aware before the first moment of this life. And so ta-da, right, previous lifetime. And then do that same argument moving forward. And ta-da, right, this mind is going to go on forever. But we need to come to that conclusion ourselves in order for our wrong worldview to show itself to us. Not believing that that's true, thinking that this lifetime is all we've got. In which case, you know, do what you need to do to be happy. Because when you're dead, you're gone, and it's done. And I believed that right up until I was 32 years old. And then something happened that directly, a direct experience that I had that showed me I was wrong. And right, my whole belief system crashed and burned, thank goodness. But it took time to piece together a new worldview. And then here I am, hooray. So let's take a break and we'll get into the details of the karmic correlations. So karma is the direct cause of every microsecond of experience that we have. It's both our curse and our power, said Geshe Michael. It's our curse because things are gonna ripen. But it's our power in the sense that how we respond to them create our future experiences, not the one in the very next moment. But inevitably, it's karma that's running the show. To make karma, all that's necessary is that our mind is aware. And our mind is always aware. Even when we are passed out, even when we are anesthetized, even when our body's dying, even when we are in deep sleep, and it seems like it's just blank when you come out of it, that the awareness is always there on obvious or subtle levels. So all it takes is to be, to make karma. So we are making it, making it, making it, collecting it's called. To be just aware of ourselves, thinking, doing, saying, collects karma. Collects means fresh karma, the seed is planted. Whether it's ever gonna get over its threshold or not, different story. But the cause is planted. It doesn't become the cause until the result ripens, until it gets over the threshold into experience. But the whole time in between, the awareness of me doing, planting the seed, that seed rattling along, being influenced by everything else, I think, say and do, until it gets over this threshold for manifestation as the experience. And then how I'm aware of the experience, how I respond to the experience, plant seeds new. So we're constantly ripening, planting, ripening, planting, ripening, planting. Our thinking minds can only think of it as sequential, but technically it's happening together. Experience, response, experience, response. And it's all happening in the now. And that's me in my world, me in my life. All this process we call karma, that we call really profound dependence together. So all of these deeds that we're saying are things we want to avoid, the non-virtues, the wrong deeds, the bad deeds, are only bad because when their results happen, they will be unpleasant experiences. Our own unpleasant experience is what makes the deed done, that is the cause for that experience, a bad deed. So we've heard that before. You can't really say whether a deed you're doing now is a good deed or a bad deed because it hasn't ripened yet. Once it ripens, if it's pleasant, it was a good deed. If it's unpleasant, it was a bad deed. So when we learn about these correlations, we can establish, well, that would be unpleasant to be going along with a healthy life and then get in a car accident and be paralyzed. And then my life is shortened because paralyzed people don't live a long time. So my life gets cut short or even worse, I'm going along just fine, I get pneumonia and die. It's like that would be a bad result, I think, or we get cheated. If we have an unpleasant thing happen to us ever, it's a result of having somehow created that cause by doing something similar to another, is our party line, right? But now we're going to have this list of correlations from these 10 basic deeds that bring unpleasant results through which we perpetuate samsara, that we can redesign our response so that we can have less and less unpleasant experiences in the future. And if that's our goal, fine, use it for that. If our goal is nirvana, then use it for that. If our goal is Buddhahood, then use it for that. And all the rest comes along for the ride. So wrong deeds that come back to us as unpleasant are then deeds that block our nirvana, because we respond to that unpleasantness in a way that perpetuates them. You know, someday we'll have an unpleasant ripening, and we won't have a mental affliction about it, and then we won't respond badly. And if that, if our mind has reached the place where it couldn't have a mental affliction about any kind of unpleasantness that comes up, that's what it is to be in nirvana. Our mind doesn't get rocked from its peace of mind, even as our experiences are still going along, pleasant, unpleasant, unpleasant, pleasant, until those seeds are replanted as well. So there are four different karmic results that come out of any given behavior. We're going to talk about the four specific to the ten non-virtues. These four come to us from DCI as the four flowers. But here's the right where, where that comes from, out of Jetsun Kappa's Lam Rim Chenmo, which comes out of Buddha's teachings. So the first level of karmic result is called the ripened result. And for the ripened result, what they mean by that is that how the karma influences our overall projection in that, in a future birth. So call it the projecting karma that sends us into the next realm, the ripening result. So any, any seed, mental seed could be the projecting karma that sends us to the next lifetime. And the quality of that karmic seed distinguishes whether it's a hell realm, a hungry ghost, an animal, a human, etc. So any of these ten non-virtues can be the seed that is the projecting karma into the next life. For an extreme instant of any of the ten non-virtues, if that ripens as the projecting karma, that will project us into a hell realm. It doesn't matter whether the extreme of the ten non-virtues was killing or stealing or sexual misconduct or lying. If the extreme version of that deed is the projecting karma, hell realm is the ripened result that next lifetime. So what does it mean to be an extreme instance of the ten bad deeds? It's one where all four parts of that path of action are strong. So for killing, premeditated, clearly identified the object. That's the one I wanted to kill. It's living. I'm going to kill it. We go and we have the mental affliction strongly involved. They're bad. My solution is to kill it. I'm going to do it. And then we take on the deed and they actually die. To have all those four planted, it's not one seed. It's going to be a whole series of seeds. But any one of those being the projecting karma, hell realm. So those same four for ill will, those same four for any of the ten, sends hell realm as a ripening result. Medium level deed means, you know, you don't have all those four really strongly intact. Some variation wasn't really premeditated or premeditated, but oops, it wasn't actually the right person or premeditated right person, but I was really trying to help them. Mental affliction, right? Misguided, trying to help. And then, you know, they did die, but maybe they didn't actually die of what I did, but they died of something else. I ended up hurting them. They got infection. They went to the hospital. They got pneumonia in the hospital. They died of the pneumonia, not of my action. So that would be a medium deed. Medium deed sends you to birth as a craving spirit. So before we heard craving spirit from being stingy, etc. But also any of the ten deeds done medium way. And then any of the ten deeds done by a lesser instance, birth as an animal. If those seed, that seed is a projecting karma, birth as an animal, what animal, right? That would be filled in by other seeds. So the lesser instant, something done by accident, something done repeatedly, something done, you know, not really very aware of what we're doing. You can see how that would send us to an animal realm where we're on instinct. We're on automatic pilot, right? We have to do what we do. When we're a gazelle, you have to live as a gazelle. You can't decide, oh, I'm going to live differently. You know, me the gazelle is going to choose to live like a monkey. You can't do that, right? As humans, we can kind of do that. It's unique to being human. All right. So ripened result means ripened into the next life. Then the next level of before is called the consistent result. The second one is called the consistent result. And it's expressed as even if you do get a rebirth as a human, then you'll have the habit of doing that wrong deed again. So if in a given life, you know, we were in the habit of lying and then we die and we are projecting karma somehow miraculously gets us another human life, we are born as the one who just sees nothing wrong with lying, right? Is always fibbing, right? Just seems to have the automatic pilot to fib because of past seeds, coloring that life in that way. Not that you can't change it, of course, but we would have to recognize it. So it's called the consistent result. We have the habit of and we enjoy doing that which the consistent result is ripening. Then the third factor is called the consistent consequence. And it gets confusing because of the redundancy of the words. The consistent consequence is the things that we will personally experience as a result of the deeds that we have done towards others. This is the one we think more of as karma, right? What I do is going to come back to me. This is the what comes back to me. It's our own experience, what our own experience will be like as a result of what we've seen ourselves think, do, say towards others. And each one of the ten non-deeds has two identifiable kinds of experiences that are their consistent consequence. Mm-hmm. So for killing, the first one is our life will be short. We'll get, yeah, the first one is the life, our life will get short, be short. The second one is we get sick and tire easily. So those beings who just were sickly, it's a result of previous lifetimes habits of killing. And who's going to come up with that? When I was in medicine, mostly I did adult medicine, but I had some kids I took care of. And one sweet little girl had asthma and I saw her regularly and she'd get head colds. And every time she got a head cold, her asthma would kick up. No, we need to do an asthma treatment and so forth. Darling little girl, but always sick. And hopefully she grew out of it. But it's like my job, I didn't know about this at that time, but it's like now looking back, it's like that poor thing. She's ripening results of some past life in which killing was what was necessary to live. And now she's ripening the result as this little kid, right? She's not killing things. It's just happening. Even if I had known it at the time, I would not have told her that, right? But I might have encouraged her to find ways of how to help somebody else feel better without even saying why. Just saying, use this prescription, use this medicine. And when you get back to school, I'd come up with some way, some suggestion for how she could help a friend. And maybe her seeds would have shifted. They eventually did, but you get the idea. So if we're having health problems, right? We reach for the geritol, the vitamins, the exercise, all those things work and don't work. What really works is protect life. But the thing about protect life, if it doesn't work in the next moment, but neither does the geritol. We just think it does. So different ways to protect life helps our seeds for future lives, whether it's the future of this one or the future of future ones, be long lived and healthy. So it's not that, oh, okay, every month I need to go buy fish and let them go in the bay, right? I don't have access to that. But we can protect life as we go through our day. Wear your seatbelt, stop behind the limit line of the stop sign. Don't run the yellow light.You know, all the different ways that we get sloppy because we think we're safe because we've done it so many times and we're safe. But are all opportunities where we can say, no, I'm protecting life here. You know, even if nobody's coming to stop behind the stop sign limit line is protecting life. All these little ways that we can do it. Give blood when the Red Cross comes to town, if you qualify, right? Little ways that we can protect life in order to do the opposite of all the killing that we can't help but do. Drive your car, we're killing stuff. Eat vegetables, eat nothing but vegetables. There's still creatures getting killed by harvesting the vegetable. Even if we grow our own garden and we're going to be so, so careful about all those little pill bugs to not hurt them as we harvest our vegetables, we're still going to kill somebody. But we can also protect life more than we were before. Second one, stealing. The consistent consequence from stealing is we never have enough to live on.And whatever we do have, we must share with others. Like everything's in common property. We don't really have the exclusive use of anything. And you know, when we live in families, right, that's true. And it's not a bad thing, right? You're the parents. You're providing everything for the kids. Everything you have is sharing with them. Maybe you don't have anything that you can really say is your own. And that's not a bad thing. It's a karmic consequence of stealing if you're living in a dormitory and your roommate keeps using your toothpaste, you know, and you didn't offer it. And they just don't care enough to distinguish their toothpaste from your toothpaste. But you are upset about it, right? It's my toothpaste. You keep your gums off of it. It's a result of our own past stealing that makes us be in a situation where somebody's going to use my stuff. You see? So it's the unpleasantness of it that makes it a result of stealing. Not when I'm happily sharing everything, right, to take care of you situation. But it is interesting when we think of people that are in poverty. And we think of the reasons for poverty is well, they don't have well, which we would think, oh, because they were stingy in the past that they don't have well. But here, technically, it's from past stealing. No, and if you can't get your needs met, and you come across something that would be one of your needs, you would take it to use. So you're stealing because you're in the situation of not having your needs met would perpetuate the not having the needs met. No, even in that lifetime, because you'll get in trouble for stealing. But even then, like, as I'm following my example along, suppose someone who's homeless, gets caught for stealing, and they get put in jail. It's unpleasant to be in jail. But now they have a bed and they have a meal. So they're actually getting their needs met. In some way better than when they were living under the bridge. It's just unpleasant. It's more unpleasant to get your needs met in jail than to not get your needs met under the bridge. You see, so none of this is a black and white thing. But when we're trying to solve poverty, are we somehow addressing past habits of stealing? And whatever state of mind or mental affliction that would lead to stealing as the cause of their poverty, right? If you brought it up at your city council meeting, you know, the solution to our poverty is to prevent stealing. They'd say, yeah, right by, you know, because it doesn't make sense. In our day to day world, it doesn't make any sense at all. But that would be what would, if we were able to work on that, that's what would shift the karmic seeds of everybody seeing homeless people. If everybody does less stealing. I don't steal. Wait, do you take pencils home from work? Right? We talked about it before. Do you steal somebody's time, which I'm going to ask your permission, but I'm going to steal your time at the end of class because I can't do this in the time I need. You get it? Stealing. Sexual misconduct, consistent consequence is the people around you are unreliable. They're inconsistent because we're ripening seeds from having been unreliable or inconsistent with our closest person in the past. So this ripening result is not just in the sexual activity arena of people being inconsistent. It's in any way that we're finding people to be unreliable. You know, where it's going to show up would probably be our work life, right? Or our family life where, you know, the kids have certain responsibilities and they don't come through. Or in our work life, our teammates don't fill their role the way they're supposed to. Our judgment is people are unreliable and we blame them and get upset with them when in fact it's ripening seeds of our own past unreliableness, but in specific, unreliable in the context of sexual misconduct with somebody else's partner. And it's like, who would draw that conclusion? And how useful is it to think, okay, some past life I did adultery so that my team at work is full of unreliable people. So we would go back and go, wow, you know, that was a big mistake that life. I didn't do it in this life. You know, am I, is there any way that I'm giving anybody a wrong impression in this life? I'm going to stop doing it. I'm going to do such and such as my antidote for that past life of doing it. And I'm going to really, really honor my commitments to other people to see my team at work experience shift, right? Ordinarily, you would go to them and say, let's do a team, I don't know, relationship building exercise and learn how we can rely on each other better. And maybe that would work and maybe it wouldn't. Okay. Dealing with our own past seeds, maybe that'll work and maybe it won't also by next week, but it is going to work. It has to eventually. Eventually is the hard word here. Okay. People around you are unreliable from sexual misconduct. And the second factor is you will always have competition for your partner. So whether it's your sexual activity partner that you've got this perfect partner and other people are hitting on them all the time. And if that's unpleasant for you, it's a result of past adultery in the office space, right? You and your partner, your business partner, right? You've got this perfect situation going on and the headhunters keep coming to your business partner. And so you're constantly afraid that they're going to cut and run. That would be a result of past sexual misconduct. Who would figure that out? Okay. Next one, lying. The consistent consequence of past lying is nobody believes what you say, even when you're speaking the truth. So we know this kind of stuff happens. Somebody who you see lies all the time, but you get in a group meeting and they say something and everybody believes them. You don't have the habit of lying. You're in that group meeting. You say something and say, nah, that's not right. Right? People, everybody disagrees with you and don't believe you. And the other way around, maybe you're the one where no matter what comes out of your mouth, people believe you, you know, and then are we going to take advantage of that in some way? Hey, are we going to be really conscientious about using that situation from lying? Nobody believes us even when we're telling the truth. The second is we perceive that people are always trying to deceive us, to cheat us, to lie to us. No. So everywhere we go, we're on this alert. They're out to get me.They're out to cheat me. They're out to lie to you. Do you remember the old days when people had to count your change, you know, and you had to be on this constant alert? No. I had people, well, I kind of remember people, it's like they just accept their change and not count it. But me, it's like I was making sure it got right. I had this underlying sense that they were going to do it wrong and I was going to end up, you know, with less dime than I should have had. And I remember being like that. And now we don't have that, right? They count out the change because the machine tells them how much to count out and you just trust that they get it right. But I remember those days when it's like, no, no, they're like, they're out to get something from me. And it was, it was really unpleasant to have to be on that kind of alert all the time. These kind of karmic results come up. They do shift. Hooray. Divisive speech. The first one for divisive speech, the result is people around us are always fighting with one another, or it seems like they're fighting with one another, right? Assuming it upsets you. There are cultures where to a other culture, it seems like they're fighting. I don't know, Italian, New Yorkers. I don't know, whatever the hot-blooded Latins, maybe. They yell, they scream, they blame, right? And it's all part of being a family, and I guess they all enjoy it and they don't see it as fighting. Me, from my background, like, what are you guys all fighting about? This is terrible. I can't be in the middle of this, right? I perceive it wrongly. It's my seeds ripening from this divisiveness. Right? That that would be unpleasant. Second factor from divisiveness is people around us have undesirable characters. Like you live in a community that, you know, there's gang members everywhere. And so you feel, you know, threatened and fearful or mistrustful. Right? We can see how that would come about. Next one, harsh speech. Consistent consequence is that the sounds in our world, so many are unpleasant. As a result of our own past harsh speech, we live where there's lots of sirens and squeaky bus brakes and barking dogs and, right? Jets overhead and just noise, unpleasant sounds happening. The second is that when people talk to us, it sounds like they're trying to start a fight. You know, to us, their tone seems, what's the word? Accusative. Right? What they're talking about feels accusative. It just always sounds like somebody's picking a fight. So between unpleasant sounds around us or someone always picking a fight, anytime that's happening, it's these kinds of seeds ripening, right? It doesn't mean only if we have a life where everybody picks a fight with us, then we're ripening these seeds. It's anytime it sounds like somebody's picking a fight with us. These are harsh speech seeds ripening. And when we have that, like in our lexicon, instead of blaming them, we'll go, Oh, harsh speech ripening here. What do I want to do about it? Because ordinarily our automatic response would be to lay into them, right? Would you quit picking a fight with me? And we're probably going to use harsh speech in the process of doing that, thereby perpetuating the cycle or some other similar cycle, whatever it is, how we respond. So you have a neighbor with a barking dog. You can take cookies to the dog. You can ask the neighbor to restrain the dog. It may or may not work. Purify harsh speech and see what happens. How long do you have to purify your harsh speech until the dog stops bothering you? However long it takes. And that will be determined by the strength of our effort to change our own harsh speech. Now to decide what we do to purify past harsh speech and intentionally do the opposite of harsh speech to powerful karmic objects frequently, right? Powerful karmic object, Lama, parent, arhat, someone in need, someone who's helped us, someone in need. Remember that list? Like all the stuff that we've been learning, it comes into play with this like database that we're developing now, how to use it. Harsh speech, idle speech. The result of idle speech is no one respects what you say, right? No one thinks what you say has any value. It's a little different than lying speech where nobody believes you even when you're saying the truth. This one is they just don't value what you say. So they don't really even care enough to go, you know, is it true or is it not true? It's just like, eh. The second is we are afflicted with our own lack of confidence. We don't even respect what we say or think or do. From past useless speech, we have lack of self-confidence. Again, we wouldn't connect that dot. And Geshe-la said, you know, if your therapist understood that your lack of self-confidence is from past gossiping, useless speech, and probably is being perpetuated by useless speech, I'm no good. I'll never be good enough. I can't do that. All the reasons why we can't put into practice what the therapist is suggesting we do, all that useless speech is what's perpetuating the lack of self-confidence. And if that counselor were able to say, look, go work on your useless speech in this way, so that whatever method we use to help boost your confidence can work, that therapist would be a successful therapist because they'd be adding a piece to their program that's working with the karmic seeds while using the scientific method for building confidence, so that the scientific method for building confidence can actually work. It can only work if we have the karmic seeds for it to work. And useless talk is the opposite of the karmic seeds that would make a technique boost our self-confidence. Do you see? So, again, once we understand these correlations and we have enough courage to look into our own state of heart, state of mind, and see where we want to improve ourselves, we have this additional layer to work with, which is our karmic seeds from past behaviors. Coveting. Because of coveting, we have a personality that's dominated by desire, desire for things first. And second, we're never satisfied with what we have. So because of that jealousy or coveting, before in this life, we're one of those who needs the latest fad, who needs a new handbag with matching shoes to go to that party, who just needs to keep up with the latest trend. There are apparently people like that. I don't actually know any, but you see them on TV, in the ads. I don't know if that makes them real or not. But then also never satisfied with what we have. That's one of the six human sufferings, never satisfied. Interesting, isn't it? How ubiquitous our coveting must be that even if, even as humans, which is like the best karmic result circumstance we could have, is colored by the results of coveting, of jealousy. It must be so ubiquitous. Ill will, result of ill will. We are always finding ourselves without the help we need. So we saw that with divisive speech as well. Here, the result of ill will is this scenario where you know, you've got this big project and you need help from your team and the team doesn't show up or only half of the team shows up. And then because of our past ill will, it's very likely that we get upset with those team members that didn't show up to do their part. We get mad at them and then, right, in our mad at them, we don't care so much about why they didn't show up. Maybe their mom is really sick, right? And they had to take her to the hospital. We don't care about that. We don't even think about that. They didn't show up to their job. I'm mad at them. I'm going to dock their pay, whatever. That ill will has just added to the seeds of possibility of not having the help you need, you know, another time that you need help. So it's such a common pattern and our reaction is so automatic to blame them and get upset with them for not showing up that then we perpetuate the very situation. Second result of ill will is that we find ourselves always hurting others or being hurt by others. So probably none of us are somebody who goes around hurting others. And hopefully we're not also the ones that are constantly getting hurt by others physically, emotionally, emotionally, maybe, but physically at least. But it's happened to me that in my effort to protect something or somebody, I hurt it instead, you know, like catching the little pack rat because it was getting into the car. And, you know, we're not going to kill it, but somebody in the neighborhood is if it gets into their car. So our justification is let's catch it, take it miles away. It can live in the desert where everybody's happy with where it lives. And so we get the have a heart trap or something equivalent. And the little creature gets into the trap and it sticks its nose through the little spaces in the trap and its nose gets caught and it swells up and it can't get its nose out. And the poor thing is in there all night. Right. With this nose cut like terrible. And then we had to hurt it worse to get it free. I mean, it was just awful in our effort to protect it. We hurt it badly. And, you know, you take the bug out so careful to get the bug in your cup. And then when you take it out and dump it, I don't know it. It gets smashed by something else. It's like, oh, man, it's we think, oh, I just wasn't carefully enough. True. But result of past ill will, which means any ill will now is going to bring that up. Wrong view as a result of past wrong view. We are a person who keeps harmful views now. And it's like. But would we know they're harmful views? Maybe we do and still keep them. This one's a little hard for me to quite understand because it's our own judgment of our own mind. And why would we keep a view that's harmful once we know it's harmful? Unless we really, really have this ugly heart, you know, I know it's harmful and I want to use my harmful worldview to keep others hurting, like really ugly. Hard to imagine even getting a human life with that kind of state of mind. But Keshla said. The way this might show up would be that our country has the view that if someone from another country is threatening to harm the people of our country, that it's right to go harm them before they can harm us. And that once they've harmed us, then it's right to go and harm them back, because that's what you're supposed to do in the face of getting harmed. That's how we protect our people, is to harm them bigger than they harm to us. And to think that that's the right thing to do is what they mean by holding wrong view. But you see, you think it's the right thing to do. But it's just going to come back to everybody as more unpleasantness, more suffering. So it's the wrong thing to do.Ultimately, you just think it's the right thing to do because of past wrong view. You think wrong views are right views. And then, of course, you're just going to do them and perpetuate them. It's a it's a real problem. Wrong view, not believing in karmic consequences and not believing in past and future lives, leads to a world where views that are harmful are actually the way we should live. Sounds familiar to me right now. Second factor is we ourselves are a deceitful person, somebody who cheats others to get the advantage for ourself. So, you know, presumably none of us are like that. And yet we live in a world where wrong views are right. So, right, we have it ripening in our outer world, but not so much in our inner world, thank goodness. But we could see how wrong view will perpetuate wrong view and and lead to. All these other ways of behavior that we're pointing out are wrong because they come back as these unpleasant ways. But if we reject all of that, then there is no reason to reject killing when it looks like you kill that animal, you have meat to eat. It looks like lying to get the deal. You get the deal. Sometimes. It looks like through jealousy, you can obstruct them from getting so that you can get more and will believe it because of wrong view. So wrong view, although it seems like minor, just don't believe in karma, don't believe in past and future lives. It like underlies the willingness to do all those other nine non-virtues, because if we really did connect the dot, we wouldn't let ourselves do any of them just purely out of self-protection, let alone everybody else. I don't want to experience the result of killing, stealing, sexual misconduct, lying, harsh speech, divisive speech, useless speech, jealousy, ill will, wrong view. I don't want to experience that. So I need to stop perpetuating the seeds that make me experience that. If it were easy to act upon, we would all be Buddhas already. And you probably are. I know I am not. You are welcome to quit pretending any minute. So we're at 7 a.m. my time, 7.04 actually. But I have about another half an hour of material to deliver to you. So I know, please, if you can stay, stay. If everybody cannot stay, I'll send you last night's class audio. You can get it from there. If somebody can stay, I'll deliver it. Do you need a break or shall we just go for it? I got to get ready for work, so. Okay. So you'll go to the recording to get the rest, this recording. Anybody else staying for me? Okay, good. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, here goes. So what we have left to do is the fourth way that karma re-ripens, which is as the environmental consequence of those 10. The experiences that we have in our life, like our worldly situations, the 10 non-virtues all have an impact on those as well. So Je Tsongkhapa's Lam Rim Chenmo goes into this in detail. He's talking about a time when the culture was agrarian. So the governing factor, excuse me, the governing factor in abundance was the the quality of the crops, the timing and quality of the crops. So all of these karmic environmental consequences are talking about how effective the crops are. In modern time, we don't have that relationship with our crops. We have a relationship with the grocery store, right? Or the online shopping, whatever your mode is now. And whether or not stuff's available, affordable, whether it's valuable, right? So I'll try to adjust the scriptural about crops to how it can manifest in what we can relate to in terms of getting our needs met. So the consequence of killing expresses in our outer world as the food and drink and medicine and crops in the field having less and less power, like they're inferior. They have little nutrition, little potency. The medicines can't work. We eat food, but we're getting sicker. It doesn't sustain our strength. And what we see is that the majority of beings around us seem to die young, right? We already heard that our own personal consequences, we die young, right? If that's what's ripening. And sometimes the seed ripens as our outer world circumstances, not so much on our personal circumstances, right? So we're not always getting all four from each of these 10 non-needs. And it makes sense from having taken life. The things that we go to to sustain ours aren't going to work, aren't going to work as well. Then stealing because of having stolen the crops that grow are few and far between. When we, they grow, they don't have the power to remove hunger. They spoil easily and early. They, the, you plant the seeds and they don't come up or they come up and then rain doesn't come. So they wilt and die or they come up and too much rain comes and they wilt and die. Uh, it just, the, we, the, the crops can't provide for us because we've stolen. So we heard the personal result of stolen is we can't get our needs met. And here it's the outer world's way, right? Of ripening in that way. So it's like, we can go to those grocery stores that have so much merchandise. It's crazy. And have on our list to get peanut butter with no sugar, like just made of peanuts and salt and nothing else. And out of the millions of foods that they have and the five different kinds of peanut butter, they don't have the peanut butter with no sugar, you know? And it's like, that happens to me or it used to. And it's like, doggone these grocery stores, you know, they have everything, but something that would actually be useful, right? My judgment, don't bother with peanut butter, full of sugar, eat the one that's just peanuts, right? So I've got this judgment and I can't find it. And I blame the grocery store, right? I blame everything, but my stealing karma, like who would connect the dot that I can't find peanut butter I want because of past stealing. I can steal in this lifetime, but do you see that the karmic correlation is whatever the circumstance that I can't get my need met is a result of past stealing. So what to do with that? I don't steal now. And then like, what's the opposite of stealing? Oh, protect other's property. Go further with the opposite would be, well, maybe the stuff I have, I could share better. I could share more, right? Like I'm going from the pendulum of not being able to get my needs met. So I'll take anything that I can get, stealing more to avoiding stealing to stop that situation, but I don't steal. Okay. I'll protect other's property. I already do that. What goes further than protecting other's property is sharing my property with others. And then to take it even further, I'd want to share my property with those in need because that's where I started. I couldn't get my needs met. So it leads from stealing into generosity from which every time I can't find that peanut butter, instead of going, right, it's like, oh, okay. Who can I find that I can share something that I do have with, and then hopefully go do it, right? We don't always have that opportunity to go do it, but the intention to go do it is, you know, one step down from completing the cycle. So as we're growing this database, this is how we can start using it as our own guidelines for behavior. Third one, because I have wrong sexed, whatever that meant, the place where I live or the places that I frequent, there's urine and feces all around, mud and dirt and filth and everything stinks and everything seems unpleasant and distasteful. So it maybe isn't the place that you live necessarily, but suppose on your commute to work, right, your commute takes you through an area or a neighborhood where you're going past the restaurant or grocery store, spoiled food dumpsters, and it just stinks, right? And it's always dirty and there's trash everywhere because, you know, the garbage can't keep up with the overflow of trash that's coming out. And it just, you have to drive through this five minutes of stink, right? You wind your windows up, but like, it's just this, these moments of past sexual misconduct ripening every day going to work. It's weird, right? And it's like, I don't do sexual misconduct now. Okay. I guess I must have because I keep going through this stinky area. Let me clean up my relationship in every other way, gross and subtle, and see what happens to my commute to work. You know, see what happens to that stinky area. What might happen is all of a sudden the trash is always cleaned up, or all of a sudden there's a different way for you to commute to work, or even all of a sudden you're moved from that location to another location. So your drive is different.Who knows how it's going to actually ripen, but you've used up your seeds for driving through stinky place. And when you don't have the seeds ripening, you can't have that experience. True for any unpleasant experience that's happening in a recurring theme. We can recognize it, find its match in the 10 non-virtues, see what we did, see what the opposite of that is, add the piece where I've already done the opposite and rejoice, and do more of the opposite to change the unpleasantness. Like that's the pattern. I'm going to go through it again at the end. Next one, because we've lied, we live in a world where when we undertake work in cooperation with others, like farming or anything, in the end the work fails to prosper. The people don't work well together. For the most part, everybody thinks everybody else is cheating them. So everybody's afraid, and there are many things to be afraid of. So because of giving misimpressions, this environmental consequence, it doesn't quite, right, we couldn't think this out. So in our more modern world, you have your team at work, and you think you're on project, and then it's just like you can't get it completed. And everybody seems to be interfering with everybody else's effort to complete it, and it's just going wrong, going wrong, going wrong. And we try to find somebody or something to blame, when in fact it's our past lying, but I don't lie now. Okay, how can we take not lying to a higher level, right, being really truthful? Does it mean sitting down with your team and saying, look, we need to really communicate clearly with each other here. You know, that's not the problem, boss. The problem is they don't show up on time, right? That's a different karma. No, right now, right, we instigate this ability for everybody to speak more truthfully together as our antidote for the project not coming to fruition. It would be really different than what ordinary boss response would be. Next one, because we've split people up, the ground where we live is uneven, covered with crags and gullies, highs and lows, travel is very difficult, where there are many things to be afraid, and we are always afraid. So this one, divisiveness is ripening as you can't get from here to there, because there's ups and downs and things splitting you apart, environmental splitting us apart. Harsh speech is similar. Because we've spoken harsh words, the ground where we live is covered with obstacles, prickly things, thorns and stones and broken glass, and I'm going to throw in cactus spines. It's rough and dreary. There's no streams or lakes or springs of water. The earth is hot and parched and poisoned with salt, burning hot, useless, threatening, no place to rest, many things to fear. Because of harsh speech, our environment is exceptionally harsh. Now, I think of this as the Arizona desert. It's just like this. You go walk out in the desert, you have to be on your guard, because you get within six inches of a plant, and it's got barbs or thorns or claws or bees in it that are out to get you, it seems.And yet, if you sit down and watch the little ground squirrels run all over those cacti that are covered in needles, and those little creatures don't get stuck. But I get close to it, and I've got a cactus pad stuck in my hand. It's like different karma for the different beings. Those little creatures don't have the karma for those cactus needles to be dangerous. I do. Why do I? Because of harsh speech. Who would figure that one out? So, you want to change it? Change harsh speech. Seventh one, meaningless talk. Because we've spoken meaninglessly, fruits and crops refuse to grow. They grow at the wrong times, never at the right time. They seem ripe when they're not yet ripe, or their roots are frail, so they can't right nutrient the tree. Maybe they topple over in the wind. They don't live long enough to really bear the fruit they're supposed to bear. There are no places to take your leisure, no parks, no glades, no pools of cool water, many things to make you afraid. So, meaninglessness makes our crops that we're going to for life sustaining be meaningless. They just can't do what we need them to do for us. So, same grocery store would be, you know, I go in there and all those billions of things, but I'm looking for yellow squash, you know, and again, it's like, well, there's yellow squash, but it's all withered and shrinking and they want, you know, three dollars a pound for it, and it's half rotten. Like, I'm not going to buy that. Why would the grocery store sell that, right? My mental affliction would start when really it's some combination of these karmas ripening result in my environment of not being able to get what I want. That would be stealing karma, right? Like the peanut butter not there. How did I say? I forget what that was from. Lying. This one could be from meaningless talk. It's there, but it's useless. No, or you buy the fruit that looks delicious, but it tastes like cardboard when you get it home. And it's like that fruit lied to me. Look beautiful, but not worth eating. Also meaningless talk, like all these different ways that it's kind of fun when we know these correlations to go around looking. It's like, yeah, I see. I see where these are manifesting in my outer world. Meaningless talk. Next one from coveting or jealousy because we've coveted what others have, then each and every good thing that we managed to get just gets worse and worse, less and less. Like as, as we have it. So again, that was one of the six human sufferings, right? We're never satisfied from high comes low, right? Everything gets less and less, but this one's like, takes that a little bit more intensive that because our past coveting, even though maybe this life, I'm not so much a covetor, but I, I finally get that thing that I needed or wanted and I expect it to last a little while, right? In this nice state where I can enjoy it. But for example, I finally find that car that I need. And as I'm driving home, my new car, whether it's used or brand new, but the truck in front throws a rock and the windshield cracks. And it's like my new car already has become a problem. I haven't even gotten it home yet. And already it's a problem for me. So I get the windshield fixed. I get it home the next day. It's got a flat tire, right? And it's just like that kind of constant. One thing after another being a problem, not necessarily always related to that car, but just like one problem after the other, I know people who have those kinds of lives. No, it's always something never right. Never call at all.And who would say, you know, it's because of your past and jealousy. And even if I said it to them, would it be helpful? No, you know, they'd say, who the hell are you to say whether I've been jealous or not? Well, you know, just able to see your pattern. That's all trying to help, but it wouldn't be helpful unless they asked you, why do you suppose I have a life like this? And then you could say, well, you know, there's this thing about the pen and then, and then, and then, and then. And so, you know, really this kind of thing comes from jealousy or coveting. And maybe there's a pattern here that the harder your life is, the more upset you are when other people get a little bit of happiness. And maybe there's some underlying theme here that I can help you work with that would help you be intentionally happy with other people that are getting the things that you want that you can't seem to get. Maybe that would help. And then maybe they'll go along with you and maybe they won't because it sounds crazy. You know, my life is caving in and you want me to be happy for what other people have? Like, yeah, try it on for size, see what happens. You know, we would have to be a living example of it before somebody else is going to say, well, maybe that's a good idea because it seems to work for you. Right. That would be the way we could catch their attention, perhaps. Coveting. Ill will, because we wish bad things on others. We live in a world of chaos, diseases spreading, evil is everywhere. There's plagues and conflicts and fear of armies from other nations there where there are lions and tigers and bears. Oh, my venomous snakes, scorpions, poison biting worms. Surrounded by harmful spirits, thieves and muggers and the like. So because of ill will, like I'm seeing that in my my world right now, not in my immediate world at all, but in my newsfeed world, a little bit further out is this wicked ripening of ill will. And then people's response, bless you, is to point out what all those others are doing wrong. And then to say something like, you know, I wish this would come back to them. I wish, you know, that eventually they'll get prosecuted. Right. To end up with an ill will. In pointing out the wrong that's happening, right, is perpetuating the wrong that's happening. And as I was studying for this class, I realized I was doing that on Substack, right? I had gone to that platform, Substack, and that's where I was seeing what was going on in my world. Rather than going to the news, I was going to people's Substack. And then when they were pointing out like an event that was happening that I don't perceive the news telling people about, but I want people to tell about, I would restack it, right, as my contribution to the resistance. And then I realized, oh my gosh, I'm just contributing to the perpetuation of the ill will. And it's like, so I deleted it all, right? I uninstalled Substack. As great a platform as I find that to be, I was contributing to the ill will that's ripening in my world right now. And I had to stop it. No, now I need to take it to the next level. And I haven't figured out how to do that beyond my little community, but maybe I don't need to go beyond my community, right? I already am doing it in my community, but can I do more the opposite of ill will? So working on it. So last one is wrong views. Because we've held wrong views, we live in a world where the single highest source of happiness is steadily disappearing from the earth. A world where people think that things that are unclean and things that are suffering are actually things that are nice and bring happiness. A world where there's no place to go, no one to help, nothing to protect us. So our tradition would say the single highest source of happiness is the Dharma. But other traditions would say the single highest source of happiness is their tradition. And we'd all be right, right? And we'd all be wrong. But regardless, we see that the things that society goes to for pleasure are things that once we understand about karma and its consequences are things that will come back to us as unpleasant, right? Like competitive sports events. Not that there's anything wrong with competition, but the way it's gone about, is we support our team against the other team. And we don't just rah-rah our team, we point out what's bad about the other team, even if the other team is better than ours. We find something that's wrong with it and point it out to aggrandize our team. And we're expected to do that. And it's weird if we don't do that. And it's ill will wrong view, right? Jealousy, all happening in the space of entertainment. We go to movies that are violent. Well, because the hero always wins in the end. Yeah, but a hero that wins, that destroys property and people and lives, is that really winning? No, we let stuff be imprinted into our minds, thinking, oh, it's all okay. That's what we do. And we're perpetuating our samsaric world in doing so. The things we go to for entertainment are perpetuating suffering because of past wrong view. Now that we have more accurate view, it's totally up to our own decision, the extent to which we want to change our behavior. And we have other people to consider in life. So we can't just say, throw the TV out, no more movies, right? The cultures, religious traditions have tried to do that. And they aren't sustainable. Because if we don't replace them with some other form of entertainment that does bring happiness, we just end up all work and no play. And that's not functional either. So it takes a skillful self-discipline, not imposing it on others, but rather using it to show by example and willing to share when others ask. How did you do that? How did you change your circumstances so amazingly? I'll tell you, sit down. So we have these 10 number 2s.Now we have more insight into why they're called number twos, because of the suffering that they are the cause of. And then it's up where it's our decision how to change our behavior accordingly. And it's one thing to say, okay, I'm going to stop killing, stealing, sexual misconduct. It's another to take a vow to commit to stopping those things. But the 10 themselves are so ubiquitous, we can't actually uphold our pledge to stop killing. So when we take the vow, we make a pledge to stop killing within an arena in which we actually can. Right? As lay people, we take, I will avoid killing a human in a human field. We can be pretty sure that through the course of our lifetime, we can avoid doing those two things. Maybe a killing a human might happen by accident. Maybe someday we get in a position where a parent needs to have life support being stopped. And then we're in a bit of a conundrum. Uh, but for the most part, we can keep those vows. We take vows of behaviors that we are pretty sure we can keep. That's the whole point about keeping vows. It's not to struggle. It's to increase the power of the goodness that we do by not doing those deeds. So if we're already not doing them, let's get extra credit by taking a vow of not doing them. What are we not doing? Killing a human or human fetus, stealing anything of value, uh, committing adultery, lying about our spiritual practice, intoxicating our mind or contributing to the intoxication of someone else's mind. Maybe the hardest one to avoid in our society because of societal pressure, but we can do it. Right. And our tradition says, don't take all five until you are willing to try to keep all five, right? Not, not mix and match. Okay. So we can use this information in a really clearly calculated method. If we use the database and then look at our life honestly and say, you know, what do I like about my life and how do I perpetuate that? And what do I not like about it? And what do I do to stop, stop perpetuating that and create the opposite instead? So the, the system would, so a tool that I, that I offer is to sit down with yourself at some point and think of three pleasant things about yourself and your world. So one pleasant thing about yourself, even your body or your personality or your behavior, one thing that you like. Second is one thing about the others around you that you like and one thing in your immediate environment that you like. Right? So you've got these three things, make another list, three things you don't like, one thing you don't like about yourself, one thing you don't like about the people around you, and one thing you don't like about your environment. Now what you're going to do is those three things that you like, think about and write down. How do I perpetuate that? This quality in myself of honesty. How, how do I perpetuate my honesty? I rejoice in past honesty. I rejoice in other people's honesty and I, right, be aware, stay keenly aware of situations where I'm fudging the truth a little bit or exaggerating and work a little harder to clearly convey what I'm meaning to convey. I see others around me as being so generous, right? How do I perpetuate others around me as generous? I contribute too. I share in that generosity. I give back. Make your determination to do that. What do I like in my world? Where did it come from? Which of those 10 non-deeds opposites is it probably coming from and where can I do more of that? Then similarly with the three negatives, what deeds made this happen? What would be the antidote? What would be the opposite? Where can I do that opposite? Where have I already done that opposite? Rejoice. Where can I do the opposite more so that I can see this negativity in me shift? Same for the people around, same for the outer world. You may find that there's a recurring theme amongst these six different pieces you're going to look at. They may be all coming from different karmic seeds. Maybe two of them are similar, right? You'll see the pattern and then you plan out a you who's going to live according to these three antidotes for the negative and these three perpetuations for the positive. Imagine a you going through your day being that already so that then when you get out into your day, you can try it on for size. I fantasize about being that way. Then go try. We'll succeed and we'll fail and that's fine. Then every now and then you come back and look at your list again and you decide, okay, that was fun.Let's do three more on each and see what else I can work on. It becomes like a game, a tool that we have for making these changes. We can fly by the seat of our pants any given day what happens and do our four powers and then apply our four steps or we can go at it in this very sequential developmental way. It's up to you how you want to use it. But as we learn the method, then that method becomes a way of life. You're constantly working in the antidote for negative things and the rejoicables for the things so that we're learning how to be in our moment of experience able to choose a response instead of automatic pilot our response the way we have been. Our automatic pilot has the stains of all these 10 non-virtues from the past, especially the wrong view. And we're wanting to get off that automatic pilot so that we're planting our seeds with correct view, which includes that little piece of the emptiness factor that we're not even focused on so much. Geshe Michael had said, forget Shamatha, forget Vipassana right now. Get in there and clean up our seeds and purify, make merit for a while really conscientiously. And that will shift our ability to make progress on our meditation cushion, which is what's necessary to make progress towards the Nirvana or Buddhahood, which is why we started our study into Vinaya in the first place, right? So it's all in preparation for making this transformation of ourselves and our world. So thank you for the extra time. My bank account is now back to zero and that's fine. We used it where it was important. This is a really important class for your spiritual courier. So use it please. So remember that person we wanted to be able to help at the beginning of class. We've learned a lot that we will use to help them in that deep and ultimate way someday. And that's a great, great 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 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 happiness, filled with loving kindness, filled with wisdom. And may it be so. Okay. Thank you, everybody. Please stay close. Thank you, teacher. Have fun in Beijing. All right.

Vocabulary Class 8

LAM RIM Steps on the Path

LAM RIM DUDUN Short Book on the Steps of the Path

Je Tsongkapa Lobsang Drakpa (1357-1419)

LAM RIM CHENMO

JEY NYAM GUR Song of my Spiritual Life

SHAKYA TUPPA Gautama Buddha Shakyamuni Buddha „capable one of the Shakya Clan“

SAKYA Area of Tibet, also a Tibetan lineage called after that area

KADAMPA

JETSUN JAMPA Lord Maitreya

JAMPEL JANG Lord Manjushri

SHING TAY SOLIE inventor of the wagon

Arya Nagarjuna (200 AD)

Arya Asanga (350 AD)

Master Serlingpa … from Lord Maitreya

Vidyakokila … from Arya NAgarjuna

Lord Atisha (932-1052)

Choney Lama Drakpa Shedrup (1675-1748)

NYINPO DORDU SELWA Illumination of the Essence

Our lineage (in reverse order):

Geshe Michael - Khen Rinpoche Lobsang Tarchen - Trijang Rinpoche - Pabongka Rinpoche - … - 2nd Panchen Lama Lobsang Yeshe - Great 5th Lobsang Gyatso - 1st Panchen Lama Lobsang Chukyi Gyeltsen - 3rd Dalai Lama, Sonam Gyatso - Gyaltsab Je/Kedrup Je - Je Tsongkapa - Geshe Drolungpa - Lord Atisha - Serlingpa - Haribhadra - Arya Asanga - Lord Maitreya

And:

… - Lord Atisha - Vidyakokila - Chandrakirti - … - Arya Nagarjuna - Manjushri

All right, for the recording, welcome back. We are ACI Course 9 Class 8 on July 4th, 2025.

Usual Opening

All right. Victor, hello. Thanks for being here, even though you're on vacation. Thanks for your family letting you be here.

So our review of class seven would be to go through all those correlations again, and it would take the whole class. So we're not going to do it. But I wanted to share when I first met that class, I learned those correlations really well. And then I played with trying to see them happening in my outer world as I went through life, because I just didn't relate to crops not growing, you know. But it was fun to actually be thinking every time I drive by that area of town, that's always sort of garbagy and icky. “It's not the people that live there, it's my past sexual misconduct seeds.” Like, there they are again, 30 seconds as I drive through that area of town. And it was just fun to think differently in my response to situations based on really trying to see how those karmic correlations play out in my, apparently, more modern life than when that teaching was written down originally. So I encourage you to really learn those details and play with them. See how they manifest. I found it really helpful.

So at this point, Geshe Michael has said what he can say about ordained vows. And then he's gone into some detail about the lay vows. And so at this point in our course on vowed morality, he chose to go and review the Lam Rim again. So for these last three classes, we're doing a Lam Rim for a review, because our study and practice of Vinaya is based on renunciation. And once our renunciation is strong enough, we commit ourselves to finding something else. And when our goodness ripens, to find something that we go, ah, I think that's the answer. And we commit ourselves. Then our renunciation can feed on itself in the sense of not being a state of mind that makes us sad, but a state of mind that empowers us.

So it's not that we get renunciation and leave it behind. It's that our renunciation goes deeper and deeper from renunciating expecting something or somebody will be the source of our pleasure or happiness to renunciating the very misunderstanding happening in our own mind, right? What we're really trying to renunciate is our ignorance. And we can't just do it by knowing it's there, right? We have to recognize it's happening when it's happening. And that's easier said than done. Because we're on such automatic pilot.

Review of the Lam Rim

So our renunciation is what gets us interested in some other way of being. And that's what starts us on the path. And so that path, as you know, is called the Lam Rim. Which in Tibetan means the steps on the path or the stages of the path.

LAM = path

RIM = steps

Which means the things we need to come to know and live by that will help us transform our perception of ourselves and our world from samsara to Buddha Being in Buddha Paradise emanating everything we need to know and do for that to happen. So the term Lam Rim steps or stages of the path refers to any teaching that has all those points included. And it may be long and detailed about all those steps. It may be just bullet points essentially, but any teaching that includes it all is called a Lam Rim.

And then technically it's called Lam Rim because when, in English, you say a Lam Rim, it means you're talking about just one piece of that teaching that would complete. So there are many Lam Rims that have been written and each one to be considered a Lam Rim, it needs to be complete, but it may be an open Lam Rim, in which case it just mentions the secret teachings, but doesn't teach about them. It maybe goes into detail about how to have a relationship with the Lama and that's its main focus, but it somehow mentions all these other steps. So each individual step is a Lam Rim and the whole text is called Lam Rim.

So in our moving along our Lam Rim, it's really useful to revisit it from time to time because it's so easy to get on automatic pilot at a new level, at a new stage. And then we think, I'm doing fine, I'm doing fine. And then, if we don't intentionally push ourselves to get off that, then, you know, our karmic seeds, life will ripen something and oh man, right? I got complacent and we crank up the juice on our practice. And then every time we go back and we look at the Lam Rim again, we understand each Lam at a deeper level because we're different than we were when we met it the last time. And so each time it's like, well, I didn't understand that about renunciation before.

And right, it's not that we missed it, you know, somebody told us that it's that our karmic seeds didn't ripen to understand it at that way. And so really these teachings are just so rich because, right, as we change, they deepen and our insights can go deeper and deeper.

Geshela used the analogy of Buddhism being like a car engine. It's made up of many, many, many parts, some more essential than others, but it really needs all the parts to function well, reliably, and the way that it promises to function. And if some of those parts get old or stale or go missing, that car either won't run, right? It won't work or it'll not be efficient and reliable.

So the Buddhist, the things that Lord Buddha taught as the method of going from suffering being to fully enlightened being helping everyone do so too, is like a car with all these parts when they're working right to their efficiency, their maximum efficiency. But he didn't teach that whole thing in one sit. Each of his teaching came about as a result of something somebody asked. No, he didn't even gather everybody and say, let me tell you what's going on. He always waited until somebody asked something and we'll see about that shortly. And so his teachings were all, you know, started from a certain perspective and then he would go back, you know, this is what you need to know to understand this and this is where it will go. And so over the course of his career, there's all these different teachings and he himself didn't sit everybody down and say, okay, look, this is what you do first, this, this, this, and this apparently.

So what comes to be known as Lamrim comes out of Shakyamuni Buddha's Perfection of Wisdom Sutras, right? His teachings on the perfection of wisdom. And again, it's not all in one string. It's here and here and here and here. So somebody along the way had to have studied all of those and seen, oh, right. There's an outline here. I can make an outline about this path that's been taught and I can put it all together and maybe it would help it be easier for people. The first person to do that was Lord Atisha and we'll hear about how it evolves.

Once the first one got written it was very cryptic and needed commentary, right? Commentaries got written on it and commentaries got written on that, right? So everybody had their way, not everybody, but the teachers had their way of, let me see if I can make this clear for my students, right? In the way of, I don't know, organizing the material for themselves and then how to share it. And one of those teachers who worked with the Lam Rim was our hero Je Tsongkapa Lobsang Drakpa 1357-1419. And he wrote multiple things that qualify as Lam Rim, meaning all-inclusive in the path.

One of them, the famous Lam Rim Chenmo, really long, really difficult, apparently, even if we could read Tibetan, like really good as a resource material, but not so much the kind of book you sit down and, you know, read for entertainment. And then he wrote, he wrote a really short one, the Source of All My Good, also complete, but just like one-liners, one sentence, one verse about the different stages, but all-inclusive, so it qualifies. And then he also wrote one that's a brief presentation, Lam Rim Dundun, which means a brief presentation on Lam Rim, whose title, the text's title, is Jey Nyam Gur. Sounds like there's a “y” in “Gyur”, but there's not, apparently. Je Nam Gur. We're familiar with it, actually, from Geshe-la's teachings in April. This is the Song of My Spiritual Life. And it's a Lam Rim by Je Tsongkapa, and it's unique in the sense that of all of Je Tsongkapa's writings, this is one where he actually says, this is what I personally undertook that helped me. So his other textbooks don't refer to his personal practice, but this one does, at least in this recurring refrain in many of the verses when he describes a certain part of the path, activity of the path. He says, you know, this is what I put into practice myself and if you're a serious practitioner, you might want to do the same. So it gives us insight into how this thing called the Lam Rim can actually be used in life.

 So it sounds like Lam Rim means there's this ladder, and we're at the bottom of the ladder, and where we're trying to go is the top of the ladder. And we step on one rung, and we get secure on that rung, and then we step to the next one and the next one. And that each of these different lams are the things that we do to hang out and get secure on that rung before we go to the next one. Meaning things that we do in our outer, our interaction with others.

And that's true, but technically the Lam Rim, the steps on the path, is outlining the realizations that need to come to us to make this transformation from suffering being to fully enlightened being be happening. So a realization means something that we personally directly experience, that we haven't experienced before, or that maybe we have, but we haven't understood it in a certain way before. That then, because it's now a personal experience that which we were in our way, we were in our right mind, we weren't hallucinating, we weren't on drugs, we know we had a valid experience. Now that thing is real for us, and nobody can tell us differently because we've personally experienced it.

So I like the analogy of riding a bicycle. So suppose you're an adult and you never learned to ride a bicycle and you really, really want to know what is it like to ride a bicycle? And so you watch every YouTube ever made, you read every instruction ever made, and at the end of all that you go, okay, now I know what it's like to ride a bike. And then somebody brings you a bicycle, right? And you get on and you ride it. And you know, ahhhhhh!! And then you can do it and you're riding a bike. Now you know what it is to ride a bike. Before you had all this intellectual understanding, but no experience. Once you get on the bike and ride it, it doesn't matter if you had any of the intellectual experience. Now you know what it is to ride a bike. And nobody can ever say to you, nah, that's not what it's like. Because you did it. You know, even if you never ride another bicycle, you know what it's like to ride a bicycle.

So technically, when we talk about the lams of the lam rim, we're talking about things that weren't real, becoming real for us. So for instance, our renunciation, right, renunciation is the recognition that nothing in our worldly world can go right. And it's like, okay, I understand, I understand, I understand. But then at some point in life, we go, oh, man, even the good things leave me suffering. Or a bunch of people around you, close to you just die one after the other. Oh, my gosh. Right? The end of this life is just – you don't know until you have a personal experience. No, you can't argue that you now know it to be true.

So these lam rims really are making those ideas real, some experience where, oh, yes, now I know it to be true. And those realizations, they say, happen in a deep state of meditation. Which require deep states of concentration. Which is the result, a good result, so it has to be a result of kindness. So the way we cultivate deep concentration is by cultivating our kindness and cleaning out our past unkindness, selfishness. So it all really comes around that ethical living is the way we plant our seeds to improve our concentration, to improve our meditation, so that we have the platform for gaining these particular realizations that will move us along our path to enlightenment.

All right. So that means these instructions on the rungs of the ladder and how to cultivate them, we would want to verify that they work, that they're valid, that they're correct. You know, and if we knew it already, right, then we would we would learn about it and go, oh, yeah, oh, yeah, oh, yeah. Which I've had that when I when I first met Theosophy and I was studying Theosophy, which in my immediate world, it was all completely new to me. But as I read and I learned, I had this feeling as like I was just remembering stuff. And the Buddhist path has been similar in some places and other places, you know, not it all felt really brand new. Why am I going there?

We're relying on our own karmic seeds for whether or not these teachings are valid, authentic guidelines for getting to where they say we can go. And we've learned before. Maybe we hear the teachings and we're attracted and that's based on past attraction. We call it faith, perhaps the belief in something that we can't actually see for ourselves yet. And the teachings themselves say, well, don't rely on your faith because we don't know how many seeds for faith we've got. Right. They could wear out. And so here is a way that you can go. You can go into it logically. And logically prove to yourself the truth of the teachings.

But even then, we kind of hit this wall in the sense that we also need to believe that logic makes something valid, a valid direct experience until we have the direct experience. And they say there will be a point in our path of preparation where we experience remembering all the teachings we've ever received. And I don't know if that means just in that life or if it means in every life. But when we have that experience, which I have not. You know, now this this this reliability-of-the-lineage becomes real for us. So not that we don't believe it until we get that. But our belief is based on faith and logic, even better faith born of logic by way of the teachings teaching. Right. This is how to think about it. This is how to investigate it. But you come to your own conclusion.

So, Geshe Michael wanted to show us our lineage so that we can see that the Lam rims that we study, Je Tsongkapa’s Lam rims, he didn't just make them up. He didn't go to the Buddhist scriptures that he had access to and drag them out. Because by Je Tsongkapa's time, not all Buddhist scriptures were available. You know, maybe even in Lord Atisha's, I don't know. So we go through this lineage.

And an interesting thing about the lineage that I didn't understand when I first studied all of this is that in this tradition where we align ourselves with a Lama and really rely on them for everything. We think, oh, I'm relying on them. But then we realize they did the same thing to become the them I see with the qualities that I rely upon them to have. Like they relied on their Lama and their Lama relied on their Lama. And wait, that Lama relied on their Lama. And so in a sense, each one got poured into the next. And that means by the time that all has gotten poured into my Lama, right?

All of that gets poured into me, not just my Lama's goodness, but all the way back to the start of the lineage (if there is a start of the lineage, which technically there's not, right?) Shakyamuni received something from the Conqueror the Enlightened One Called Maker of Light, remember in Diamond Cutter Sutra? No, there's nothing I received, which is why I received everything. So when we tune into the lineage, we're accessing that pouring down of love, compassion. Knowledge, love and power, if you remember the Utara Tantra. We have access to all of it to the extent that we are open enough to receive and use. So we go into the lineage here.

So in Je Tsongkapa's Song of My Spiritual Life, his opening verses are about honoring the lineage as a text is supposed to do, right? You bow down. You pay obeisance to what the subject matter is going to be. And then typically you pledge to complete the work and then you go on. So in Je Tsongkapa's Song of My Spiritual Life, these personal advices to his student that’s far away. Well, if I remember this story right, has just ordained his first crop or is preparing to ordain his first crop of people. And Je Tsongkapa writes to him, yeah, you know, make sure that they understand the Lam Rim. And he writes it. It'd be quite a letter to get from your Lama, wouldn't it?

Bowing to Holy Beings

So his first, Je Tsongkapa's first verse, he says, your holy body. Sorry. He says, I bow down to my teacher, Gentle Voice. We'll get back to that. Your holy body was birthed by billions of perfect good deeds. Your holy words fulfill the hopes of infinite living being. Your holy mind sees all things in the universe exactly as they are. I touch my head to the feet of that leader of the Shakya clan. So he's talking about Shakyamuni, also known as Shakya Tuppa, also known as Gautama Buddha. And Shakya here is the name of the group of people that he was born into. Not to be confused with the Sakya, which is the area of Tibet, where the Sakya Buddhist tradition was born, which developed into a lay lineage of practitioners that we have met in our studies and will meet more deeply when we reach the Lojong. Because the Sakyas were part of the Kadampa era when the Lojong was gaining popularity. And the Sakyas was that lineage that had the Sakya Pandita, who was an old man. And the Mongolian Kong said, come teach me or I'll kill everybody. And he goes, I'm an old man. I'm going to send my nephews ahead of me. I'm coming, but it's going to take me a long time. And the nephews get there first. And by the time the old guy gets there, the nephew has converted the Kong and the Mongolians stopped fighting and et cetera. So we've heard that story. That's the Sakyas. So Tibetan, long, long, long after Shakyamuni walked the earth.

Muni means able one, Tupa, able one. So able one of the Shakya clan. It seems like an understatement. The one who completed the transformation from human into Buddha in that one lifetime, apparently. Now we also hear that, in fact, he had completed that transformation long, long, long ago. It was just time for him to manifest how one would do it from a human life. And so he manifests being the prince, having it all, rejecting it, making them stake in spiritual practices, seeing that they don't work completely, finding what does the emptiness dependent origination marriage, putting that into practice, finally fighting off the last of the Maras, the last of the illusion and coming out as Buddha. And then finally getting off his cushion and he waits for somebody to ask him to teach, which is a funny sort of thing, right? What if he walked around and nobody, it never occurred to anybody to say, hey, you know, teach me.

And we know the story. He met up with those other aesthetics that he was practicing with who he left because it wasn't working. And they probably thought, ah, you know, he gave up and went back to worldly life. But then they see him again after having not seen him for a while. And I don't know, he must've been glowing in light or something. And those guys had the presence of mind to say, wow, you know, what's up with you? They asked him a question and - you want to know, sit down. And he taught the Four Arya Truths and apparently on the spot, two of them saw emptiness directly. It's like, wow. So the able one of the Shakya clan is in our world, this first, our world turning Buddha of this era from 500 by 50 BC, long time ago.

Je Tsongkapa is pointing out that that being Shakyamuni Buddha, he was made not by some external forces, but by billions of good deeds. We think, oh, flesh and blood, body, personality, whatever that's made up of, intellect, whatever that's made up of. And we think that body comes from parents sustained by food. We've studied all of that stuff and it's not true. And then in particular, by the time we reach Buddhahood, it's not that this body becomes a Buddha body. This personality becomes a Buddha personality.

It's having a body that we believe is made of flesh and blood and bone is karmic seeds ripening. It's an incredible goodness to have a human physical body, no matter what shape it's in. It takes incredible good seeds to get into a human life and then to sustain it. So if we're human, we're ripening this incredible goodness. If we're human in a world where there is the Dharma, that's even greater goodness seeds ripening. If we are human in a world where there is the Dharma and we're attracted to it, that's even greater goodness that we have done before that's creating that and sustaining it. If we're the human with the Dharma, met the Dharma, interested in the Dharma, to just get chills and cries, you know, when we hear the Dharma, even greater goodness. And we're experiencing it and using it up as we go.

At the same time, when we have aches and pains and things go wrong and blah, blah, blah, and all the things that we blame on outer factors, there are outer factors involved. There are aches and pains and yuck that's going on. And it too is nothing but past behaviors, ripening behaviors that were harmful to others. Obviously, grossly, subtly, and really pushed by selfishness, right? The belief in a me, that's independent of things happening. So things happen to me that are independent of my own behavior. All of that, all of that is driven by seeds. Hey, even the mistake is driven by seeds. And nothing exists in any other way than that, which means everything and anything is infinitely changeable, just not in the moment as we know, right? At least yet, not in the moment.

So to be here, studying at the level we're studying, we've done extraordinary kindnesses, goodnesses, even highly motivated, right? Even wisely motivated to some extent, but we just didn't quite pull it off completely in previous lifetimes. But our potential is that we can, which is why we're here. The projection of totally enlightened body and mind have certain qualities. And those certain qualities are the ripening result from certain deeds. And those ripening qualities become what are called the marks and signs of a Buddha body, the exalted speech of an enlightened being and the mind, which is omniscient. It can only come about forced on us by the ripening seeds of our kindness done with wisdom, our merit, they call it merit.

Karma we know means the imprints made in our minds by what we think, say, and do that rattles around until it crosses the threshold to manifestation. And then that's our experience result. When all of that still is stained with our belief that things are in them from them, I am in me from me. We call that process karma. When it's no longer stained with that belief, we call the process merit making, right? We make merit. So we make merit to become Buddha. And once we are Buddha, we continue to make merit. Because we don't just become Buddha once and for all. Okay, we're still empty of self-nature as Buddha. We perpetuate ourselves as Buddha. And that's why emanations happen. Forced by our compassion, we emanate. And that's what perpetuates our state of enlightened being.

Okay, so Shakyamuni Buddha, what a Buddha does with their speech is teach. Really, that's all they want to do with their speech is teach. You know, they're not gonna bother to talk about the weather or complain about their aching back if they have one. They're just gonna say important, meaningful things. Now, they could talk about the weather and be saying important, meaningful things. But the point is, the main reason to become Buddha is to help people, other beings to become Buddha too. And the only way we can do that is to guide them in what it takes for them to clear out the obstacles to their wisdom and gather the goodness that can ripen as wisdom. We can't give them wisdom. All right, we can say it. You know, it's like, just listen to me. But because of the emptiness of words, there's nothing even Shakyamuni Buddha can say to us that will make us go, ‘oh, I get it.’ If our seeds don't ripen, ‘oh, I get it.’ So, I don't know, they say it's so blissful being a Buddha, but it seems to me like it must be frustrating. It's like, ‘come on, I've told you a million times, Sarahni!’

But they love us so much, you know, that they don't get tired. Thank goodness.

So, those omniscient beings, as they see us suffering, they know how unnecessary it all is. And they know how it actually is necessary in the sense of that's what's going to finally inspire us to say I've had enough, right? And we get open to learning how we need to change ourselves in our interaction with others in order to stop this unnecessary suffering, right? Unnecessary means it's all born of a mistake. Necessary in the sense that we won't wake up without it, but then unnecessary in the sense that we don't have to keep perpetuating it. Thank goodness.

 So, Je Tsongkapa, I bow down to Shakyamuni Buddha who created himself as Shakyamuni Buddha through billions and billions of good deeds done with wisdom merit. Three times 10 to the 60th countless eons, right? Great eons of compassion, wisdom to make that transformation. Like, wow. Geshe Michael says this text is like a love letter to Lord Buddha. By way of Je Tsongkapa's other teachers.

So, he goes on in his second verse. He says, I bow down to the ‘Undefeatable’ and to Gentle Voice. The two highest children of the matchless teacher who took upon themselves the heavy load of all the Victor's deeds engaging in the divine play with emanations sent to countless different realms.

So, he's starting through the lineage. His personal lineage which ends up being ours too because we are in his lineage. So, Je Tsongkapa bows down to the ‘Undefeatable.’ The name for Lord Maitreya. The Tibetans called Lord Maitreya Jetsun Jampa. Jetsun means Lord. Jampa means love. So, Maitreya is this thing, quality we call love. Meaning, all I care about is your happiness. That's love.

A little bit different, quite a bit different, than worldly love which has all those attachments and strings attached and etc. Expectations. You know, I love you so you're supposed to do things in this way that make me happy. Versus, I want to be responsible for you being happy, seeing you be happy. Lord Maitreya's specialty is this wisdom love. And so, they call him the Undefeatable. You know, and we hear from other traditions, there's like, love solves the problem. And in worldly, it's like, no, actually love causes a lot of problems. But the love that we're talking about, it really does solve the problem. If we have no concern other than the well-being of the other, whoever we're with, right? How different we would respond. How different we would be. How different we would see ourselves.

You know, and it's hard for a worldly mind to even quite relate to that. Because our self-existent me is going to go, but what about me? You know, what if they hurt me in process of me trying to help them like that? What if, right? What if, what if, what if all our self-existent me strength comes up when we try to even imagine loving others in this way. Deep, deep, deep down, this impulse that we're using the term Jampa or Maitreya-love to describe is the impulse that stirs forth the most subtle wind that moves the mind out of the clear light. So when and if we go into the clear light at death and actually recognize it, which untrained we won't do, it's so blissful apparently. It's so extraordinary that from outside thinking about it, we would think, wow, you know, I would just want to stay there. Why would we ever come out of that being-ultimate-reality? Something has to stir us out. And the yoga tradition says, you know, this really subtle wind that was in our indestructible drop that got destructed when we died, stirs. And for an ignorant being, what stirs is me, more me. I want more me. And it starts.

For a wisdom being, what stirs is love, right? Wow, this is so spectacular. I want everybody to be it. I want everybody to have it. I want everybody to know it. Not in those words, of course, but in the feeling, right? It's an outflow. And so underneath every change in all of existence, technically is this love, right? The want for other, because we need others for self, right? There's either no experience whatsoever, or there's subject object interaction between. You can't have just subject. You can't have just object. You can't have an experience without subject and object. So underlying everything is this love. And so love is called undefeatable, right? It's always going to win. It just takes a long time, maybe. So Lord Maitreya is this being who is known for the specialty of this love.

In the open teachings, Lord Maitreya and Manjushri, they're said to be high-level bodhisattvas. And they show up at Buddha's teachings because they have the insight to know what question to ask for Shakyamuni Buddha to be able to teach what the audience there of humans and less, didn't even know to ask. If I was there at Shakyamuni's class, I might say, you know, what seeds are causing my elbow pain? When really what I need to hear, right? Is some teaching about something else. I don't even know what to ask. So these high-level bodhisattvas show up in the crowd and they're the ones that ask the question because the rest of us would ask something that wouldn't be helpful.

So Lord Maitreya, even as this high-level bodhisattva, his specialty is love. Lord Manjushri, Jampal Yang, his specialty is Wisdom. They both, of course, are masters of both. So Lord Maitreya's specialty is the specialty of the bodhisattva ideal. He describes, well, Geshe Michael paraphrases his description of the bodhisattva ideal of, ‘I will spend every moment of my forever trying to make others happy, totally irrelevant to myself, forgetting about myself, thinking of others only, because caring for others brings automatic happiness.’

Maybe not at first because we've all cared for others and been resentful or in the end, the others seem ungrateful or somehow it turns sour. Maybe it's fun in the moment, maybe it's not. But the seeds planted by looking after others, when those come back to us, it will include a circumstance where we are being helped and it will include being happy about it, having some amount of happiness. But it's really unnatural to have that full-on, everything about me is for you. Because again, just to hear it, I feel my mind go, wait, but...

So the bodhisattva ideal, it's one wing of the bird. Lord Manjushri, as the great bodhisattva Manjushri, his specialty is wisdom. His name, Jampel Yang, means Gentle Voice. He's teaching the wing of the bird of insight, of the vision of wisdom. Meaning specifically the direct perception of emptiness, which will happen for the first time and will be forever different. But we won't be able to perceive emptiness directly again and again just by thinking about it. Through our practices, however, we again gather the goodness that we can get to ripen as another direct perception of emptiness, and then we change again, and then we have it again, and again, and again, and again, and again, until eventually our seed shifts such that we don't need to be either in it or out of it. But rather, we're ripening the experience of being in the direct perception of emptiness and aware of the ripening-appearing-nature simultaneously. And that's Buddhahood. That's the omniscience.

So, as we're getting there, you go into the direct perception, and then you come out, and you're in your appearing world. You go back in. Some period of time, you come back out. Eventually, it's going to be both at the same time. It takes two wings of the bird to do that. The Bodhisattva ideal, as great as that compassion and love is, how amazing it would make us be. It's not enough to reach Buddhahood. Wisdom alone to see emptiness directly without that love and compassion, it's useful. It will help our own suffering decrease, but it will not take us to full Buddhahood. It will not take us to omniscience all by itself. It will take us only to nirvana. But when you have both, they say you can't help but fly all the way to full Buddhahood.

So, in the Diamond Way teachings, Lord Maitreya and Manjushri are said to already be fully enlightened beings. And they pretend to be Bodhisattvas walking in the world at Shakyamuni Buddha's time to be the ones to ask the right question. And you see where that rumor about Bodhisattvas staying in the world might build momentum. It's like, well, look, you know, Manjushri and Maitreya, they stayed as Bodhisattvas. And it's like, no, they didn't. Those were their emanations. Their Buddha emanations showed up. And better, other people had the goodness to see them. Not the goodness to know them as emanations, but the goodness to see them as high-level Bodhisattvas. Right? Because their own emanations are happening spontaneously. With our compassion, that drives reaching omniscience, then drives the emanations through which we perpetuate our Buddhahood by way of being what every being needs to give up and take up.

But it's not like you Buddha, you in paradise is like scanning the world. It's like, oh, Chrys is ready for me to show up as her car is not starting today. So I'll do that for her because I love her so much. It's that you Buddha for the other in your world, you are what they need. You are there. If they can see you, great. If they can't, I'll just wait until you do. You know, it's like it's part of your existence, is that you're being what everybody needs, but not just human. Every gnat, everything for everybody, like that's what inspires me. So why am I going there?

These holy beings emanating, providing, being, pretending, how do I say, as Bodhisattvas in order to help those in Shakyamuni's time learn from Shakyamuni, they then contribute to the teaching. And then as practitioners of Buddha's teachings, gain their realizations, share that with other people, we come down as the lineage is poured to two beings called the Shing te Soljey.

The Two Innovators: Shing te Soljey

So in Buddha's time, the people had the goodness, some of the people had the goodness to see Buddha as a Buddha, whatever that meant to them. And then, you know, as the generations passed, people didn't have that much goodness. They couldn't see Buddha Shakyamuni around us anymore, or maybe even these high-level Bodhisattvas, but still had the goodness to see non-Buddhas in the world who were able to explain what those enlightened beings meant when they said what they said. And so there are two of those in particular in this lineage. The term Shing te Soljey is used for these two in particular. Shing te means a wooden horse and Soljey means inventor, inventor of the wooden horse. What they mean by wooden horse is a wagon, something that can carry a big load with a whole lot less effort than if I had to pile it on the horse or pile it on my own back, right? So if I've got a crop of wheat with a thousand bushels of wheat and I need to get it to town, I either need to carry it myself one at a time or pile it on the mule three or four or ten at a time, but you give me a wagon and oh my gosh, I can take the load in one trip. Like what an innovation, what a change in lifestyle, how much easier life just got by somebody inventing the wagon.

So that idea of somebody who makes such a huge change, an improvement in life is then called a Shing te Soljey, the inventor of the wagon. They're doing something else, but you get the idea, the analogy. So there are two great innovators and Je Tsongkapa bows to these two guys next in his opening verses. He says, I prostrate at the holy feet of those known as Nagarjuna and Asanga, so widely famed through the three realms. You are true jewels of our world who undertook to comment in a perfectly accurate way upon the true thought of the Mother Sutras of the Victors. So extremely difficult to fathom. So he's bowing down to these two, Nagarjuna and Asanga, for being able to explain sutras such as the Heart Sutra. ‘There are no eyes, no ears, no nose, no tongue.’ Well, wait, what is this? Explain it to us in a way that we can go on to understand it perfectly and accurately. Because of how they were able to help people understand this marriage of karma and emptiness, the marriage of compassion and wisdom so much more clearly, they're called the Two Innovators.

Nagarjuna came into the world 200 AD. They don't give a dying date. His specialty was Wisdom. Arya Asanga comes later, 350 AD. His specialty was Lord Maitreya's emphasis on love, love and compassion. They both have mastered both, of course. So Arya Nagarjuna is emphasizing Manjushri's wing of the bird, the vision of emptiness, understanding emptiness and its relationship to all appearances. And Arya Asanga is specializing in Lord Maitreya's teachings, right? We know this story. He got them directly from Lord Maitreya, brought them back, helped us understand.

So Arya Nagarjuna outlines the Middle Way and Arya Asanga is outlining the Bodhisattva Path. And of course, they both need each other. So if we were to read either Nagarjuna's texts or Asanga's texts directly, like even if we could read Tibetan and we tried to pick up their direct writings, you know, maybe we could read it and go, wow, see clearly what they were talking about. If we have the karmic goodness, I don't even have the karmic goodness to be able to read it in Tibetan or Sanskrit. And I don't even seem to have the karmic goodness yet to have all of Arya Nagarjuna's root text Wisdom verses written down in English, right? Yes, they're written down somewhere by somebody, but I'm waiting for Geshe Michael's translation. Lama Christie's and his ended at verse 15. So it's like that we need commentaries. We need teachers to explain the root text who's had it explained to them. And then they've meditated on it to get to understand it better. And then they share it with us.

So here are these two innovators. They're fabulous, but here are we generations later in deteriorating times and I can't get it directly from the innovators. But the innovators passed their innovation along to others during their time. And so those passed it along, passed it along, passed it along. So Lord Maitreya's lineage gets passed along, passed along, passed along. And it comes down into someone named Master Serlingpa. Master Serlingpa is a practitioner in Indonesia, a teacher in Indonesia. And about that same time period, there's this guy in India named Atisha Dipamkara. And he's a great practitioner. And he hears about somebody in Indonesia talking, teaching about this thing called the Bodhisattva ideal. And he goes, I need to learn that. And he goes to the trouble to travel to Indonesia from India, apparently a dangerous trip. And we've heard that story. He reaches Indonesia and instead of marching up to Serlingpa and saying please teach me. He spies on the students and questions the students about the teacher. He checks on the teacher. They say for 12 years, I don't know if that's literal or not, but he checks very carefully to see if this is a legitimate source. He's got to use his own judgment. He's not been taught the Bodhisattva ideal before. That's hard to imagine, isn't it? He's like been studying Abhidharma level. And then, oh my gosh, this idea to become a total Buddha for the sake of everybody. Oh my gosh. So he goes and he learns from Master Serlingpa. And we know that as some of the start of the Lojong.

But Lord Atisha also had a teacher named Vidyakokila. Vidyakokila comes to us through our Arya Nagarjuna. So Vidyakokila's specialty is the marriage of karma and emptiness, the seeing emptiness directly, deep stages of meditation, those kinds of things. So Lord Atisha is trained in Wisdom through Nagarjuna's lineage. And now he gets training in Bodhisattva ideal from Master Serlingpa through Lord Maitreya's lineage. And he goes, wow, now I see the complete package. Both those teachers are teaching from teachings Lord Buddha gave in the Perfection of Wisdom Sutras. And Lord Atisha gets inspired to compile it all into one. And he writes that text that comes to be known as the first Lam Rim, where it's all in one place. Not new, but all in one place.

It comes down through the ages. Commentaries written on commentaries written on commentaries. Je Tsongkapa’s Lam Rims are similarly written based on Lord Atisha's, based on checking all the original sutras as well. And then we come on down to Choney Lama Drakpa Shedrup,1675 to 1748, who we know as the one whose textbook writings and commentaries seem so much easier to comprehend by Westerners. Even apparently the Tibetan is easier to understand and easier to translate because of his style of writing. He thinks like we do. So we have many texts by Choney Lama that we study through the course of our ACI Diamond Way career.

The one we're talking about here is called Nyingpo Dordu Selwa. Nyingpo means essence, heart essence. Dordu Selwa means a brief illumination. So Geshe-la translated as the Illumination of the Essence, which apparently was a text that was amongst the collection that was lost to Tibet for a long, long time. And in the time when Geshe Michael was teaching this course, like mid-1990s, what was ACIP back then had just found this text in the St. Petersburg library collection and managed to get it scanned and available for Geshe Michael to use, which is really extraordinary. Like in that period of time that these classes are going on, Geshe-la's seeds are ripening, that he's able to find texts that have been lost for 30 years. So he really did become obsessed with saving those collections, getting them in a form that they don't rely upon their paper anymore. You know, now they just rely on the ability to have power to turn on the computer, but you know, at least, at least they won't disintegrate.

Okay, so Choney Lama's text allows us to understand Lord Atisha's first lam rim better, because we can understand what he's saying. Geshe Michael's translations allow us to understand what the Tibetan's trying to say. In my experience, not all English translations of Tibetan texts can I read and go, Oh, I think I get it. Right? They just it's like, what are they trying to say? I have the seeds for Geshe Michael to have this extraordinary gift. May they perpetuate. So along the way to Choney Lama, we have Je Tsongkapa. And Je Tsongkapa is making this point at the beginning of his personal sharing of lam rim, the importance of all this lineage, of how necessary it is for us to receive from the lineage and how important it is for those who become part of the turning of the wheel, to do so as authentically and accurately as they can. To clearly say, this is my personal experience. This is what was taught to me. You know, fully understanding that until we're Buddha, we can't quite get it right. But we try and try and try. Always with this understanding that we're being the vessel that's pouring it through to someone else.

Bowing to the Lineage

So Lama Tsongkhapa in this short lam rim, it's only 45 verses. He spends the first five of those verses on bowing down to the lineage so that we can know that we have an unbroken lineage. All the way back to Shakyamuni, which then puts us in touch with those beings that the one called Shakyamuni relied upon to become Shakyamuni. So it's not that our lineage stops at Shakyamuni, it starts at Shakyamuni. All the rest we're pouring into him so we have access to them as well, even if we don't know who they are, those other beings.

This is the lineage that we are in that comes down to us in two branches, merges with Lord Atisha and then comes down to us. So it's like it goes backwards. So here's our lineage.

• Technically it's me. I receive from Geshe Michael. You receive directly from Geshe Michael too. So we'll say Geshe Michael. Geshe Michael is pouring into us.

• Ken Rinpoche, Lobsang Tarchen poured into Geshe Michael. So he's pouring into us too.

• Trijang Rinpoche poured into Geshe Lobsang Tarchen.

• Trijang Rinpoche's Lama was Pabongka Rinpoche. There's two or three between Pabongka Rinpoche and the 2nd Panchen Lama. Geshe Michael didn't list them all, but we know who they are. Jigme Wangpo, the other one I can't remember right now.

• So the 2nd Panchen Lama Lobsang Yeshe is Pabongka Rinpoche's teacher.

• The 5th  Dalai Lama Lobsang Gyatso was the 2nd  Panchen Lama's teacher.

• My hero, the 1st Panchen Lama Lobsang Chukyi Gyaltsen, was the Great 5th's teacher.

• The 3rd  Dalai Lama, Sonam Gyatso was one of Lobsang Chuky Gyaltsen's teachers.

• Gyaltsab Je/ Kedrup Je were his teachers.

• Je Tsongkapa was their teacher.

• Geshe Drolungpa was one of Je Tsongkapa's teachers.

• Lord Atisha was Geshe Drolungpa's teacher.

• Serlingpa was one of Lord Atisha's teachers.

•  Haribhadra was one of Serlingpa's teachers. There's a couple between Haribhadra and then

• Arya Asanga from Lord Maitreya.

Right. So you see this lineage that here we are. Then Lord Atisha, here he is.

• He also had Vidyakokila as a teacher. So two.

• Vidyakokila had Chandrakirti as a teacher.

• Chandrakirti had a couple in between him and Nagarjuna.

• And Nagarjuna's sharing the Manjushri wing of the bird.

So because Lord Atisha is part of the one pouring into us, we've got both lineages. So that everybody that's getting Lord Atisha poured into them has both lineages. You see? So I imagine that Chrys's brain is going, Oh, how can I make this into a diagram? That's going to be pretty. I can't wait to see it. All right. So our lineage, you are a part of that lineage. It combines the Bodhisattva behavior with that radical concept of emptiness, meaning nothing is anything except the ripening result of my past behavior. And so my current behavior is the cause of everything I can ever experience.

Hooray. It's up to me. EGADS. It's up to me. Right? Both. We have the power to change. Easier said than done.

Four special Qualities of the Lam Rim Teachings

So there are four special qualities of Lamrim teachings, of which there are five. The overall special quality or benefit of a Lamrim teacher teaching is that it's a teaching that covers the entire teaching of Buddha.

And so the virtue is really, really strong to read or study or recite a Lamrim.

So thank you kind Lamas for giving us Lam rims that are short enough that we can actually say out loud, right? You can't sit down and recite Lam rim Chenmo. It would take years, but A Source of All My Good.

Right. Just saying it is good karma.

Saying it and thinking about it, you know, a little stronger karma.

Say it, learn it, work with a given Lam, a given verse to help change our behavior. Now we've got a tool that's so easy to make merit, but we’re like, eh, “I know best what's for me.”

1. All the teachings are free of any inconsistency

So, but of the four qualities, the first is that when we study Lamrim, like it's growing in our understanding, we'll reach a point where we realize that all the teachings are free of any inconsistency. So I remember first meeting the ACI Dharma where, you know, the specifics were there. My previous Buddhism study, it was all more generalized. So we got really specific about these different things that Buddha taught. And so much of it was like, wait, no, that doesn't make sense compared to this. That seemed like we were getting mixed messages all along. Still seems like that. But technically, like there is no inconsistency in any of the Buddha's teachings. And at some point, we'll come to that, Aha. Right. We'll be able to see that what looked like inconsistencies was my own misunderstanding, you know, just understanding it at such a superficial level that it looked like it contradicted something else. We'll go on to recognize that these different views of the different schools, we learn them like there's really a group of people that hold to this belief, you know, as the ultimate belief. And then we come to this realization. It's no, no, we're studying it in that way to engage our intellect.

But what we come to recognize is that at any given moment of the day, I'm interacting with my world from that worldview. If I didn't study the worldview really carefully, I wouldn't recognize it when I'm doing it. Blaming somebody else. Oh, blaming my own past seeds. That's good, too. But right at different levels, we will realize we're still believing that there's something out there that gets my projection on to it. How can there be nothing but right at some point, those go from these intellectual ideas to, Oh my gosh, I'm, I'm doing it. I'm having those different beliefs. We'll see how all the different teachings fit perfectly. We come to this realization. This is all the first one, we come to this realization that we've been studying and practicing and trying to put the pieces of a puzzle together, where we hadn't seen the image. Like if you have a jigsaw puzzle, you know what it looks like. And then you put all the pieces together. But what if you didn't know what the picture looked like? How could you ever really put together a jigsaw puzzle? If you don't know that there's mountains here and a lake over here and a canoe there, it would be so random. So at some point, we see the big picture. Study of the Lam Rim helps us see the big picture.

2. Every teaching will strike us as personal advices

Second advantage of the Lam Rim is we'll reach a place where every teaching strikes us as personal advices. We've heard Michael say this again and again, right? When we are receiving a teaching, we are receiving personal advices from Lord Buddha himself. Because of his omniscience. And it's so hard to even explain, when he taught Heart Sutra, you know, 538 BC. I don't know when it was. Whenever he taught Heart Sutra, he was talking to me now. It's like, that can't be. Okay, so there was a version of me there and I heard it. It's like, yeah, maybe, but that's not really what it's saying. It's omniscience is omniscience. Right? He was giving personal advices to me. And that means he's giving personal advices to me now too. You know, even as the fly is buzzing around my ear, that could be Buddha's personal advices as well. I just don't have the goodness to hear it that way. Not that it is, but that it could be. Hmm. So at some level, each teaching that we get is like directly what I need to hear.

And I don't know, I got to the point where I would not ask questions in class. I had to really work myself up in bravery to ask a direct question of a teacher, you know, because I didn't want to look stupid. It was so stupid not to ask questions, but I wouldn't do it. But then I got to this point where like in between the term, I'd be working on all this stuff and doing my retreats. And these questions would come up in my mind and I just couldn't sort them out myself. And the next course that we did at Diamond Mountain, it would get answered. Like almost as if right in class, they said, now, my name was Susan then, now Susan, this one's for you. It sounded like that to me, but then other people were saying the same thing. They had different questions, but their questions were getting answered. And it gets like that at some point.

And we think, Oh, just in terms of Dharma teachings are special for me, but it can go deeper still. Can't it? Like a billboard could have a special message for us. From its own side? No, of course not. From how I interpret it, sort of, but even directly. In April when, you know, a lot of people in the tradition are coming through Tucson to get to Diamond Mountain, all of a sudden there was this great big billboard along the highway that said, Live the Diamond Life. And it was an advertisement for a casino called the Diamond Casino. But, you know, everybody in our tradition, wow, this huge billboard reminding me to live according to touching the Diamond Way. It's like everybody was seeing it. It was so cool, right? Cause that billboard hadn't been there before. Now, I don't know if it's still there. I haven't been along that road, but like that kind of thing, messages for me, studying, practicing the Lam Rim will bring us to that point. Life gets pretty fun, more fun when we're at that level and it'll come and go in my experience, but it's nice.

3. It becomes easy to grasp the intent of the Buddhas.

Third, special quality of Lum Rim teachings is that it becomes easy to grasp the intent of the Buddhas, the intent of their teachings. So we reach this level where we really understand why Buddha taught any specific point at that point. Like how the sequence is a necessary part of the Lam Rim, how each one of the Lams serves as the foundation for the next one. Not that in our analogy of the ladder that you step from rung one and leave it there, and go to rung two, it's more like your rung one becomes real. And then it and you rise up into rung two and you're using what you've learned with or how you've changed on rung one. You're now using that as the platform to learn to live on rung two. And then one, two, raise into three, like that. We're bringing it all with us. And then we know at some point along the rungs, we're not all the way to the top yet. It's like, oh, let's drop back down and revisit rung one. And we find that it's so different than when we first visited it, because now it's imbued with all this other stuff. But when we work at that beginning level again, wow. The beginning level is so much deeper. And then we carry that with us up into two and we do it again and up into three. So the power of knowing what is rung one, what is rung two, what is rung three, helps us see how these build upon each other and know how logical it is. Helps us stop struggling against which lam should I work on? Where should I be in my practice? Where am I in my practice? When we know the whole structure, it's like, oh, here's what's showing up in my life over and over and over again. That puts me on this lam, even if I thought I was over here. If I focus on the one that's manifesting for me right now, I can use it more conscientiously and intensely and get moved to the next one.

Most important in the intent of the Buddha is not so much an intention to get something right as it is to understand that until we have omniscience, we don't get anything right. The true intent of the Buddha was to show us that if we are one like him, we can judge another. And if we are not one like him and we judge another, we will fall. Remember that? I think it was course two, proving to us, showing us that we don't know another's mind. We don't know what their motivation was for what they did or said. We don't know what they were thinking. We don't really know who they are. They look like my stupid boss who blames me for everything. And I don't ever do that stuff, but they yell at me all the time anyway.

Buddha's true intent is for me to see, oh my gosh, all that judgment of that other. It's mistaken. It's wrong. I can't know. It's all my seeds forcing me to see them in that way. That's closer to their true nature. My seeds ripening. So Buddha's real intent behind anything is to show us that we are mistaken in every perception we have. That's tough, but mistaken because we believe that all these valid perceptions of valid things happening that are very real are in them from them to a me in me from me. And that interaction that's happening has nothing to do with my past behavior. Like our ignorance is such that we don't even think of it like that. We just blame the other for good and bad things. We think that the pleasure is coming from them or it, the displeasure coming from them or it. And that is a mistaken judgment that we're making. And so we fall as a result of every moment. Aye yai yai!

Buddha wants us to see that we don't get it right, but we can get it right. And Geshe-la is already encouraging people on the aspiring to Diamond Way path to be thinking. It's like that other person. They look like they're them, from them, but I understand intellectually that no, they aren't, they aren't, they look normal, but they don't have to be normal. They aren't them. They aren't not them. They could be the angel. They aren't necessarily the angel, but they could be, right? Because they are blank. How we interact with them, plants seeds. So to interact with them, wondering, are they really what they seem to be? Or might they be Buddha emanating? And if they're Buddha emanating, am I going to be resentful or grateful? Hopefully we'll recognize our resentful is coming from blaming them. And we might say, Oh, thank you for giving me the opportunity to clean out that bad seed. And I'll try to be kind.

Well, how far do we take that? If they're coming to beat us up? Well, thank you Buddha for beating me up, right? Who's learning about Nagarjuna and no, sorry, Tilopa and Naropa. No, the teachings aren't saying, let somebody, let your bad karma ripen somebody hurting you, because they're getting bad karma to do it. But every time our elbow hurts, you know, and it's like, oh man, my elbow hurts so much. I've got to do something about it, like, wait a minute. Every time that elbow hurts, that's burning off some yucky seed, some ignorant, stupid hurting somebody seed. How bad is it to have an elbow pain versus a car crash, you know, a broken arm or something that would really interfere. I can be thinking, Oh, every time that elbow hurts, okay. Another negativity out of the way because I stopped moaning about it. And then these little aches and pains and struggles they become actually a goodness. It's like, great! More of that out of the way, instead of moaning about it. Like I'm talking to myself, right? I've been having some hard weeks recently and I'm moaning about it. I'm getting really down about it instead of yay. Yay. Yay. 

Because my resistance to those pains, like if my mind follows up with that resistance, okay, no more elbow pain. You're fine. That negativity will accumulate until some big thing happens, you know, and I get really pained or inconvenienced as opposed to the little ones that were going away. Do you see what I'm trying to say? Little ones constantly being burnt off means there's less likely a great big one going to wipe you out someday. When we think of those inconveniences, uncomfortables as good things, get it out of the system. Thank you very much. As opposed to fighting with it, struggling, right? Letting ourselves get cranky. So all of that within this third special quality of Lam rim teachings, easy to grasp the true intent of the Buddha to help us change our behavior, even towards ourselves.

1. It will save us from the great abyss.

Fourth one, it will save us from the great abyss. So this great abyss is the great abyss of rejecting a teaching. Like when we see the whole picture and so we see how everything fits together. And so we're hearing all of it as advices from the Buddha so that we understand their true intent. Then when we hear one of those teachings, that's like, oh, well, I don't want to believe that. We won't say, I don't believe that. I will say, wow, now that's a weird one. I don't quite get it yet. I admit, I don't want to agree with it yet, but I'm not going to reject it. I'm going to put it on the shelf. Like I do this mudra, put it on the shelf mudra, set it there for later. Maybe you'll never actually get back to it. But to say, no, that can't be true. About a teaching by an authority, some being we've established as an authority, especially on our spiritual path, to flat out reject, plants such a strong seed to not receive more. Our own mind clamps down and to have our teachings be rejected. And that's probably worse than, I don't know, that would be a debate, which is we'd be worse to you be closed to more teaching or others be closed to your teaching. Both are pretty serious.

So when we understand the Lam rim well, these other three factors will make it such that it will not occur to us to flat out reject. It will also not occur to us to blindly accept. We'll understand where it all, how it all comes together. It's like, oh, okay. I will understand that meaning better later. It's okay to not act on something that we've heard. It's not okay to say to your mind, I won't ever act on that. Just put it aside for later so that we can continue to grow the karmic goodness to receive more teachings.

Dedication

Khong Lee:  So actually, my question is, Maitreya is supposed to be a future Buddha, isn't it? To our understanding. But this one, the timing is, you know, a little bit far back behind. So is it during that time he's still a Bodhisattva? Or, you know, what is his status during then?

Lama Sarahni: Yeah, it's confusing. So we hear that Arya Asanga, you know, works for 12 years to reach Lord Maitreya directly, and he doesn't get there. He doesn't get there. Finally, because of the compassion to the dog, he thinks, you know, and they say that all that time, Maitreya is hanging out in Maitreya's paradise. And it sounds like he's there and not anywhere else, which if he's fully enlightened Buddha, he is there from his side, and his emanations are everywhere else. So, you know, when he, when Asanga says to Lord Maitreya, where have you been? Maitreya says, I was there with you the whole time you sat on me, right? You sat on me. And it's like, so what is Lord Maitreya? You know, Asanga is a sutra teaching. Is he meeting Maitreya as a high level Bodhisattva? Like so high a level Bodhisattva, he already has a Buddha paradise? That doesn't make sense. He's gotta be a Buddha already. And then a Buddha will emanate. And maybe one of those emanations will say, oh, you know, here I am. They're not going to say I'm a Bodhisattva. Everybody else is going to see them as a Bodhisattva. Maybe they were seeing themselves as Buddha Maitreya walking around. But if nobody else saw him that way, then he wasn't walking around. Buddha Maitreya, Buddha Bodhisattva was walking around because that was the highest goodness the people had to see. Do you see how that answer is like, we want it to be which one was he? Just tell me. And it's like, depends on who's looking.

Khong Lee:  Okay. Yeah, I think.

Lama Sarahni: Does that help?

Khong Lee:  I don't know, because I think the previous teaching, I think is the second one. You say that, you know, in secret teaching, he's already a Buddha. And then, I mean, if like, you know what, yeah, he's still a Bodhisattva. So if I'm not mistaken. So just like when teacher was explaining this, and then something come up into my mind, the future Buddha, then what is the status right now? You know?

Lama Sarahni: So, right. He is the future Buddha right now, waiting for humans to ripen the goodness to see him walking around because he's already walking around amongst us. His Buddha emanations are already here. We can't see it. Okay, someday, there'll be a group of people or at least one. This guy, he reached his Buddhahood. Now he's Lord Maitreya. But no, he was Lord Maitreya before. It is really hard. Our belief in self-existent things puts a wall up that makes it really difficult to understand. But work with it, chew on it, play with it.

Khong Lee:  Or maybe it's, you know, our karma still haven't ripened. You know, we cannot see him. And the second one, the Nagarjuna, Arya Nagarjuna, and then he's very special to me because of his neck. You know, is there a story behind it? Because, you know, others, I don't know how to differentiate, but him is very special.

Lama Sarahni: Right, right. So, I don't have time for the whole long story, but Nagarjuna was able to show up in the Naga world, the world of water snakes, dragons. And they had the Prajnaparamita, the Perfection of Wisdom Sutras, the Naga King had a set. How, I don't know. But they loved that kind of stuff. They didn't know what it was. They couldn't read it. They just, my stuff. And Nagarjuna, you know, had this Wisdom, I need to go get that from that king. So, he had these powers that he could do alchemy. And he did alchemy, I guess, on his self that he could go and live with in the Naga world. And he smoothed with the king, you know, taught the king the Dharma and finally got the king. He was a little deceptive in how he did it, but he got the Prajnaparamita Sutras from the king and brought them back to the world, is what the story says. So, because he taught Dharma to the Nagas, the Nagas became his protectors. And so, that's what the snakes over him, they're being like a sun shield, they're being protectors. He was protected by snakes and Nagas and dragons.

Khong Lee:  Oh, you mean this one actually has a written story about?

Lama Sarahni: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, we'll get it someday. It's a beautiful story. Like he broke all the rules. He was a naughty guy.

Khong Lee:  You mean Naga? Nagarjuna?

Lama Sarahni: Yeah, Nagarjuna. He was naughty.

Khong Lee:  You mean naughty boy is it?

Lama Sarahni: A naughty boy, right. A gifted, naughty boy. Okay. And he used it to his advantage and then he paid for it.

Khong Lee:  Okay. You mean he need to, you know, later he has some lesson to learn from it.

Lama Sarahni: Yeah. Okay.

Khong Lee:  Thank you.

de ne di chiy lektsok jinyepay tendrel lekpar drikpay tsawa ni lam tun she nyen…

How ever many good things in this and all other lives the holy spiritual guide Get off to a good start

• she nyen tensul, kalianamitra (sk) spiritual friend

• tensul                                          (how to use your spiritual friend) you follow their advice and take the medicine

•  dulwa                                          discipline

• shiwa                                           peace

• nyer shiwa                                   really peaceful

• yunten hlakpa                              higher spiritual qualities than us

• tsunche                                        has effort (focused on the two goals, love & compassion)

• lung gi chuk                                 rich in scripture (mastery)

• de nyi rabtok                                great realization of emptiness

• make den                                     master teacher

• tseway daknyi                              embodiment of love

• kyowa pang                                 never get tired of distaste (never give up their students)

•  ten gyi tob                                   basis force (refuge & bodhichitta)

• nampar sun jinpay tob                  totally wipe out force (regret)

• nyepar le lar ndokpay tob             restraint force

• nyenpo kuntu chupay tob              antidote force

Okay, welcome back. We are ACI course nine class nine, July 7 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 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. 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 in some deep and ultimate way, a way through which they will go on to stop their distress. Deep down, we know this is possible. Learning about emptiness and karma, we glimpse how it's possible. So I invite you to grow that wish into a longing, not longing into an intention. With that 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 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 Agudah and offer it all to you. By this 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. To the merit that I do in sharing this class and the rest. May we reach Buddhahood for the 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. Okay, bless. Last class we started into the Lamrim and we learned about the importance of the lineage. We learned about our lineage. Thank you, Chris, for your diagram. That's beautiful. Future classes will bear the benefit of that. And we learned about the benefits of the studying of Lamrim, benefits of practicing it, more importantly. And so in order to do that review, I thought to read to you the verses from the Song of My Spiritual Life that laid that out to us, laid out the lineage, and so showed us the authenticity of the teachings and then went into the benefits of the Lamrim. And that will take us to the first Lam, which is the beginning topic of this of this class. So just listen. Here's our review. The Song of My Spiritual Life by our hero Je Tsongkhapa. Your holy body was birthed by billions of perfect good deeds. Your holy words fulfill the hopes of infinite living beings. Your holy mind sees all things in the universe exactly as they are. I touch my head to the feet of that leader of the Shakya clan. I bow down to the undefeatable and to gentle voice, the two highest children of that bachelor's teacher, who took upon themselves the heavy load of all the victor's deeds, engaging in the divine play with emanations sent to countless different realms. I prostrate at the holy feet of those known as Nagarjuna and Asanga, so widely famed through the three realms. You are true jewels of our world, who undertook to comment in a perfectly accurate way upon the true thought of the mother sutras of the victors, so extremely difficult to fathom. I bow down to Dipankara, maker of lamps, who holds a great treasure of advices, which incorporate unerringly each and every one of the essential points of the paths of the profound view and widespread activities, descended so perfectly from the two great innovators. I bow down to all those spiritual friends who utilize a variety of skillful means to clarify these teachings moved by their love. They are eyes to view all of the myriad forms of high teachings, the very highest point of entry for those of sufficient goodness to make the journey to freedom. The steps on the path to enlightenment, passed down with such excellence in their own stages through the two of Nagarjuna and Asanga, are a jewel on the top knot of each and every master upon this planet. A victory banner of great renown, glorious here among beings. These are an instruction which is the very king among the lords of all jewels, for they fulfill each and every one of the aspirations of beings. They combine the rivers of a thousand beautiful classics. As such, they are a glorious ocean of fine explanation. The steps also allow us to grasp that each one of the teachings is completely compatible with all the others. They also make it possible for all the classic teachings of the Buddha to strike us as advice meant for each of us personally. They permit us to locate with perfect ease the true intent of the victors, and we are also protected from falling off the high cliff of the great mistake. As such, the steps are a supreme form of instruction, relied upon by a great many people of sufficient goodness by great masters in both India and Tibet. Where could we find a person with intelligence whose heart wasn't completely stolen away by these steps of the path designed for persons of three types of capacity? This then is a system which embodies the deepest heart of all the high speech of the enlightened ones. When we teach or listen to the steps even just a single time, we are able thus to obtain with perfect certainty and with powerful efficiency all the benefits of explaining and listening to all the holy dharma. Contemplate then this point well. The specific root cause then of getting off to a good start in the entire collection of the good things that could ever happen in this life or in our future lives is our holy spiritual friend, the one who shows us the path. And then with great efforts we need to rely upon that lama in our thoughts and in our actual actions. Seeing this, we see that we must please them with the offering of accomplishing everything they have commanded us to do without ever giving it up even at the cost of our life. I, the deep practitioner, have accomplished my practice this way and you who hope for freedom should you do your practice the same. So verse 11 is that verse about how to get off to a good start so that our spiritual path can be done with ease and efficiency. And this is the first step of the lam rim, the first rung of the ladder is finding our teacher and building this relationship with them such that it is the foundation, the source of all our good. The source of every good thing that happens in this life and further. So that we often hear Geshe Michael say, or I remember often hearing him say, it's like really the lam rim has two parts. The first is finding your teacher and establishing this relationship with them. Like that's the major part of the lam rim. And then all the rest of it is just like all the rest of it. It's like a little bit. The big part is here. This very first step is the major one. So he gave us this particular verse in Tibetan. He felt it was so important that we should see it in Tibetan. And turns out he only gave us part of it in Tibetan. Now that we have the whole thing. But I'll share with you what he shared originally in terms of seeing it in the Tibetan. For our seeds to help Tibetans stay in the world. And look what a good job we've done because Song of My Spiritual Life, you know, it's now a little book, which it wasn't before. So all this just looking and saying Tibetan, you know, is paying off. We will keep doing it. We now have translators learning how to translate. They're doing a really good job, aren't they? Like they talk about, I don't know, I don't even know the English words. Is that a declension or is that a blah, blah, blah. And it's like, I don't know what he's talking about. You know, in the group of mixed nuns, they're like talking about those things like they're real things, you know, it's like, well, I don't know English well enough to learn another language. It's terrible. OK, so this verse is about the spiritual guide. Day need the G like so. Can you buy 10 draw like part drink baits? I want me. I'm 10 Shenyan. There's more to it. I'm 10 Shenyan dump out. What by some dumb drawer wide search and send by rule is the rest of it. but here's the important part the DNA means and then or because of that meaning what came before meaning we've recognized that we have a lineage and the lineage goes back to Shakyamuni and that makes a the practice authoritative for us at least and that the Jetsun Kappa has pointed out that studying practicing the Lamrim we can we get this for benefits right we were we've heard all that and so now and then it's what the name means you hear his holiness Dalai Lama often say Dene right and he goes on with the next thing that's this DG D means this life and she means that every life coming so something about this life and every life coming lexil gene a path I am getting ahead of myself lexil means all the good things and gene a path it's like however many will ever happen to you so all the good things that could ever would ever have ever happened will ever happen not have ever happened well maybe that too it ever now and in future lives something about that mm-hmm Dandrell usually means dependent origination but here the meaning is to get off to a good start in in the sense that you're really you're really clear about what you're setting out to do know your motivation is good you have all your you have everything you need gathered and like everything is is going well and so you go on to do what you need to do and everything goes smoothly because you're so well prepared you know that's what it means to get off to a good start as opposed to you know wanting to accomplish something but I haven't haven't figured out exactly how to do it I don't really know what it is I need yeah you know and then we set about to do this thing ill-prepared and it just doesn't go well it's everything's a struggle so this idea to get off to a good start you know I realized I'm talking to people who's different languages are ours I'm not sure that it's conveyed but here dendro means this auspicious beginning to something like Lek Park Drake Bay means to get it exactly right so this being at the starting point with something that if we get it just right it will be the source of every good thing that can happen in this life or any future life but I hope I've gotten your attention like what there's something that can do that for me what might it be that if I if I get off to a good start with it all good things forever so I need means a pivotal moment there is this pivotal moment in this relationship with this thing that if we get it right then like good things will come in this life and all life mm-hmm long tension in oh yeah where's lumpton ah long means path so I'm turn is like the path of learning and here's the main word that's important is Shannon the after we've done all that about the lineage and the benefits then see that the very foundation of an excellent the very foundation of an excellent start for all the good in this and future lives is the spiritual guide who teaches you the path lumpton teaches the path Shenyan our relationship with our Shen Yan to get off on the right foot with your Shenyan from the very at the beginning establishes establishes I don't know what how to finish that establishes the quality the speed the effort needed the pleasance or unpleasance of our love the rest of our path so there's a lot of meaning in here that can be misunderstood and when it's not misunderstood we really see the power of having this deep relationship with this being that we're calling our Shenyan so this word Shenyan in Sanskrit it's Kali on a Mitra Shenyan the she and Shenyan means blood and then yen means relation so literally the word means a blood relation so you know anybody that we're related to by blood right I you know I guess how you figure that but and you know in English we have this term blood brother blood sister and we don't use it to mean you know my brothers and sisters in this life we use it to mean somebody who I'm not actually related to but I feel so close to like I'm even closer to them than I am to my own sister for instance and then when we were kids I don't remember actually ever doing this but I right it when we were kids we you know you are so amazing you are my best friend forever let's seal it you know let's become blood sisters and you would prick your finger you know with the pin and get a little blood and you'd go like this and then it's like okay now we're blood sisters no and it it like made this bond between you guess what it says this idea of a Shenyan is more like that then like oh we're related by blood because you know you can love your brothers and sisters but not actually like them you know and so it's like yeah yeah I'll help you when you have need but you know we don't need to interact on a regular basis thank you very much and that's fine just because we're related doesn't mean we have to you know live together my parents always used to say you have to love each other because your brothers and sisters but you don't have to like each other you know go your own way that's fine Shenya no it's not like you have to love them it's that you do right and and you like them and you're like you really admire them and you you want to spend time together right because the two of you are better than either one alone in the sense you know you you you anyway so in this particular context however it it takes that sense of bondedness and it's it's from the one person's side towards the other the Shenyan is is in a spiritual sense so here we have this feeling of deep deep personal connection with someone but then not in the terms of oh we are equal but in the sense of oh they're the one who knows what I need they're the one who loves me even more than I love myself and that's like hardly possible they're the one you know who who will guide me on my path through thick and thin they're the one like they're the one you know not romantic they're the one for me but in terms of this admiration and aspiration and you know we look up to them so much and we have this deep personal connection with them no so we can admire and aspire to someone but not feel like we can we would be that there's any like there's any actual personal relationship or you know we wouldn't get that close to them we can admire them from afar Shenyan is you know this being we aspire to become like but also this being that we feel deeply personally connected to so we're trying to get all of that packed into one word and that's what the term in Tibetan Shenyan means Kalyana Mitra so we'll have many teachers in life and even within our Dharma career we have many teachers different Sutra teachers a different maybe different ones who grant us our vows so we have vow masters who are different then maybe our diamond way teacher is different than our Sutra teacher maybe they're not even in diamond way we'll have different teachers different guides and then and then they'll be the one they'll be the Shenyan who may not even be one of those formal teachers but they're the one that you're so connected to and that something in your heart tells you that they know you you know they know they know the real you they know the highest you and the worst you and they know what you need to give up and need to take up you know whether you actually see them glowing in light or see them as omniscient it's just your connection with them is like they're the one that can show me the path ah to have a relationship with such a being is is what is is being described as this the source of our bill of our ability to progress along the path so we could want to progress along the path and we could take all the classes but have a sense in our mind of you know I can do it myself I'll hear what I have to do and I'll do it myself but you know I can figure it out and and that'll work to some extent but if we want to get off to a good start to makes you know smooth ish right it's never going to be smooth but smooth steady rapid progress having this personal spiritual guide relationship and how we how we how we establish it is this pivotal moment that takes that spiritual career and jettisons it and you know it's a long long story about why that's true it could sound like you know bus there that you know here's this teacher saying look how you treat me is pivotal to your happiness so you have to treat me well you know give me everything do what I say do you see how easily that could be terribly abused from both disciples side and teachers side so of course that's not what's being met here at all so we really do need to understand where the power of this being comes from if they're thinking it's in them they're not the right one if you're thinking it's in them we don't have it right either so they say to get off to a good start is this pivotal moment in our spiritual career it is literal in the sense of there is there is a method one goes through to establish this relationship like formally and they say if you do that in an inauspicious way just like everything you write all the steps of your path following that teacher well the road will be just bumpy and full of potholes and dangerous cliffs and it'll just be a struggle whereas if you do that all properly you know it'll be pretty much smooth sailing but come on you know so the instructions are you're looking for a spiritual guide first step decide you need one and then you're you're pretty sure you know what qualities you're looking for we're going to talk about that and you're spying on different ones until you meet the one where you go oh they're the one and then the tradition is you would think of some get some kind of offering that you know for you we know is important valuable meaningful and you would take your offering and you would go to them and you would make their offering and you would request formally no multiple times to be taken as their disciple and you know maybe they just say yes maybe they grill you about why you know maybe they say no who knows what happens but they say if in that process you get off to a bad start you know it's just gonna be hard ever after but like how could you get off to a bad start so that the story is there's you know some guy he checks out the teacher he finds his llama he goes to the llama he takes this beautiful vase but it's the vase is empty and he offers this empty vase to the llama which in that culture apparently is like you never offer an empty an empty vessel right and and it's like we learn that when we're setting up the our altar you never put an empty vessel upright on the altar like you're waiting to do something with it you set it there always set it upside down you know or set it aside and then always have something in it right so when we're doing our boat water bowls right there upside down you pick it up you fill it even partway before you set it down you don't set it down empty and then fill it up right so it's just these little details I don't know in Western culture I don't remember anybody ever saying don't don't you know don't don't give somebody an empty vase but you don't take an empty plate right if they brought you cookies you wouldn't take wash their plate and take it back to them you'd put something in it I guess it's like close in our although many times I've just taken the plate back I sorry for that district distraction the point is they say this guy who gave the empty vase as his offering his relationship with his llama was just you know constant struggle and if he had just put some rice in the vase then theoretically his relationship with his llama would have been easier and again it's like calm on self-existently what difference does it make if that's really your shenyan they don't care one wig what kind of offering you give them right they know they know their role they know that right they from their side it doesn't matter it's our side and how we are showing respect and what our own mind is saying feeling as we're going to them to declare that we need them to help us you know weed out the parts of ourselves that are blocking us from being the love that we see them as being that we aspire to becoming like so this this being to get off on the right foot with this relationship with this being is so pivotal saw one me that we want to understand really really well you know who I choose as that llama or maybe better who who is a who's qualified for me to recognize them as my llama because technically although we may although we may be meeting them for the first time in this lifetime right we had to have known them before not my personality surrounding knew them before but my mind my subject side mind to meet them in this life means we've had a connection before which of course means that if their physical body withdraws or my physical body withdraws we haven't necessarily lost the connection and that is circumstances that happens to many people that you have that being you are devoted to and you know you're being as good a disciple as you can and oh my gosh they die you know llama yes he died he was only in his 40s and you know left all those folks right in a really painful place uh fortunately he had his disciple who stepped in so shen yin is the word for this special being but shen yin tensil is this important piece tensil means what you do with them so apparently in tibetan that word tensil it's it's meaning in the colloquial is what you do with the prescription prescription your doctor gives you you know so you're not feeling so well you go to the doctor they examine you oh you know you have such and such here this herb this medicine will help your body fix it so you go what you do with the medicine what you do with the prescription tensil is you go fill it at the pharmacy you get the medicine you read the instructions you take the medicine you follow their instructions and you get better so tensil means this you follow the you take it you take the medicine you follow the instructions and you take the medicine so what you do with your shen yin is you follow their instructions you take the medicine right so really this pivotal piece of having the lama is the tensil part is what we do with them and in english really it would mean how we use them like how we use our lama is this pivotal piece that's that starts that establishes whether the ladder of our lam rim is solidly grounded and can stay put as we go up the rungs or if it's wobbly you know imagine going on a ladder where the ladder is like low right it would be a rocky ride so really in english you know we say oh how you use somebody it's a negative connotation it means you know we're going to take advantage of them and i would i just felt used by them so here we need to override that kind of use and think of taking the medicine right it's like how do we take the medicine of our spiritual guide but it really is that idea so the bottom line of our relationship with this spiritual guide is that they are they are our most fertile soil for planting our mental seeds of merit they are the arena in which our purification will happen and our merit making will happen and when we are declaring ourselves or requesting to declare ourselves to be in our relationship with them what we're actually doing is establishing to our own mind that they are this most powerful karmic object in my world and so now our interaction with them is is the place where where we make our good karma bad karma with such strength or power that that we can rely on those seeds to to to carry us along the the the the rungs up the ladder uh so we can see that if we don't understand this relationship with the teacher well as we're going into it and we're expecting them to behave in certain ways or we're expecting you know them to do for us and we don't understand that right this how how karma works in relation to them will we we won't have this drive to be using them as the source of my seed planting for our the realizations that we're wanting to get to and so really we set up this relationship with this spiritual guide and what we're saying to our own mind and to them is i'm gonna i'm gonna use you as my karmic object you know and i'm gonna do it really intentionally and so like what can i do for you and then it would seem like all right you just move next door and you clean their house and you do their laundry and you go to groceries and right you just take care of them take care of them and take care of them and that would be a powerful relationship with the lama but it isn't necessarily necessary because how many people can do that you know only one you only need one to be the attendant 15 attendants you know come on everybody get out you know it's like for the longest time geshe michael lived up there at house and he said don't anybody live in in in uh i can't remember the name where rimrock and then all of a sudden right his attitude shifted and now this community is growing up around him he's never really had that before a close set of students that are close all the time and it must be sweet like i'm not part of it at all uh but i i can also imagine knowing the part of him that didn't do that before is that there's part of him i'm sure that's that's feeling like man this is a big pain in the butt you know to have to juggle all of that when all he wants to do is translate but that's what a teacher does out of love right they do what's what's needed they are being what's needed by those who have right declared themselves so technically this being when they when they accept a student what they're saying what they're need our understanding is that they've just signed up to be this mirror of the students karma good karma and bad karma and and that their role is to just be what that student needs right from their side out of love and then the students from the student side the student just draws right out of that teacher whatever it is that is needed for that student's progress so you know if we get off on the wrong foot then that mirror just is rough if we get off on the right foot meaning we really understand the process then we understand what's going on when things get rough and we understand what's going on when things are going smoothly so in that sense everything's going smoothly even when it's not when we don't understand well the process of this relationship and we declare oh this person they're the angel right they love me so much and then we have these expectations that they'll always act so holy and then we get close enough to them and we see oh my gosh they pick their nose they fart they right they even say rude things sometimes it's like whoa you know maybe i made a mistake maybe right we have these doubts and we it's it if we don't understand where all that's coming from right there oh my gosh they're wonderful and oh my gosh they're human if we understand it's all coming out of our seeds and they're merely being the mirror then right we'll doubt we'll wonder we'll maybe i made them maybe right made the mistake and that kind of doubt or change your mind is like devastating to one's progress up the ladder and no i don't have a note to myself in in these notes that said that at some point i had a realization that you know in some past relationship with the llama you know i got it wrong i did something wrong like doubted or rejected or something like that and i paid for it karmically with eons of not having a spiritual teacher not able to find a spiritual teacher and even in this lifetime uh the relation my shen yun relationship is not with an embodied being no and this whole tradition is about finding your shen yun in in the apparent flesh and having this close relationship with them even if you're not physically close having this rely upon them relationship uh using them as this powerful karmic object which in some ways is easier to do when your llama's not in the flesh you know they're everywhere and harder to do when they're not in the flesh because they're everywhere you can't you right don't get the immediate direct feedback when you're interacting with some being that is still a little bit in your imagination so we do want to have this shen yun be in the flesh but then when we're thinking oh well they have to look a certain way you know do they have to have robes do they have to know the dharma do they like who are they how are we going to know who they are or what they are and people who have this relationship they say oh i just knew in my heart but even when we meet up with someone it's like oh i know they're the one we still that's this tradition says it's still necessary to look at their qualities no maybe that heart felt they're the one is some other kind of they're the one no if we have this if we have this like uh personal relationship human in love right samanthi says the first time i saw her i knew i was gonna marry her it's like you did not but he says it now right it's like i just knew in my heart we were connected and you know in a sense i kind of i did too but that doesn't mean you just right then go okay let's get married right it's just you have this attraction and you'll check them out you know is he really somebody i want to get to know and then if not you go okay whatever that connection was right we just ignore it so same with looking for our spiritual guide there are certain qualities that we want to see in them and so even if we have this heartfelt oh they're the one we should look for these spiritual qualities so we've heard them before i don't know that we've ever gotten them in tibetan before so here they are in tibetan if this being is going to be our powerful karmic object here are the qualities we want to see in them dulwa shiwa mir shiwa yunten lakpa shiwa syunche lunkychuk deniraptok makeden seway dakni and kyowa pang there they all are in one place so dulwa we've been studying dulwa ethics. It means controlled or tamed. So we want them to, I got ahead of myself, be controlled. Here it's, it means the first of those three trainings, ethical living, they live ethically, they're controlled, they have controlled themselves, they have disciplined themselves.So they are living according to the three sets of vows. The three sets of vows, when you hear that it means the Pratimoksha vows, the Bodhisattva vows, the Diamond Way vows. Within the Pratimoksha vows, they're living at the very least, carefully avoiding the 10 non-virtue. Better, they have the five lifetime lay vow. Maybe they have ordination, maybe they don't, it's not a, it's not, it adds to their, for us, for the disciple, it adds to their powerfulness of a karmic object, if they are ordained, but it's not, right, it's up to you, whether that's a box that needs to be ticked or not. From the, from the teaching side, it's like, it's not necessary for your shunyin to be ordained. But they are tamed. Right, they have tamed themselves. So how are we going to know that? We would have to be around them, we would have to see how they behave in good situations and unpleasant situations. And like see, when everybody's upset, do they behave in a way that I find admirable? Do they set a good example? Because we're looking to them to be the one to guide me in my own behavior. So I don't know, I don't want to declare myself to somebody who, the minute things go wrong, they get all pissed off and start yelling at people. It's like, well, thank you very much. You're wonderful in every other way. But I don't want to be like that. So maybe you're not the one. Okay. Shiwa means peace. It means the second of the three trainings, meditative concentration, their mindfulness is strong. Like how can we know how strong somebody's meditation is? You really can't know. But we can see their, we can judge their quality of mindfulness off the cushion. To some extent, you know, all of this is what we're looking for. What we perceive is coming from us, not that we're making it up. But what we're looking for these qualities that reveal that they have deep meditative skills. Third one Shiwa, they are really peaceful. And this one refers to the third training, which is the collection of wisdom. Here, not meaning they have the direct perception of emptiness. But it's clear that they have a very, very deep or high intellectual understanding. Because you can, you can see by their behavior, that they're living according to karma and emptiness, that you see in a certain unpleasant situation where you expect them to yell. And instead, they say something, especially kind, that right changes, changes the whole situation. Right? We can see their skillful means with how they interact with situations, both pleasant and unpleasant. And we conclude, oh, they really do live what they teach. I think karma and emptiness is real for them. That's this near Shiwa. Yonten Lhakpa, yonten means spiritual qualities. Lhakpa means excessive or greater, greater than mine. We want to see their spiritual qualities as greater than our own. Because that means they've made more progress than we have. That means they're gonna know how to deal with mental afflictions better than I know. We don't go to a teacher to learn to play piano, who doesn't know, like we know how to play piano a little bit. And we want to learn to get better. We don't go to a teacher who doesn't play better than you do. Right? Who hasn't had better training. So Lonten Lhakpa, yonten Lhakpa, they have higher spiritual qualities than me. Tsunche means effort, they have great effort, meaning they are clearly dedicated to the two goals. The two goals means for the ultimate for their own ultimate benefit, and for the ultimate benefit of others. So that clearly says that this teaching about the Shen Yun and qualities of the Shen Yun are Mahayana, right from a Mahayana level, because Hinayana wouldn't say that, that well, maybe they would. Hinayana doesn't have the two goals, it has one's own personal goal. And so your teacher is somebody who's hell bent on reaching their nirvana, or we already see that they've reached it, which is why we are aspiring to them as our teacher. For Mahayana, we have the bodhicitta piece, which always has the two goals, I want to reach my total Buddhahood, because I'm sick of suffering and being an ignorant slob. But my renunciation is turned on to everybody. I want everybody to get free. And in fact, the only way I can get free myself is to try to help everybody get free, which I really can't do until I'm totally enlightened. So I'll just keep the cycle going, help them, right grow me help them grow me help them grow me. And you never stop doing that, even as Buddha, you're still emanating to help those who don't see themselves as the Buddhas that you see. So how did I get there? Sun Tze, they have this great effort. You see, you spy on them, and you see that like everything they do is, is, is underlaid with these two goals. How are you going to judge that in somebody else? Ah, number six. No, let's take our break. Let's take our break. I'll pause the recording. All right, we need to get going here. Next one link, Lung Ki Chuk. Lung means scripture, Chuk means wealth. And so the rich in scriptures, rich in the three baskets, the three baskets is the Vinaya basket, the Sutra basket, the Abhidharma basket, but meaning Vinaya, they understand they've, they know the scriptures on ethical life. They know the scriptures that teach how to concentrate. They know the scriptures that teach wisdom. So the you know, the words Vinaya, we understand ethical life Sutra, we tend to think all Buddhist Sutras, but these all come from Buddhist Sutras and more. And then, but here Sutra refers to everything about learning to concentrate how to meditate. And Abhidharma does not just mean Abhidharma Kosha, it means the higher wisdom. So they've mastered these three scriptural collections, they have the resources from which to teach. Which then implies, oh, well, then they need to be a Buddhist master, right? They need to be a Geshe, they need to be. But that's one of those, like gray areas. It's I'm looking for my spiritual guide who can teach me, do they have to have their 18 ACI certificate? And it's like, I'm not gonna say yes or no. Then Daini Rab Tok. Daini means emptiness, Rab Tok is realization, great realization. So this one is saying we want them to have that great realization of emptiness. Meaning ideally, our personal Shen Yen has seen emptiness directly. And so has those qualities of no longer belief in self existence, even though the world may be appearing to them that way, still. However, they say, a very high intellectual understanding of emptiness. It serves as this quality as well. And how would you know anyway? So it's unusual for someone to say they've had the direct perception of emptiness. And then actually, the scripture describes that you don't say for reasons for for reasons that you your own mind understands the seeds you would plant if you heard yourself say it. And, and so you're not gonna. So even if somebody asked directly, have you seen emptiness directly? That the an arias answer is gonna be skillful, use skillful means to avoid answering the question directly, for a lot of different reasons. Ah, so it's, it's, it's actually quite extraordinary, that we have someone who years ago, came out and declared that he had had that realization. But even when he did that, it was 20, almost 30 years after he'd done it. Before the circumstances were such that it, it felt necessary for him to say so out loud. And the circumstances around that were a little bit touchy. And as a result, some of the community that had gathered to build diamond mountain left. And, you know, for whatever reason they did. Nowadays, like he, he's not the least bit shy about letting people know, you know, and it's our good seeds to be able to hear that and understand, but recognize that outside of our good seeds, right? There may be beings that hear him talk like that, and they like do reject doubt, right, which is why you don't usually say, because of the negative karma of people that doubt. But you know, in his wisdom, he sees there's an advantage, but it's like a big, a big risk for himself to be willing to do that. So back to our topic at hand, we do want our Shen Yun to have this wisdom. How would we know if even if we were to say, you know, have you seen emptiness directly? They won't tell us for sure. Like, how are we going to know? And again, we're doing this careful Sherlock Holmes thing, right? Like watching, watching them, listening to them, listening for clues, watching their responses, to recognize the extent to which they seem to be on ordinary human pilot reaction mode, or whether they are responding carefully, always. And then the other way we can assess one's understanding of emptiness, even intellectually, is how they teach it. And so we're taught to teach it the way Geshe Michael taught it. And then he modifies it to the pen thing. And then the most important piece in that is that always included in an explanation of emptiness is an explanation of behavior, karma. Because to learn about emptiness, without drawing the conclusion of our behavior matters, is a misunderstanding of the importance of emptiness. It's the misunderstanding of emptiness at all, is to talk about emptiness without talking about the appearing side. And to talk about the appearing side, and its emptiness, the reason why it appears the way it does is because of karma. And karma means what I saw myself do towards others, not literally see, right, my awareness, my mind's awareness of its interaction with other. The ethical component of our behavior, and emptiness are so intertwined, that someone who knows emptiness, can't talk about emptiness, without talking about behavior. And they'll know not ever to do that.Even if their two hour talk is on emptiness, and the last minute is, oh, and by the way, right, because of emptiness, be nice, if you want a nice world, because that's where it's going to come from. It's always got to be tight. So of course, if you hear somebody teaching that emptiness means a big black hole that everything falls into, or emptiness is this clear light that you reach at death. And, you know, we've been so well trained. It's like, no, that's not what emptiness is. We'll understand that, although this being may be absolutely exquisite in every other way. If we understand emptiness and karma better than they do. They're not the one who's gonna get us to see it directly, if they don't even know about it. Right. So Danny wrote, Ma Ke Den, Ma Ke means master, Den means to possess, the Ma is this teach. So this is their master teacher, they possess mastery of teachings, and teaching. And this means they have this capacity to teach to the level of the student. And, you know, ultimately, when Buddha spoke, everybody heard what they needed to hear, even in their own language. Like we could look for a teacher like that. You know, if that's our criteria, it might be hard to find one. But and, and here, it's like if a teacher is teaching to a group, you know, they put it to a level that the higher capacity people still get a little bit of a challenge, but the ones that are more beginners don't get wiped out, they teach sort of in the middle. But more this is about one on one teaching. So suppose this, your Shen Yen is somebody else's Lama too. And you go to them for advice, and they give you this advice. And the other person goes to them for advice, and they give similar situation, but the other person gets totally different advice. And maybe yours seems harder to you to understand. And there seems so obvious to you for them. And you realize, oh my gosh, they the teacher knew to challenge me a little bit more, because I was ready for it. And they knew that what they did for the other student was just as challenging for the other student as mine is to me, you see, they have this teacher has this ability to, to, to, to, to push when the push is necessary and back off when the back off is necessary. And it there, we were looking for a teacher who has that capacity, right, we want to see in them this kind of ability to adjust the teachings according to what I need, not meaning they're going to change the teachings, but how they personally teach me. They will match according to my ability. So they teach to the students ability and they teach to the students speed capability. This is the Mac again, nine say way duck knee means the embodiment of love. Duck knees embodiment say way is love. Make me say way to Jen really. Meaning we can somehow know that their motivation for teaching is out of love and compassion for their students, not out of personal gain, not out of monetary gain, not out of desire for respect or fame. They know where suffering comes from. They know that it's all a big mistake. They know that when anybody recognizes the mistake, and stops making it, they're on the conveyor belt out. And they know that all they want for other beings, students or not, is for them to wake up to that mistake, right and get started on a path to stopping that mistake. Like all they care about is the students reaching their long term goal. Killa paying number 10 pun means to give it up. Killa is distaste. So they've given up all distaste. What they mean here is they're beyond discouragement, meaning willing to teach over and over again, answer the same questions over and over again, just keep changing the words until that student gets it. Never tiring of teaching never tiring of being available. Not that they don't physically get tired. Of course they do. But meaning, you know, I, this is what I have. This is what I am. This is what I have to share. Not going to shut somebody off because they're asking yet again, you know, what seeds did I make, you know, for my husband to yell at me, but just go through it again, and again and again, tirelessly go up on because of their love, right, their love doesn't wear out just because we're slow on the uptake. And so we want to see that in them. No, gosh, let's said a mother doesn't give up on her kids. She they don't. A mother doesn't divorce the kids. You're not my kids anymore, because you're being such jerks, right? She may want to but right. Temporarily. But it's like, they're my kids, right? I love them so much. They're making this mistake. I see where it's gonna go. I wish I could just shake you awake, right? I wish the Buddhas would shake me awake. Go up on these qualities. So what if we found our holy Lama, we've declared ourselves to them and we really have been working to serve them. And then they go away or they die or like what's happening? Really? Did we do something wrong? Right? Did suddenly they stop being Lama? What happens when we don't have them available to us anymore? And of course, we know, our seed shifted. It's really expensive karma to be close to this being. And so although it's high yield, high gain, it's also high risk, in the sense that the closer we are, the more often we're around them, our own karmic seeds will will be the more human they become. And that's the struggle in the relationship, is to keep to keep our high view of them, even when our seeds are making them look to us, human, with those human frailties, human mistakes, right, human stuff, when we've declared this relationship, then our task is when we see that stuff, to recognize, oh, my seeds are shifting, right, I need to go someplace else to get, get my goodness planted strongly to remove that doubt and come back to this relationship. And maybe they look even more human when I get back. But my view of them is stronger, that they're just manifesting this for my benefit, right, to overcome my doubt or my, right, errors in my relationship in the past, whatever it is, they are going to be the reflection of what we need to work on. And that's what that's what we sign up for in that relationship.Right? So you can see how, I don't know, it's a it's a really powerful and slippery relationship to have a Lama and to have them close to be interacting with them regularly. So what if we recognize somebody as our shen yan? And they insist? No, no, like, I don't have those good qualities. I can't teach you anything. I can't be your Lama. You know, I don't know what you're talking about. Like what's going on there? Do they or don't they have those good qualities that you see in them? You know, every time you see them, they're being so exceptionally kind and loving, even when the person's in their face being nasty to them, and they just love the person all the more, you know, and it's like, Oh, my gosh, I want to be like them. And we spy on them. And we decide they're the one for me. And we go to them. And oh, please, you know, would you take me as your student? And they go, I don't know what you're talking about. Go away. Like, whose seeds makes the Lama the Lama? Right? This the students see. So you could have one Lama, multiple students, this one says, Oh, man, I see them as total Buddha. And this one over there goes, I you know, I see him as extraordinary human, but Buddha, I know, you know, and everything in between. And what about from the Lama side? No, did they necessarily see themselves with these good qualities that you see in them? Maybe, maybe not. Maybe they see themselves with even better qualities, qualities that you don't see in them. Right? So we can see someone as looking extraordinary and human. And they can see themselves as totally enlightened being, we can see someone as Oh, my gosh, I'm so sure you're totally enlightened being looking human. And they can see themselves as human. And, and, and this relationship can still work. Because what's important is what our seeds are ripening. And then how we pencil that, what we do with that, to perpetuate the goodness of seeing them in that highway, and to use that their high good qualities, as this powerful karmic object, merit making object, and so then serve them, how do we serve them? We put into practice what they teach us, it's not so important to do their laundry and cook for them. That's less important, actually, that what they want is that when they teach you a class about karma and emptiness, right, you go and you do your homework, and you do your meditation. But more importantly, you track your behavior about how you're putting into practice what they've taught. No, so technically, the best way we serve our teachers is to learn, review, like listen, review, contemplate, and try it on for size. That's serving the teacher. That's making offerings to the teacher. Look, they were yelling at me, I got upset. I thought about what you said. I let the upset go. I realized that the upset was my seeds ripening to none of it had to be the way it was. And I really did have the feeling I want to help you person who's so mad at me. Like, wow, I really did it. Lama. Right? That's, that's what that's what powers our relationship with the Lama. When they say make offerings to the Lama. Those are the offerings that shows us that we are making a difference in ourselves by way of what they've taught. So, and that perpetuates the ability to do that, which is what they want for us. So where does the Lamas good qualities come from? If they see them in themselves, they come from the way in which that being interacted with their own Lamas in the past.Where do our seeing beings with qualities of Lamas come from our own past interaction with teachers in the past. So in order to have a close Lama relationship now, it would need to be smaller seeds of close relationships with teachers in the past, ripening now bigger than before. Well, past is past now is now like, what do I do if I have rotten seeds of interacting with the teacher, right? Purify, we understand we're going to get there if I go, golly, I've got to get going here. Right? You have a question on your homework. You know, where does the Lamas good qualities really come from? And our own past interaction with past teachers is what plants the seeds to be able to ripen into any teacher now, but especially the special teacher relationship. We've had it before. It's not manifesting maybe we need to stir those seeds up, clear out the obstacles, add to the goodness of the ones that we have to get it to ripen. If we've had a close spiritual guide, and now they're gone, right, we have other things that we need to do to clean it up. The tendency is to go, oh, they're gone, I give up, as opposed to recognize, no, no, that being looked like that before. That, that look is gone. But they are not gone. I can, I can work on gathering the goodness to have them back again. Look in some other way. They can look different. It can be the same mind stream. Never the same two moments in a row. But you know what I mean? Just not looking like that, looking like something else. And then that opens this whole thing. It's like, well, then, even during their lifetime, now, are they limited to looking like that? Like, are we only close to Geshe Michael when Geshe Michael is there? And it's like, no, that body's not Geshe Michael. Well, it is. But right, it's the mind stream we're relating to as the Lama. And that mind streams everywhere. So in a sense, you know, you don't really need their physical body when we have this connection with them. But it's the physical body to which we can do physical karmas and show the results of our practice, etc. So it is helpful and powerful to have a have a being in a physical body, to be able to interrelate, interact with them. But it's not that we're not interacting with them when they don't, when they aren't there with you in a physical body, they are still aware of you. Okay, we got to move. So suppose, wow, they are the one. And we go to that holy being and we make this proper request. And oh my gosh, how wonderful they accept us. Then what happens? Like we've gotten on the first rung of the ladder. And it's like, oh, yeah, you're so wonderful. You're my teacher. Like they're not gonna say, okay, sit down, open your notebook. Let's get started. They wait for us to ask. Because they know unless we open our head, right? Anything they try to pour in is just gonna flow away. So we need to know to ask, Oh, holy teacher, you know, please teach me what do I need? What do I need to do? What do I need to do? And they'll go get the essence of your life. And they won't say anything more. Unless we ask. So if you know how to get the essence of your life, you just go do it. But if you knew it, why would you need to ask the teacher, right? We would have just been doing it. So we would go, what do you mean by that? And then they say, Oh, recognize your eight leisures and 10 fortunes. Like our tradition says, recognize the advantage you have right now. So I'm going to go through these really quickly because we've heard them before. The eight leisures means eight circumstances we are free of that allows us to pursue a spiritual path. The 10 fortunes are 10 circumstances that we have that allow us to pursue this spiritual path. So there are eight knots and 10 halves. The eight leisures, things that we are free of, is we don't hold wrong views, meaning we understand and believe that our behavior has consequences. Second one, we are not born as an animal. Third one, we have not been born as a craving spirit, hungry ghost, incapable of being satiated. Fourth one, we have not been born in the hell realms. Nothing but obvious pain, like no room for any kind of questioning. Five, we've not been born in a land where the Buddhist teaching is not available. Number six, we're not in an uncivilized land, meaning no one keeping vows of morality. Number seven, we're not we've not been born as a human with disabilities, either mental or physical, that would prevent us from studying and practicing the Dharma. And then number eight, we've not been born as a pleasure being. Is my sound doing okay? I'm seeing my other me doing weird things. We're not so blissed out that we're just using up our good karma. You know, careful with that one. Our 10 fortunes, five relate to oneself and five relate to our outer circumstances. The five goodnesses, good circumstances that we have is we are born as humans in a central land, meaning in a land where the Buddhist teachings are still available to us. We have our faculties intact. We've not lot we are not lost to the laws of karma. And we have the feeling of faith for the place is the word, but it means we have this faith in the Buddhist teachings, that we have an attraction to them, an interest in them, not meaning blind faith, it's all correct, no matter what, of course, but we're attracted to it. Then the five that relate to things outside ourselves, is the Buddha has come here. Okay, number one, they taught implies that Buddhists can be in a world but not teach, because if nobody asked them, they're not going to say anything. Third, where the teachings remain, even though the Buddha is gone, where there are ones who are following those teachings, putting them into practice, and five, where there's compassion, like some are following those teachings for the sake of others. So we have these 10 fortunes, you and me. And so, Lama, what I do get the essence of your life, recognize this amazing circumstance that we have, not all humans, are humans interested in the Dharma, have access to the Dharma, have the capacity to study it at the level we're studying it, even if they are interested in the Dharma, our seeds are ripening in this exquisite way, and have been for quite some time, right? Even if you just first started from the beginning of ACI, we've been at this for a couple of years. And you started before that, even. So Lama will leave it at that for us to cook this special, recognizing what an extraordinary and special circumstances that we have. And, and they won't say anything else until we come back to them. And if we think carefully about the ramifications of all that, we will come to our own recognition of, Oh, my gosh, there's no guarantee that I'll get this again. These eight and 10 perfect circumstances. And then we realize like, Oh, my gosh, I don't really know exactly when this life is gonna end. Like, this is all these circumstances, right? I know people who drop dead suddenly or get cancer, and then that takes over their life. Like, we'll come to our own realization of impermanence. If we just think about these 10 leisures and eight, eight leisures and 10 fortunes. You know, if we don't, it's like, alright, Lama, I see, you know, I'm really available, you know, what next? And we ask, they'll say, look, you know, are you guaranteed to get this lifetime again? You know, when you die, but right, they'll give the teachings on impermanence. They'll give the teachings on a death meditation. They'll give us the tools to come to our own realization that, Oh, my gosh, this is fleeting, fleeting opportunity. I need to do something with it. Something powerful. We, we go through a period of fear and faith. Technically, like we recognize we could lose these circumstances, we could end up helping hungry ghosts, etc. And it's like, ee gads Lama, what do I do? And they'll say, take refuge. And then, traditionally, refuge means no nama guru, buddhaya nama guru, dharmaya nama guru, right? Just say the words over and over and over and over. And it's like, you can say the words over and over and over again, the army will come and slaughter you. Or maybe not. Right? It's not the words. Oh, no, the three jewels, refuge in the three jewels. That's how you declare it. We've been so well taught. We understand that the Buddha jewel is not the statues. It's not the words. It's the emptiness. It's the emptiness of the Buddha's mind. It's the emptiness of my mind. It's the emptiness of the army. It's the emptiness of the bullet. It's the emptiness. It's emptiness. Understanding emptiness, being aware, relating to emptiness, and depending on origination as the essence of existence. We take refuge in that we are ready to be slaughtered by the army or have the army show up and get to us and throw flowers on us instead. Right? We're ready for any of it. When we are taking refuge in the emptiness of our mind of Buddha's mind of you know, it's like whatever happens gonna happen. Dharma, taking refuge in the Dharma is not the books, the sutras. It's the realization that comes, right, the cessation in the mind of a being who has directly experienced the truth of no self nature. And so ethical component of behavior appearing nature of experience, and the end of the belief in things having their own nature as a result, and all the ramifications of that, as we've been taught, taking refuge in the realizations of the path. That's the only thing that will help us. It doesn't help us in the moment, not to stop whatever bad's happening. But to stop our bad reaction to whatever is happening, is the actual refuge, we change our response. Third refuge is Sangha, not the people in robes. But those who have had the direct perception of emptiness, they show us that it can be done. And they show us the behavior changes that happen as a result, and inspire us. Maybe they can help us physically, literally in the moment of the army coming at us. Maybe they can't doesn't mean our refuge has failed us. Right? Our refuge is a thing that happens in our understanding. And it can be strong enough to actually shift the scene from army coming at us to on everybody having a picnic. It could happen. Right? We heard Lobsang Chukwigaltsen's experience. He failed the first time he went and did this other merit making stuff. The second time he comes out. Look, army, you know, you're just getting ready to kill each other. I have a better idea. Let's go have some tea. Okay. Right? Why did they agree the second time and not the first time? He changed his seeds. So refuge is changing my seeds. Yeah. All right. Conley, I need to go on. I'll get to your question at the end. Okay. All right. So when we understand that real refuge is in our seed planting, right, recognizing seeds ripening, our seeds done, how I respond plants new, we go, Oh, okay. So I see what I need to do going forward. Plant, plant good seeds, plant good seeds, plant good seeds. But Lama, I've got all kinds of crap seeds in me from before I understood. What do I do with those? Am I doomed? Like I have to wear off every single one that's going to take me a really long time. And of course, Lama says, good question. There is a process through which you can damage those previously done ugly seeds that you don't want to let continue to grow. And if you do those goodness as well, those seeds that are cooking and growing, you can get them to ripen sooner now. And they'll ripen as a lesser ugliness than if you let them go on, right, until they come to their own manifestation. Diamond Cutter Sutra says that to read and study the Diamond Cutter Sutra is such a great goodness that anybody who does it is gonna suffer. Yikers, why would I ever read and study the Diamond Cutter Sutra if it's going to make me suffer? Because the suffering that comes up as a result of that goodness is suffering that if left on its own would have led you to hell being hungry ghost animal realm existence. Wouldn't you really rather experience it now as a headache or a hurt foot or a sore elbow or a flat tire or a traffic jam? Then let it go on to become hell realm hungry ghost? Yeah, of course. Of course, I'd want it to ripen lesser. And once something ripens, it's done and gone. How we respond is planting new. Typically, we respond in the way that planted the seed for whatever comes up. And so it looks like, no, we I get the same karmic seed over and over and over again. But technically not different karmic seeds. So we go, oh, so there's something I can do. I can read Diamond Cutter Sutra over and over and over and over. Yeah. And that would be one piece of the power of cleaning out these negative seeds. But there are four steps to doing this cleaning out process, called the four powers, the four powers of purification. Again, we've heard them before. So I'm going to go through them fast. But maybe we haven't had them in the Tibetan before I don't recall. So tangito means the basis force. So whether we're sitting down to work on, you know, all my past jealousy seeds, or I did something out of jealousy recently, and I realized, oh, I want to purify that seed. Either way. Suppose we start with saying, okay, I need to start by reconfirming my foundation of refuge for Mahayana's refuge in bodhichitta. So when we sit down to purify, the first thing we do is go emptiness and karma. Right? I saw them do this. I believe they did it. Right to me on purpose. I blamed them for it. It made me hurt. I acted in that way from that hurt thinking that that was going to solve the problem. And maybe it did. And maybe it didn't. But I recognize now that I planted ugly seeds. So I'm going back to understand the whole situation was a ripening of my own seeds, and no nature of its own. I could have responded differently. Right? But my response was driven by my seeds ripening. But I understand karma, emptiness, I take my refuge in the three jewels, we push ourselves back up, and grow our regret stronger.Right? Regret comes first, refuge happens, but then real regret comes up. Namparsinjimpe. It means the total wipe it out power. Namparsinjimpe. Totally wipe it out. What totally wipes out our negative karma is that power of regret, intelligent regret of an educated Buddhist. Remember the three guys in the bar? I shouldn't have done that. Not guilt, not I'm bad, not shame, just all that was a mistake. Kabunk. Regret. We have the thing we want to clear out. There's already some regret. We recall karma and emptiness, like the three guys in the bar, right? Now our regret goes, right, I've made those seeds. Just think it through until you feel it like that. Like to me, the mudra of regret is like, like that, till you feel that, oh, man, it was just such a mistake. Even though part of us is saying, no, no, I was justified to act like that. Right? Regret should take that. No, I was justified. And right, bring it down to a dull roar until it really is gone. Regret is no my, my bad, totally my bad. Healthy, educated regret. Nyeparlelangdopetok comes up next, because it's like, oh, so I will really want to reframe my from doing that again. So this is the power of restraint. Nyepar means bad day, bad deed. Lelangdopet, bad deed, karma, restrain myself, power, the power of restraining myself from repeating that in the future. So we call it the power of restraint, we establish a power of restraint, meaning, okay, next time, they yell at me like that. I'm not going to respond in that way. I am going to respond in this way. Or maybe next time I have that feeling. Right? So they yelled, I felt hurt because somebody blamed me for something I didn't do. But maybe the next time I feel that hurt. It's because not somebody yelling at me. But somebody saying, you know, Tarana, you said you'd do such and such, and you didn't do it. And then this feeling like hurt comes up. Same feeling of hurt, but different circumstance. And my power of restraint is next time that feeling comes up. Like I'm gonna, I'm gonna stay like a bump of a log, or I'm gonna give myself a little love, instead of react against the person, right? Have a plan for avoiding repeating the seed that we're trying to weed out. But have the plan be a plan that you can actually keep. You know, if we're working on jealousy, for instance, and we were feeling like, every time you look at the neighbor, you feel jealous. Then you say, you know, I'm gonna, I'm going to refrain from jealousy for the next 10 seconds. And then open your eyes, look at the neighbor and go, wow, they have such great stuff. I'm so happy for you. And it's like you kept your power of restraint, even though in the next instant, right, you're jealous again, make your power of restraint doable, do it. And then next four powers do it again, because we want our power of restraint to be successful. Make it successful. Make it so it will be successful. Then last power, NYAM PO KUN TU CHU PE TO. NYAM PO means antidote. So KUN TU CHU PE, some activity, some antidote activity. So not only will I restrain myself from that behavior, again, I will do something to make up for it. So sometimes when we learn these four powers, that order is different.Because it depends on the situation, and circumstance and the availability of doing an antidote. It doesn't matter what order you do them in. And you'll find how this sequence develops in your own heart. Oh, I get my refuge. I mean, I get my regret first, and then I go for refuge. Because then that tells me that if I don't, if I restrain myself from repeating it and do an antidote, I can really fix it. Others like to refuge first, you see. So however the four work for you, but all four need to be present. There is the classical list of things that we do as the antidotes, which is the most powerful one, of course, is to study meditate on emptiness. So to do an emptiness meditation on the three spheres of the factors of the event that we were purifying is a powerful antidote. But there are other ones that work as well. And then in another way, our antidote is to do the opposite of the seed that we just planted. So, you know, if we're, if we're feeling hurt, and to lash back at the person seems to make us feel better, we decide that what the opposite of lashing back at somebody when I'm hurt, would be what to say something nice about them, say something nice to them instead, as much as I don't want to say anything nice to them, I'm going to make myself say something nice, something that's true. You know, the color of your blouse is really beautiful. Even if it's like, where what are you talking about? There's nothing to do with this situation. It's like, no, it has everything to do with this situation. I just did my antidote power. I compliment the person you want to put down. Be say something happy about the person that you're jealous of. Plan out your antidote force. Doing the opposite is building the habit of responding with the opposite. But the antidote, the list of classical antidotes doesn't say do the opposite. It says study emptiness, use holy words. What is the make make make holy images, right? They're all merit making tasks. This the antidotes, the classical antidotes, we can be kind to somebody who's yelling at us. And that makes a good karma. But it isn't necessarily merit making. So we can do both. We can teach ourselves the new response by doing the opposite. And we can assign ourselves an antidote power. That's actually a merit making power, right from those six that we won't go into. But you can't you know, the six you can review them. Right? So first step of the long run first half of it, find the teacher, right that requires even recognizing that we want or need a teacher, which is hard in this day and age, and then finding the creating them technically, right. So how do we find a teacher, if these 10 qualities are actually difficult to know whether somebody else has them, if they're all coming from us anyway, then it would be like, well, these 10 qualities there, there are things I want to see in myself. I need a teacher to teach me how to do it. But I kind of understand them. So I can start living according to them. I can be looking for them in other people. I can be admiring and honoring anyone that I do see with some of those good qualities. I can be trying to be those good qualities for others, the ones at least I can do. Maybe the embodiment of love, maybe the being disciplined and controlled, right? Maybe I can show those, like we create the Lama by growing these qualities in ourselves. Well, if we can grow the qualities in ourselves without the Lama, why do we need a Lama that is the Lama teaching us how to do it, being able to do it. The Lama is helping us do that, even if they're not in the flesh. So then do we really need them in the flesh? Technically not. The advantage is when they are in the flesh, we get to have this right tangible relationship with them so that we can see them receive our offerings, we can see them receive our questions, and give us answers. It just adds to the power of the practice. So we create the Lama by honoring and admiring those we see ahead of us on the path, admiring and honoring and putting into practice things that people teach us, whether they're about Dharma or not, we create the Lama by way of our own seed planting, and that is the Lama. And so it creates one. And then we go Lama, please teach me. And we start up the rungs of the ladder, get the essence of your life. Right? So we only got to what do I do with all my old bad karma? Clean it up. We have one class left, we're not going to get through all the long rims. But we'll go as far as we can. And then class after that is review class. So next week, beyond class on time, if you want question for the review, right to teach me in the end, and we'll finish this course before Geshe Michael's Wisdom in the Time of Chaos, that'll be auspicious. And then you'll have a whole month or six weeks off. We'll start course 10 in September. So yay. So remember that being that we wanted to be able to help at the beginning of class, we've 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 relay 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 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 happiness, filled with the wisdom of loving kindness. And may it be so.Yay. Good job, everybody. Thank you, teacher. Okay, calmly had a question. So you're welcome to stay or you're welcome to go. I know we've gone over time. Thank you for the extra minutes. I owe you. Yes, teacher.This is the second time I asked you about the teacher, you know, the first time you say that, you know, you you will know automatically when you when I meet him, okay, or, you know, whoever. And now I want to ask, I mean, can it be like, you know, our partner can be our teacher as well? If let's say, you know, so happen, he, he is practicing, or he is learning. So is it can be our teacher as well, isn't it? Yeah. Okay. So normally, specifically how to plan a teacher out. So I mean, actually, in fact, I am looking for one and then you know, so that you know, because I know that this is a breakthrough, if let's say, I want to know more about the wisdom.Yeah. Gashla has said, to bring your teacher to you. When you go to bed at night, you you imagine this, you know, amazing, holy Buddha being perfect love, perfect compassion, perfect wisdom, and they are your pillow.Right? Their lap is your pillow. And you put your head in there in their lap, like you don't really know who they are yet you have this ideal, they're just mythical. You put your head in their lap. And you go, Oh, my llama. You love me. I love you. Please come to me. And you just keep saying it until you fall asleep. Oh, llama. I love you. You love me. Please come to me. Then during the day, you're you're, you're like, anytime anybody does something for you, you go, Wow, thank you so much. Like, really appreciate those who help you. You know, those who get in the way and those who don't, don't worry about it, or even go, Wow, thank you. You helped me. Okay. Honestly, you're not just making it up. You helped me see what a jerk I was in the past. You don't say that part, but you think it. So it's like, thank gratitude, gratitude, gratitude, gratitude. And at night, llama, I love you. You love me. I know. Please come to me during the day. Gratitude, gratitude, gratitude. Okay. Yay. Right. Thank you so much. Yeah. Good question. Okay, thank you. Okay. Thanks, everybody. Have a great week. See you Friday morning. Thank you. Chris, I predict your foot will be better by then.

Welcome back. We are ACI Course 9, Class 10, July 11, 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 there they are 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 how 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 I invite you to grow that wish into a longing and that longing into an intention. And with that intention, turn your mind back to the 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, 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 love. I go for refuge until I am enlightened to the Buddha, the Dharma and the highest community through 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 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 and sharing this class and the rest. May all beings totally awaken for the benefit of every single other. So last class we focused on the qualities of the Lama. We focused on the power of having a relationship with a spiritual guide that we've devoted ourselves to and we studied their qualities that we're looking for in them and Geshe-la pointed out to us that our ignorant tendency would be to think that those qualities of a Lama that we're looking for are qualities that that person would have. They would be theirs, they would be in them, right? It would make them up, it would be their identity. Those qualities are in them from them and we go looking for the person who has as many as of them as we can find and then because they have those qualities they themselves have those qualities. Oh they're the one for me and of course if we're thinking that that's where those qualities come from we have it wrong and I don't know it'll be hard to get off to a good start in our relationship with that teacher if we're not really understanding where those good qualities actually come from. So it's almost like you have to have the wisdom, you have to have the wisdom that the teacher is going to teach you in order to get the teacher to teach you that wisdom and it's like how does this really work? But the important piece is to understand that the qualities we see in that person are reflections of our own past behavior in relation to teachers and whatever qualities that person sees in themselves is a ripening of how their past relationship with their teacher went, right? How they treated their teachers in the past. So for us to see a being that we call holy being, it's a ripening of our goodness, our past goodness, right? From relationship with teachers, you know, planted smaller. So maybe spiritual teachers, maybe plain old teachers, right? And so that says okay then how I interact with my teachers now helps me perpetuate the seeds to have a teacher-disciple relationship and to turn that into a spiritual one, right? Is additional goodness and then how that teacher sees themselves is based on how they dealt with, you know, their own teacher. So and then at some level even if we think we know how they see themselves, that's still coming from us. We can't know how somebody sees themselves even if they say, look, I see myself like this, like I see myself like a totally ordinary being. I'm as mentally afflicted as you are, right? We can go, okay, oh nuts, you're not my teacher. Or we can go, yeah, yeah, they always say stuff like that, right? Because we want to plant seeds in our mind to cultivate that relationship. But do you see how dangerous that could be? You know, we decide, oh, this person's our teacher. And then that person goes, great, right? I have somebody, I can do anything I want to. And yeah, it can go sour really fast, which would still be coming from our seeds. Or we meet a teacher, right? Our goodness ripens. And it's like, it doesn't matter what they do. We're just like, wow, wow, you know, that's a personal message for me. I know exactly what to do with that. And like the Tilopa-Naropa story, that we've just seen little tiny glimpses of how crazy that relationship was. And it's like everywhere in between. So the moral to the story is, of course, our teachers are ripenings of our own goodness. And we use them to perpetuate and grow that goodness until, right? There's no distinction between teacher and self, self and teacher, and self and others, and others of teacher and teacher, and it just gets bigger and bigger. And that's the idea. So once we have that teacher relationship starting, and we get off on the right foot, said the scripture, it's like it's gonna go smoothly, meaning no problems whatsoever, probably not. But right, it'll, our own mind gets off to a good start in the sense that, right, well, we'll be able to negotiate this relationship sweetly. Whereas if we get off to a bad start, it's going to be a struggle the whole way. So to even want to find a teacher, we've already must have, you know, met some level of renunciation. And then in this tradition, we've probably also met some level of taking refuge, whether we did it, you know, in the in the words, not really understanding so much about it, but you know, this is what you do to become a Buddhist, if you weren't raised a Buddhist, you take refuge, right? And then you do it in a formal ceremony, and then you repeat the prayer every day. And, and, you know, on some level of practice, that's enough, right? You, you do your prayers every day, and then you go about your business. We're in it in the we're studying that system at a much deeper level, where we're understanding how the process works, so that we can better utilize it to make this change in our suffering world. So we, we then take finding a teacher seriously. And even though they know, we've already taken refuge, they will still go back and teach us about refuge, they'll go, they'll teach us about renunciation. And, you know, I've, I've found many times that, you know, I, I think my renunciation is pretty strong, you know, I gave up my career that I love to go do that thing at Diamond Mountain, that was hard, and then finished at Diamond Mountain, which I thought, Oh, I'll be there until I die. And it's like, Nope, time out done with Diamond Mountain, time to go elsewhere, you know, and then it's like, Oh, this sweet community, I think I'll be here until I die. And then it's like, maybe not. And then it's like, it's each time it's like renunciation comes back around, right? A reason to share it with somebody else, which means got to look at it myself, Sarani and, and see, you know, what is it that I haven't yet renunciated. And I saw how my renunciation was at this level, you know, mostly worldly life and expecting things in ordinary ways. And then it went even deeper. And then it went even deeper. And at some point, it really was man, the only thing to renunciate is ignorance, that misunderstanding. And yet you just can't write, you can mentally go, Okay, I reject that. I know it's, but then you're out in the world, you know, and the car cuts you off around a jerk driver, you can't help but blame, which means, right, I haven't renunciated my ignorance, except intellectually, just it hasn't sunk in yet. So, right, we go back into those beginning practices again, and again, and then we recognize, oh, there's more to it. Yeah, even though we thought we got it at the beginning. So we meet this Lama, they'll talk to us about, you know, what a special, rare, amazing opportunity we have. And if you know, theoretically, that's all they need to say to us. And it will trigger our thinking, our clear logic, and we'll go, Oh, man, and there's no guarantee I'm going to get that again. And then it's like, Whoa, when am I gonna lose it? I don't know, right? car accident could do it. A stroke could do it. Dying could do it. Oh, my gosh, what happens then? Maybe at that point, we need them again. Because what happens after I die? You know, we can't kind of figure that one out on our own necessarily. So they say, you know, look, these are these other possibilities, not because there's a such a self existent place as a hell realm, a hungry ghost realm, an animal realm, but because, right, every experience is ripening result of how we've been aware of our self inner behaving towards others. And that's what colors the show. So they'll, they'll say, so so once we recognize that we're actually in a quite dangerous place, to be human in the Dharma, with our faculties intact, etc, etc. But also in the position where we could lose it at any moment. And we're worried about what could come next, we end up with this fear factor. That is half of refuge, e gads, right? What, what, what am I what what to do? And then the second part of refuge is the belief factor, the faith factor, that somebody somewhere knows. And so when we've already got our relationship with the teacher, this faith factor is like this one is the one that knows how to guide me in my behavior such that I can at the very least close those doors to a lesser rebirth. So we in order to really have refuge, we actually need that fear of coming to the end of our karma for this life. Before we've had enough chance to clean out the karmic seeds, any one of which could become the projecting karma that sends us to hell realm, hungry ghost, animal realm. And if we don't really believe that can happen to us, then we're not we're not really taking refuge, right? We're not really even Buddhist, even if we've declared ourselves as Buddhist, if, if we don't believe that those lower realms can happen, but it's not like there's a a hell realm being body hanging in a closet somewhere just waiting, you know, for my mind end of this life to go and go into that costume of helping it's, it's that a seed from having seen myself been angry, hateful, hurtful, you know, cruel towards some other being just one of those. If it happens to be the one that ripens at the moment of death, then all the ones similar to it, like are dragged along and turn my reality into a reality in which there's hatred, anger, cruelty coming at me constantly. Just one seed can be the one. Now, you know, we learned yet got bazillion seeds, countless seeds. What's the chance of one popping? If you only did one cruel thing in all your eons of lifetimes, you know, the risk is low. But what if there's lots, then the risk is higher. What if there's lots of seeds from no, this is mine, right? Not share my needs are more important than other needs. And we have many of those seeds. So that the likelihood of one of those popping at the end of death, with the string of similar ones that goes with it, fills in the detail of me a being who sees food far away exerts myself to get it, eat it, it's gross, right? Or can't you wait, hungry ghost realm can't get our needs met, can't get satisfied, can't get sustained, and yet you don't die. Then the third one animal realm. If we have seeds of being on automatic pilot, generally disrespecting other beings, other people, you know, just not making intentional choices, being in that state of mind, that's just dumb, dull or stupid. Creating that in other people, any one of those seeds ripens as experiencing our self and the others like ourselves, as beings that aren't capable of making ethical choices that are on run by instinct and can't make behavior choices. Then there's some piece of that, that ripens as this situation of needing to be on constant alert, like eat or be eaten is the characteristic of the animal realm. Even for our pets, they still have the instinct. Yes, they're ripening the goodness of a certain amount of comfort, but still they're relying on somebody else for their food, for their safety, and they can't, they can't change that. So when we look, it's like, you know, I really wasn't like any of, well, can't say I wasn't like animal, right? On automatic pilot and dumb, dull and stupid. I see that quality of mind. Not that I'm imposing it on others necessarily, but although I apologize for every moment, I made you like, just go bored to death because those would be animal seeds for me. You know, when I see those faces that are just like that happens sometimes, so sorry, but you get the idea, right? So the, they, they, in these early stages of our Buddhist career, there really is a lot of pointing out situations that they use the term. Aren't you afraid? Doesn't that make you afraid? And it seems really weird. Why would you want to step into a tradition that's based on fear? You know, it's like, didn't we reject that from our formal religious life before? It's like, don't do that. You'll go to hell. Like, ah, come on. But it, it really is true. If we don't have this healthy concern that that could be my future, then we're not going to have the power to choose our behavior differently with enough consistency, with enough strength to actually do it. So this motivation of renunciation that leads to fear is a good thing. A healthy thing, a healthy kind of fear, fear and faith that now that I understand about the mental seed thing, oh my gosh, it's my behavior choices. That is my refuge. And I couldn't in a bazillion years have figured it out myself. So I need to rely on this teacher. Thank you, teacher. Oh my gosh. Right. So they really do say, don't move on from your refuge until you really recognize that you believe you could end up as a hell being hungry ghost animal. Because when that fear is strong enough, we will really act on our refuge prayer. We will really want to change our behavior to really watch our behavior because maybe they're like, we don't have big, bad habits. Like I never was wanting to go in, stomp on the ants just because I saw them. But you know, you get those ants coming into the bathroom. Right. The only way to stop them is to go pour poison down. Right. And it's like, I have done that in the past. You know, now at least I sweep them up without hurting them and put them outside. But that's just as bad, you know, because like now they're separated from their home. And anyway, so it's hard, but we, we get more and more subtle at our, our recognition of what, what we still want to change about our behavior, right? Not because teachers said so, although that's good enough, right? In this relationship that we have with this Lama, when we have the understanding clear enough about our mental seeds, we really can say, just tell me what to do, but then we need to actually do what they say. Right. If we're going to devote like that, then when they say, you know, like all of a sudden they go, oh my gosh, go, go to the store and get me some bread, even though it's like in the middle of a terrible snow storm, you know, and we'd go, what do you need bread for right now? Can it wait until tomorrow? You know? And it's like, sorry, that's not the, I'll just, just tell me what to do. Right. We're still like trying to figure it out. And it's fine to have the relationship with the teacher. It's like, please teach me how to know what to do. And then our job is to listen for teachings. And then they're not going to say all of a sudden, oh, go get a loaf of bread right in the middle of a snowstorm. They're not going to give us that instruction. Not that they're waiting to see, but spontaneously the way we ripen, right? What we bring to the is what we're going to get back from them. And it works to just purely devote. And it works to say, you've taught me how to think and how to make decisions. And that's what I will do. Right. And then we've heard those teachings where the Lama says to two students are there and Lama says, you know, our center needs money. I know that bank has a whole bunch of money in its vault. Why don't you go rob the bank? Right. And we can get the money for this really virtuous project that we need. And you see, it'll be a good thing because we're going to use that money for this stupa. And one student goes and robs the bank. And the other student says, you know, in all due respect, Lama, you know, I don't think you really want me to rob the bank. You really want me to raise the funds for this stupa. Right. And both of them would be collecting good karma and bad karma, but different ways in different ways. Right. So our relationship with that Lama is unique to each of us and how we use them. Right. It's the quality of our own path progress, of course. So I got distracted here. So we aren't technically even Buddhist until we have this really deep, healthy fear that we will run out of seeds for this life before we have adequately prepared our karmic refrigerator for the process of this death. So that's how we ended up at the four powers. Last class is we go e. Gads, I'm full of seeds of selfishness from lifetimes and this one before I knew any better. And, you know, I need to damage those seeds so they can't go up. So that at the very least, I can be assured of another human life and if possible, another human life with those ten fortunes.Right. So what good is another human life if it doesn't have our faculties intact or it doesn't have Buddhism in it? Right. Those are all going to be coming out of our own seeds. So first level Buddhist practitioner is I need to close the door to those lesser rebirths. And we think we came into the system with seeds for Mahayana because we're here and then we learn about the three capacities. And I don't know, my own mind goes, yeah, you know, long time ago, I was a first level practitioner. I don't have I already have that. And it's like, hmm. Right, that's getting complacent about it. So have we really closed the door to lesser rebirth? Second level practitioner is rec understanding. Karmic correlations like how we create karma and how it then ripens so clearly that that we see we can, in fact. Purify and make goodness such that we can reach the place where there's there's no more seeds for mentally afflicted reactions to anything that happens, right, that we can reach nirvana. Freedom from our own mental afflictions forever, reaching that state where we've, they say, gotten out of samsara. At the second level practitioner, we want to stop our own suffering. We see where it comes from.We understand we apply ourselves to our behavior change. We are avoiding harming others, which is what our practices to close the door to lesser rebirth focuses on. And we're gathering enough goodness. To to. To be become free of those mental afflictions forever doesn't mean that unpleasant things won't happen. Remember the King of Kalinga story. We can still have situations that are painful, unpleasant, but our reaction to them will not be mentally afflicted. We'll understand directly where they're coming from and how to respond to them. Reaching nirvana, nirvana with remainder, still have a body to work that through. But then eventually you even end up with no seeds for that physical body. And where a nirvana sized mind goes, I don't know, I don't understand. I, I, I, but we can reach that state of no mental afflictions ourselves. Second level practitioner cranks up the juice on their avoiding harming others and gathers the goodness to, to, to ripen the seeds for nirvana. It was based on wanting to close the door to lesser rebirth. So it's not like, even though we stepped right into Mayana in this life that we hadn't at some point in previous lives, worked hard on closing the door to lesser rebirth and worked hard on seeds for clearing out our mental afflictions. But we had something good about us that ripened. Whoa, if this is true for me, it's true for everybody, right? And we turn our renunciation onto others. And now our practice to close the door to lesser rebirth, our practices to stop all mental afflictions is being done so that everybody can do the same. And that means our practices are the same, but the state of mind with which we are doing them is different. And it's so different that that state of mind is called an alchemical elixir, right? Alchemy means you take, you mix some factors and then you use this new mixture to take some ordinary thing like steel and you put this stuff on it and you say some mantras over it and the steel turns to gold and now it's valuable and you can go and buy things with it. And right, this alchemical elixir transforms ordinary into precious, valuable stuff. Nagarjuna got good at it and then got in trouble for it. You remember the story? So this state of mind of renunciation turned on others is this alchemical elixir that turns our practices to close the door to lesser rebirth, avoiding harming others, and our practices to stop all our mental afflictions, which is growing our goodness, our moral discipline, helping people actually become the seeds for our total Buddhahood, not simply nirvana. We do reach nirvana, but that's not our highest goal. So this state of mind, this alchemical elixir, what I'm talking about you recognize is what we call bodhicitta. And the bodhicitta has those two factors. I want to reach my total enlightenment so that I can help all sentient beings.But really, it started with wanting to help all sentient beings. Well, no, it didn't really start with that. It started with wanting to help me get out of my suffering. And then I met a teacher who explained the system. And then we recognize that, oh, if that system is true for me, it's true for everybody. And so I see that everybody's suffering is as mistaken as mine. And if I can stop mine, maybe I can help them stop theirs. Do you see how it grows? It's like it has to start with concern for our own suffering. And then as we become more and more understanding, it turns on to others. So it might, our bodhicitta might start with, oh man, everybody's suffering is so much worse than mine. Like I want them to reach that realization that it's a mistake and unnecessary and they can change it. But then we realize what we see in them is coming from us. And it's like, oh, my gosh, I need to change my seeds. So this bodhicitta, it can be, you know, I want to help everybody get enlightened. And to do so I have to get enlightened. Or it can come from the, I want to get enlightened. And in order to become enlightened, I need to have the wish to help everybody get enlightened. Either way, we color our mind with bodhicitta. And then anything we do is colored with bodhicitta as we're planting that seed. So this alchemical elixir of, I want to reach my total buddhahood for the sake of all sentient beings, changes any ordinary behavior into a cause for our enlightenment. And then, well, what all ordinary behavior? Like you could take that to the debate ground. So I could kill somebody with bodhicitta and it will be a cause for my enlightenment. And remember the captain of the ship story, what it means to kill somebody with bodhicitta. It isn't, I'm going to kill that ant because I'm going to reach total enlightenment by doing it. Sure, maybe so, but you're going to get killed many, many, many times on your way to getting there. Is that what you want? Would that be a good result? Maybe not. So we can't use it to fool ourselves into doing anything we want, which is why it's so extraordinary that we're so well trained that I can say these words to you and I know you won't go off and say, so Ronnie said, I can do anything I want as long as I say bodhicitta. Say bodhicitta and rob the bank. No, I didn't say that. Right? Unless you want to, you know, have the results of robbing a bank, which you will still get. Even though we were saying bodhicitta, even if we really had bodhicitta in our mind, that student who goes and robs the bank gets the goodness of having the money to give to the project, but gets the badness of being stolen from for eons. If they're willing to take that on, then fine, go rob the bank. It really is true that none of those non-virtues have anything in them from them that's good or bad. We've learned that, which is why we avoid them like the plague. Okay. So all of Buddhist practice starts with this one goal. I need to close the door to lesser rebirth. And it's built upon that. And so whether we are a first capacity practitioner, second capacity practitioner, or third capacity practitioner, we already are cultivating an ethical way of life, just at different levels, levels of understanding, a practice of learning concentration, meditative concentration, so that our powers of mindfulness in our off cushion time can help us choose our behaviors in the moment more wisely, so that we can behave in our off cushion time in ways that will help support our on cushion progress, right? We're learning that in bodhichitta, how we what we do off cushion affects what happens on cushion, what happens on cushion affects what we do off cushion, right? We're not, oh, I have to do my practice, and then I'm out in my worldly life. It's all practice. So meditative concentration, and we're already working with the extraordinary training of wisdom. Also, we're learning, we're studying, we're contemplating, we're meditating, we're trying to use what we learn, right, using our concentration to use what we learn to affect our behavior choices. So those three are all interwoven. And it takes practice in these three, then, to arrive at those five paths of spiritual progress for any capacity practitioner. So we know the five paths, let me make sure I haven't missed anything. We know the five paths, the path of accumulation, the path of preparation, the path of seeing, path of habituation, and the path of no more learning, which each of those paths really means a realization, right, something that has become true for us. And on the way to the experience of the realization, we are learning things, doing things, right, changing. So path in terms of going from here to there is true. But path as in something becoming true for us, it doesn't mean we don't still have that path that we walk on. But now we know it's true instead of out of belief. So each of those three capacity has a five paths, a five realizations that they come to, that what they describe as those five paths is different. But the process through which they move through those five is the same. So we even get on the path of accumulation on any three of those levels by way of this renunciation. It takes renunciation first to start the whole process. Renunciation, you know, means we've come to this, you know, realization that there's nothing in this samsaric life that can bring us that happiness that we're expecting or searching for. Or like there's just really something wrong with this picture. And we get glimpses through life of that. But at some point, something sent us searching. And, and whatever that was for us, whatever that feeling that you remember, that's what we mean by renunciation at some level. I mean, I remember the day I got mine. And then since then, it's deepened and grown and, you know, morphed, etc. So it can take a long time, we can meet the some spiritual path, you know, because our karmic seeds ripen. But in life, things are going so well. It's like, okay, that's interesting. Like I, I have a nephew that was, you know, quite privileged in his upbringing at but he was interested in spiritual things. And I think it while he was still in college, he had this opportunity that he could get college credit for going, you know, and immersing himself in something. And he said, Hey, can I come to Diamond Mountain. So it was really, really early on Diamond Mountain University hadn't started yet. And he came and stayed for a month, maybe two months, I was in retreat. So I missed almost all of it. But when I came out of retreat, one of the other teachers there was teaching the review course, I think it was 18, the highest one. And he took that course with her. And I was in a couple of the classes. And he and he was saying, you know, why, why does it really take some kind of suffering to turn on your interest in a spiritual path? Right? That just didn't relate. He just didn't relate to that.Because I mean, he had usual teenage distresses and so forth. But right, he was interested in spiritual things, but he'd never had the wake up call. And, like he caught on to karma and emptiness really fast. And then he said, Okay, bye, see you and goes right back into apparently, ordinary human life, which has actually ended up being full of struggles, more struggles than you would think given his upbringing. And just interesting, right? He had the seeds to touch into it and go, Thank you. That's interesting. But not like, this is the answer to everything. Because it isn't in it. Right? So sorry for that distraction. Renunciation is painful, and it takes a long time to really get. And once we get it, and then we look back later, it's like, oh man, that's the best thing that ever happened to me. You know, the worst thing is the best thing.And it's really a beautiful state of mind. So the accumulation in the path of accumulation, as we know, is accumulation with enough understanding that nothing can go right here, that we go searching for an answer to why that's true. And then when we meet something that seems to be the answer, we step into the path of preparation. Where we learn about it, right? We study, we take teachings, we hear about it, we question, we debate, we contemplate, we meditate, we really work with the principles. And maybe we meet a tradition where we learn, learn, learn. And it's like, well, you know, like I met theosophy first, and it's like, wow, wow, wow, I learned so much. And then through it, I met the Mahayana Buddhism. And then through that, I met why the why of Mahayana Buddhism, and then it's like, ah, that, right, it just hooked me into that as my tradition versus theosophy, right, which was for other people. So we get onto our path of preparation, and our path of preparation is all about preparing to experience our tonglam, our path of seeing, which is that experience of the truth that what we've been studying, becoming a direct experience for us. We say, we reach truth, we reach ultimate reality. But do you see, it's like, ultimate reality, according to our tradition, not meaning it's been made up, but you can't say that our truth is the truth that everybody would relate to. But on the debate ground, you'd say, eventually, they're all going to get here. And it's like, well, that's arrogant to say, eventually, they're all going to get to truth. And nevermind. So path of preparation, many, many, many hours, maybe even lifetimes of study, study, study, practice, practice, practice, purify and make merit, until that merit ripens as that experience of ultimate reality. Geshe-la calls it mile post zillion and one on the highway to freedom. It lasts 20 minutes, after eons of lifetimes, right, of suffering and trying and 20, 30 short minutes. And then, you know, 16, 18, 24 hours afterwards, and, and we are forever changed forever different. And then we're on our path of habituation, where now, we know from direct experience, what it is to change our behavior, right? What seeds we need to plant, in order to bring about this thing that we experienced in that 24 hours, as our moment to moment reality. Path of habituation, time frame is variable. According to the practitioner, typically, they say seven lifetimes or less, compared to how long will it take to get enlightened before our tonglam, Mahayana tonglam, impossible to say, not even an omniscient being can say how long it will take. Because there's so many variables. But once seen emptiness directly, because of the impact on our mind, where we are no longer replanting that mistaken belief in things as natures, there's a finite period of time in which we need to burn off past belief in self existence, and not replant it, right, so that we're replacing stained seeds with pure seeds. And sooner that or later, we've got them all replaced, right, or damaged so badly, that they can't go off. And then all we need to do is clear out the the remnants of that belief, called the obstacles to omniscience, to reach Buddhahood. So it really is does become a finite period of time to do that. And we reach our goal, the goal called no more learning for the Mahayana is our total enlightenment that experiencing ourselves as a being made of love, compassion, wisdom, perceiving ultimate reality and appearing reality simultaneously in all times, experiencing those four, they call them the four bodies, right, but meaning four aspects of being. Hmm. So there's a point on power. Sorry, break time. Let's take our break. So Geshe-la gave us this clue about why it is that bodhichitta is this alchemical elixir. And he said, consider that you do some kind of kindness for for your own benefit. Like you do something nice, but you really intended it, right, because it feels good or because I need I need to accomplish this. So I will do it like one, one seed. No, never one seed, one series of seeds, one kind of seed planted for one person's benefit. Right, we understand about that. Now, think about all the people that live in your city, just human people. And think specifically, you know, they're all doing something. Some are driving, some are at work, some are home from work, right, all the different things that they're doing. And we recognize that, as far as I can tell, they all have the states of mind that what they're doing in the moment brings what comes next. And they're all in search of happiness. And they're all expecting happiness to come to them in a certain way. And, you know, we recognize, gosh, you know, I don't know for sure, but it doesn't appear that there's very many of them that understand the actual process. So in their effort to find happiness, they're just pounding their big toe with a hammer, right, as I still do. And I did for many lifetimes. Now I understand. Oh, my gosh. Now, as I'm thinking about their suffering, and I'm doing this kindness for just one of them. I'm doing it because I care about all those that don't understand. Yes, I'm going to get the benefit. But my motivation is on behalf of all these others. Even as I'm interacting with just this one, what's happening to the seed, right before it was one on one for my benefit, even one on one for their benefit, the seed is planted in a certain way. Now the action is one on one, but the state of mind is so that, you know, I can help all those beings in that ultimate way. Eventually, the deed is the same. But can you feel the difference in the seed planted? On behalf of I know there's a million people in Tucson Valley now, on behalf of a million people. I take flowers to my friend. Or I take flowers to my friend with bodhichitta in mind. The flowers to the friend seed is the same, but it's not the same. When it's colored with bodhichitta on behalf of the end of everybody's suffering, same deed. Because of the power of the seed because of the power of the state of mind. So include all the animals in your area, include all the unseen beings in your area, include all of them in your country, include all of them in the world, include all of them in the thousand of a thousand of a thousand planets, right? Do you see how the seed gets bigger and bigger and bigger as our concept of what we mean by all sentient beings gets bigger and bigger and bigger? Same deed done, different seed planted because of the state of mind with which we do it. The two bignesses, remember we learned that. I want to reach my total buddhahood, that ultimate state of being because or so that all beings can reach that too, or at least all beings can reach the end of their suffering. All meaning all, meaning such a big number, right, that we can't even give it a name. So that wish to reach total enlightenment for the sake of all sentient being, that wish to help all beings and all of their suffering forever and to do that I need to become enlightened. Held in mind as we're brushing our teeth, makes brushing our teeth a cause for our buddhahood. Remember that from light course two? Any deed done with bodhicitta becomes a cause for my enlightenment. So then how much do we have to have it in our mind? You know, 100% single point of focus as I'm doing the dishes. I'm doing the dishes to become a buddha for the sake of all sentient beings. Like I do the dishes and an hour later it's like, oh yeah, oh I did the dishes for the benefit. The more the better. Any fleeting instant is better than not at all. Like how much do I have to have bodhicitta on my mind to become a buddha? You'll know when you reach buddhahood that much. So we just keep trying and doing and learning and our ability to have bodhicitta in our mind all day is a karmic goodness ripening. So we really can't like make it out of willpower, we create it out of karmic kindness, goodness. And we grow that goodness by avoiding harming others, looking for ways to behave according to the ten virtues instead of the ten non-virtues, keeping our vows, right, dedicating, having our intention. So maybe our first intention is to be able to grow the intention, our bodhicitta intention, and then to grow it into coloring our mind. Like coloring our state of heart all the time. Like once we've got it colored, do you still have to have the words going in your head? Or is it colored? Like I wrote bodhicitta across my glasses once, figuring I'd be looking across it, right? And it didn't really work because it just made everything blurry. But you know, just anything I can do to remind myself to have bodhicitta in my mind, in my heart, as I'm doing anything. And anyway, so, you know, we always hear Geshe Michael say, as you're feeding the bird, it feels good to feed the bird. You can feed the bird, your little bird, you know, if you take this bite, you and I are connected. You'll become my student, I'll become your teacher. You can take it a little bit further. You little bird, I don't know for sure, maybe you're already a Buddha, and you're just giving me the opportunity to become a Buddha. Faster and great. Let's change the world together. Eat this little piece of bread. We can, I'm driving my car safely for everybody's benefit, or I'm driving my car safely so that every one of us can become Buddhas for the sake of everybody else, right? It's a game we can play with our mind, with our heart, to remind ourselves that it's not what we're doing. It's the quality of our intention with which we are doing. But that doesn't mean we can just intend to bring everybody to enlightenment and then do any old stupid thing we want. Because the any old stupid thing is going to still come back to us as somebody else doing any old stupid thing to us with bodhicitta in their heart, and that'll still be painful, right? So our bodhicitta is supposed to inspire more and more kindness, more and more avoiding harming in more and more subtle ways, rather than using our so-called bodhicitta to let ourselves be more and more selfish. It's a danger. And so we watch, we watch our own mind. So even as we're interacting with just one other person, that one other person can represent for us all suffering beings. And then our interaction with them is for their ultimate benefit, if we just think of it that way. When our wish through our interaction with them to be for their ultimate benefit, it becomes for our ultimate benefit. So we can say, I'm feeding you little bird so I can become a Buddha so that I can help you become a Buddha. Or we can say, I'm feeding you little bird so you can become a Buddha. And that will plant the seeds for our relationship with our teacher, our practice to help us become Buddha. So it has these two components, right? My, our bodhicitta, two components, my ultimate and the ultimate number of beings is ultimate. Because those two ultimates, right, are what the bigness that it takes for the seeds that we plant by the little deeds, everyday deeds that we do to grow into that result. So with that, then, someone who, whose renunciation path of accumulation has put them onto their path of preparation, and their renunciation has been turned onto others, so that in their path of preparation, they're preparing for their path of seeing, based on their wish to help all beings stop all of their suffering. Then, when those goodness seeds ripen into the experience of our tonglam, our direct experience of ultimate reality, we will go into that with a mind imbued with bodhicitta, which has an additional influence on our mind of that direct experience of emptiness, when we come out of that direct perception of emptiness. When we go into what's called the direct perception of emptiness, with the mind imbued with the motivation to close the door to lesser rebirth, the experience that we have called tonglam, when we come out of it, we interpret it in such a way that we now know what we have to do to close that door to lesser rebirth. We know from direct experience, and we're on our path of habituation to close the door to lesser rebirth. Same for nirvana. If we go into our tonglam with a mind imbued with wanting to reach nirvana, we come out of tonglam with the impact of that experience, such that we now know what we need to do to reach our own nirvana. Do you see? If we go into our direct perception with a mind imbued with all beings, total buddhahood, my total buddhahood, the connection between those two, that experience of tonglam influences us in such a way that now we know what we have to do in order to reach omniscience, which is that state of being the one who will help everyone become the one who will help everyone. So seeing emptiness directly doesn't automatically put us onto the Mahayana path. We need to go into it with the aspiration of the Mahayana, the bodhicitta, in order for our direct perception of emptiness to even be a cause for our buddhahood. The alchemical elixir even changes direct perception of emptiness into the cause for buddhahood. Otherwise it would be a cause for nirvana or it would be cause for closing door to lesser rebirth. Do you see? There's nothing in the direct perception of emptiness itself that makes us into Buddha. It's hard. It's hard to understand. So coming out of our direct perception of emptiness with bodhicitta in our heart, we come out and we have that experience also of the bodhicitta, the actual bodhicitta, right? The clear light flowing out of our heart. We see the face of every being. Geshe-la describes it and we love them. And coming out further, we have these direct experiences, some still in meditation, some off-cushion meditation. They come to be called the Four Arya Truths. Excuse me. Now I have a vocabulary to share here. Pakpe Denpa Shi, we know that. Come on fingers, do your job here. There we go. Pakpe means the Arya, the Four Shi, Denpa Truths, the Four Arya Truths. Those four direct experiences through which the Arya now knows, knows like getting on the bike and riding it finally, knowing. The truth of suffering, Dunyal Denpa, the truth of the cause of suffering, Kunjum Denpa, the truth of the cessation of suffering, Gok Denpa, and the truth of the path to the cessation of suffering, Long Denpa, these four. So they say that the way we understand the four, we do, we understand them intellectually in a certain order, like they write this first, that next, that next, that next. But Geshe-la says the way they happen is in a different order. And technically the way they happen is circular. So you can't really say there's a first one, a second one, right there. Wherever you enter into looking at them, then that's going to be the first one. And when we intellectually learn them, we learn them in this order, the truth of suffering, the truth of its cause, the truth of the end of it, and how to bring that about the end of it. But he says the way the Four Arya Truths are happening is that one understands that every suffering comes from a cause and that every suffering then also becomes a cause for future suffering. It's one thing to understand that all suffering has a cause. It's another to understand that that suffering itself is a cause of more suffering. So one of the things that when you are out of the direct perception of emptiness, but still in meditation, right, you got into the direct perception of emptiness because you saw that, oh my gosh, everything is seeds ripening, right, in my mind, to make the identity out of information. And you realize, oh my gosh, there's never been anything that's not that, that's anything but that. And you get pushed because of your ability to go into shamatha level meditation. You take your review of what you just saw happen with the pot on the stove, for instance, and you analyze and analyze, and then you get pushed into the direct perception of the no self nature of self, right? That's true about the pot on the stove. It's true about everything I've ever experienced.Wait a minute, that's true about me. And then like water poured into water, then those seeds shift and you come out. And like one of those first realizations is, oh my gosh, every seed I've ever planted has been stained with this mistake. And so every seed that's ever ripened, being stained with that mistake is a suffering. Like it's all caused by this ignorance and the self-existent me that comes out of it and the selfishness that comes out of the self-existent me. And so the blaming others for anything I don't like, or even anything I do like, right? You see so directly this domino effect that starts from the misunderstanding. And so this cause of suffering is the first thing that actually is revealed to us. And so then you recognize that, well, for anything, if you stop the causes, you stop the experience, you stop the result. You can't have a result if you'd never made the cause to begin with. And then you realize that, oh my gosh, during that direct perception of emptiness, whatever that experience was, for the first time ever, you realize you were free of the mistake, free of that deep cause of suffering. You experienced being free of it. You experienced being no cause, no cause for suffering. So you know it's possible because you just did it. Now you can only remember it. You can't go back into it. But you've directly experienced the fact that if you have no cause for suffering, ripening, you can't have suffering. And you know what you have to do then to reach the point where your moment-by-moment reality is this empty nature of all existence of oneself and other and the appearing nature of it all simultaneously. You know what you need to do. And so you know what your path of habituation is going to be and for how long it's going to be, our lamda. So out of the experience of going into and coming out of direct perception of emptiness, these realizations come to you. But then when you try to describe it to someone else, you would start with saying, look, this whole process started with recognizing the fact that everything is suffering. And you might say, look, and I really didn't believe it until I got into and out of the direct perception colored with bodhicitta before I actually recognized, oh my gosh, it has all been suffering and nothing but the bad times were obvious suffering, but the good times that were out, you know, and even when good times stayed good times in the end, you lose it all. And it's all for not, and you do it over again. I had to really understand that from direct experience. So that dunyo, dunyo denpa, the truth of suffering is, is not that, oh, now I know it's true, but it's the fact of suffering. It's the truth of suffering is the fact that there's nothing but suffering in a world that samsaric, a world that's created by misunderstanding is nothing but suffering. And it has two divisions that the division of the impure vessel in which we live, meaning our world and the impure contents of that vessel, which means all the beings who live in it. So the truth of suffering is the fact that everything about our world, every, all the, the way it functions, all the non-material, no, sorry, all the material things of our world, they are all suffering and the causes of more suffering. And every being in that world, including myself, of course, is also the fact of suffering, suffering in the moment, creating more suffering in how I try to stop my suffering. Like it's really depressing, this truth of suffering, not just, oh yeah, everything's suffering. It's like, wow, the fact of my very effort to stop it is making more of it. Crazy deep. Piyashola asks, so do you think there's anything in our world, not the truth of suffering? Like your chair is the truth of suffering. Your grandchild is the truth of suffering. Your beautiful blue sky is the truth of suffering. But, you know, if you took it to the debate ground, you'd probably end up saying, yeah, well, what about my meditation practice? Is that the truth of suffering? What about my growing bodhicitta? Is that the truth of suffering? What about my tonglen practice? No. And it's like, if I'm a samsaric being and I'm doing it, it must still be the truth of suffering. But it's what I do to change my seeds, to help me stop being this mistaken, ignorant, selfish slob so that I can help everybody awaken to the truth of suffering so they can stop causing it. Certainly that's not the truth of suffering. But I don't know about you. I get disappointed with my practice. Like this isn't changing fast enough. I'm not doing well enough. So if my reaction to something that's not a suffering is a suffering, where's that coming from? And I'm not going to give an answer because I don't know it. But it's a thing that we want to grapple with. We grapple with it because we're still thinking self-existently about it and about the truth of suffering. Is it true everything is suffering from them, in them? No, right? It's not true. Is it real? Well, do you see where I'm going? Yes, it's true. Yes, it's valid. Is it correct? No. Valid? Yes. Correct? No. Thank goodness. So part of the understanding of the truth of suffering is like, it's not necessary. It's all a big mistake. Oh, phew. The truth of the cause of suffering. It has two parts as well. So we know is karma. What's karma? Movement of the mind and what it motivates. What it motivates means what we say and do. So our behavior. So karma is movement of the mind and the behavior that comes from it. Movement of the mind. I want, I don't want, what do I do to get or not get? I think I do something in the moment to get what comes next. Oops. I do things in the moment knowing that what happens next is not related. So what I do in the moment is in order to plant seeds so that when it brings its result, it'll be great for everybody. That's a whole different mindset than I want, I go get, maybe it works, maybe it doesn't.Hmm. So movement of the mind. We see in the truth of the cause of suffering is just the very movement of the mind. And what I do as a result is the cause of this perpetuating suffering, because I think that what I do in this moment brings what comes next. And it appears to, but technically, I'm sorry. Technically, those two are not related. The second factor in the truth of the cause, we know the word nyomong is mental affliction. But nyomongpa means mentally afflicted things, meaning the things we get mentally afflicted about. A mental affliction arises because it's triggered by something or somebody. But our perception, our ripening seeds are, I'm angry because the boss is yelling at me for something I didn't do. The nyomongpa, the cause of my suffering, is this thing happening that is, that I'm calling the cause for my mental affliction. Is that yelling boss blaming me for what I didn't do? Does it have to cause my mental affliction? No, because if it did, everybody who heard her yelling at me would have the same reaction as I do. If it was really coming from that. Excuse me, let me mute and finish this. I just need to stop breathing and this would stop happening. So it's the things we get mentally afflicted about. It's not the things that are the cause of suffering. It's the getting mentally afflicted about them. But we only get mentally afflicted about them because we blame them for our mental affliction. Do you see? So Geshe-la says technically anything which is the truth of suffering is also the cause of suffering because of how we blame it for either our pleasure or our pain. Cause result, cause result, cause result, cause result. So then Gokden, the truth of the cessation, what we know coming out of our direct perception is that suffering stops when the causes for it stop. You can't get a result if we didn't plant the seed. And there are two things that need to be stopped. But really it's not two things. It's one thing with two flavors and it's called the Gakja. This really slippery word, the Gakja, the thing that emptiness is empty of. Well, that's clear as mud. The thing that we deny, that's also clear as mud. The Gakja, anything that it could exist independent of any other factor. That's so broad. Like what is this thing, the Gakja? A self-existent thing. A thing that could exist independent of any other factor would be a thing that has its identity and qualities in it, from it, not dependent on anything else in any way. Which if you think about that, could there be such a thing that we could experience that is in it, from it, independent of our experience of it? Do you see how absurd it is to even say a thing that has its identity qualities in it, independent of any other factor? Could we even perceive it? Like if we could perceive it, it would determine how we perceived it. But then that means it's somehow being influenced by me being there to perceive it, that it says you must perceive me like this. Like that can't happen.So this idea of a self-existent thing, a thing with its own identity, is just so stupidly impossible. But we just don't get that until we've directly experienced how this pen, right, is not a pen out here. It's my seeds ripening onto information that makes it this pen for me and this pen for you. And none of us ever perceive an object in the same way. And technically none of us ever perceive the apparently same object in the same way, two moments in a row. Here's the pen again. You've seen it for a second time. Here's it again. Third time. Here's it again. Fourth time. Every time we see it, we are different. It is different. It can't be in it from it. If it was, it would be independent of our perception of it. In which case I could never use it. It could never change. It could never do anything. Now apply that to yourself. Do you think you have your own identity in you? I do. I'm so runny, right? If I really were so runny, in me radiating out from me, everybody would have to know me the same. And nobody knows me like I know me. And that hurts my feelings, right? I want people to know me. But you see, when we turn the pen thing onto our own self, it gets more slippery. Am I like, am I really different moment by moment by moment? Well, then who do I relate to? But at the same token, if I'm really different moment by moment by moment, who is it I'm so trying to protect? Who is it that's unsafe? Who is it that needs to be prideful? But then that's dangerous. It's okay. I relate to this changing, changing, changing me. Well, then it doesn't matter if I walk out in front of the truck. But it does matter. So this Gakcha, it has two versions of it, two directions to work with it. There's the Gakcha that is stopped by way of the path of seeing. And there's the Gakcha that stopped by way of middle way reasoning, meaning by logic. But logic as taught by the middle way, which the process of logic isn't different. But what we're turning our logic onto is a bit different logic according to the middle way. The Gakcha which is stopped by logic, of course happens before we reach the Gakcha that stopped by the path of seeing. The Gakcha that stopped by the path of seeing, due to that direct experience of the lack of self existence, self identities of any existing thing, including oneself. We come out of that having destroyed the belief in something's own identity. So we have these beliefs that I have my own identity, whatever it is. And every other that I experience has an identity in it. We don't think they're self existent, independent of any other factor. We know we're all interconnected. But we still think a pen's a pen, a horse is a horse, a tree is a tree, Kongli is Kongli, Pia is Pia. Something unique in each thing that identifies it as it. That deep belief that things have their own identities and at the same time are influenced by other things. After the direct perception of emptiness, that belief is gone. Were the self existent things that the belief applied to ever there? Was the pen that I believed to be self existent ever there? It's slippery how to answer that, right? The pen with its identity in it is not here, never was there. My belief that there's a pen with its identity in it is definitely here. What happens to the pen when my belief goes away, but it still appears to me as having its penness in it, right? That's the state of mind of a new Arya, still ripening the seeds for things having their own identities, but you no longer believe it. It's hard to even imagine what that is like, what that would be like. Once the belief which was an existing thing is gone by way of that direct experience, no amount of things appearing as self existent can make you believe in their self existence again. Once you've gotten on the bicycle and ridden it, even if you never ride the bike again, nobody can ever tell you that's not what it's like to ride a bike, right? I did it, I know. Direct perception of emptiness, we come out, things look to be coming at us, but we know they're not, right? We've heard it, they describe, we are living in the illusion, the misperception. So this belief that things have their own natures, that was an existing thing before our direct perception of emptiness. It colors our mind with every experience, that's how existing it is. But the things that it believes in, a self-existent boss that's blaming me for something else that can be the cause of my upset right now, my belief in that is what's making my upset. Not the that, because the that in it, from it, isn't even there. Never is, never was. My belief, however, was and my belief caused all of those mentally afflicted things, right? My belief makes the boss be my mentally afflicted thing, my nyo mong pa, my truth of the cause of suffering. And so once that belief is gone, you can no longer plant seeds that has it in it. So our path of habituation is about, you know, world looks like it's in it from it, I know it's not. I know how to respond to just burn off those seeds and make merit, right? It's the path of the perfections and more that we've already been learning to do. I'll get back to that. Oh man, I'm almost out of time. The second gaksha, not the second gaksha, the gaksha that we're working on in the path of preparation is this belief, this what it means to be a self-existent thing. And we're using reasoning to show ourselves how impossible that is so that we can come to the logical conclusion that that boss yelling at me, blaming me cannot be the cause of my upset. It's really hard. It's like, well, I, you mean I would get upset like this if the bus driver handed me a free ticket, but technically if my karmic seeds for getting angry at somebody were ripening right then, yes, right? Anything that happened would make me upset because it doesn't take anything to happen. If my seeds ripen to be upset, I'll be upset. I've had days like that.Hmm. So this gaksha by way of reasoning, we need to be able to identify it clearly so that we can analyze whether it's there or not, which is why we spend so much time in many of our courses working on this thing, the gaksha, so that we can prove it's impossible. Once we prove it to ourselves that it's impossible by logic, we have the motivating factor that will help us choose our behavior more consistent with our wish to stop our own suffering and our wish to help all beings stop their suffering. Okay, when we intellectually understand that there's nothing that's anything but the ripening of results of our own past behaviors, and so our current behavior is the place where I plant my seeds for future suffering or happiness, when we have that logically, we have enough motivation to say, okay, I'll avoid the 10 non-virtues. I'll practice the 10 virtues. I'll follow my bodhisattva vows. I'll work on the six perfections. And we're doing the perfections to gather goodness so that that goodness can help our mental concentration on and off the cushion to increase so that our intellectual understanding of dependent origination and emptiness can increase so that our choice of behaviors can get more subtly, less harmful, more kind, so that our progress on our cushion can take us closer to direct perception of emptiness so that our wisdom can grow. Do you see the cycle? So we're already working with our giving, our moral discipline, our not getting angry, our joyous effort to grow our ability to reach deep shinae, deep level of meditation, shamatha, to grow our wisdom, lakton, vipashyana, to that direct perception. We come out of direct perception and we now do our perfection of giving now with this new state of mind, the real bodhicitta from having seen emptiness directly and now no longer having the belief. So as we do our acts of giving no longer with any belief in the object, having its own nature, the subject having its own nature or even the act of giving having its own nature, we are doing those six perfections as actual perfectionizers where they are moving us towards our buddhahood, whereas our six perfections that we were doing before our tonglam, we're moving us our tonglam, which is great. And then we've already become accustomed to giving moral discipline. We do it now colored with this mind that now is free of the belief. Do you see? So these whole five paths lead one to the next, all with the momentum of pushing us towards whatever the goal was when we got started. So if our goal is buddhahood, our path of accumulation, preparation, seeing and habituation will be taking us towards that goal of buddhahood. And they say that then our truth of the path to our buddhahood then is divided into those paths that come before the direct perception of emptiness and those paths that come after. And we're doing the same things, but our state of mind is different. Hmm. All right. So I was supposed to go into each of the six perfections that I'm out of time. We know them. We understand how we can be practicing them even before the path of seeing so that we're good at them and they will feed our path of seeing. And then we just use them for the next seven lifetimes or so to transform our whole world from suffering world to fully enlightened world and tada. So good job. Thank you for the extra time. I'm still owing you. Thank you, teacher. Remember that person we wanted to be able to help. Not only have we finished course nine, we're halfway through our ACI courses. That's extraordinary also. So really, really, really great, great goodness that's been created by you. Be happy with yourself. Think of this goodness like a beautiful glowing gemstone 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, support 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 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 happiness, filled with wisdom. And may it be so. All right, thank you so much for the opportunity. I look forward to review class. We'll have fun. Have a great week. I'll see you Monday morning.