For the recording, we are setting the heart opening practice of the Peacock Gobbling Poison. It is March 23rd, 2022. 

Please gather your minds here as we usually do. Bring your attention to your breath until you hear from me again.

Class Opening

Now bring to mind that being before you is a manifestation of perfect love, perfect compassion, perfect wisdom, and see them there with you.

They're gazing at you with their unconditional love for you, smiling at you with their holy, great compassion. Their wisdom 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.

Think about how much you would like to be able to help them and 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 away through which they will go on to stop their distress forever.

Grow that wish, grow it into a longing, into an intention, even into a determination if you're ready.

Turn your mind back to your precious, holy Guide.

We know that they know what we need to know, what we need to learn, what we need to do 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:

Here is the Great Earth filled with fragrant incense

And covered with a blanket of flowers. 

The great mountain, the 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 ratnamandalakam niryatayami.

I go for refuge until I am enlightened

To the Buddha, the Dharma and the highest community.

By the power of the goodness that we 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.

By the power of the goodness that we 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.

By the power of the goodness that we do in sharing this class and the rest

We will reach Buddhahood for the benefit of every single being.

Motivation Meditation for Doing this Course

(6:36) Bring your attention back to your breath, please.

Just watch that air, or feel that air that flows what we call out, what we call in, those sensations.

With every outbreath, your body relaxes.

With every inbreath, your attention gets more eager to hear what's coming up.

Now think about why you are here. Why are you in this class?

We are in a world of pain.

Everyone around us is in a world of pain.

We've got to stop it. Our own suffering, our own distress, other people's suffering, other people's distress, all of it.

The projections of our own life. And it hurts.

Things happen that we don't want, things that we want desperately don't happen. And it hurts.

How do we change that? Is there something outside of us that we change?

No. We have to become a different kind of being.

To do that, we must experience the ultimate nature of our being.

To do that, we need to open our heart.

There are blocks inside of us that are preventing us from getting to our goal.

When we are sensitive, we can feel them. These walls around our heart, the walls we put up between ourselves and other beings, even other things.

Why do we put those walls up?

Is it just habit, or are we afraid of something?

Those walls are killing our chances of stopping suffering, of reaching happiness, either our own or anyone else‘s.

Imagine what it would be like without them, without those walls around your heart. 

What would it be like to have this completely open heart that radiated to every person, every being that you met, or saw, or thought of?

Just imagine being pure love flowing.

We'd be a very different kind of being, wouldn‘t we?

Being love.

It doesn't seem possible. But turn your mind to that precious holy guide, that one there before you. Become aware of their love flowing to you, their open heart, including you.

Ask them to bless you, to melt these walls around your own heart, these traps that keep you stuck inside.

Ask them again, please bless me to melt these walls around my heart.

And again, please bless me to melt these walls around my heart.

Then see them granting you that blessing, however that looks to you.

And the walls do melt, and your heart does open.

Look just towards that one holy being there.

And then your holy angel comes and dissolves into you.

Then to gather, you and they gaze upon that person you thought of at the beginning of class. Recognize what kind of pain, what kind of distress they're in, or seem to be in. And let your heart open to them.

Feel their pain with them.

If there is resistance, ask the Lama‘s love to break it in.

Their pain is ours.

Open your heart so wide that their distress is as unacceptable to you as your own. 

And recognize that being whose pain has now helped me open my heart, they are another holy angel who came to do that for me.

That was their goal, and it's been achieved.

Bow to them, thank them for coming to you.

And then offer to them, you may go back to your enlightened being. Well, thank you so much. I will use what I learned from you to share wisdom and love in my world.

And see your own angel guide inside of you. So happy with all your gratitude to them. 

Ask them to stay close, to continue to guide you, and dedicate the goodness of what we've just done so far, that every being can open their heart to others and so bring happiness to themselves and their world.

And may it be so.

So now in your mind's eye, first become aware of being in your room again.

Feel your body in your chair.

And then when you're ready, open your eyes. Look around your room at certain objects, specific objects to get well-grounded.

And then when you're ready, take a stretch.

Review of the Purpose of Lojong

(23:35) It is difficult to think about others' pain, especially that deeply.

It's difficult to think about our own pain. Not as difficult though, right? Because we wallow in it actually.

But then, now to really try to understand where it's coming from, we like wallow in it but don't really want to solve it. And yet we don't want more of it.

But it's so hard to really look at another's pain and be willing to dig in so deeply to it that tears come to our eyes. That our own heart feels that desperation.

This is not a meditation that you would lead somebody in who doesn't already understand something about emptiness and karma. Because it would just leave us like desperate. Oh, all this pain, I can't stand it. Yeah, I feel it, and there's nothing I can do about it. That's not the point of this meditation. That's not the point of this class, of course, of any of Buddhism.

It's that there is something we can do about it. Just not in the way that we think.

The Lojong, as we've just studied recently, Lojong is about training our Bodhichitta. We understand Bodhichitta up here pretty well. But to have Bodhichitta in here, that's what this meditation that Lama Christie led us through, more than once through the course of my training with her, is about.

What keeps us from being just this shining love everywhere we go?

Somehow it's dangerous. Somehow we're not allowed. Somehow we'll get abused, right? We'll get taken advantage of.

There are all the kinds of things that we are trying to protect ourselves from that we have had for infinite lifetimes.

So it's not just, oh, my parents taught me that. It's not that. It's way deeper than that. It's all stemming from that belief that there is a me that needs protecting.

But to even say that does not mean there is no me that needs protecting.

It's the belief in the Me that's something separate from every moment of projection. 

That's the Me, that we're protecting so carefully, that's trying to protect itself more carefully, more so tightly.

And yet that Me is only a belief, it's not a real thing at all.

Can a belief be in danger? You bet.

If you believe in Santa Claus and your 10-year-old brother comes and says, there's no Santa Claus, your belief is going to dig in and say, yeah, I'm going to duke it out with you brother. There is a Santa Claus. Until seeds shift, and then it's like, oh, you're right. What was I thinking? And then you're all grown up, and sorry, you had clung to your Santa Claus. We might've done better.

It‘s the self existent Me that doesn't even exist. But it doesn't help to say it doesn‘t even exist. We need to get to that experience of what it is we're protecting and recognize, this is silly. Because I can't protect it in the ways it thinks it wants me to protect it. So that's where the Lojong is going to take us, is like, how do we crack that nut? Because one of those walls that's around our heart, so to speak, like the deepest one you could say is that belief in a self existent me.

Because that means there's self existent others. And that means we do this. Even when we love each other, we're still doing this. Because there's a me and my need, and there is you and your need. And even when I try to take care of your need, if I'm doing it in the way I think you need it, I'm not going to get it right for you. And it's like bing, bing, bing. Even when we love each other.

So there's this deeper peace that the Lojong is helping us get to. And again, we study it, but until we try it on for a size on our meditation cushion to work out the details and then try it on for a size outside meditation cushion, that's when it goes from here to here. 

We'll fail more than will be successful. But the struggle, the effort to try, is making seeds. It's not the success. I mean success is great, but the trying is the power. So we just doggedly keep at it and things shift. Things shift. They may shift subtly, in which case you think, oh, woe is me. Nothing's really happening.

Or they may shift in major ways, which happens. It really does happen from time to time. And then it's important to write those down somewhere so you can go back and go, I remember that shift. Because then later you'll just take that for granted. And nothing's happening to me when in fact magic happened. It just doesn't happen all the time. And then we get disappointed, because we want it to happen all the time.

So little by little, okay?

(30:20) When we face someone else's distress, if it's a distress that we have some worldly way that we can help them, we step right in and we do it.

I was visiting a friend of mine yesterday and she had fallen on the tennis court a couple days before. Her knee was all banged up, and it was getting infected. And it's like, yikes, we need to do something about that. Let's do this and this and this, and this and this. I just happened to be there, and her knee was banged up, and she let me help her. And 24 hours later, it's much, much better. Yay for me, yay for her. But that's just a worldly helping out. You see? And I was willing to do it because I knew what to do.

But what if it had been, I don't know, some drunk on the street who's vomiting. Uh, that's not so comfortable. I don't really know what to do with that. Maybe I could dial 911, maybe I could call… I don't know. So my tendency is, look away.

I think we all do that at some point. We have a limit. We have a bar, right?

I'll help here, because I feel capable. But over there, I've got to look the other way. 

Again, Lojonging isn't about barge right in and help no matter what. It's recognize where our limit is, and then investigate that limit.

It has to do with our capability, our feeling of capability. There's a worldly situation and there should be a worldly way I respond. We all know: worldly ways don't work. 

Why did my friend's knee get better?

Not because of anything I did. Because of some ripening way that she cared for somebody else before.

Why wasn't that ripening before I got there? I don't know. Maybe her letting me attend to her knee was what shifted it for her.

The workings of karma are delicate and deep, and complicated. And we should try to work them out. Because our natural reaction is, oh, here's a situation. I have to do something worldly. That's not to say, here's a worldly situation, I'm not going to do anything worldly. But here's a situation that I am not capable of doing something worldly. What else can I do?

And you've heard the fallback, is Tonglen. We can always Tonglen. Our Monday-Thursday group is learning Tonglen practice in May.

But the point isn't what to do. The point is why do we do anything, and how does it make a difference? And that's where the Lojong comes in.

It also takes us into, we try to stop someone's pain so that they can be happier. 

Where do we think happiness really comes from?

Again, this particular Lojong is going to help us dig into things in such a way that I hope that we'll be able to pull away one of those walls around our heart, that's a belief about where happiness comes from, where freedom from suffering actually comes from.

So hopefully I'm going to get there with that.

Again, lo Lojonging, all of them are about growing our Bodhichitta.

The Bodhichitta is that deep wish to reach total Buddhahood for the sake of all sentient beings. It includes those two pieces where we cultivate that direct experience of the truth of dependent origination, and the truth of ultimate reality, and actually how those two are not two separate things.

And we do so with a state of mind that I'm reaching that, because that's the only way for me to stop the suffering of anybody, let alone myself, let alone everybody.

So it takes those two pieces, ultimate and the bigness of all sentient beings in order for that experience, that we call direct perception of emptiness, to become the cause for this ultimate state of being perfect love, perfect compassion, perfect wisdom.

(36:08) So why can't we just sit down and do that? We all intellectually understand. 

Here's the pen. The puppy sees a chew toy. That means the pen's identity is not in it. The two toy‘s identity is not in it. That applies to me too. Here I am, three people looking at me. Oh, who's the real me? Will the real me stand up?

Why can't I just sit down and have that experience directly? It's that easy. But I don't know about you, but I can't do it. The closest I can get is that intellectual, it always makes me laugh and I pop out of it.

But the direct one, that's a whole different avenue.

Lama Christie said, I forgot to tell you, this is a course that Lama Christie taught us, so I'm not making this up. She said, look, we've got obstacles. If we didn't have obstacles to seeing emptiness directly, we would all do it tomorrow morning in your meditation. It doesn't happen because we've got obstacles.

You could also say, well, maybe I just don't have the seeds either.

Or you could say, maybe I do have the seeds, but I can't get them to ripen.

All of those are valid arguments. And then when you say, well, why don't I have the seeds? 

Because I had obstacles to planting them.

Why don't I have those seeds ripening?

Because I've got obstacles to them ripening.

Why do I have obstacles? That would be our question. Why do I have obstacles?

She says, these obstacles are these knots around our heart. The knots around all the different chakra centers, they're all knots, they're all obstacles, blocks to our winds and minds being able to draw into, and then into the two side channels fully, and then into the central channel to get them to understand. Dissolve there, whatever that means. You've all heard it.

Those obstacles, they're like the onion skin. There's big ones that are like big obvious ones, bad stuff happening immediately, bad stuff happening in our world, bad stuff happening immediately in our own life. Bad stuff happening in our own physical body, bad stuff happening in our emotions, bad stuff happening in our thoughts and our motivations. All the way down to the bad stuff happening deep, deep, deep inside of which are the fears, the protections, the hesitancy, the angers, the pride, the jealousies, the ignorant liking, the ignorant disliking. And it all comes down to the self grasping and self cherishing, self existent me, which implies self existent other. And the, I want/I don't want that goes hot on the heels of me.

Not saying there's no me. But the me that we're talking about is a me that's self-standing on its own, independent.

And we know at the highest level, a me that we think exists, that's not a part of the projection happening. We think it's a me that is the projector. But that's not the case. 

Those two deepest walls around our heart are these self cherishing and self grasping that we studied about in the wheel of knives, Lojong. We just finished that.

This belief in this self existent me and other makes us believe, or is part of the belief that habitually makes us do the things we do to get what we want, and do or avoid doing the things to avoid what we don't want

So the self existent me goes to the self cherishing, goes to the I want that/I don't want that. And that goes to, and I'm going to act now in this way to get what I want, or now in this way to avoid what I don't want. And because it all started from that self existent me, self existent you, the whole domino of the other three are all equally misguided. 

We've been working for years to figure out that what I do now does not in fact bring what comes next. The key in the car. And yet every time I get in the car, car starts, off we go.

If I really, really deeply had internalized this key, this car, that I don't know what's going to happen here, and when I put the key in and the car starts, I'd be going, wow, miracle again. Whoa, yay. Will it get me all the way to the grocery store? Let's see. Right?

We'd be in this constant state of marvel, maybe anxiety. But marvel, because anytime something worked like Stevie's cup giving her some tea, we'd be going, wow, wow, it's so great. But I don't do that. I hope you do.

So again, it's like the subtlety that Lojong is helping us work at, it‘s not for beginners. So I bow at your feet for being here. You're not beginners if you're here.

(43:23) So we avoid our own pain. We think we're pretty good at it, most of us. And then we want to avoid being aware of others' pains. And in doing both of those, we are missing big opportunities for putting our Lojonging into practice. 

A Lojonger who's getting into it is no longer avoiding situations that are difficult.

They're not necessarily creating situations that are difficult, but they're not going out of their way to avoid them the way we do. They're not going out of their way to avoid witnessing someone's distress, like ordinarily we do to keep ourselves comfortable. The Lojong is challenging us to be willing to notice someone's distress, and then respond in some way, not necessarily directly towards them unless we have that capacity. But in our own heart to respond in some way other than, Oh, I can't deal with that. Little bits. Little bits.

We would only do so because we understand about the seeds. The pain that I see is coming from me, and it's real. And so to ignore it doesn't help stop it. To recognize it's coming from me and just think to myself, I am so sorry. That's a big step forward compared to what we're used to doing. And that's a success. That's a successful Lojonging, to be willing to just look and notice and witness.

And then if hot on the heels of that, we have this sense of, gosh, I'm sorry, I'm still seeing something like that. I'm going to send them a little light bulb of ray of love. Maybe they'll feel it. Maybe they do, maybe they don't. I'm going to guess that they do, actually. Just a smile to the fellow with the card on the street. In Tucson we've got the guy, hungry, and you don't know what's true. But mostly we do this… because we're embarrassed. But to just smile at them. If you haven't stopped at the streetlight, it's not safe to stop in the middle of traffic and hand them a buck. But you can smile at them and wave, and they light up.

So how easy is that? That's Lojonging, right?

If our habit was to have put blinders on. Now maybe your habit wasn't that, and your habit's always been to smile at them, then great, right? Just smile some more. But find some other place where we're looking the other way. And maybe it becomes even more subtle. Not somebody who's obviously in pain, but the grocery store clerk who's been on her feet for eight hours. We just go, oh, hi, how are you? Fine, thank you so much, right? It's like, wow, you're at the end of your day. You must be tired. Thanks so much for doing a good job. Easy to do. I know Val does it all the time. I know Val, she's amazing like that, noticing. And who's listening? They are of course, but so is our own mind. And our own mind says, wow, she's off automatic pilot.

She's just expanded her caringness to include another being that you didn't even know. Our own mind is like, whoa.

Those little times is really all it takes. We don't very often get a chance to save somebody's life, jump into the orbit. But all day long we have a chance to make a difference in somebody's life.

There's a lot of people already doing this kind of practice. They don't call it Lojong, and whether or not they understand about the mental seeds when they're doing it, coming from my side, I'm going to decide they do. And just see a whole world of Lojongers will help me Lojong better. I'm getting distracted.

To just be willing to recognize, and think about others' pain, others' distress, with this understanding about karmic seeds, mental seeds and karma. The noticing is radical enough. And then to add to the noticing, and doggone it, this is my seeds ripening.

I still have them in there. And so then I would want to send a little blast of love. Because I'd want to plant that into my mind.

It takes a radical shift in our moment by moment awareness as we go through our day. Our ordinary moment by moment awareness is me. Am I safe? Am I getting what I want? Am I going? Me, me, me, me, me, right? I, me, mine. I, me, mine. 

It’s habit. And we're not bad to do it, but we're Lojongers. We're wanting to catch ourselves in doing so and saying, come on, I, me, mine. Let's play this new game.

As we do that, we're chipping away at our belief at self existent me. It doesn't seem like it, but we are. Because we've gotten ourselves off automatic pilot because of our understanding about emptiness and karma.

Lama Christie said, our self grasping and our self cherishing are inexorably linked. Meaning any moment we think we truly exist, we will be selfish. Because that me needs and wants. But contrarily, she says, it's impossible to be selfish when we're holding correct worldview about ourself.

When you're aware of your empty, dependent originated nature, when you're aware of your projected nature, you can't be selfish, she says. Not, you won't be selfish, but you can't be. It's something to cook. Like what's the difference between, I won't be selfish versus I can't be selfish?

And how is the emptiness of me related to that?

She says, another benefit, give me a few more minutes and we'll take a break. Another benefit of doing these heart opening practices is that they help us get to meditative stillness. So the group she was teaching this course to was a meditation training series of courses.

She started the first four or five of those courses, were about a meditation skills. And then she went into a variety of different meditative practices that focused on emptiness. And then we went into Arya Nagarjuna, and then she went into this Lojong.

So out of 18 courses, 14 and 15 are this Lojong. Because she saw her group of students, our meditation was getting better, our emptiness understanding was getting better, but it was still up here (meaning in the head). And she wanted us to take it and drop it to the heart. She also saw that although we were all working, working, working, and our meditations were getting better, we weren't reaching meditative stillness. We had the obstacles to that piece of the puzzle that would shift our ability to take our emptiness understanding more deeply.

So she plugged meditative stillness as a benefit of Lojonging. Well, Lojonging is something that we do off the cushion.

How is that going to help us get to meditative stillness?

Because it's training us in greater kindness, which means we're planting good seeds, and goodness ripens into goodness. And meditative stillness is a goodness that we can use to reach the highest goodness of seeing emptiness directly.

So in a sense, it's simply related to a careful Lojonger is keeping their vows better. 

But Lama said, another way to keep our vows better is to open our hearts to other people. When you open your heart to other people, you are naturally kind to them. You naturally avoid harming them in gross and subtle way. You naturally find a way to help them worldly or otherwise, because your open heart pours out love. 

Love is, I want you to be happy. To be happy I need to help you stop your pain. And that's just outpouring from us. It's like if we walked around with an open heart, we wouldn't have to stop and write our book. Because we would be doing our six perfections. We would be keeping our Pratimoksha vows by way of our behavior with other people.

So either way, Lojong still up here helps us keep our vows better, which translates, they say, into deeper meditation. Or learning to actually crack our heart open will also lead to this meditative stillness, because we're going to grow our goodness.

That's where that meditative stillness is coming from, that peaceful, loving being who when they're around other beings, it's not consciously, I'm not going to disturb your mind so my meditation can get better. You just are kind and special, and helpful and loving, and then your mind becomes kind and special, and helpful and loving while you're in your meditation. It's sweet.

Alright, let's take a break. Get refreshed and we'll start into our actual text that we're studying.

(Break)

The Text we Study—LOJONG MA DA ZUK KONG by Master Dharmarakshita

(55:30) The Tibetan title of this Lojong is LOJONG MA DA ZUK KONG. It was written by Master Dharmarakshita. We know him, the same guy who wrote Wheel of Knives. I don't remember his dates. You guys are taking the final, you know his dates.

MA DA = peacock

ZUK—I have seen it spelled ZUK and DVUK. I'm not sure which of the Tibetan is correct. Sorry, I just lost it in my notes here.

ZUK = poison

JONG = to train, or to purify, like in Lojong. Here it means that the peacock, what they're doing with the poison, is jonging it. Which means they're transforming the poison into something good for them, something pure.

Supposedly peacocks eat plants and bugs that other birds or animals find poisonous and so they avoid. But the peacocks gobble them up. And not only do they not get sick, but I mean peacocks, they're beautiful. They make those beautiful blue color, and those amazing feathers. So it's not just that peacocks eat poison and they're okay. It's that they use that poison as their sustenance. So I don't know.

My husband and I had peacocks for very short period of time, and we fed them regular bird seed. And then the mail he took off and went to live at the dude ranch next door. And the people at the dude ranch fed him hamburgers, and he didn't live very long. So I don't know, hamburger apparently is not poison to the peacock, but it did kill him, I think. But anyway, I don't know about the story about peacock's eating poison. So if we just have to buy that one, let's do. Because this whole Lojong is about this not just eating poison, but transforming it into what we thrive and get beautiful from.

This Lojong has five chapters. I'm going to do my best to cover all five in these three classes that we have. There's a verse though, I'm pretty sure it's part of your reading that I sent you. 

I'm going to read it to you. It's the Tibetan verse just for the seeds of the transmission. It says, so just listen…

(59:10-59:30 Tibetan transmission)

What it says is,

When a peacock wanders in the forest of poison,

he may come across an exquisitely beautiful garden of medicinal plants.

But he has no love for this garden

Because he lives off poison for his sustenance.

Just like that…

I'm not sure where that verse comes from. It's a Lord Buddha quote. So some sutra or some Jataka tale, I'm not sure. But in this peacock gobbles poison Lojong master Dharmarakshita, he starts every one of his chapters with just the first line of that verse.

It says,

Just as peacock's gobble poison…

Something like that.

And then we're supposed to remember. Oh, it's that verse about they may be in a medicinal garden, but they don't even like it there. They go for the poison place, and they thrive in the poison.

The analogy is that a Bodhisattva is like this peacock. Great, to be in a beautiful garden. But they're searching out the poison for their effort.

So he's saying with each of his chapters—I think if he could have, he would've put it with each of his verses—just like the peacock thrives on poison, the Bodhisattva does this…is the implied thing.

Chapter 1 I Wanna Be Just Like You

Let's read the chapter together. How did we do that when we did Diamond Cutter sutra? Each one reads a section and then you say, who's going to go next? Right? That‘s how we did it? I won't be able to see you once I've got my screen share.

(Luisa) Each of us has to remember we are after whom. So for example, if you start and then I say I am next, then I just remember I am after you.

(Lama Sarahni) Thank you. Okay, so let's set that up. I'm going to go, and then Stevie. Okay, then after Stevie Luisa, and then Nancy, and then Val, and then Roxanna, and then Basant, and then Carlos, and then Joana and then me. Got it? Okay. Now I have to remember, I'm after Joana.

The following translation is an excerpt from a Lojong text called Gobbling Up the Poison: The Heart-Opening Practice of the Peacock, by the famous Lojong master Dharma Rakshita. And it tells it where it's found, gobbling up the poison, the heart opening practice of the peacock, chapter one.

As the peacock wanders through a grove of deadly plants…

I bow down to the holy one, the slayer of the Lord of Death.

Just as the princes and the princesses gave up their kingdom when Lord Buddha took birth as Prince Vishvantara, so too shall I wholeheartedly give all my material wealth, so difficult to part with, my circle of followers, and everything else, without any hesitation whatsoever.

Just as Lord Buddha nursed the tigress with His own flesh when He took birth as Prince Sattvika, so too shall I joyfully give my own pile of flesh—this body of illusion which I also dear, to the masses of flesh-eating spirits.

Just as Lord, Buddha sustained malicious spirits with His own blood when He took birth as King Maitri Bala, so too shall I lovingly give this heart's warm blood—so difficult to cut from me, to all the blood drinking vampires.

Just as Lord Buddha rescued the fish by chanting the names of Those Gone to Bliss when He took birth as the merchant's son Chumbep, so too shall I act to give the highest spiritual teachings to every living being who lacks spiritual guidance.

Just as Lord Buddha had compassion in patience towards those engaging in misguided practices and teaching immoral behavior when He took birth as Prince Getun Chenpo, so too shall I hold in my heart the followers of misguided practices and disruptive customs, looking upon them with incredible compassion.

Just as the Buddha pulled an evil man up from the bottom of a well when He took birth as a Bodhisattva monkey, so too shall I run to the aid of the fallen, and pull them up with great compassion, without holding anything back, and with no expectation of any thanks in return.

Alas, 

There is not a single soul

Who has not been a father or mother, to me,

And they'll never have a single moment

Of happiness, here in the cycle of pain

Giving big harm

To all the harm-givers

Works as well as the horns on a rabbit

Now is the time to emulate

The lives of the great able warrior.saints

For if I fail to develop the means

How could I hope to lead the life

Of a warrior-saint myself?

Totally impossible.

So even at the cost of my life

Let me undertake spiritual hardships.

After pretending to pass on to bliss,

Those wishing to be like Him

Took this His kind of life to heart

And unless we do the same

We have surely killed the joy

Of every living being.

Thus, the joy of the warrior-saint

Lies in the holy teaching

And no matter what difficulties come

I will bring these teachings to life

For this in the life that warriors lead.

So ends the first chapter on

Living off poison.

Thank you.

(67:30) So in this chapter, Master Dharmarakshita is establishing his inspiration and his aspiration. He's referring to Buddha's previous lifetimes, before he's Buddha. Different events in that being‘s life that contributed to his becoming Buddha. 

The first one, may I give my material wealth like Buddha did, my wealth, my students, my effort, my everything.

And then may I give my own flesh.

And then, may I give my own heart's warm blood. And then may I give the highest spiritual teaching?

And may I give compassion to those following misguided, disruptive, custom.

And then finally even run to the aid of an evil being, and grab them and save them with great compassion and no expectation of thanks in return.

It's like, I don't know about you, but that makes me a little scared. Do I have to do all that? Really? Yikers.

But then he explains why. All those beings, they're my mothers, they're my father's, from before. Or maybe mother's, fathers don't inspire you so much. Maybe they're all my children from before.

However we get inspired that will grow that personal responsibility. They use mother, father because of the benefit of repaying their kindness. Our children were even our mother, father from before. So in taking care of them, we're repaying the kindness that they gave us when they were our parents.

But then he said, all those beings, they're my mother, father, so I want to take care of them, but implying that they do bad stuff to me. Then you're supposed to repay harm with harm. And if you don't do that, there's something wrong with you.

But he says repaying harm with harm is like a rabbits horn doing something. Rabbits horns can't do anything.

No, there's no such thing as rabbits horn. So it's not that they just can't do anything but sit on a rabbit's head. It's that there's no such thing. So there's no such thing as repaying harm with harm. Because technically there's no such thing as harm coming to you. Is there?

Yes, there's harm coming to us. But not the harm that we think is coming at us. Which is harm they're doing to me. The harm they are doing to me, is the harm that's ripening my karmic seeds. So to repay harm with harm doesn't repay, doesn't harm them—if that's what we wanted to do. And doesn't help us, which is what we think it does. Because it's the horns on a rabbit‘s head. He's like cuts to the quip.

He says, only becoming a warrior saint, like only becoming a warrior saint, meaning the behavior of what we mean by warrior saint is going to bug the system. You not only refuse to repay harm with harm. You repay it with kindness.

But to be able to do that is only going to happen if we've created the causes for it to happen. Because we can't just decide, oh, I'm a warrior saint, I'm going to repay harm with kindness. If we don't have the seeds to do it, we could waltz out to try to do it, and we'll still hurt somebody.

Many times, unfortunately, when I've tried to catch a bug to protect its life and put it out, I kill it instead. And it's like argh. Karma's ripen. And yes, our intention is a little protective. I was trying to protect that bug. Somebody will, I'm trying to protect you—whack. Thank you for trying.

It requires purify, make merit, to even start on the path of the Bodhisattva Warrior. And then the path of the Bodhisattva Warrior is purifying and make merit.

And then technically the completion of the path is at least keep making merit. I don't think Buddha You will have to continue to purify. But we still make merit, perpetuate merit as Buddha, as fully enlightened being.

We have the Buddha's teachings available to us to try to emulate the path. And Master Dharmarakshita has determined to share these teachings with us in order to grow the warrior's life.

And we want to say, oh, he's teaching us so that he can grow the warrior's life in us. But who is he really growing it in by teaching us?

Yeah, himself. Oh, what kind of selfish warrior saint is that? He's just teaching us so that he can get better. We're hearing it in a self existent way. And so our mind goes, what?

When we hear it in a wisdom way, it's like, oh, of course the more Bodhisattva he becomes, the more Bodhisattva I become, because he will see me that way.

Does that make me a Bodhisattva from my side? If I can see him as a growing Bodhisattva, that's coming from me.

So we're all spiraling.

But it does tell us that we can work hard. I'm an a Bodhisattva, I'm a Bodhisattva, I'm a Bodhisattva. And if we're not seeing ourselves trying to help others Bodhisattva-ish, are we really going to see the change in ourselves just by doing Bodhisattva things? Is that enough? He's given us a clue. Yes, do Bodhisattva things, but also yes, help others do Bodhisattva things. They don't even have to be on the Bodhisattva track, right? Bodhisattva help others. But technically Bodhisattva help others help others, don't they? Do you see the difference?

Yeah. Shortly out of retreat, someone asked me to give a talk to a group of chaplains in Tucson. I don't remember the connection necessarily. And I thought, what do I have to say to chaplains? They're trained in this kind of stuff.

I thought, well, I'll teach this thing about help others help others. Maybe they help others, but maybe they don't help others help others.

I don't know how well it came across, but I tried to and I did the pen thing, et cetera. At least at the end, somebody came up to me and said, wow, I really appreciated that idea of one step revolve, help those grieving people help other grieving people, and that they will have better response than just me helping them. So I think I got it through to one person at least.

(76:37) So each of those examples was an example from Lord Buddha's past lives. It was referenced to the Jataka tale stories. Stevie, did you recognize any of them from your reading? Yay, all of them. Yay. I like that.

Those Jataka tales are examples that Lord Buddha used to his disciples when he saw that someone or other of them were having trouble with their practice, or they'd gotten into some kind of difficulty or trouble. He taught by example.

“This happened to me once“, as a way of helping the student understand. Buddha could have said, just do this. And some student would go, I'm not going to do that just because you told me to. And others are going to go, yes, yes, yes. But when we teach by example, “this happened to me once and this is the result I got“. You want that result? Go ahead and do it. Yeah, I'm writing it down.

I don't know what the word means, but Jataka, it's usually said the Jataka tales. The marvelous companion. That sounds nice. They're often published as children's stories. Some of them are very sweet in that way.

(Stevie) I think it's just because they're so simply written. They're a tale. They're just so simply written. And if you didn't even understand any of this, you'd still enjoy the story.

(Lama Sarahni) Yes, yes. Nice. And so they are meant to inspire us and help us, but I don't know. I read them and I get scared. Really? Really? To be a Bodhisattva is to give somebody my heart's blood. And it's like recently I was thinking, if somebody I knew needed a kidney, I'd give them a kidney at a heartbeat. If somebody I knew needed a part of my liver, I'd give them my liver in a heartbeat. And it's like it was a long time before I got to that. But I haven't gone so far as to get on the organ list and say, I'm available if anybody wants a kidney. Like I'm waiting for it to happen. I'm prepared. But that's a whole lot different than giving my heart‘s blood. It's like, really? Do I have to give my flesh to become a Buddha?

(Stevie) Here's a challenge for you. If your vegetarian, and your medical doctor said that you were sick, and needed to have to eat something that you don't eat, would you then not eat it?

(Lama Sarahni) Yeah. I've thought that through and come the conclusion that I would say no. But I've never actually been in the situation where it's happened. But I do think that I would say, no, personally. Because of what I understand and because of what I believe is my relationship to my body, and what I truly am not.

But it's a great question. It's great something to think about.

I know many high practitioners who have said, okay, because I need to live long enough to reach my enlightenment in order… It's a valid argument, just not for me, personally. But yeah, all of this brings up a lot of discussion. We will, I'm hoping in the next couple of classes, once we've got our foundation, that we can actually think about it, talk about it a little bit more.

But so think about these different examples, and is it metaphorical or is it real? Would there be a situation where I would need to give my flesh to somebody, or could be in a position to give my flesh to somebody to save their life? And would I do it?

It seems like in our world, that would never happen. I would just go kill a rabbit for them. Wait, no, I wouldn't. It's worth thinking about and the timing's going to work out pretty well. I'm not going to go into chapter 2. I thought I would get both, 1 and 2 done tonight. But let's stop and chew on these ideas from chapter one.

Am I afraid to be a Bodhisattva if this is what I'm going to have to do?

Or, am I eagerly looking forward to the time when it's like no sweat. Here, have my eyeball.

And we think that's not even possible. But maybe self existently it's not possible to give your eyeball to somebody else and have it help them. But not self existently, is it possible? Like in a dream? Is it possible? Sure. Somebody needs your eyeball in a dream, you pull it out, you stick it in their head. Tada, and you don't think anything about it. Dreams are just dreams. They're as valid and invalid as life.

So I don't want to go any further. I get to tell you a story. 

The Jataka Tale of Lord Buddhas Previous Life as Elephant

One of the Jataka tales. It's not one of these five or six, but it is meant to be thought provoking and hopefully inspiring.

One of Shakyamuni Buddha's not yet Buddha life. He was this majestic bull elephant. And this bull elephant was living out in this very remote and desolate desert, all by himself. But he had found a little oasis and he had this spring-fed pond, and he had fruit trees. He had grass, and he was like this yogi meditator elephant, hermit in retreat elephant living all by himself.

One day he hears this unusual different sound, and it's like, wow, that sounds like cries and moans. So he goes away from his oasis out into this hot, dangerous, dusty desert to investigate these sounds. And he comes across a group of people that are dragging, and hungry, and thirsty, and dirty, and they're moaning and they're crying. And he says, who are you? What are you doing here? What's going on?

And the leader of them says, we were kicked out of our country and we're looking for a new town, city to live in. And we've come so far and we've run out of food, and so many of us have died and there's just us left, and we're so hungry and we're so thirsty, and we just can't go another step. We've just lost hope.

The elephant, his heart just opens to these people and oh, he's weeping for them. And he has this idea. He says to them, do you see that mountain? It's not so terribly far away. Do you see that cliff at the mountain?

Yeah, we see it.

He said, make your way to the base of that mountain cliff. There will be food there for you. You'll be able to gain your strength, and then you can go on, you'll find the next city to live in.

With that, the elephant turns and runs away.

The people all go, what? We can't, can't get there. We're at our end. And the leader says, no. That amazing, kind, special elephant, he said, there'll be food there. He's given us hope. Come on. We need to at least try.

So the people drag and struggle and go. Meanwhile, the elephant has climbed up that mountain to the top of that cliff, and he's watching their struggle. He's just weeping. And as they get close, but not close enough for them to see him, he throws himself off the cliff. And so by the time they get there, the elephant's freshly dead body is there on the ground.

And the people get there and they go, oh, oh, this is terrible. This is terrible. The elephant who was our hope, he's dead. Oh man, we're really doomed now. And the leader says, no, no, no, you misunderstand that. The elephant gave his body for us. We're supposed to eat him. This is what he was talking about. That elephant, my gosh, it's our honor to eat his flesh, because he gave his life for us. We must eat him. 

So they did end up eating the elephant, and they gained their strength and they got onto the next city.

The moral to the story is that elephant who gave his life, that was me, says Buddha. And it's like, how does that make you feel?

Wow. Lord Buddha, so amazing, what Lord Buddha did to become Lord Buddha.

But how does it make you feel?

Like no way. I'm so far away. I can't possibly… Does it make you want to turn back, or does it make you say, yeah, I could do that too? Or somewhere in between?

When Geshe Michael says, you are the one who will stand on a billion planets and take care of every living being. How do you feel?

Yeah, I want to do that. Yeah, I want to do that. I know I'm meant to be that. I know I'm not so far away. Yeah.

And would you throw yourself off the cliff to let hungry people eat you? No. No. Doing that wouldn't get me enlightened. No or yes? What do you think?

Do we have to do the elephant thing?

Would it be an opportunity to do the elephant thing?

What does it take to become the one who stands on the billion planet?

Does it require sacrifice, or is it not sacrifice at that level?

That's what we're getting to.

If it's sacrifice, whatever for you would be sacrifice, and it feels like sacrifice, and that means you're losing something by doing it, then don't do it.

When we're in a situation and we're willing to give up something in order to plant our seeds, somebody else may say, wow, that's a great sacrifice. And from your side, it would be, no, it was no sacrifice at all. It was opportunity.

We're going to see, I hope, that this whole Lojong thing isn't anything about outside behavior. It's all about what's going on in our heart mind. It's all about what's going on in our mind as we're responding to situations.

The actual response we do may actually be the same as what we were inclined to do. But our state of mind with which we are doing it is so completely different.

Usually the so completely different means you end up doing something different too. But if the doing, the actual thing that you're doing isn't Lojong, it's the state of mind. 

This first chapter is trying to set us up. Like what's my edge? How far am I able to push myself now? And where can it go?

Not where does it have to go, leaping off the cliff, cutting your heart's blood. But where might it go? What kinds of opportunities might I have in my life?

Love, compassion, and wisdom are an amazing power. Love, compassion, wisdom. Like turn it into all one word. Lovecompassionwisdom. Wisdomlovecompassion. Compassionlovewisdom. Lovewisdomcompassionwisdom.

Work it out until it means something deeper for you so that we can use it through our Lojonging.

We'll stop there since that's where we would start chapter 2, and hopefully we'll do chapter 2 and 3 next class.

Anything to share? Anyone?

(Luisa) I feel like, because you asked, how do you feel when you hear these things? I really feel like, no way. I am so far away. And this, I think in my case, because I'm a perfectionist, then I feel demotivated or, and I say, oh, there's no point. It is never going to happen.

(Lama Sarahni) Right. It's like if I can't do it perfectly, I'm not going to do it at all. Right? I have those seeds too. And how do we work with that? What would you say to someone who came to you for advice, and it's like, I can't do this stuff because I can't do it perfectly, so there's no point in trying.

(Luisa) Yeah, of course you say what you're supposed to say. Come on, just try. Doesn't have to be perfect. The struggle is the power, and all this stuff. Like you repeat as a parrot, or this is how I feel, at least. And I see it in my daughter. She's showing me that all the time, this perfection. She wants to be perfect. And if the drawing is not perfect, then she just xxx and throws it, and it kills me. Because I know it's coming from me. But at the other side, it's like, how the hell should I change that? Sorry.

(Lama Sarahni) Anyone can help Luisa?

(Luisa) Plant good seeds.

(Lama Sarahni) How do we get through that?

(Stevie) I think if you see that perfection as an obstacle, then you'd have to purify it. 

You'd have to purify it every time it arises to regret and to resolve and make a remedy, and you'd have to purify it. That's part of one of the poisons.

(Lama Sarahni) And so you'd have to intentionally be not perfect, okay, I'm going to go be fast. That's not right either, is it?

(Stevie) No, no. That‘s not what I'm saying. But I'm saying, but when it arises, when it ripens, yay. It's an opportunity to purify it and then just make sure that you don't continue it. You know what I mean? You don't continue to, well, maybe I can't purify it perfectly, so I'm not going to purify it. No, no. That isn't what you do.

(Nancy) Can I say something? Luisa, I think it starts with love, wisdom, compassion for self. We all fall. We will fall. And it's part of it. And it's the determination to pick up again, to keep going, that makes the progress, and not to hate ourselves because we have these obstacles. That's what we are working with. And it's to have that compassion, that love for self. We have to have it for ourselves to move on. I think.

(Luisa) I agree with you here. It's easy to say, but then I don't have the switch. Okay. Self-compassion on. That's my problem.

(Nancy) Geshela would say, fake it until you make it. Just fake it. Do it from here. And it feels all clogged up and not right, and you feel like you're just a farce. But keep doing it.

(Lama Sarahni) That's true. It still plants seeds.

(Roxana) Okay, Luisa. Well, I have a very structured mind. I'm an engineer and I like various things to be very systematic. But that's the way my mind works. Everything organized, everything's planned ahead, very clean. So I'm very, very structured. But with time, you learn to turn absolutely everything you do into a virtuous action. So if I'm going to be cooking, I am going to do my best to whatever meal I'm preparing. And if I'm tired, I'm offering it to the Buddhas. I imagine that I'm cooking for the Buddhas. And if it doesn't come out perfectly, I don't get upset because that's the way it was supposed to come out. If I plan my day so thoroughly sometimes that I need to get certain things done, and I do not shift them, I go, that's the way they're supposed to be. But I try to keep in mind that everything that I do has a very beautiful virtuous cause, sweeping the floor, doing the laundry, everything. So I guess that makes you always aware that you're still human. You're trying to do your best. That there are days that are going to come out wonderful as you expected with everything perfect. Okay. You might say, yeah, today, it was a great day. I wasn't feeling that good a couple of days ago, and they would ask, how are you feeling? Oh, I'm up to 125% right now. Tomorrow I'll be 150. Okay? But I don't give up. I try and do my best. So as a mother up to chemical engineers and also very structured girl, because they intake you, you cannot avoid that. That's what they're seeing. That's what they're learning. So it's beautiful just to let them know, okay, there are things that are going to come good, and there are things that are going to come better. And there are things that definitely not going to come out at all. And life goes on and the sun continues shining. Thank you, Lama.

(Lama Sarahni) Thank you, Roxanna. I like what you said. I'm trying my best and however it comes out as the way it was supposed to. That would help me. That's the way, not the way I want it, but it's the way it's supposed to be. Maybe that would help with your daughter. Sweetheart, it's not the way you want it, but it's the way it's supposed to be.

(Basant) Can I add something. I wonder if we could practice speaking to ourselves as we would speak to our child. If they've done a drawing, and they're not happy with it, what do you imagine you would say to them? So likewise, if there's the last piece of cake that I think, oh, I'm supposed to offer this so that I have seeds to get the cake that I want, and I can't do it, what should I say to myself? I maybe imagine if I was my daughter, what would I have said? I might say, oh, I think this is really hard for you. Can you share half the slides? Can you share a little bit? Can you eat this? And then go get another one right away? What's the best step you can take, right? And have that practice, that love and compassion, just imagining that are your daughter making a similar struggle and using that same tone of voice with yourself.

(Luisa) Thank you.

(Lama Sarahni) Thanks everybody. Thanks Luisa for being willing, brave enough to open yourself up. I really admire you. 

Okay, so we have some thought to do between now and Sunday about Buddha's previous lifetimes, and what that means for us. Investigate that aspiration to stand on the billion planets, and how do those two connect? Then we'll get into what Master Dharmarakshita shares with us about our blockers. Yes, Stevie,

(Stevie) This makes me remember the very, very first time that I ever took a teaching from Geshe Michael. The first thing that came out of his mouth was he was standing there in front of us. He said, now what I'm about to tell you is not going to make any sense at all unless you try to understand precious human rebirth, and about rebirth. Because it won't make any sense at all. There must have been that understanding as the elephant threw himself off the cliff that he's going to get another chance. Is that not what I don't believe? I don't know. I'm just throwing it out.

(Lama Sarahni) Thank you for sharing that. It's a great aspect. 

Alright, so let's do our dedication, shall we?

Dedication

(102:09) Remember that person we wanted to be able to help at the beginning of class. We've learned a lot so far that we will use to help them in that deep and ultimate way someday. And that's a great, great goodness. So be happy with yourself.

Your seeds made this class, your seeds brought you here.

All your past years were in on it.

So think of this goodness, like a beautiful glow gemstone that you can hold in your hand.

Recall your own precious holy guide.

See how happy they are with you.

Grow your gratitude to them, your reliance upon them.

Ask them to please, please stay close. They're actually already inside your heart from our meditation. So ask them to stay there.

And then offer them this gemstone of goodness.

See them accept it, and bless it.

And feel them there, inside that holy of holies in the middle of your chest, their love, their compassion, their wisdom feeding you.

Feel it in there, a kind of glow, or tingle, or buds. Whatever it is for you.

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 things complete the collection of merit and wisdom

And thus gain the two ultimate bodies 

That merit and wisdom make.

Release those three long exhales, the first to share this goodness with that one person. 

The second to share it with everyone you love.

The third to share it with every being you've ever, ever seen or heard of, and imagine them all receiving your love. It feels so good to them. And then they want to share it and so it shines out from them, and everyone receives it from them, and it shines out to others.

And may it be so.

Alright my dears, thank you so much. 

For the recording, welcome back. We are the Heart Opening Practice of the Peacock Gobbling Poison Study Group on March 27th, 2022. Let's gather our minds as we usually do. We'll do our opening prayers and then that same guided meditation, and then begin class. So bring your attention to your breath, please, until you hear from me again.

[Class Opening]

Guided Meditation

(6:35) Bring your attention back to your breath.

Being alert, focus on that sensation that recall breath.

Shift your focus to thinking about why you came to class. What do you hope to achieve?

Recognize and admit we are in a world of pain. Everyone around us is in a world of pain. We must stop it, our own distress, our own suffering.

All other beings are afraid.

All of it is projections of my own mind. And it hurts.

It hurts to see it. It hurts to hear of it. It hurts to feel it, and it hurts worse to know that we ourselves created it all, somehow.

How do we change it?

We can't change it. But we can change us.

We can become a completely different being.

One that does in fact bring a stop to all that (…).

A doorway to becoming that change is experiencing ultimate reality.

To do that, we need to open our heart.

There are blocks within it that prevent us from that experience of the true nature of all existence, those blocks that separate ourself from the others.

We put up walls between self and others. Why do we do it?

Why can't we just decide to take those walls away? What's stopping us?

There's some kind of fear.

What would it be like without those walls?

When we have a completely open heart, we would be pure love radiating to every being, to every thing.

Just imagine it. Walking through your work, walking through your grocery store, simply being love.

Certainly you would be a very different being.

Turn your attention again to that precious, holy being before you, that one who is for you this being love.

Bless them and bless you, to help you to break down these walls around your heart. Whatever they are that are limiting, keeping us trapped inside ourself that we believe in so strongly, but in fact does not exist.

Ask them again, please, please bless me to transform this wall, to be able to see it, to be able to see through it, and to finally be able to dissolve it.

And see that precious being actually bless you in that way. However you want to visualize that, the blessing pouring into you, those walls melting, and gaze at that holy being and feel this open hearted love, Surrender to them.

And see them smile and melt into you.

And then in their place in front of you is that person you thought of at the beginning of class, the one you want to be able to help.

Identify the pain you see them in. Imagine you can open your heart completely to them, willing to feel that pain with them, wanting to lift their burden.

The resistance comes up, notice it. Just pretend you can melt it away and try again. Open your heart so wide to them that when you think of their pain, your own tears might come.

Then recognize that the whole reason this person in pain has come to you is to help you open your heart in this way, as some holy being in disguise. Thank them for the opportunity.

Since they've done their job, they return to their enlightened realm, and you return to your room realm. Try to hold that open heart.

And when you are ready, have a look around your room, take a stretch, have something to drink.

(23:40) It's painful to be aware of others' distress. It's painful to admit our own distress. And then it's quadruple painful to recognize and admit it's all my seeds, and then I can't make them stop. That's the worst of all to me. Like, all right, I get it, I get it, I get it. Why can't I stop it? And it's these darn blockers, and this whole Lojong is helping us recognize where all this pain really comes from.

The first chapter, if you remember, Master Dharmarakshita was helping us grow our inspiration and aspiration by speaking to the things that Shakyamuni Buddha did as a Bodhisattva in order to help me.

I don't know, it still leaves me not quite sure if those are literal or figurative, or just quite how to take that. I have a lot of questions about those Jataka tales.

But I do recognize there's something deep inside me that says, wow, that really would be amazing to be able to throw myself off a cliff. So convinced that that would save all those people, and that it would help me save them ultimately someday, with no concern—this live, next live, 50 lifetimes, doesn't matter. This is what I need to do at this time. And then so willing and eager to do it.

So hopefully that chapter and the few days of thinking about it, it's like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. What else does he have to tell us that can help me grow that ability? And so he gives us chapter two. So let's get chapter two.

Chapter 2 Walking Through Fire

This is the end of chapter 1:

Thus the joy of the Warrior-Saint

Lies in the holy teaching

And no matter what difficulties come

I will bring these teachings to life

For this is the life that warriors lead. 

So end the first chapter on

Living off poison.

And so chapter two begins:

Chapter two

As a peacock wanders

Through a grove of deadly plants... 

I bow down to the Holy One.

The slayer of the Lord of Death!

All who hope to be Warrior Waints

Come listen to this teaching.

Look at the lovely peacock

In the forest of this cycle of pain!

She takes no pleasure in healing herbs

But flourishes rather on poisonous tree.

She sits at the foot of the poisonous tree

Of our five mental afflictions.

See here, the molten poison sap

Of your own acts of desire!

Unless you seek to intermix

With desirous types of people,

Those with desire run the risk

Of engaging in immoral practices.

So your desirous sorts must work to

Annihilate this poison.

And here, the fiery poisonous flowers

Of our own fiery anger!

Unless you are displaying wrath

Like the Slayer of the Lord of Death,

Those with anger run the risk

Of causing themselves obstacles.

So angry sorts must kill off

This obstructing enemy.

Behold, the toxic quicksands

Of our own ignorance!

Unless you are developing

A corpse-like kind of patience,

Those with bad habits run the risk

Of storing up bad deeds.

So ignorant sorts must meditate

On how all is equal.

And look, the sweeping poisonous branches

Of our own jealousy!

Unless you are defining near from far

As when we swap “you“ with “me“,

Like a Mutekpa you'll run the risk

Of corrupting His holy word.

So jealous sorts must therefore strive

To protect the holy teachings.

And here, the poisonous tree trunk

Aflame with our own pride!

Unless it is the kind of pride

Where you enact a play of anger,

You run the risk that demon hordes

Will make a fool of you.

So confront and defeat any adversaries

To those who keep the Buddha‘s word.

(31:10) He's just talked about our five main mental afflictions. And remember we're talking about the peacock who eats poison for his/her sustenance. Not just, oh, I'll take it, I'd rather have the good stuff, but I can eat poison. Like no, no. Poison is my preference. Thank you very much.

So this peacock sitting at the base of the poisonous tree, she or he is not in any kind of danger. That's where they want to be. And that's a little hard, because the peacock means the Bodhisattva. And it sounds like it's saying the Bodhisattva wants trouble. And that's a long discussion. It would be a good debate. Bodhisattvas avoid pleasure, they want nothing but pain.

Investigate that all the way through to who is a Bodhisattva, what is wanting and what's pain and pleasure. And see if it doesn't end up being what this Lojong is teaching.

So keep in mind, we're talking about Lojong, a very high level of practice such that it was kept secret for a long time because they were afraid people would go, no way. And you can see why they might say, no way. Are you telling me to be a Bodhisattva I have to prefer the poison? And actually that's not what we're saying. By the time we get to the end of these five chapters, I hope it'll be more clear. Not so much they prefer it, it's that bad stuff happens, unpleasant stuff happens, and they make this shift from trying to avoid it, to using it, to a place of not even noticing it anymore. How cool would that be?

So we'll talk about, that's where we're going with all of this.

This analogy of the tree and the five poisons are the sap trunk. The branches, the flowers, the branches and the roots, the quick sand that it's in, the foundation.

In the first verse… I'd rather see your faces than have my screen share. So I'm just going to flip back and forth in my notes to see the verse that I'm talking about. Sorry for the sound of shifting pages.

The Poison of Desire

So the verse about desire, ignorant desire. 

See here, the molten poison sap

Of our own acts of desire!

Unless you seek to intermix

With desirous types of people,

Those with desire run the risk

Of engaging in immoral practices.

So you desirous sorts must work to

Annihilate this poison.

The sap of the tree is what he's calling our ignorant desire. But he says specifically our acts of desire. Which usually is code for sexual acts. And that in our sexual bodies, all of us, male and female, have a subtle version of what's called semen as the gross version. And it's a subtle substance that actually is involved in transforming these physical bodies into bodies of life.

And so he's alluding to this subtle thing inside our body that actually is this piece that pushes, or contributes, compels, let's use the word, the ignorant use of it. Which becomes sexuality, the kind of sexuality that is willing to harm another to get what we want.

So not saying sexuality, there's anything wrong with it, of course. But it's the willingness to harm someone to get the object of your desires.

So he uses the sap of the tree as this analogy for the more subtle body stuff. But the rest of his verse isn't really so much about that. The rest of the verse is about what we ordinarily call acts of desire, which is anything that we think is going to bring us pleasure. We believe the pleasure comes from the thing. And so we believe that what we do to get that thing is going to be what gets us the pleasure.

The ramification of our self existent me, self existent them, self existent pleasure is that it seems like it doesn't quite matter what we have to do in order to be able to do what we want to do to get what we want. It's getting pulling steps back, back, back.

He's talking about this pattern of behavior that's impelled by the “I want that“. That will make me happy, and doing this will get me that. Do you see all the pieces of it?

Is it wrong to want some pleasure? No.

Is it wrong to act towards another in a way that seems pleasurable in the moment? No, as long as it also doesn't seem to be harming anybody else in the moment.

So what's missing in this example that he's saying…, lemme go back to it. 

Those with a desire run the risk

Of engaging in immoral practices.

(Basant) When we harm others to fulfill our desires, you think that would be what he might be referring to?

(Lama Sarahni) So what happens when we do that?

(Basant) It could be that we act in immoral ways, as we might outline morality to be that we to plant the seeds that we want to receive. So we would be giving instead of grasping. So in order to receive, we would give, and then we would also receive.

(Lama Sarahni) Right. So with wisdom, we would act from our desires in the way you're describing, right? It's like, oh, there's some pleasure that I want. The only place that comes from is ripening seeds of having helped somebody else have, or feel, or get something that they want. Let's just make it similar for ease of figuring out. But helping the other. And that's not going to lead us to immoral behavior. That is moral behavior. That's where he's wanting us to go. He's pointing out that without that wisdom, then our „I want that. That will bring me happiness. I do this to get that.“ pattern. We let that go on without applying the wisdom that Basant pointed out. Then we will sooner or later hit a level at which, no, no, I really, I want that. I'm willing to do this, to get that.

I have just a teeny example that, I like watch when I walk around, and see what kind of little plants have grown up. And on our common property, if I see one that I know they're going to weed, I know I've gone to the maintenance people, can I dig that up and have it? And they've always said yes.

So I saw one that I've been watching for actually a tree tobacco plant, and it's like, whoa, there it is. I've asked them before, they've always said yes. I had the tools with me. I could have dug it up right in that moment. And it's like, no, I can't do that. That's stealing. No, I own this place. Like 1600 other people. No. Right?

My mind was going back and forth, not really seriously, but it was. I was watching it. 

So I went to the maintenance place. There was nobody there.

Argh, I really want that plant. So I walked home without it, (grumbling), and then I had occasion to go back later in the evening. It was almost dark, and I thought, well, I'm going over there. Just in case the maintenance guy is there, I'll take my knife and my bag. And he wasn't there. I did the thing that I went to do. When I finished, maintenance guy was there. Can I have that plant? Sure.

I dug it up. It came out easily, now in a happy little pot.

But it's like I could so easily have said, oh, they've always said I could have it. Of course they're going to say I could have it. I can just take it. And I could pat the earth and nobody will ever know. And I watched my own mind trying to convince me that I should do that. And it was just like, shut up in there, shut up in there, shut up in there, and yay, the angel one out. And I still got my little tree tobacco. But, do you see what I'm saying? I still have the missing link, because I still think doing the right thing at that moment is what got me the tree tobacco plant. But it's not, is it?

It got me future tree tobacco plant, or something similar. It got me somebody else in my world asking permission before they took something that they wanted.

So we're not just talking about the kind of ignorant desire that makes us into drug addicts, or interfering with people's relationships. It's just the little moment by moment „I want that. That will bring me pleasure. I do this to get that.“

And I do it hundreds of times a day when I drink tea. But hopefully I won't hurt anybody to get my tea. So I'm not doing the falling into immoral practices, but I'm not using every opportunity to overcome my ignorance. Which that's coming later.

This first one is ignorant liking. What are we willing to do to get the thing that we want now.

But we want to eventually be working on, why do I think that even the moral choice of behavior gets me what happens next? We are getting there.

But then he has this little piece, 

Unless you seek to intermix with desirous types of people

That's a little confounding. So each of those verses about the five mental afflictions says, Unless you're doing da da da da, then watch for this kind of behavior to recognize your mental affliction and the ignorance that underlies it.

Why would he give us an out? Like, do everything you can to overcome your ignorant desire, except…

It's an interesting clue. It's not because there are some things that we just won't be able to overcome our ignorant desire.

What he means is that there are circumstances, or we can intentionally use, even cultivate our desire for a specific purpose, for a higher purpose.

So he's saying in each one of those verses that that mental affliction is not a mental affliction from its own side. It's not a self existent mental affliction.

There are circumstances where you would use what we call that mental affliction, for a powerful goodness. In which case it's not a negative, it's not a non virtue, it's not a mental affliction. It's very interesting.

His verses are not about how to cultivate those practices, but it could be used that way. We read the verses, oh, this is what I need to avoid. This is what I need to avoid, this is what I need to avoid. But you could go back and read them and go, yeah, yeah, I'm going to avoid those, but I'm going to do this one. And there's five of them to do, if we're at that level that we can.

So this one, he says,

Unless you seek to intermix with desirous types of people

We should avoid desirous types of people. We should avoid desirous types of situations, so that we're not becoming overwhelmed. But so what do you suppose he means, Seek to interact with desirous types of people.

Like oh great, I'm going to intentionally go to an orgie tonight to see if I can do so with wisdom. I don't think that's what he means. I hope that's not what he means, not my practice. Thank you very much.

(48:30) Lama Christie gave an example that seems really superficial, but I'll throw it out there to get you thinking about it.

She said, there might be a time when you would decide to serve cookies at a program or at a teaching, because you know that people are more likely to come to a teaching, if they are served cookies than if they are not served cookies.

And you don't really want to encourage people to eat cookies. Actually I do. But you don't really want to encourage people to eat cookies. Especially if you yourself one of those know you would overeat the cookies if they were there. Ordinarily you would have fruit instead or nothing. Save everybody the calories, we'll serve water. But nobody comes to a teaching when you just serve water. People come to teachings when they know they have cookies, okay, I'll go.

And then you share something with them. Hopefully you share the pen, really fast. So you're willing to feed on their desirousness to get them, to be able to teach them something that your intention is to bring them to ultimate happiness someday.

I don't know, that just seems like a really little idea of how you would intentionally mix with desirous people, and in doing so, you would not be feeding your mental affliction of desire.

Anyone care to comment on what to you feels like ignorant desire, and how is it showing up in your life, and how might you be in a situation where you might say, no, I'm going to use that in this way.

(Basant) I first wanted to make sure I understood what you explained. So is it that unless you seek to be with desirous people, so was that saying that you would seek out these desirous people who want cookies, or something, and then you would use that situation to cultivate your generosity?

(Lama Sarahni) Yes, and to help them come to some higher level of understanding.

(Basant) Okay, I see. The way I had heard it when I originally read it was that maybe as a warning, that if I were to continue in desirous activity, then unless you wish to see your own partner stolen away by desirous people, then you should not be hurting others‘ relationships. Is that possibly a wrong interpretation, or is it just another valid interpretation?

(Lama Sarahni) Yeah, I think it's a valid interpretation. But then it would miss this little subtle instruction about how these very mental afflictions can be not mental afflictions at all, but rather a force for good.

(Basant) And so to understand a bit further to help me use that situation of people desiring cookies would be that I invite them, and I do serve them cookies with my wisdom understanding of planting generosity. Is that how you would plant it in that situation?

(Lama Sarahni) Yeah. You might think, oh, I am using the cookies to get them to the Dharma teaching, because I want cookies at Dharma teachings I go to. And it's true, but not the level we're working at. It's that I know that, because I know certain things attract me, I know that certain things attract other people and I'm going to use that attraction to bring an opportunity for me to share something good with them, gooder than the cookies.

(Basant) I would think that if I thought I want cookies when I go out, so I'll give cookies. I would think that I'm perpetuating my desire to get, because the intention I planted with? And knowing that if this is my weakness that I want—I want in general or in a specific area—that I would seek out that area and say, I struggle with wanting cookies, and I would love to not want cookies. And so let me just be very generous in giving cookies, and maybe I plant seeds for me just feeling like an outflow of giving, and I might not even want cookies. I just might feel like giving anything. And so it might in future plant seeds for me to not get cookies, because I gave them. It might just plant seeds for me to perpetuate giving.

(Lama Sarahni) Right, right. And that's like a little glimpse into what it would be like to be walking around as a being of love, right?

(Basant) Lovely. Thank you. I really appreciate that insight into what that line could really mean. So thank you.

(Lama Sarahni) Anybody else on that one? Stevie?

(Stevie) I just wanted to say that it's like peeling the onion. You just keep going deeper.

(Lama Sarahni) Right. Absolutely.

(Roxana) May I ask something? When you were talking about desirous people, could it be those who still haven't had that awakening moment of consciousness, who still haven't discovered their spiritual path? Could you think of them as that they're still in that suffering realm, that we should have compassion towards them instead of just saying, Hey, you're in that desired note. I don't know.

(Lama Sarahni) Yeah. Yes, it certainly could be.

He's also pointing out though, that if we're not actively engaging our wisdom understanding and we're interacting with people who are at that level, not on a spiritual path, not trying, just “I want. I don't want.“ Then our own seeds of similar past behavior, they're going to ripen with that exposure, and our tendency is going to be drawn in, drawn back. So part of what he's saying that, when we intentionally step into that situation, our intentionality is we're going to bring our wisdom to this so that it'll protect us from slipping, and hopefully it will help us somehow share with others that there's another way to get what we want, and avoid what we don't want.

So yeah, we can see these verses are really rich. And so actually that said, I'm not going to be able to finish all five chapters in three classes, and I'm not even going to try anymore. Because we have Sundays and Wednesdays after the Lam Rim is done, we'll just carry on and anybody who wants to join us is welcome. So we'll finish it when we finish it. Diamond Cutter sutra took 2 ½ years. This won't take that long, I don't think. But that way we get to share the richness.

So, when we say I'm going to bring my wisdom to the mental affliction of desire, how do we actually do that?

(Basant) Would that mean our intellectual understanding of godman emptiness so that we're more aware in what is it? When do I feel desire or grasping? And then reflecting that this is coming from the seed of planting, that is perpetuating this desire and grasping. And from the ignorance thinking that this item, my coffee or tea brings me pleasure, that misunderstanding would make me desire. But if I understand pleasure from this comes from giving pleasure to someone else, that I might break this understanding of what my desire looks like. And that intellectual understanding is what helps us plant differently.

(Lama Sarahni) So you're talking really about recalling the emptiness of the three spheres. If we had to call what you just described something, it'd be, oh, that's the emptiness of the three spheres, isn't it?

The emptiness of me wanting, it's seeds ripening, projected results happening. So what I want looks like something I want, my seeds ripening. The getting it in this way is coming from seeds‘ ripening and nothing but that. And all of that is supposed to trigger on ourselves. Well then great, it's something pleasurable from what I did before. I want to perpetuate that.

And so it's going to spur that feeling of wanting to give the cookies. When we really have it clearly, we would much rather to give those cookies than we would to eat the cookies. And that just feels like, whoa, that's pretty far away. I'll share the cookies, but I have one? Really? Of course we can. But at some point that emptiness of the three spheres would be so complete. It's more pleasurable to share the cookies than it is to eat the cookies. So you just go find somebody else to eat one. I think of all the calories you would safe. But you'd have equal amount of pleasure, maybe more.

That's why it's Lojonging. Our growing our Bodhichitta isn't just my wish to reach total enlightenment. And it isn't just, oh, my direct perception of emptiness. It's this whole expansion of our own identity, and that's where the emptiness of the three spheres is planting these teeny little seeds that are helping us come to this different identity when we say “me“ and “you“. We still use those words, but it means something completely different.

All of this is helping us get at that much deeper level of what ignorant desire really means, really is. It has levels, layers.

(62:14) Lama Christie pointed out a danger of a misguided understanding of the lack of self existence to things, and others, and self.

We could say, oh, I understand the emptiness of me, the emptiness of you, the emptiness of the interaction between. None of it has any nature of its own.

That means none of it is really real. What I do to get what I want doesn't really bring it. So it doesn't really matter what I do. So I might as well do whatever it seems like I can do to get what I want. If it works, great. If it doesn't work, great.

You see? We think, oh, wrong understanding. We would never fall off that cliff. But we actually aren't so far from it anytime that we justify doing something that we want to do, because we say, oh, it's empty.

Oh, it's empty so I can do such and such, right? Oh, it's empty.

The same words could mean something different.

Oh, it's empty. So I want to give all those cookies away even though they're my favorite kind of cookie, and I spent hours making them. And I was slobbering over them wanting them so badly, but it's all empty. I'm going to give them all away.

Versus, it's empty. I can eat one, and then give them all away. Because it‘s one less to give away. It doesn't matter. I'm still giving them all away.

This lack of self existence can go a little bit wrong.

We are so well trained. I don't think that happens in your mind. But when we're teaching somebody the pen and saying, see, nothing has any nature of its own. It behooves us to be sure that we do our best Not to let someone walk away thinking, oh, so the pen, it really isn't real, and it doesn't really matter. It takes a little more effort to make sure that we get that piece across to people.

(Basant) I have 20 cookies, and five people are coming over, and maybe after the party or before the party, I have extra cookies. And I do quite like them. And I eat a cookie and enjoy it, knowing that that's great. I got a good one and I like it, because that's my past seeds if they're peanut butter cookies. Sometimes my tastes change. And now 10 years later, I don't like peanut butter. So I know it's my past seeds, but I also just like the cookie. So, is this wrong to enjoy the cookie then, when you do have the karma, and I guess the trick would just be to remember that it's my past seeds that I'm enjoying it now?

(Lama Sarahni) Yeah. What would your answer be to Basant? Is it wrong to enjoy the cookie before you give them to your guests? Rachana says, no, it's not wrong. You want to care to explain.

(Rachana) This is I think very much not the answer you're looking for, but Lama Sarahni, you told us something in Lojong, and now I think quite maybe incorrectly use it every day when I eat my chocolate. And I'm like, as you said, that anytime we do anything, anything we can be like whatever I'm doing be a cause for me to reach the highest state for all sentient beings. And so if you're eating the cookie, I don't think this is necessarily what we're looking for, but if you're like eating this cookie, let me reach high enlightenment for the sake of all beings, and then it could be a cause for that.

(Lama Sarahni) It absolutely could.

(Rachana) It‘s what I run with, but I don't know if I'm justifying my desires cookie.

(Lama Sarahni) So how would we decide whether Rashna is justifying her desire for cookie, or in fact creating her own Buddhahood? We couldn't really decide, but how might we test it?

(Stevie) I hope I don't break the winds, don't pick up again, sorry. But wouldn't it be that we would have to, aren't we our own judge? Isn't there something about, and that the work that we do on keeping our vows close? Like your story about the plant. I mean, there was a lot of work to go to the maintenance guy over and over and over again, but you kept it close to your vows, and that's the morality.

And there's this thing I heard just the other day about the virtue of terms, and that we have to define what we're denying. So I think it's important to really talk about this stuff and define it. And there's virtue even in that, of saying, well, maybe for Basant eating the cookie, it's a virtuous amazing thing. But for me to eat the cookie, it's addictive desire, overeating. But we're both eating the cookie. And so I think it's all about self and self cherishing. What are we protecting?

(Lama Sarahni) And so, if Rachana is all by herself, and there's nobody else to share the cookie with, and she offers it as her tool to reach enlightenment as quickly as possible, that's an incredible virtue. We're not saying, oh, just let this cookie sit there and drool over it, and don't let your self have it. But what if there were three people there and only two cookies? And Rachana says, well, it's a higher thing for me to eat the cookie as the tool for me to get enlightened so that I can help these people get enlightened as quickly as possible. So I'll eat the cookie, and then I will split the last one up in three and offer it with them. Now I don’t know where Rachana’s mind is, maybe I'm not talking about you. I'm talking about me right now. Am I rationalizing something? Probably, right? Maybe not. But probably.

(Stevie) In the same, in that elephant tale, they talk about early on in the day, Buddha went out to beg. But then the guy that made comment on the tale said, but the Buddha doesn't have to eat. But he goes out every day, and he begs for food. Now what's up with that? And what's up with that is that he's giving someone the opportunity to give him food, helping others to help others kind of thing. I mean, this stuff gets really deep. But at any level you stop at, it's an improvement. As long as you're going deep.

(Lama Sarahni) That's great. Any level we stop at, it's an improvement. That's great. Nice. So let's go back a step.

(Roxana) Sorry, I was just remembering when you were talking about the calories and all that, but past December, I bought a lot of food for a family. And it had four children. So all I wanted was for those kids to really enjoy different breakfast, but really good breakfast. I mean good breakfast, I mean hotcakes with a syrup, and milk and different types of cereal. Because I know they cannot afford those things. And I just wanted them to enjoy hotcakes. So many other things. But I never thought of the calories to be honest. I just thought of making them happy and giving them the opportunity of eating something different. I don't know regularly what they have, but I know that it's expensive to buy the butter, the eggs and pour it all in just and mixture instead of just eating the eggs or the butter with something else.

So what happens when, I don't know, I don't think I was careless in not thinking about the calories, or I don't know, I just wanted them to be happy. What happens then? Is it ignorance?

(Lama Sarahni) So like Stevie just said, we go to a level and we work at it, and then we look at it and go, oh, I could go to a deeper level than that. When we do that, don't look back and go, oh, I missed the boat that time. It's extraordinary to go to the trouble to bring some people a little worldly happiness. That's a rejoicable.

Now you might decide, now when I'm going to do it, I'm going to do the same thing, but I'm going to be thinking empty me, empty them, empty pancakes. Maybe they're already Buddhas pretending to be kids in need to give me this opportunity to see them as angels. There's all these different levels you could do the same deed and the seeds planted are going to bring a different result than that time before. So it's not wrong to think, I didn't think of the calories. You gave them some pleasure, hopefully. We don't know for sure, do we? But your intention was to give them something they wouldn't ordinarily get. And that's a beautiful intention.

You look at it more deeply. It's like, well, I still think that pleasure comes from pancakes, and maybe it does, maybe it doesn't, based on whether they have been kind in the past.

(Stevie) So I think she was just gobbling poison. We are all just gobbling poison. As we get closer and closer to the light, we're just picking poisons.

(Lama Sarahni) Right. Picking or poison.

So anything can be a virtue and anything can be a non virtue, right?

It depends on the state of mind of the being who is doing. It's the state of mind beneath the deed that is the determiner, and then that's included in the seed that's imprinted. And then we don't really know until the result comes. 

And by the time the result comes, we're different. It's different.

(Stevie) That's where it gets slippery, right?

(Lama Sarahni) Very slippery. And technically that's why it's the intention underneath anything and everything that we do that really is that determiner in the sea as to whether when that seed ripens, it's going to take us further along our path, or draw us back. And that's what‘s so difficult, because we are mostly on automatic pilot with our intention of things. And our automatic pilot is based on self existent, me self existent world.

On these rare opportunities where we get off automatic pilot, even enough to just keep a vow, let alone really know the emptiness of ourself, emptiness of other, emptiness of interaction between, to do something with that higher intention is such a powerful goodness. Because it's so off automatic pilot that we really don't have to do it too many times to start really shifting things within ourselves. And the difficulty is it's like stirring the pot, and up comes the yuck, most of the time. Only now and then does up come something extraordinary and beautiful, and magical, and thank goodness those happen now. And then that keeps us dealing with the yuck, because we see that in fact, there is some goodness in there.

Did I miss somebody who had something to say about ignorant liking? Before we go on to ignorant dislike?

(Basant) I just wanted to clarify how in thinking of the three spheres, I maybe ideally, as you said, if I make tea for my mom and I'm thinking I'm saving her time and I'm making her happy. That this is one level of understanding. And for me to think of that I'm planting some seeds here. But ideally we would also want to think of the emptiness of who I see my mom as, and who I see me as. And I'm planting maybe a sense of giving and this understanding here could evolve to become anything. It could be me giving food to the whole planet and all the beings. It could be just could this ripen into the direct perception of emptiness, as I try to see the seeds, maybe I'll try to, then I'll see directly and then I'll really see. And so is that sort of some idea we could have in the back of our mind to better cultivate our understanding?

(Lama Sarahni) Yes. Even not so much in the back of our mind, up in the forefront. Looks like my mom, looks like me serving tea to my mom. We're empty of self existence. This could be two angels sharing the nectar of wisdom so that as she partakes the whole world gets free of their mental affliction. It's all fantasy, but it's planting seeds. Giving tea to my mom is fantasy, because really, blank nature, projected results happening. That's not fantasy. But it's not any more or less real than two angels.

(Stevie) And then for the sake of debate, your mom doesn't want the tea. She doesn't appreciate the tea. And then what?

(Lama Sarahni) How do we respond? If we get offended, which I don't know about you, but I do. If we got offended, whip, there went my emptiness of the three spheres. If we don't get offended, it's like great. Burned off a time when I didn't like what somebody gave me. How often does that happen?

(Basant) To me it does seem like a very different space than what I think of, I guess, when I'm trying to do the 10 virtues and avoid the non virtues, and do good things for others. It seems like a very different space in terms of thinking of all these different seeds. But when you mention it the other way, I think I do think of a more fantasy space in that every interaction is sacred. This is my sacred cultivation of me and how could I see everyone? And it puts me in a different mindset where anything I do could be, it just feels a lot more sacred. And I think the right action comes to me more naturally, as you said. If the tea was rejected. But if I was in this other space of thinking of all this as more sacred, then I think I wouldn't get offended as easily. Yeah. Thank you for that discussion.

(Lama Sarahni) Anything else, ignorant liking?

(Roxana) Well, I really enjoy giving Edward his bottle, and I see the bottle as the gift. So every time that I'm giving his bottle, what I do is, I start being very grateful and very thankful for all the people behind the scenes who prepared Edward's bottle, and make it possible for me to give me that delicious cream that became healthy, and so happy and everything. But I don't know ever since Edward was born, I see him differently, not because he's my grandchild, but…

(Lama Sarahni) Yes, because he's your grandchild.

(Roxana) Well, he is. But he's such a, he's always laughing, smiling, and so alert at everything at a young age. But I like to play with him when we're alone practicing Dharma and mantras and everything. But I do always practice the three spheres with him.

(Lama Sarahni) I have more new grandmas in my life, and I'm just loving seeing how they glow from these grand babies. I never believed it. And it's like, wow, grand babies are magic. They even changed my brother. Oh my gosh. One grand baby and he's a whole different guy.

(Stevie) Can you just remind me again what the three spheres are? The three spheres?

(Lama Sarahni) The self, the other, and the interaction between.

All right, let's go to the next vote. Oh, we went right through break time. Let's take a break. 

The Poison of Anger

(82:42) Alright, so let's go to the next poison. 

And here the fiery poisonous flowers

Of our own fiery anger!

Unless you are displaying wrath

Like the Slayer of the Lord of Death,

Those with anger run the risk

Of causing themselves obstacles.

So angry sorts must kill off

This obstructing enemy. 

At this point, Lama Christie finally spoke to that obeisence that comes at the beginning of every chapter, not just at the beginning of the text.

I bow down to the Slayer of the Lord of Death.

So the Slayer of the Lord of Death is referring to a particular tantric deity who is this perfect love, wisdom, in a raffle, fierce, powerful, ugly appearance. And it's curious to me that this force of love is pictured in a male deity, when it seems to me that a mother's ferociousness towards something or someone who's threatening her child, whether it's a human or an animal, maybe even more. That power is beyond worldly. 

You hear of a little mom who lifts the Volkswagen offer. Kid, and it's like, it feels like a huge mother force. Not that dads don't do it as well, but I don't know. It surprises me in this tradition that that force is pictured as a male deity and not a female deity. Although there are raffle female deities for sure.

So that's beside the point.

What is it that this Slayer of the Lord of Death signifies, and why are we seeing it in a Lojong text when Lojongs are open teachings? And actually there are five or six or seven more Lojongs that Lama Christie taught us, that are like they're so tantric that I'm not sure that it's right for me to teach it in an open way that Lama Christie did.

But they're Lojongs, they're open. 

It's an indicator, actually, of back then in the early days of Tibet, what is it moving into Tibet? There wasn't this fine distinction so much between Sutra as the preparation for Tantra and et cetera. There was what's necessary to make the changes necessary. And Lojong was kept secret partly because of the subtlety and power of some of the practices that were taken from India into Tibet that when everything shook out, it's like ohoh. These are for people who are more well prepared with the foundation before we go giving them these practices that, in fact are very forceful and dramatic. And they can be forceful and dramatic in a positive way, and they can be forceful and dramatic in a negative way—depending on our seeds, of course, and our preparation.

Do you remember in the Wheel of Knives Lojong, that being Yamari? When our hero goes, ah, now I know who the real enemy is. It's myself grasping myself, cherishing, and he comes out looking like this real meaner. And that these ugly qualities are manifestations of wisdom, of love, of compassion, of the four powers.

Do you remember all that?

And that we said, well, why does he look so ugly? And it's like he looks ugly to the self existent me that's threatened by those wisdoms, by that purity. Because the self existent me in the face of wisdom is doomed to demise, and it doesn't want to give in. It doesn't want to play. It doesn't want to learn its true nature.

It wants to be self existent me in charge of everything, even though everything's suffering, it just goes, I guess it doesn't care about that. I don't know. 

To that part of our mind, the wisdom part of us, whether it's coming from the inside or seems to be coming from the outside, it looks ugly. It looks scary. Is the slayer of the Lord of Death really ugly like that?

You have to say, according to whom? It depends on who's looking.

Theoretically the Slayer of the Lord of Death has a holy wife. I think she sees him differently, probably. So we're bowing down to the Slayer of the Lord of Death, the one who is the manifestation of perfect love, perfect compassion, perfect wisdom, as seen by our very ignorance for whom that being is terrifying.

So it looks terrifying like this wicked warrior thing.

He's telling us at the beginning of every chapter that these Lojonging trainings are a radical aggressive power of love to protect all beings. Which we're going to hear again and again, all of whom are my mother, my father, my children.

They are all beings I've been with before. They've cared for me. I've cared for them. Beings that I am personally responsible for paying them back.

The way we want to do it as Bodhisattvas is to pay them back with their own freedom from suffering. We can't make it happen. I wish that we could. But we can help them, help others make it happen. And that's how they make it happen. And that's how we make it happen. Help them help others help others to help others. You can never stop saying it.

(90:33) So the poison of desire was the tree sap. The poison of anger is its fiery, poisonous flowers. And again, flowers is a funny thing. Usually flowers are the metaphor for our goodness, our virtue. In the Lama Chupa we offer the flowers of our virtue again and again and again. Flowers signify goodness. On another level flowers signify beauty, and they're the result of the practice of patience, not getting angry.

So here he's saying, our ignorant anger is the poisonous flowers.

It's beautiful, it's subtle, and beautiful the way he uses, the way the tradition uses these metaphors. And he just adds the poison to them, and then says, here, this is how you use them.

Ordinarily we would say, oh, surely he's going to say, one moment of anger destroys our root of virtue. That's what we learned from Master Shantideva in other places. An instant of anger towards a Bodhisattva and all our root virtue, not just all our goodness, but our very root of virtue is destroyed.

But then you can get it back. So it's not completely destroyed, but it's frozen. It was a long story, if you recall.

But he doesn't say that. He says, anger is going to bring us obstacles. Anger is going to block us from making the progress.

So we need to investigate. What is this thing anger. Why are we talking about anger, and not just ignorant dislike. We are talking about ignorant dislike. Because you have to have that in order to get irritated, in order to get frustrated, in order to get angry. And it goes so fast that sometimes you just go straight to anger. And then we can stop and think, oh, where did that really come from? Once we have a level of mindfulness.

So he is saying, our anger causes obstacles, and those obstacles block us from getting what we want.

They block us from getting what we want to have.

They block us from getting what we want to happen.

They block us from getting what we want to stop happening, to stop happening. Anytime we're trying to get or avoid something and it's not working, it's a result of anger. It's anger ripening.

I had to think about it a little bit. It's like, why is he saying that? Before we heard jealousy brings obstacles, and we explained that. I remember explaining it, I can't remember the explanation now. But that made sense too. We got into other people's way because we didn't want them to be happy and so forth.

So anger kind of does the same thing. And as I was thinking about it, I had came up with a really silly example. I'll want to make one trip to carry stuff out to the car, or in, it doesn't matter. And I've got my hands full of stuff, and I get to the door and one of our doors has the kind of doorknob that you can just take your elbow and it opens, and the other one has a doorknob. And I can't get my hand around the doorknob with still the stuff in my hand. And I'm starting to get irritated. I have to put the stuff down, open the door, the bugs come in, pick up the stuff, go out. Now I'm really irritated, because of all the extra effort. And that irritation then makes me on edge. And then I get to the car and I can't get the car door open either. And then I'm mad, and it's like, well wait. All that blocking that got the irritation and then the frustration and then the mad came from previously being mad. Why? And so I got to thinking about it. It's like, well, if I was the one in the way of somebody, and my blocking them was what was irritating them and I didn't see it and recognize it and get out of the way, I just like, their problem. Then they got mad at me being their obstacle. And so obstacles come to me and I get mad. And then that getting mad at the obstacles somehow brings more obstacles, and you've got this double thing going on. Because obstacle in somebody else makes them mad. And then I get mad when I get obstacles. 

Because we don't realize the connection there. If we did, it's like we'd get out of somebody's way as quickly as we could. We would do whatever we could to avoid getting them upset.

Can we really do anything to avoid somebody else being upset? Technically no.

If they have to get upset, seeds ripening, we can be like the sweet angel to them and they'll still get mad. But the important piece is my effort to not cause them to get angry. If I'm seeing them get angry, interact with them in such a way that's going to at least not feed it. Maybe stop it if we could—which maybe it'll work, maybe it won't work. But the state of mind of this whole situation, even though I'm not angry and I'm not necessarily even seeing them angry yet, but the obstacles coming, I'm going to be really, really careful even at that level to avoid contributing to somebody else's obstacles, that's going to lead them to anger. To work on my own anger and it's obstacles.

But let's go back. What's ignorant disliking?

(Stevie) Avoidance.

(Basant) Thinking that I dislike something because of something self existent in that and in me, rather than thinking that it's coming from my seeds that I have dislike, ripening.

(Lama Sarahni) Right. So we're blaming the thing for our dislike, right? Blaming the thing for our dislike. And then in that blaming the thing for our dislike, it means we should do what we need to do to avoid it or get rid of it. Because what we do in the moment is supposed to get rid of it. It's supposed to protect us from it.

There are these different aspects of the ignorant disliking, and what we choose to do in response to it. Let's say we react from our ignorance. We're going to do whatever we need to do to protect ourself, if it's a serious threat. But even if it's from an avoidance part, we'll do whatever we think will work in the moment to get rid of that unpleasant thing. And then it works.

That's like worse for us for it to work, because then we continue to believe that what I do now stops that bad stuff. Whether it was a good thing or a bad thing. What I did now worked to stuff. So it's probably better for what we try to do in the moment to avoid or stop the bad thing to not work. Because then at least we can realize, oh, what I do in the moment doesn't work, does it? But what do we do when what we do to try to stop the bad thing in the moment and what we do doesn't work? What happens? We can get mad.

Our ignorance is so strong and so subtle. So there's some clue in there too about why anger brings obstacles. Because in a way, we really don't want what we do in the moment to work if we're on our path and we want to prove to ourselves karma and emptiness. But then when we experience that, we want to be all to go, oh wow. See? Instead of nah. Because what's going to happen if we're in the face of something that's unpleasant, and what we try to do to stop, it doesn't work. The unpleasantness is going to go on, maybe, but probably. And then it's going to make us doubt.

It's really slippery. So what does he say?

Angry sorts must kill off this obstructing enemy.

Oh yeah, just kill off your anger. Have you tried? It Doesn't work.

But that should make us go, see? What I do in the moment doesn't work. But it just makes me angrier. I mean, I don't fly into a rage. I've never been like that. But deep down, and that's enough to perpetuate anger seeds. Just that ew kind of thing.

So he is going to give us more clues about how to work with these mental afflictions. But he gives us that exception. If we're the angry sorts, we need to kill off that enemy. We'll learn how a little bit later. But he says, but there's an exception.

Unless you are displaying wrath.

Unless you are displaying wrath like the Slayer of the Lord of Death.

So what does he mean by displaying wrath? It's good to understand the term.

(Nancy) I do it a lot.

(Lama Sarahni) Yeah, because you're with five-year-olds all day.

(Nancy) Yeah. The way I look at it is you to guide, you sometimes need to take that position of really looking wrathful, or saying it in a way that the message has gotten through. But there can't be anger in the heart. It's not a reaction, it's a response to the situation.

(Lama Sarahni) So really it's that forceful love that's coming through so strongly to get somebody's attention.

(Rachana) Isn't it also the wrath of if I can feel an affliction coming up and I'm like, whoa, wait, I don't want it. And then I've got that Yamari wrathful going like, Hey, irritation, get out of here with the wrath directed at…

(Lama Sarahni) Right, right. So how is that wrath directed at your own… we're going to call them demons, because we're going to talk about demons next time a lot.

How is wrath not anger, or hatred, or self deprecating? Is the wrath, I want you out of there. What's the state of mind towards that mental affliction?

(Stevie) Because it's not ignorant. It's not ignorant. Wrath is not ignorant anger. It may look like Yamari, but it's really a beautiful thing. It's not ignorant.

(Lama Sarahni) Not ignorant. Wrath is not ignorant.

So then, can an ignorant being have wrath? Or am I just pretending to have wrath, in which case I'm fooling myself?

(Stevie) Practicing.

(Lama Sarahni) Practicing wrath. Good. I like that. Practicing. Yeah.

So I guess the word wrath, as Nancy pointed out, it's this big love, this big concern for the others‘ need, that comes out forcefully. And so it looks like it is harsh. It looks like it's powerful. It looks like it's dangerous to get the intention.

And so yes, same as you mental affliction, I'm onto you. Because of my love for all beings you've got to stop. With that force, born of wisdom. Force born of love, wisdom, together. And yes, you can turn it on anything or anybody.

And what's the response going to be?

We don't know, do we? The other being may run, the other being may sit like a bump on a log. The other being may fly in your face with their anger towards you who was displaying wrath but they saw it as anger.

Is what's coming at you a result of what you just did?

No. Ignorance will believe that it is. Wisdom understands that it isn't.

But then what do we do?

We respond again. Our habit is to react. Whoa, that was dumb to try to be wrathful.

I shouldn't have done that versus, No, no, those were good seeds. I need to do it again in a different way—depending on the situation, of course.

Lama Christie shared an experience she had before she was really on her path.

She was more in her search mode right out of college. She went, spent a lot of time in India, and she was ready to go. She wanted to go to Copan, Nepal, which apparently from where she was in India, it's not so far. And she understood that everybody knew how to get there. So it's time for her to go to Copan. And she had just obstacles after obstacles.

She had trouble getting across the border out of India, even though her visa was running out, and she was supposed to be kicked out. She couldn't get out.

And then finally she gets out, and she can't find anybody who knows their way to Copan. And then finally she finds a ricksha person who's willing to take her there, even though they say they don't know where it is.

And on the way, meanwhile, she's gotten very, very sick, and is having to stop every 20 minutes to use the toilet. And just like obstacle after obstacle. And she finally said, she just sat down on the side of the road and cried. She was so frustrated that she couldn't get where she wanted to go.

She says, now in retrospect it was, because what happened to her at Copan, was like a turning point. It was so powerful, such a virtue for her to get there and do whatever happened there, that whatever this process was of stirring up the muck from past anger and ignorance, that it was this hugely frustrating experience, obstacle-ing experience to just get there.

So again, we've heard from Diamond Cutter sutra, you do a lot of virtue, bad stuff's going to happen. And it's hard to really understand. Yeah, it stirs up the muck. But that's an explanation that for me isn't really all that satisfying. 

Yet here it is again, the piece of connecting it to anger starts to make a little bit more sense somehow, and… lost my train of thought.

Our response, our reaction to the obstacles is what keeps them as obstacles, or shifts them to something else. So even if the obstacle doesn't un-obstacle, our perception of this situation becomes: it's a useful situation.

When we think, oh, I'm going to plant my seeds differently so that I can have a different result. In a way we're at, I mean it's a deeper level than worldly action. But we're still at a level of wanting this, wanting to avoid that.

How do I plant my seeds to get this? How do I plant my seeds to avoid that?

And it isn't actually quite accurate. We'll see why later.

So the verse says,

Unless you are displaying wrath,

Like the Slayer of the Lord of Death,

means that that's the only time we should use a situation in which we would ordinarily react with anger. And we instead recognize the emptiness of the three spheres and the opportunity that we have here to respond instead with this wrath, this forceful love. It doesn't mean, oh now with forceful love, forceful love, I can chew the guy a new one.

Forceful love probably doesn't want to chew the guy a new one.

The forceful love wants to do something else to help that person who seems to be so angry.

It sounds like he's saying, you can be as angry as you want in certain situations when you're intentionally calling it wrath. And see, we would be fooling ourselves. We would just saying no. So this situation, I can just go ahead with my anger, and you're going to call it wrath. But I'm going to do the same thing that my habitual reaction wanted to do, and now I'm going to justify it by calling it wrath.

That's not wrath. That's justifying our anger.

So he is saying, there are times when in a situation that would usually make you angry, you are not in fact getting angry this time, but you're using this situation with this wrath to stop these seeds in a different way than we've tried before.

It's something to explore.

How do we respond?

What do we do when we're wrathful, versus what do we do when we're angry and justifying it as wrath?

(Nancy) I was just going to say for myself, I have learned that I can distinguish it in my body. Well, because anger, I feel a certain rising of my temperature. Palpation. With wrath, there's a solidity and an openness at the same time, and an awareness of what's coming through. Whereas with anger, it is not like that. The body gives that.

(Lama Sarahni) Very nice.

Our time is up. We got through two. We got through the sap and the flowers. So we will carry on on Wednesday.

Let's gather our mind as we usually do. Please bring your attention to your breath until you hear from me again.

[Class Opening]

Review Chapter 2–The Mental Afflictions of Desire and Anger

Let's reread what we did already and then we'll start right into where we left off. As a peacock wanders

Through a grove of deadly plants... 

I bow down to the Holy One.

The slayer of the Lord of Death!

All who hope to be Warrior Waints

Come listen to this teaching.

Look at the lovely peacock

In the forest of this cycle of pain!

She takes no pleasure in healing herbs

But flourishes rather on poisonous tree.

She sits at the foot of the poisonous tree

Of our five mental afflictions.

See here, the molten poison sap

Of your own acts of desire!

Unless you seek to intermix

With desirous types of people,

Those with desire run the risk

Of engaging in immoral practices.

So your desirous sorts must work to

Annihilate this poison.

And here, the fiery poisonous flowers

Of our own fiery anger!

Unless you are displaying wrath

Like the Slayer of the Lord of Death,

Those with anger run the risk

Of causing themselves obstacles.

So angry sorts must kill off

This obstructing enemy.

Behold, the toxic quicksands

Of our own ignorance!

Unless you are developing

A corpse-like kind of patience,

Those with bad habits run the risk

Of storing up bad deeds.

So ignorant sorts must meditate

On how all is equal.

And look, the sweeping poisonous branches

Of our own jealousy!

Unless you are defining near from far

As when we swap “you“ with “me“,

Like a Mutekpa you'll run the risk

Of corrupting His holy word.

So jealous sorts must therefore strive

To protect the holy teachings.

And here, the poisonous tree trunk

Aflame with our own pride!

Unless it is the kind of pride

Where you enact a play of anger,

You run the risk that demon hordes

Will make a fool of you.

So confront and defeat any adversaries

To those who keep the Buddha‘s word.

(10:35) Last class we started into this chapter about the peacock thriving on the poison. He gives us this image of the peacock at the base of a poison tree.

She's not worried, Uh this is poison. If it touches me, I'm going to break out on a rash. 

She's like, I thrive here. This is my tree.

His analogy is that Bodhisattvas can sit under the tree of their mental afflictions and knock it all flipped out or hurt about them. Eventually he's going to say, not only are they not afraid of them, they use them. In fact, the peacock's going to eat those leaves and flowers, and she is going to get all the more beautiful from it. 

He's trying to help us grasp this idea of what does it really mean to thrive off of our mental afflictions? Because for sure he does not mean, just bring them up, have them let them fly forth and say, I'm getting enlightened by doing it right.

That is like the complete disaster result of reading this.

What's he really saying? In these few verses that we've read so far in chapter two, he still is saying, here are five poisons, and unless you're using them in this very specific way, in this very specific context, then stuff's going to go wrong. We should avoid them. We should overcome them. That's the opposite of what he was saying about the peacock.

It would be like he's saying, look, peacock, unless you can intentionally use those flowers in a good way, you better get your butt away from that poison tree. You're going to get hurt by it.

It seems contradictory. And so for a group for whom the Lojong would be being taught, they're not going to fall for that. Lojong was secret when he was teaching this stuff. He was teaching to people, or sharing with people, that he knew they were already well along the path and had already done a lot of work at trying to overcome their mental afflictions. And maybe we're at the point of seeing, good Lord, this is impossible to overcome my mental afflictions. They come up so fast, I can't just make them stop. I've been at it for 30 years, and they still come.

So he is taking them, us, to this more subtle level of how we work with our own mind when it's having a mental affliction, when it's wanting to react to that mental affliction, and how we train ourselves to do that stuff differently. That's, we'll see, is what he means by thriving from our mental affliction. Not letting them go on willy-nilly, but using this growing awareness and mindfulness to choose a different response.

We have that term that Geshe Michael gives, do the opposite. Which is a good rule of thumb, not completely accurate all the time. But when we're desirous, and something is within our grasp, we do something to get it, thinking that that's where the pleasure comes from. Maybe it does, and then we're fooled some more. And maybe it doesn't, but then we get upset. And then the upset makes us act in a way differently than we initially set out. And now we're into a whole new level of that mental affliction, the willingness to do something unkind to get what we want because what we did before didn't work.

So it's not necessarily, here's one situation and it's done and passed, and I either respond or react and it's over. It's like one experience is the state of mind, and then that state of mind, and then this one, and then this one, and this one. We're just cycling through these different levels of either the same mental affliction, or from ignorant liking to ignorant disliking to jealousy, to pride—all in the same situation before the situation's over.

So we can see the level that he‘s helping us to get at, is much more subtle than, oh, what's my ignorant liking and what am I trying to stop being willing to do to get what I want? We're at a much more subtle level.

He spoke to us about our acts of desire, our ignorant liking, and that there is a time when we should use ignorant liking to our advantage. Like when you serve cookies at a teaching so that you can get people who like cookies to come to the teaching, so you can teach them the pen thing. Probably there are other circumstances as well, but that's the example Lama Christie gave us. And I think it's meaningful that she gave us one that seems so superficial.

Then we talked about ignorant dislike, anger. There's a wide timeline from ignorant dislike to anger. Isn't there? Just like there's a wide timeline between when the little flower buds and when it becomes the full on fiery flower of our anger. Isn’t that what he called it? Big, little, too big, but it's poisonous at every level. It's still the fiery poison flower.

He talked to us about when you're pretending to be angry. Like the mighty Slayer of the Lord of Death. Well then maybe you can get away with it. But all the rest of the time be aware, be aware of anger. Of course, to be aware of anger, we have to be aware of the precursor to anger, and to be aware of the precursor to anger, we have to be aware of the precursor to that. And that's the subtlety that he's helping us get to.

The Poison of Ignorance

(17:57) Let's move on to the third of the mental afflictions of this poison tree. Which is curious, he calls it the quicksand of our ignorance. Like the quick sand isn't part of the tree, it's the soil the tree is sitting in. But we won't argue with him there.

He says,

Behold, the toxic quicksands

Of our own ignorance!

Unless you are developing

A corpse-like kind of patience,

Those with bad habits run the risk

Of storing up bad deeds.

So ignorant sorts must meditate

On how all is equal.

Let's look at quicksand.

I've never encountered quicksand that I'm aware of. But in the cartoons that I grew up with, they did all the time. And the hero would end up in walking onto the quicksand and then they would sink, and the more they struggled, the more they'd get sucked down into the quicksand until somebody threw them a root or something and they pulled themselves up. So it's like the quicksand has not enough substantiality to push against to get us up out of the problem, out of the hole. You can't push against gravity when we're in quick send. 

The more we struggle, apparently the more we sink in. And he's using this analogy to show us how the ignorance that underlies our mind is perpetuated.

It's like we're in our world, we're struggling against our world, and because we're standing on quicksand, the struggle to get what we want, to avoid what we don't want, is just sucking us down. Because our ignorance is the quicksand, our wisdom would be a nice solid ground. 

Which is kind of funny, because there's nothing solid about wisdom. Our wisdom is understanding that there's nothing solid and substantial about anything. 

It's brilliant, his analogies. Because they're like backwards, but on purpose. That's what shows us emptiness and dependent origination.

So our ignorance is this lack of substantiality, when really it's our wisdom that's the lack of substantiality.

Anyway, this ignorance is what allows us to when a situation arises, and our natural action towards it is impelled, we just do it.

Ignorance has to be underlying there. It's the belief that what I'm impelled to do will give me the result that I expect it to do. Whether it does or not, that's just a mistaken understanding of how the world works.

Yet it happens so swiftly, that we've done our action before we even realized, oh, that was just an automatic action, and the seed has been replanted. The seed for whatever the action was and the seed for the ignorance that underlied being our action.

Wisdom would be, if I understand it correctly, here's the experience. I want to do this. That's my ignorance wanting to do. I'm going to choose to do that instead. To be off automatic pilot with enough alertness to choose a different response. Even if the different response is not a great one. Just to get off automatic pilot is a huge step forward. There's no absolute right or wrong thing to do in any given situation. It's the extent to which we're motivated by this love wisdom that we've been talking about, that helps us choose our response that is the progress on the path. So we'll be choosing whatever level of kindness we can come up with in the moment. Not like, oh, it has to be exactly like this.

He seems to be saying here, that the ignorance is our lack of, or how we access this ignorance is through our level of mindfulness. But mindfulness here in the sense of our level of those two states of mind, DRENPA and SHESHIN—off the cushion DRENPA and SHESHIN.

DRENPA is that you've got your mind locked on your object in meditation, locked on your object. Like the rope is tied, the mind can't get away.

And then SHESHIN is the state of mind, alert, dull, agitated, dull, alert, dull, alert, too alert—just the checker. 

Then there's the us in there somewhere that's responding. Oh yeah, brighten up. Oh, cut back. No, let it go. 

On our cushion, that's like the task. But then off our cushion we have the same task. Where our DRENPA is locked on our, whatever we're working on in particular, our level of morality. If anger is my main mental affliction, then I've got my DRENPA locked on that irritation, that feeling of irritation that's just starting. And I'm wanting to really grasp when that is arising. 

Then my SHESHIN is saying, is it there? What are you going to do? Is it there? What are you going to do? Is it there? What are you going to do?

And then the me behind all of this somehow is saying, I'm choosing kindness. I'm choosing kindness. I'm choosing… It's like whatever I have to do to make my response to this little bitty irritation be such that the irritation doesn't grow.

Now that requires recognizing, am I blaming the other? Am I blaming? Where's the blame? Where do I think this feeling's really coming from?

And of course it's like it's from them, right? Wrong.

Without mindfulness, I would never bother to bring up that thought. Oh, I'm blaming them. I know that's not right.

This isn't happening even in mental words, it's more subtle than that. It's happening in between the I'm starting to react, I'm going to respond instead.

So again, he is talking to us about being at this very subtle level and it takes this high level of mindfulness, mindful awareness of our behavior. Not of our behavior, of our choice of behavior, which most of us aren't even aware of choosing behavior. We just get up and go make a cup of tea. Not, mh, I'm going to go make a cup of tea. Now now. I want a cup of tea, who can I make a cup of tea for?

I'm all by myself, I'll make it for the angels. Go, right?

I got my tea by the time I've thought that all through, and it's like, oh darn, missed it again. But that's the practice that he's teaching us about.

Lama Christie pointed out that it's very common for us to know that we have a habit we want to break. A habit of behavior, not really meaning smoking, or eating too much candy. But a behavioral habit we want to break. And we know we want to break it, and we just don't make the effort.

Why do we do that? We all do that at some place or another in life, and in our spiritual practice for sure.

She says, there's some kind of denial, there's some kind of resistance or there's some kind of self-sabotage. And those are issues to check out in oneself.

How come I won't let myself make this change?

There's no one answer to that.

Maybe the change is too scary.

Maybe it's too big a responsibility to really have the new habit.

Maybe it's just inconceivable that you could have the new habit. Like I'm not good enough to be like that.

Any one of those, probably a combination of all of them we all have.

But if we don't recognize it then we don't have anything to work with.

He's saying, we have this problem with the quicksand of our ignorance. But he again gives us that exception. The one time when you don't need to be struggling with ignorance is when you're trying to develop a corpse-like kind of patience.

What does he mean by that? A corpse-like kind of patience.

A corpse is not going to react, or even respond to a situation of unpleasantness, or difficulty, or struggle. The corpse is not even going to label it difficulty.

A corpse is a corpse.

Does he mean we're developing a kind of patience where anything, anybody can do anything to us and we'll just be like a bump on a log. Is that what Master Shantideva was really saying? That the term was “be like a corpse“ and Geshela called it „Bump on a log“? If we had heard “be like a corpse“, we all would've flipped out and left Master Shantideva at the moment, I don't know, I don't know what the word is in that text.

But a corpse-like kind of patience, it's like that would mean I could take anything. 

Without pain? A corpse would, not me, I wouldn‘t

But from a state of mind, it's interesting to think about.

Remember from Diamond Cutter Sutra, the king of Kalinka's story. The context of that story is Lord Buddha has been talking about the amount of merit that a Bodhisattva makes when they do their Bodhisattva activities—giving, moral discipline, not getting angry, and joyous effort with wisdom, with emptiness. And that merit is so big that it‘s what will create, it's what becomes the form body of your Buddha.

Already in the sutra, a couple of times he's drawn this connection between understanding emptiness and dependent origination, and making merit, and why those two go together. Then he says something like, I made all this incredible merit with all these amazing beings. But then he says, and the highest kind of merit is not getting angry.

He says, and you want to know why?

There was this time that I was this yogi… And we get the story about the king of Kalinka, where the king of Kalinka is the bad guy, and the yogi is the good guy who's teaching the queen how to meditate. The king gets the wrong idea and goes into a rage. And either he himself, or his slave guy, his warrior guy, starts cutting the guy's fingers and toes off. As he's doing so, the yogi is just saying, I love you King. If you're wanting to make me mad, I can't get mad at you.

His wisdom is so great that he's not blaming the king. He's blaming his own karma, and he's knowing that by going through this experience, he's just getting that much closer to the ability to help the king reach the king's full enlightenment. Which is going to be a long time from now, because he's cutting up an Arhat, and that's going to come back to bite him in the butt badly. And that too, the yogi's heart is going, oh my gosh, king, if you didn't have me all bound, I would be doing something to stop you from doing this. But as it is, all I can say to you is, I love you so much. Yes, my name is yogi of patience and I love you.

Yeah, you love me? Whack.

I love you. Whack.

But did it hurt? Absolutely. It hurt. It hurt terribly.

And Lord Buddha is saying, that state of mind is patience.

I mean that's beyond the word patience, in English. I don't think we have a word for it. It's like wisdom, love, compassion that's willing to take on anything necessary to help the other person.

He was trying to help the king. He did help the king. Eventually that king went on to be a great disciple.

Why am I talking about that? Because you could say that Yogi had the corpse-like kind of patience. He was not a corpse by any means. A corpse would just not feel the pain. He felt the pain. But he didn't respond from it, responded to the situation.

So unless we're working on that kind of patience, he says, then don't think you can let your ignorance go on.

I don't quite get the connection, because it's like that Yogi had, he didn't have ignorance left. He had obstacles to omniscience left, it seems to me, to be at that level. So it's not like, okay, I'm going to really practice this high level of patience, and so I don't have to be working on my ignorance while I'm there.

I think it means that when we're at that level, we don't have any more ignorance to work with. We're just working with obstacles to omniscience.

So it's a little bit of a dig to say, there's actually no exception to the rule of when we should be working with our ignorance, to overcome our ignorance.

(Flavia) So in situations like that with somebody is trying to practice this, not this level of patience, but some high level of patience, is pretty normal to hear people saying that like in this case, the king is being hurt by his own seeds. So the Bodhisattva is letting the king hurt himself. So that is not kind. But in this explanation, that seems like a type of ignorance. So it is like unless you have this understanding, you cannot, because in the last class you were talking about wrath, and unless we have like hugely high understanding of emptiness and patience, how can we be sure that we are not acting from a different place?

(Lama Sarahni) Right. Right. Similarly, and I think in this example of king of Kalinka, the yogi was tied down. And so it's hard to know would the yogi have let him go on if he wasn't tied down. Would he have struggled with him? Like would you struggle with your mother if she's coming at you with a knife? So it would be, I think, a different story if the Yogi wasn't tied down. But I think you point out an interesting thing to say, oh, it's not kind for the Bodhisattva to let the person go on hurting somebody else, if there's something you can do to stop it. And then that also has the underlying theme of that person, who's doing the unkindness, has some kind of self existent nature. But it's too slippery for most of us to say, oh, they're not really hurting themselves, because they're empty. It's like, no, no, because they're empty they are really hurting themselves. For us to say, oh, you the Bodhisattva, you wouldn't let them go on hurting themselves, because that's not kind to them. Is that person talking to us from their ignorance, or from their wisdom?

(Flavia) But we don't know what is the other person doing. The only thing we know is it is hurting us because we have bad karma.

(Lama Sarahni) Right, exactly. And that's why we need to do something not unkind to get it to stop. Because our habitual reaction is, he's hurting me? I am allowed to do anything I need to do in self-defense. Right? Our society, self defense, it makes it less, it makes it not illegal to kill somebody who's trying to kill you. Does it make it not a bad karma? No, not at all. So even in that position, or we have the story of the ship captain, right? Where the high level Bodhisattva ship captain who's clairvoyant sees the mind of the merchant who intends to kill all the other merchants. And the ship captain kills the merchant. When we first hear that story, we tend to think, oh, he was so heroic, he saved all those other 500. And then we hear the punchline. It's like, no, no. That was not his motivation. His motivation was to protect the guy from getting the karma of killing those 500 people. He knew that if those 500 people had the karma to be killed, they were going to get killed, whether it was from the guy or a storm or whatever. So I don't know, maybe he knew that they didn't have that karma either. It doesn't matter. The point is his motivation was to protect the guy, not the other 500.

And when I first heard that, it was like, wow, that blew me away. And then I got to thinking about that, and I heard the story multiple times after that, and told the story. And we hear that that ship captain had eons of lifetimes practicing that great compassion. And he had the clairvoyance that saw that there was no other way to help this guy. And he had the power to transfer that guy's mind to a higher realm.

So he not only protected him from getting the karma of killing the 500. He actually benefited the guy because he sent him to a higher realm, that he would've otherwise gone. Now whether that's possible or not, I'm not so sure. But they say, oh, in order to qualify to be like the ship captain where you can kill the guy to save the 500, you have to have these high qualities.

But then they go on to say, even so, that ship captain in fact ripened those seeds of killing the guy with a lifetime in a hell realm. So it was not the case that because he was a high level Bodhisattva, it was not a bad karma to kill somebody.

Now they say his lifetime in that hell realm was he showed up and bounced out. And I don't really know what that means either. But the point is that we could get to a level of practice where we think we're ready to do harmful things to protect others, and that we think that that high motivation protects us from the result of the bad deed. The high level motivation plants good seeds that will come back as goodness. But the killing, the stealing, the sexual misconduct, the lying, the harsh speech, the divisive speech, the use of speech, they're still going to ripen. We're still going to get them. 

So, if a Bodhisattva misunderstands that, if an aspiring Bodhisattva still misunderstands that, we could run the risk of just saying, I can really do anything that I need to do in the name of helping people. And it's just so easy to fool ourselves into doing something that we think is right in the name of karma and emptiness, and mighty wisdom. But then we're just acting ignorantly at a more subtle level.

(Falvia) In the example of the king killing this Bodhisattva is obvious that he's hurting somebody. But in our reality, normally, when we say, or when I say, or when I hear people say, we should stop that person. Normally it‘s doing something that I don't like. It is not chopping my arms off, and it's just doing something that I don't condone, or that I don't like, that I don't want in my life. And that is the excuse to say, I should make them stop. But really I am making a bad seaed, because I am self cherishing myself and my ideas.

(Lama Sarahni) Exactly. Exactly. And that's where he's going to take us actually in this whole Lojong, is to show us where we are still pulling ourselves, and using the Dharma to not push ourselves further. Let's say that.

So yes, Bodhisattvas are said to take on pain. And yes, they use their problems for the sake of reaching Buddhahood for everybody's benefit. But it does not mean that they intentionally go seek out problems.

As a Bodhisattva, you don't have to take yourself down to the worst places of your downtown and walk through a dark alley with money hanging out your pocket just to be a Bodhisattva.

Enough unpleasant stuff happens even to Bodhisattvas that you have enough to work with. You don't have to ask for more, right? We all know that.

But when those problems do come, these teachings say, those Bodhisattvas get to a place where…, okay, let me go back.

When problems do come, our ordinary response is find somebody to blame, and get them to fix it. Then maybe we get to a higher level. It's like, oh, I know I'm finding somebody to blame, but I know it's coming from my own karma. But I still want to find somebody to fix it from. We're still struggling with it trying to get it to stop. We want this unpleasantness to stop. That's a natural human healthy response.

But that itself is driven by this ignorance. To even think that there's something I can do now to make that unpleasantness stop is an ignorant state of mind. But it doesn't lead to the conclusion, oh, then don't do anything. Because that's off one of the cliffs. 

It's like, I do want this to stop. I can't make it stop by any worldly response.

What is it I really want to stop? Is it really the event, or is it my distress related to the event? Now that's a different thing, isn't it?

It's unbelievable to try to think, oh, I could be in such and such a situation. You fill in your personal one. I know you all have them. It's so distressing that we can't imagine the distress going away without the situation changing.

But in fact, the distress can go away, regardless of the situation, because they're actually unrelated.

Would you have that distress now if that event had not happened? Probably not.

But the distress that you feel that you're blaming on that event is not coming from that event. It is coming from some way in which we distressed somebody else in this way before.

So the opportunity to have this distress come up is the opportunity to look at, oh my gosh, I distressed people in this way? What's the opposite? Who can I be the opposite to? And then I've always been the opposite. My own mindset, I've never done that to anybody. Well, can't say never if here it is.

So again, he's taking us to a much subtler level of dealing with what we're calling unpleasant. It's the distress that's unpleasant. It's not the situation.

Then, how does he want us to work with our ignorance? This is the first time he actually says what to do. We get more later.

He says, meditate on how all is equal. Come to see how all is equal.

And it's like, come on. How is everything equal?

Hug me, kiss me, beat me up. It's all the same.

I don't think so. No.

Pain and pleasure don't feel the same. They are not equal. But they are all equally our own seeds ripening and nothing but that.

Every piece of every experience is a result of our own past imprints made.

How do we make imprints? What we think, say, do towards other.

But that means then that every moment is equally creating future experience, isn't it? 

So we can say, we can wallow in the, oh man, all of this is my own past seeds.

Or we can revel in the, oh man, every moment is creating future.

We're in the same situation. But we either are looking back or looking forward. It's a different state of mind. Theoretically, eventually we reach the place where we're always in that state of looking forward. But I don't know about you. For me it's like bing, bing, bing, back and forth, depending on the severity of things.

First thing in the morning off my meditation cushion, bah, and it just quickly deteriorates.

(Luisa) I have a question. There is an explanation that I haven't understood, why in these scriptures they always avoid writing the part that is coming from seeds. Like they always leave it open and without the commentary or the explanation, it can be misunderstood. Like now, they're equal. And then I could think exactly that pain and happiness are equal, but they are not. Why they avoid to say explicit, like specifically, it‘s coming from seeds.

(Lama Sarahni) Right. So I don't know exactly, but my understanding is that because when we're hearing a teaching that says things lack their own nature, we are capable of understanding that at certain levels depending upon our own level of seeds ripening goodness at the time. So to hear, oh, everything is a ripening of my own past seeds. If we heard that at a time before we had the goodness to understand the ramification of that, it would either make no sense at all, in which case we'd be uninterested, or it would be terrifying in the level of personal responsibility that it brings. And also would send us running away. So, an omniscient being who's teaching this stuff, is teaching to all the levels at the same time. And whoever wrote it down for us was at a certain level. And so that's the seeds that we get. And then whoever translates it is at a certain level from our side, and that's the seeds that we are ripening to get. 

And so we could hear a sutra like the Heart Sutra, and it could mean one thing early on. And then we get taught the pen thing and we read Heart Sutra again and it's like, wow, there's so much more in this sutra. And then we can see emptiness directly and then read the Heart Sutra and go, oh my gosh, how did I miss that? It's so obvious in there. Like levels and levels in all of the teachings.

So it's a great question. And next to highest wisdom school. What do we call them? 50/50 school? They say the same thing. Why don't you just say the words “coming from your own projections“, that'll solve the problem. And the way they get their name, whatever it is for 50/50 school, is because they believe saying those words has the power to all of a sudden make everybody understand it in the highest way. But it's like there's nothing in those words except for you and me and us that clarifies it. So in my mind, I clarify things with words like that. But then I have to catch myself and realize that the words themselves don't clarify it. They reveal the emptiness of the whole situation. And that clarifies it.

(Luisa) Just because of your experience. Sometimes I have the feeling like cannot grab, I cannot grab anything. Everything that is said is so running through my fingers, like that for example. I should not believe that the dharma is really helping me when I feel it's helping me. But I should not feel this because the feeling I am having now from the dharma is not coming from the dharma, is coming from something that I did. And I don't know what I did, and I got a bit paranoid. Then what is the real thing that I can?

(Lama Sarahni) I know, I know. But that's the whole path, is to be able to walk through this ungraspable, untenable reality that is actually more real than the one we think we can grasp. I understand how horrible it feels, but it's a great place if you can hang out there. And the fallback is always, whatever this is coming from, if it's leading me in a better place, it was a kindness and hooray for me.

So equal, back to the “everything is equal“, is equally my seed.

Who is there to blame for the thing that's upsetting me?

Nobody but my past me, and a whole another story about that.

And where's my future going to come from? What I see myself think, do and say.

So, technically what is there to be upset with? What is there to be happy with?

Not nothing, just our responses to things.

Then, even still when we're trying, just trying. We don't even have to be successful. Just trying. That's a rejoiceable, that's a goodness, that's a progress.

When we're in this mindset, I'm creating, I would say the words like every instant is this moment of creating future happiness for everybody. Whatever I'm doing, I'm trying to be kind enough with the intention that everybody will reach their Buddhahood someday.

Then I try to reword it more accurately and I come up with something like, equally moment to moment creating future happenings because my seeds ripen and everything about me and my world is included in my every moment.

There are certain things I'm directly experiencing, but within those, in the background, is all this other stuff, and all the seeds have all of it in it. And it's just the bing, bing, bing. So our interaction with that constant shifting flow is where the constant shifting flow specific experience is being created.

So we can say, oh, I'm working to create my happiness and everyone's happiness. But really, we're creating every happening. I think it's weird that happening and happiness are so close in English. I think that's a clue. Somehow English got that one right. English doesn't get much right in my opinion, but that's a good one. Happiness and happening. And happening means experiences.

So we're creating future experiences for everybody now. Yay.

And now, and now. Technically 65 per instant. Look how powerful you are. 

Wow, I love that quote by Maryanne Williamson. Was it her? 

„We hold ourselves back, not because we're afraid of success, but we're afraid of how powerful we are.“

Or something like that. It's a beautiful quote, very inspiring. Step up and take a hold, like you are the creator of your world. You can't say that too many people without them going blasphemy.

All right, let's take a break. We need to do jealousy and pride before we're done. I really want to get us to that pride part before Geshe Michael's program starts on Sunday. Let's take a break.

(break)

The Poison of Jealousy

(60:17) All right next verse.

And look, the sweeping poisonous branches

Of our own jealousy!

Unless you are defining near from far

As when we swap “you“ with “me“,

Like a, Mutekpa you'll run the risk

Of corrupting His holy word.

So jealous sorts must therefore strive

To protect the holy teaching.

This is weird. We've heard before, jealousy causes obstacles. The opposite of jealousy is rejoicing in others' goodness. This is different. This is different.

I don't know what Mutekpa means, like a Mutekpa you'll run the risk of corrupting His holy word.

Lama Christie didn't talk about it, and I couldn't find it, and I'm so deficient in language I couldn't find it. But it seems to me that it's a term they're using for someone who's putting a wrong slant on the teachings of Buddha, or teaching it in their own way, some such thing. So I will go back and share with you what Lama Christie shared here with us.

The term for the sweeping poisonous branches of our own jealousy.

The term from the Tibetan was widespread. The widespread. I don't know what the term is, but we hear that the teachings are called the widespread, meaning the teachings that teach us the activity side of Bodhisattva are called the widespread side. And so he's making some analogy to our jealousy, not just being the width the tree, but being this something about it that's like, whoa, far and wide, goes far and wide.

It's something to cook. Why jealousy goes far and wide? Why doesn't ignorance go far and wider? Because it's more ubiquitous in us, and all of the mental afflictions require interaction with some other. How come jealousy is bigger?

I don't have the answer to that, but it's something to think about.

Jealousy, we've heard, it's that state of mind that's upset when we become aware that someone else has something that we want. 

Like, is that fair? Check in your own jealousy, times when you're jealous.

So there's jealousy and there's envy. What are other words for that same state of mind? Anybody have some? Anybody in the counseling realm?

And what's the difference between envy and jealousy?

(Luisa) For me it's the same.

(Lama Sarahni) Yeah, they seem really similar, don't they?

(Basant) I think, I had read once that jealousy is where you want what someone else has, and you're also kind of unhappy with that person because of it. Whereas envy as you want what other people have, but you don't hold it against that person.

(Lama Sarahni) Okay, so jealousy has this component then of, the ignorance underlying self existent them has gotten the self existing goodness that I want for myself. My me wants it for myself. And then already there's been this comparison. I want that, they have it. And then there's this more subtle comparison. Why do they have it? And I don't? So there's a self something, self-judgment, and another judgment. And then because of that, so subtle, they must be better than me. No, they're not better than me. Why do they have that? Right? And this thing comes. Who's aware of that jealousy?

Us. Really. The other person's not going to become aware of it until we respond from it. And if this thinking goes on, this comparison and the state of mind grows into, well, they don't really deserve that like I deserve that. This is worst case.

And so I'm justified in getting in the way of their ongoing happiness. We're not going to go steal their car that we're jealous of. But if we interact with them at all, we'll be doing some kind of subtle things that interfere with their happiness. And it's probably really subtle. We don't like them so much. Even if they're friends, you don't like 'em a little bit less. And so we're willing to do something a little bit less for their happiness because of our jealousy.

I am starting to see why they call it widespread. Because it is so subtle inside of our behavior towards someone that we're jealous of. And it's so completely from our side. 

Now maybe they become aware of our jealousy, and then maybe that starts a whole war. Then we would have to look at our own mind. When I am aware of somebody else's jealousy towards me, what do I do now?

There could be a time, hopefully not in this lifetime, where gloat, I'll just rub it in their face. I am better than you. Pride kicking in.

So again, this jealousy has all these different components: ignorant liking, ignorant, disliking, pride, ignorance itself. Maybe that's why it's called the branches. It's got all of them all rolled in together.

But then Master Dharmarakshita, he says, the danger of letting jealousy go on is that we will corrupt the teachings.

What? Me being jealous of my neighbor's car makes me corrupt the teachings?

I don't think he's talking about jealousy on that kind of level.

Again, remember his audience: high level practitioners, Kadampas. They're all teaching each other back in this time in Tibet.

So he is talking to other teachers of the dharma, other sharers of practices here.

And so Lama Christie suggested that he's talking to people who are leading others in their spiritual lives. And so those others are watching us, or guidance.

They're not just listening to our words, they're watching our behavior, aren't they?

You who are parents, or are around children. You can say, do this, do this, do this. But you do something else. Your child is going to do the something else, not what you do.

So similar here. And apparently, to have jealousy towards another dharma teacher, another dharam sharer starts this whole subtle or not so subtle ball rolling of comparison and finding fault with self. And so needing to find fault with the other, or show it to somebody else. And this misbehavior happens between teachers, like from this teacher to that one, the jealous teacher towards the other one, that the other people—the students—see. And then it's like if it becomes clear to the students, then what comes out of that teacher's mouth? Yeah. The students are going to have this doubt, aren't they? And that's corrupting the teaching.

You could also say, oh, if you're jealous of another teacher, maybe you're going to try and teach something smarter, and not get it right. And that could be corrupting the teachings too.

But Lama Christie was pointing out that at the level that she was aware of his subtlety of teaching, he's talking about behavior. Being someone who is teaching, and then behaving in a different way. And jealousy driving that behavior is a really major player in causing corruption of the Dharma.

So another way that that would come about of course is that it could create a schism. Students are going to need to choose, oh, I'll follow this teacher, not that one. And then that's a schism. And a schism in the sangha is said to be one of the worst situations, because it is damaging the purity of the dharma in the minds of the people involved. So maybe again, another piece of jealousy is the end result, is the effect on the sangha that makes it either obviously split up, or just emotionally split between teachers.

What's the exception that he gave us?

He says, absolutely avoid letting your jealousy go on in any situation unless…

And he said,

Unless you are defining near from far

As when we swap “you“ with “me“

And it's like, thank you Lama Christie for your commentary, because I could not have figured this one out. And yet it's what's coming up next week by guessing Geshe Michael. This is alluding to the practice of exchanging self and others.

He says, the only time that it can be beneficial for others to let your jealousy go on, is when you're doing your exchanging self and others practice.

But she went on to explain, because it's hard, how can I let my jealousy go on by putting myself in somebody else's place?

And so she said, put yourself in a situation where you become aware somebody else is jealous of you. They're jealous of me. Oh, I know what I try to do. I know what that feels like. I know like this ball roll of fact, and I know what I try to do to someone else when I'm jealous. So I'm going to put myself in them to see what are they really jealous of me.

So we're trying to take on, not take on, but feel empathy for their jealousy so we can be aware. Like, oh, they're jealous of me because I have so much time with the Lama. Oh, well that's easy to resolve.

My old me who's hogging the Lama apparently, I didn't think I was, but apparently I am, will take this me, and make sure this me (the other) gets all the time they want with Lama. And because I've done this exchange, I can easily step back from my time with Lama, which is all I want to do is be close to my Lama.

The last thing I want to do is step away and put somebody between us. But that's what this me (the other) wants.

I know what it feels like to be close to the Lama. I'm going to get this me (the other) close. 

We only got there by way of noticing their jealousy, and stepping into them who is jealous of me. And then me acting towards them to help them reduce their jealousy by changing the situation. Me taking the responsibility for changing the situation that they were jealous of.

To not do that would be to corrupt the teaching.

To do that is upholding the teaching. Using jealousy to uphold the teaching.

Why? How does everybody expect you to react to somebody that you find out is jealous of you?

We disrespect them, don't we? Yeah, I have the good quality. Yeah, I'm close to the Lama. Like, my good seeds. You don't have it.

It would be really ugly, wouldn't it? And that would be letting that person's jealousy go on, instead of using their jealousy to solve the problem from our own personal responsibility.

I will back off. Not only will I back off, I'll take you by the hand and put you in front. 

That's so radical a behavior that people will notice, but your own mind will notice, because ordinarily when you're the one somebody's jealous of, it's like, yeah, of course. Right? And there comes pride. It's the next one. It's the trump we're going to.

So yeah, jealousy is widespread branches. It puts us into all these other mental afflictions. It's a pretty cool one to work with when we start to catch on.

I was surprised how my jealousy showed up. I didn't even know it was jealousy until recently actually. And then it's like, whoa, that's startling. I was calling it something else altogether. That's how protective we get of our own little self existent me. All right, let's get onto the fifth one.

The Poison of Pride

(76:52) 

And here, the poisonous tree trunk

Aflame with our own pride!

Unless it is the kind of pride

Where you enact a play of anger,

You run the risk that demon hordes

Will make a fool of you.

So confront and defeat any adversaries

To those who keep the Buddhas word.

Pride. If we let our own pride go on, we run the risk of demon hordes making fools of us. And the only time that won't happen is when we are enacting a play of anger. We'll talk about that.

So confront and defeat any adversaries.

Adversaries, their adversaries to those who keep the Buddha's word.

Again, it seems like a funny antidote to pride. Defeat the adversaries to those who keep the Buddha‘s word. Okay, keep that in mind.

The poisonous tree trunk is our pride.

Pride. What is pride?

Me and my needs are more important than you and your needs, is a kind of pride. There's also the kind of pride, like I'm the best in the world and we go around puffed up.

Then there's the piece of pride that is somewhere between the self existent me and the self cherishing that comes next. The me that exists independent. Independent, especially independent of being part of every seed ripening. So self existent me.

Then that self existent me wants and needs. That's the self cherishing.

Self grasping is the me, self cherishing is I want.

The I that goes between those two is this very subtle pride. I, me, mine, that wants and wants to avoid. That starts, doesn't start. That perpetuates the whole ignorant ball continuing to roll.

(Luisa) Did you say that pride is in between these two?

(Lama Sarahni) Yeah. It's not a separate ripening, because they don't list it. But when we go looking for our pride, and keep getting more and more subtle with it, we'll find that there's something in there. Really, it's in the self-existent me.

(80:53) When our pride, there's this thing called self-confidence. Self-confidence, you could call it a good pride, as long as our self-confidence isn't what we use to justify being unkind towards another to get them to do what we want, or to stop doing what we don't want.

And yet it's through our self-confidence that we're able to interact with others, and have the self-confidence to choose a different interaction with others based on what we want to happen. Whether it's still ignorant or wise. And so just to say, oh, we should dash all our pride, does not mean to dash our self-esteem.

That rather the more, the stronger our pride is, the more likely these demon hordes will come and humiliate it. And it's like, we do know that, don't we?

When we start getting puffed up, even in small ways, something in life comes and rips the rug out from under you. And if for instance, I mean in a really gross scenario, say you're the manager in an office, and just everything you do has been going right, and you're getting all these kudos and it's going to your head. And you're starting to get bossy and arrogant with your coworkers. Then the other shoe falls, and big mistake happens that everybody else, their reaction is probably going to be, got what you deserve.

Why? Because of their jealousy.

What's happening? Our pride was starting their jealousy, then something bad happens to us and they gloat and then we feel worse.

And then we get mad at them. And it's this big ugly scene that goes around.

Now I doubt any of that ever happened to any of us. But on more subtle ways, we are doing it. We are doing it, and the end result is humiliation.

It's like our fault will be pointed out to other people. That's where the humiliation comes. If somebody else sees our fault. We don't want other people to see our faults. It's somehow the ugliest thing. 

And yet it's going to happen, because pride isn't self existence. And because of our behavior from our pride, we are not doing anything to recreate those goodnesses, good qualities that we're seeing in ourselves.

So pride is, I am capable, I am kind, I am helpful. I do have the ability to lead my program to success. And now I'm pushing people, and I'm being a little bit harsh with people. And it's okay, because I'm good and I'm going to get this done. And that's how I'm going to get it done, and I'm justifying it. It's putting pins in my own balloons of those good seeds of my good qualities. So of course I'm going to lose them.

Now how that shows up? If anybody's guess something could go wrong, the boss could change, and not like you. You could get wildly sick and lose all that capacity. 

Anything can happen when enough of those good seeds have been used up and we haven't perpetuated them.

So humiliation is how we feel when other people see negative qualities that we were trying so hard not to show, and then suddenly they are revealed.

Low self-esteem is when we see that about ourselves, even if nobody else sees it, or maybe both, our own self-esteem goes down.

But this low self-esteem is because then we're misunderstanding what happened also. Oh, I'm just bad. I'm not good enough to really sustain any of this. No wonder it happened. Of course it was going to happen. All that goodness, it was just, I don't know, bogus all along. And we're in that downward cycle into depression.

And that's not true either, right?

The pride, good qualities wasn't true. The sinker isn't true. It is happening. But it's seeds ripening from how we interacted with others in the past. Which means how we interact with others in the now makes future happenings.

Whether they're going to be happy happenings, or unhappy happenings. We're still making happenings. 

And again, we can shift from that backward thinking, oh, woe is me, I was so bad. To this forward thinking of, what little bit of kindness can I plant somewhere? Regardless of how lousy I feel about myself. I can grow a tomato and give it to my neighbor. I can smile at somebody, even if I don't feel like smiling. Little bitty things that can get us out of the cycle, the old cycle.

So his conclusion is, confront and defeat these adversaries to those who keep the Buddha's word. What does he mean by that?

Those who keep the Buddha's word. That could be referring to people with Vinaya vows. So anyone who has lifetime lay persons vows, or Pratimoksha, or ordained vows. Those could be said to be people who keep the Buddha‘s word, because they're working on their morality. They're avoiding harming others so carefully. And ordained people, at least in the old tradition, they relied on outer support. They didn't have jobs, they had to have sponsors. And so this might be saying, overcome your pride by making sure that those who have devoted themselves to their spiritual life have the things that they need, and are free of the problems that could come—as free as you can help them be. So in one sense it could say, overcome your pride by serving the ordained people.

That makes sense. We've heard from somewhere else, I don't remember where, Master Shantideva I think. You want to overcome pride? Force yourself into the service of others. And so that would be one way to do it.

Lama Christie said, she reminded us though, remember when we were learning logic, both like course 2 and course 13, those who follow Buddhism through blind faith, it was kind of rude, that was for the dumb ones. And then those who follow by logic, that's for the sharp students. Not meaning you have to be smart to do logic, although maybe you do. But meaning with logic, we can prove to ourselves the truth of karma and emptiness. And then once we have that logical proof, it leads us to experiential proof. When we have that conviction by logic joined with our faith, then we've got an unstoppable spiritual path.

So those who keep the Buddha‘s word in that way are then referring to those who debate, who use debate, who use logic to check out the teachings, the teachings that they received. To check out their own behavior choices, they use logic.

So this would now be saying, confront and defeat any adversaries to those who use logic for their thing on the Buddhist path.

It's like, why do they need me to defeat adversaries?

It's like, oh, maybe it's not defeating adversaries for somebody else.

It's defeating my own adversaries to using logic in my spiritual.

But how does that overcome pride?

It's like, yeah, this one takes some cooking to see why he's talking about making sure that nobody messes up with the teachings in order to overcome your pride.

Seems to me, if I was the one who was able to make sure that anybody who's an adversary to debaters, and meditators, and spiritual practitioners, that I would get really puffed up. That it would make my pride way worse if I'm the protector of the debaters. And yet, he says, that's how to overcome our pride.

You'll have to cook that one and share it with me.

Lama Christie suggested that pride at the level he's talking about here, again, in those who are sharing the Dharma with others, is the pride that gets to the level of the teachings where we think, okay, I've heard it all. I've learned it all. Now I just have to practice.

That state of mind is, I know, I know, I know.

I know Geshe Michael has told this story that he got the nickname in his monastery: I know, I know. Because he would say stuff like that. Geshe Michael, go do this. I know, I know. And then to just say that, I know, I know, the seeds of that block our mind from learning something new.

So the whole point of debating is to use this didactic to learn something new from those words that we didn't get before. Using the power of the ramifications of our words to learn something new.

So those who use debate are the ones who can learn something new out of an old teaching by sharing it with each other in this way.

Anyone who gets it in the way of that, which would be the state of mind of, I know. I know, I know, I know. I know. That's the adversary to overcome.

Oh, now I see. Because it's my pride that says, oh yeah, I know. I know, I know.

But then he says, unless…

There is a time when pride can be used, I guess is what he means.

He said, unless you are enacting a play of anger.

Before, when we were talking about anger as the mental affliction, it was unless you were displaying wrath, right? And the displaying wrath was not anger. It was forceful love. It looked like anger to the one who was receiving the wrath. But from you, it was not anger, it was love. And if it wasn't love, and you were calling your wrath love, but it was really anger, ew.

But this one says, you can take this pride and make it look like anger, and your pride is feeding you. I don't know. I hope the anger isn't also planting anger seeds. I'm not sure about it.

But so Lama Christie said, she thought that what he meant was, on the debate ground, when you have an argument lined out that you are so sure of, confident, will take everybody with you to a deeper understanding. Then you should puff yourself out, and be this fierce debater to keep everybody on track, and going in the direction of revealing the truth within whatever that investigation is. And that your display might be really rough and angry looking, and prideful. But the reason is that with that force, you're bringing everybody's mind with you to unravel this knot.

And then in the end, everybody gets some greater wisdom. You shake hands, you're all friends. It wasn't about beating somebody. It was about ferociously unraveling something.

So I don't have enough experience on a debate ground to know quite what she's talking about. But I get a glimpse, I guess, of how we could enact this confidence and forcefulness that would look angry. But in fact, it's just like this driving this knife through the ignorance of everybody there in the debate part. Like Mr. Sahara, his name is the dagger, like that. Right through ignorance. Okay.

(97:05) He's given us these five poisons, and this analogy of the poison tree, and clues to how we should be avoiding the poison, but in certain circumstances we actually eat them, use them.

Then the next chapter is going to give us greater detail on that, when we get there. But let's just review the five.

Review of the 5 Poisons

So we had the the sap of ignorant desire, acts of desire he called it, which is acting from the ignorant desire. And then using that desire for things to attract people who have desire, attract people to the dharma.

But any other time, we're letting our desire rule our actions. We're not eating the poison. We're perpetuating the amount of affliction.

Then the second one was anger.

(Luisa) Was it not ignorant disliking?

(Lama Sarahni) He's calling it anger. And again, it is ignorant disliking. By the time you act from ignorant disliking, you have a gross or subtle form of anger. So acts of anger. Then anger is harmful unless we're doing this display, this wrathful display of love wisdom to protect someone.

But it's like, wait a minute. But that's not anger at all, is it? It's pretend anger, because really it's love. So is it really eating anger, or is it eating anger up? Because instead of responding from the anger that's arisen, what comes the love wrath instead?

Then the quick sand of the ignorance itself. And the only time we can let ignorance go on is when we're developing that corpse like patience. I don't know, I just hear it now. It's like maybe he's making a joke. The only time you can let your corpse's ignorance go on is when it's a corpse. When you're a corpse, your body, right?

I don't know. That's silly because your ignorance doesn't stop just because your body is dead.

The next one was the jealousy. The only time we can let jealousy go on is when we're exchanging self and others. Because whose jealousy are you letting go on? The one who's jealous of you. You're letting it go on long enough to understand it well enough to do something about it. Got it?

Then pride. The only time we can let our pride go on is when we've got this full on debate where we can show somebody truth. The rest of the time don't think you can eat your mental afflictions and thrive, until we've studied chapter three, the rest of chapter two and chapter three. Then hopefully he is going to give us a little more clue.

What to Do About This

(101:40) Next, what do we do about all this?

Now take this entire poisonous mass

And bind it all together,

Taking it in as your sustenance

Just like the peacocks do—

Here's how

By binding the “me“ that chains myself

Within that state where nothing is real;

That realm of appearance and emptiness,

That world of mear illusion.

This is packed.

Before we were thinking, oh, each one of my mental afflictions I'm going to work on, and I'm going to use for my sustenance.

And here he's saying, no, roll them all together. You don't have to work on them one by one. 

Let's go deeper and see where the common theme is to all of them and work there. 

He is saying, use everything that comes to us to work with our growing understanding of the concept of appearances and emptiness. We can call it profound dependence. We can call it the marriage of karma and emptiness.

He calls it the world of mere illusion.

Our vocabulary says projections, the world of projections, or our seeds ripening.

And so commonly the texts say, just projections, merely illusion.

Take all of these poisons and roll them all together, and work on them by recognizing all of it as mere illusion. 

Every time I hear that term, mere illusion or just projection, I can feel my own mind go, oh, so they're less real. They're not as real. Just projections.

I've worked with it for years and Bet‘s beautiful book, the Emptiness Meditations, there was a little explanation in there that says, when they say just projections, the word “just“ is not modifying the word projection. I hear it that way. Just projections. 

What they mean is, everything is projections and only that. The “just“ is referring to anything else possible that something could be other than projections.

Does that make sense to you?

For me, it was like bingo. Now I can rework that „just projection“. Projections and only that, is how I say it in my mind now. Like merely illusion, is what he calls it. Merely illusion.

When you see water out there in the desert, and then you go, oh, it's just a mirage. It means that the water wasn't there. And if we say, oh, it's merely a mirage. The mirage is real. The water was not real.

The water is the “merely“. The water is merely a mirage, right? There's no water there. But the mirage is very, very real. Okay?

So when you hear “merely“ mirage, when you hear “only“ projections, when you hear “just“ projections, try to take your mind's reaction and notice it: Whoa, projections are not real. And then go, no, no projections are real and nothing but that is what the “just“ means.

He's saying,

Binding the “me“ that chains myself

Within that state where nothing is real;

So what's going to help us use all of our mental afflictions is to find the me that chains myself.What's the me that chains myself?

It is the me that I think exists as something other than the projected one, “merely“ an illusion. I don't know. My mind just did it again. The me that's merely an illusion and not real. No, the me that is the illusion is the seed ripening me. That's there in every 65th of an instant.

And “merely“ that means there's no other me than that anywhere else. Can't be, no self existent me. The me that chains myself is the me that believes there's a self existent me that's separate from the process going on.

The me that's doing the projecting, at a pretty sophisticated level of understanding where our world comes from. Well, yeah, it's my past seeds ripening. But you see, there's a me who's doing it, rather than the me that's part of it. Bing, bing, bing, bing.

When we're identifying with the me subject side that's part of that process happening, that me is changing moment by moment, 65 per moment technically. Moment by moment, by moment, by moment—so will the real you please stand up? 

Available, free, absent.

Non existent? No.

The me that chains myself is the one that doesn't understand that. And then the way we unchain ourself, is to recognize this appearing nature of me.

So many different ways to do it. My favorite is to imagine four or five different people sitting in front of me, my mother, somebody I knew in grade school, somebody I knew in college, but I don't know anymore. Somebody I know professionally, somebody I know in the dharma, and imagine aware of how they're all perceiving me.

They're all perceiving me so differently. And then there's me perceiving me, which is different than all of them. Who thinks I'm the one that knows me best.

But then it's like, no, my mother had memories of me before I have memories of me. And the school kids, they have memories of me that I don't remember doing with them. 

Then I have work related people who know me as in my professional life, but have no idea I'm a dharma teacher.

Which is the real me? The illusion, right? It shows me the illusion.

The me I thought was the me that they all knew? They even see my face straight up. I've never done that. Whoa. They know me better than I know myself.

This me is starting to get unchaIned when we can identify with that availability to be whatever anybody's perceiving at the moment.

Those are seeds for your emanation being. What's your Buddha You going to be? Your Buddha emanation bodies are going to be what anybody needs at the moment. And we're already doing that, aren't we?

Just these little ways of pulling away our belief in self existent me is what he's talking about, is how we will then be able to use our mental afflictions as sustenance. 

Because every time one comes up, it's like, well, that self existent me having that—no such thing. Gobble, swallow, the stronger we get.

Our need to protect the self existent me that we're seeing so clearly, or now that it isn't there that way, we don't have the need to protect it in that way. We don't have the need to pamper it in that way.

We do other stuff with it. We use it as a tool to create those future happinesses for everybody.

It‘s so slippery though. It's so easy to fool ourselves to think, yeah, I get self existent me and that's why I can be angry right now. Yeah, I get self existent me, and that's why I can act from my jealousy, right?

Because that's not self existent me. That's self existent me coming out fighting. You're not going to get rid of me that easily, and I'll show you why. I'll tell you you're believing in your not self existent you, and I'll get you to act from your jealousy, right?

Yay. Win for me, self existent me.

That thing that's not even existing has such power over us.

It's a belief, and it's so powerful a belief, that even when we're getting close to showing it that it isn't, it comes out stronger. It comes out stronger.

And so we're going to learn that one of the ways to help us get on top of that self existent me is by doing these practices of exchanging self and other.

The beautiful practice of exchanging self and other grows eventually to expanding self to include other. And that's a big shift in mindset to get there. So I'm hoping Geshe Michael is going to take us through that whole sequence from one to the other. It will play right into what we've been talking about, so that we can pick up there and go on after the Lam Rim program. 

All right, so I have more that I wanted to say, but I will stop here. We'll do our dedication.

[Dedication]

For the recording, we are the Heart Opening Practice of the Peacock Gobbling Poison on April 13th, 2022. Let's gather our minds here as we usually do. Please bring your attention to your breath until you hear from me again.

[Class Opening]

Review of the 5 Poisons

(7:25) Let's remember what we're doing. What are we doing?

We're studying that Lojong called the Heart Opening Practice of the Peacock Gobbling Poison, written by or at least first written down by Master Dharmarakshita, the same fellow who gave us The Wheel of Knives Lojong. Which Geshe Michael kept referring to, but he was calling that one the Peacock Lojong. Did you catch that?

So those two Lojong are related. Maybe it's chapter one, chapter two from Wheel of Knives to Peacock. I'm not sure, maybe there's a part three and four and five. I don't know. But I thought that was fun. When I first heard him say the Peacock, it was like, wow, we're studying that. And then I realized he was talking about Wheel of Knives, but who cares? It still is a great connection, wasn't it? I liked it.

So we've studied chapter one and into chapter two where he was talking about the poisons that the peacocks thrive upon rather than avoid.

Again, the peacock is the metaphor for Bodhisattvas. And the peacock isn't just able to get away with eating poison. They actually thrive on it apparently. It's what makes them beautiful.

We have also learned that a Lojong such as this one is not for beginners. None of the loj drones are for beginners, really. But this one in particular, as we go into it more deeply. I hope that you'll be able to see, oh my gosh, if I'm hearing this teaching and I'm not running away scared, I am not a beginner—whether you think you are or not. 

So just another way of thinking about these teachings and where they're really coming from.

He called the poisonous tree, and gave us these five different parts of the tree that included the ground it was sitting in, speaking to desire. And again, by desire we mean the willingness to be some kind of unkind to get, or keep, or enjoy something that we think brings pleasure. 

And so he had said that poison of desire, unless you are intentionally using desirous things in order to attract people with desire to the dharma, then any other time we're having this desire, our Bodhisattva peacock-hood would be using it. Now in that second chapter, when he first introduced this, he actually says, no, no, avoid it like the plague. But come on, avoiding things, that's not using them.

That's actually going to delay our transformation.

We could get really, really good at avoiding stuff, and that's just not really going to help our progress. It's going to help us from down spiraling probably.

That's what the Vinaya level is about. Avoid, avoid, avoid.

But that's not Bodhisattva level.

Unless we're using desire for a very specific reason to bring other people along, don't think you're using desire properly until you're the peacock using desire

Then ignorant disliking. But he goes out to fullon anger. So desire and anger. Then we know what the anger comes from—the ignorant dislike. Which we would say is the willingness to be grossly or subtly unkind in order to avoid or stop something that we find to be unpleasant.

There's a wide range of what ignorant dislike means. But at its grossest would be anger. Then he says, unless we're displaying this love, wisdom, wrathfully to protect somebody, then don't think you can use your anger. Don't think you're using your anger.

But he is going to go on to teach us how to use the anger.

The third one was the ignorance itself. Unless we're working to develop that corpse-like patience, whatever you mean by that, then we shouldn't let our ignorance go on for an instant. Well, doggone it, if we had the power to not let our ignorance go on for an instant, we'd all be enlightened by now. So, it sounds like what he's saying to do is pretty impossible. But I hope to show you that it's not, actually.

So when we use the term ignorance, sometimes they just mean wrong view. Which is ignorance, but then they mean that level at which we don't really believe strongly enough in karma and emptiness to really believe that everything is our personal responsibility.

And then, ultimately of course, ignorance is believing that things and self have their identities in them, which is what allows us to hold that extrapolation, which is, well then they're not just my karma ripening and it's not coming from my behavior. We don't use the words, „It's not that“. It's just we don't hold them to be that. And that's the ignorance. That we are holding to things and where they come from in the wrong way—not even knowing it's the wrong way until we hear the pen thing with enough grasping it to go, oh, oh, I've been misunderstanding my world since forever.

Hopefully he's going to teach us how to use our very ignorance to transform it as well. That'll be cool. 

The next one he talked about was jealousy. So jealousy we understand is being unhappy when somebody else has a little happiness of some kind, and we go, oh no, I'm not like that. But yes, I'm like that. It's hard not to if we're human.

I'm not so sure about you guys, but I'm recognizing more and more how I've denied that I've had jealousy, and just been calling it other stuff. And now that it's, I can recognize that monster. It's like, ops, there it is, ops, ops. But now I can like, I'm onto you there buddy.

He said, the only time we can let our jealousy go on is when we're exchanging self and other. Remember his explanation? When you're stepping into seeing your own jealousy coming at you, the other guy, you have to let it go on long enough to recognize how awful it is. Then you don't let it go on a moment longer than that.

Then the last one was pride, holding the good qualities that we see in ourselves are natural to us. And so we expect them to go on. We expect everybody to see them. We expect everybody to treat us accordingly.

These expectations based on “my goodness in me“, as opposed to “my goodness come about by way of the kindness I've showed to others and I need to perpetuate that“. So pride ends up with our me needs being so front and center.

None of us are blatantly selfish people. You wouldn't be in this class if you were. So we don't mean that kind of puffed up ego-centric, narcissistic pride, heaven forbid any of us have those seeds ripening. But pull that back, back, back, to the level of me first. If we're human, we all have that still. It's hard to even conceive of having an interaction without that. To me it's like, why would you even get out of bed?

But it's a misunderstanding of what it means to be a no-me-first-er.

Well, I hope we'll get there. 

Unless we're putting on that display of, he called it display of anger, but let's call it the display of haughtiness. When you're doing a really powerful debate, you're going to act arrogant and really self-confident, and you're going to be in your opponent's face to really get the point across. It's all a fake that you're just doing it to drive your point home. And then in the end it's like, wow, good job. You really push that one on and I get it now. Everybody learns something not just from the haughtiness, but from the carefulness of the debate.

All the rest of the time. Yeah, don't think we're using our pride unless… He's going to give us this unless, which is the rest of the teaching, the rest of poem.

How to Use the 5 Poisons

(19:25) So let's go to where we left off then. Up here on page four, it goes into page five.

Now take this entire poisonous mass

And bind it all together,

Taking it in as your sustenance

Just like the peacocks do—

By binding the meat“me“ that chains myself

Within that state where nothing is real;

That realm of appearance and emptiness,

That word of mirror illusion.

Go ahead!

Appear in all sorts of different ways

To the minds of others,

But never lose your mission as

Their guide within the master plan.

Embrace goodness and give up bad deeds

Even at the cost of your life;

And if pain should come, embrace it too

Willingly, for enlightenment.

He is telling us to take all of these poisons, and just lump it all together in a big poisonous mass, and use it as our sustenance. Meaning use it as our whole practice path to reaching the end of suffering for everyone.

How do we do it?

He says, by binding the “me“ that chains myself within that state where nothing is real.

He's going to help us train ourselves to be recognizing this process of seeds ripening, and the underlying empty nature of every aspect of that experience in every situation where any of those poisons are arising.

It really doesn't matter which of the mental afflictions is occurring. Their essence is that they are seed ripening, and nothing but—their emptiness. And that this training is helping us grow the mindfulness that allows us to bring that awareness of any situations‘ true nature to mind, swiftly. Because of the effect that that will have on our subsequent behavior.

Now, it's not automatic that by recalling karma and emptiness when something arises that you, oh, do something more kind. But the training of the awareness to turn our mind to karma and emptiness starts the domino effect of, oh, then I want to react differently than my automatic is making me want to react right now.

The whole thing is going to take time to develop. But once developed, it's starting a new domino process from the old one that says something pleasant, the pleasantness is in it. It's for me. I will take it, and believing that the pleasantness I feel comes from the it.

Same with something unpleasant. Same for the thinking that I get it by doing what I just did, the ignorance.

All of those five poisons have underlying them the misunderstanding that they are nothing but this appearance and emptiness happening moment by moment by moment.

So this realm of appearance and emptiness, the world of mirror illusion. Again, we hear mere illusion and we think, oh, so nothing's real. But what it means is the world of illusion and nothing other than that. That's the mere. And illusion here means it looks like it's coming from it, but it's not coming from it.

Not that it's not at all, right? Our mind hears, oh, illusion—not real. And part of our mindfulness training is to catch that mistake and go, no! Illusion means it looks like the pleasure is coming from the chocolate cake, but it's not. It's coming from kindness in the past. It's ripening now as yummy chocolate cake.

It's a subtle but important difference, because of what we'll decide we'll do with the chocolate cake. We would ordinarily just gobble it up, and enjoy it, and it'll leave us wanting for more, maybe. Or we offer it and then gobble it up. Or we cut it in half and we share it with somebody else. That no one behavior is always correct, always on a given situation. How do we perpetuate pleasantness and end unpleasantness?

(27:04) How do we start using these poisons? How do we transform them?

He says, by binding the me that chains myself.

What does he mean by the me that chains myself?

He means the me that we're holding to as a self existent me. Meaning a me that exists as some kind of entity being that's independent of what's going on. In the sense that the me, that's not part of the projections happening.

Well, we can't understand that that's the me we're holding to, until we understand something about projections happening. That's how slippery a self existent me is. Until we are taught the true nature of me, we don't recognize that the old belief in the nature of me that there was anything wrong with it. Because we don't think, oh, self existent me. I'm not part of my projections. Until we know about projections.

So the self existent me, the me that is the one that things happen to, is the me who does things to other things. That me that we think has its own nature, its own identity in it, coming from it. That is the me that chains myself. Because that belief in the self existent me that that other things are coming at, is the me that needs protecting. It's the me that needs taken care of. It's the me that deserves stuff. It's the me that gets angry when things don't go my way.

So that me, that self existent me, chains myself in Samsara.

When you hear the term chain, think Samsara.

They don't use the term chain when you get chained to paradise. Chain is a clue. We're talking about the cycle of pain.

But we want to take that very me, binding the me that chains myself, within the state where nothing is real. So we're wanting to take that self existent me, and bind it to emptiness and dependent origination.

What happens when you do that?

Who's going to win out when you compare self existent me to true nature me?

We hear, the truth is stronger than the lie. Lack of self existent me is what will show up when we bind our self existent me within the state where nothing is real, within the realm of appearance and emptiness. Because we see that self existent me that we're holding onto so strongly, actually is nothing but a belief. There's no real self existent me there. It never has been. It's always been a belief.

So when we can find it, the self existent me, and we can put it in front of the mirror of appearance and emptiness, meaning seeds ripening and nothing but, meaning dependent origination and ultimate nature, meaning profound dependence. Like all these different ways of describing. 

When you put that self existent me in front of that mirror of wisdom, and you look in the mirror, there is no reflection there. Because there is no self existent me in front of the mirror. There's just a belief and nothing but a belief.

So this is the clue to transforming everything into our path to the end of suffering for everybody. Because the self existent me belief is like inside every seed ripening. Because it's been inside every seed that's been planted, and so it's the common denominator in all 84,000 mental afflictions.

When we talk about the three spheres of any experience, we have the experiencer—the me, we have the object of experience—the other, whether it's an inanimate thing or an inanimate, we have the interaction between—which has a whole bunch within it. The task of recognizing emptiness and dependent origination in the three spheres is to check out each group of things in each one of those three spheres to see where they're really coming from. And so we can find all the emptiness of the object, the emptiness of the interaction between, but always there's the subject side. We find the emptiness of the subject side.

The other two have to be empty, because it's the subject side projecting those others. So typical in our training is, work on the object. Learn about the pen. Take it to the husband in the kitchen. But where the practice progress escalates is taking it to our self existent me, finding that one, repeatedly. Every time we're upset, or happy, or neutral, or waking, or sleeping, or any moment. He's going to say, take that self existent me and bind it to its true nature, appearance and emptiness, and you'll have the real me.

So to not have a self existent me does not mean there's no me at all.

Our mind automatically goes there. You're saying there's no me? No, I'm not saying that at all.

It‘s a difficult practice until we're familiar with what it is to remove something that we thought was there that's not there. To be able to do that for our own self on a regular basis, on and off the cushion. But he's going to coach us. He's going to coach us. Not specifically, but how to apply it as we go through life. If I ever get off this verse and teach you the rest of them.

(Luisa) I think I am missing some point here that you had help me out to understand better with them. When I believe in the self existent me, then I think I deserve something. I think or I get angry because things don't go my way. And this there I am missing the logic behind. Like why, if I think of a self existent me then… or the other way around, if I will not have that, then I will not think I deserve things, or I will not think things are not going according to what I think. I'm missing this true self that we talk about. Then is what? Then we all have the same true self that is just emptiness, this pure potential to be something, but then we are all the same. Then who is me? I don't know. Sorry, I don't know.

(Lama Sarahni) Right, right, right. So the emptiness of me and the emptiness of you are different emptinesses. They are identical, but they are not one and the same.

When we identify ourselves with not self existent me, it means we are identifying with ripening projections‘ me. Which means we automatically understand that whatever else is part of that projection, is a ripening and a passing. And we automatically know then the behavior that I do creates my future experience. And so at that level of wisdom, although things will still go wrong, the response to the go wrong will be completely different than when we still have the self existent me that's offended by the go wrong, or the irritated by the go wrong. Because the irritation and the offense of et cetera, that's part of the projection happening. Our response to things is what changes.

And actually we get to a point where we'll recognize we're making progress on our path when we have this experience of some event happens that we were startled to find that that old emotion didn't come up. I don't know, I use a really simple one. It used to just irritate the heck of me every time I slipped on a rock and had to catch myself, because it would hurt. My body hurt all the time. And to do that would just make it hurt more. And then 20 years of working with this stuff, I realized now I can slip on a rock, and I don't get that ew. It still is uncomfortable, it still is annoying, but I don't get that ew anymore. And when I realized that, it's like, whoa, I'm making progress. Just a little mental affliction that used to be so habitual, I hardly noticed it, and now it doesn't even register.

If we are thinking, oh, my practice of the dharma is going to make my life beautiful and nothing will ever go wrong, you're either way ahead of me on this practice, not that I'm so far, or we're misunderstanding. We're having a wrong expectation of what it means to beyond the Bodhisattva path. We'll get there. I hope I'll get there.

Lama Christie had explained, if we have this belief, I'm a jealous person. If we have this belief, oh, I'm a jealous person, then when we're in a situation and the jealousy arises, that jealousy arising is a result of our belief „I'm a jealous person“. Because what's arising is just a feeling, some kind of physical emotional sensation.

And then our belief, our seeds of belief go, oh, jealousy. And then the next domino is, this is what I do when I'm jealous, thinking it's the right thing, and it's been perpetuated.

What if you didn't have that belief, or you were doubting the belief „I'm a jealous person“? That situation would arise. The feeling would arise, and you'd be able to go, Hey, wait, that's just a feeling. That's just a sensation. It doesn't have to be jealousy, right?

We can separate the belief „I'm jealous“ from this is just a situation, a feeling in response to a situation.

Now what do I want to do with it?

Maybe the domino will still fall and you behave jealously. But you've planted a different seed by the little bit of doubt in one's self as a jealous person, of that jealousy and the feeling having to be tied together.

Oh, it's just a sensation. I can use this sensation in a different way. Let's see how that works. And explore and experiment it.

(42:06) He's going to say later, when we start to actually do this work with our belief in a self existent me and doubt it enough to change our behavior, he's going to say, 10 billion warring demon hordes may rise up as your enemy. But he'll say the real terror is in thinking me, me. That that's scarier than 10 billion demon hordes coming at you. We'll see. We'll see if that's true, right?

Me, self existent me, is like THE scariest thing. When we catch onto that, maybe we can finally get a hold of that creature.

It's so slippery, because there's no such thing. So how do you get a hold of this thing that's not… If it were easy, we'd all have done it before.

(Roxana) Just wanted to share. I remember when I was growing up, I was a teenager Lama Sarahni, and it was the first time that I can recall feeling jealousy. It felt awful. And I remember that it felt so bad that I started thinking of a way of not feeling that sensation again. And I remember because it's been with me all along, I said, oh Roxana, what you're feeling right now means that you're putting yourself down in such a way of feeling jealous because of something that you're unworthy of or I don't… I exactly don't recall the situation, but I said, if that's the sensation of you feeling, it's not worth it, it's not worth it. So don't ever let that feeling come back again.

But I remember that was the first time that experience. I was very young and I've never been jealous towards my husband. I don't know, like people go, why are you? What are you doing? No, I go, no, I don't want to feel bad. It's awful.

(Lama Sarahni) Yeah, good. I think many of us, yeah, it's like we've all been doing this path before, no doubt, or we wouldn't be here. And it's sweet to hear that those seeds were ripening for you very young, and now you're putting them into context, right? So yeah, that's a nice rejoicable.

(Roxana) Thank you. You're making it easier for me.

(Lama Sarahni) Let's go on here.

(45:40) We said this one,

Go ahead!

Appear in all different sorts of different ways

To the minds of others,

But never lose your mission as

Their guide within the master plan.

Embrace goodness and give up bad deeds

Even at the cost of your life;

And if pain should come, embrace it too

Willingly, for enlightenment.

He's referring here to what he had said in the previous verses about the poisons.

If you're using desire to attract people with desire, and if you… all of those different exceptions to the rule, he says, yeah, go ahead and appear that way to people. But be careful that you're not fooling yourself. That the mission is to guide those others to their total enlightenment.

If you are using bringing cookies to class so that you can have cookies, and you're saying, oh no, I'm going to bring cookies to class so that I can attract people who like cookies, when really I just want a chance to eat cookies. He's saying, come on.

But it's really slippery. It's very slippery, especially in the Diamond Way.

Oh, I love to sing and dance. So if I sing and dance, I break my nun's vows. But as a Tantrika, I can sing and dance when I'm supposed to, actually. And I just make it as an offering. So I'll go find places where people are having parties so that I can go sing and dance, and I'll say I'm being the angel offering. Versus, I like to sing and dance. There are other people that like to sing and dance too. I'll hold the party, so they can sing and dance, and I'll interact with them in such a way that I'll have a connection with them so that someday I'll bring them to their total enlightenment. And I do get to sing and dance, and I do get to enjoy it.

It seems very subtle, different, and it's like, can I really be sure that I'm holding the party for their benefit, and not just using it as a reason?

I don't have an answer to that. Who's listening? Who's watching?

Our own mind.

That's what he's talking about. Holding everything up for the benefit of others, bringing them to their ultimate happiness is really our own protection from fooling ourselves into thinking we can get away with using our mental afflictions.

He says, embrace goodness. Give up bad deeds even at the cost of your life.

He reminds us here. Because again, we could fool ourselves into thinking, oh, this taking everything into its emptiness and appearance level, its illusion nature. That means nothing's really a bad deed. Nothing's really a good deed. So I can cut some corners here.

And he's saying, no, no, there is no shortcut. Purify and make merit, is true, right up to total Buddhahood. And then at that point it's make merit. Make merit. It's not like we stop perpetuating merit once we're fully enlightened beings. It's just now spontaneous and effortless. But it still has to be done even at the cost of our life. And if pain should come, embrace it too willingly for enlightenment.

Let‘s go on.

(50:14)

You may be learned in many things,

But unless you learn to look beyond

Your own comfort and happiness,

You run the risk of immersing yourself

In desirous and angry behavior.

Swept a babe away by self interest.

So beat up your own wants out of town

Just like you a dog, or thief.

Some great Lama, I don't know who, said something like,

All of those who are masters now suffered in their student years.

And that if you want to be comfortable, you will never become a master.

If you crave small pleasures, you will never reach the highest bliss.

So again, we hear, oh, the blissful path to bliss. Buddhism is all about reaching that everything is pleasurable. And it is true that that is what it's about. But unless when we start our path, we're already very advanced on our path, it's not true that everything's going to be pleasurable as we make progress on our path.

If we hold our comfort and happiness now as a beacon of our practice progress, we're going to get stalled out.

If we have a period in life where everything's going great, we are likely to get complacent. And then when it shifts, we'll be right back where we were before.

He says, if we are still holding our own comfort and happiness as our goal, then we're just going to stay in desirous and angry behavior.

Maybe we're being a little bit wiser, but it won't be enough.

So he says that self-interest will take hold. So you want to get rid of it. Like running a dog out of town, running a thief out of town.

I don't know that we would run a dog out of town, would we?

(54:15)

You may sit at the feet of the wise

Relying on them for guidance,

But unless you work to sharpen your mind

In the textual tradition,

You'll run the risk of embellishing

Or discounting what these wise ones say.

Thus, you should become well-versed

In every different subject.

Those terms, embellishing or discounting, we've learned those. It's the DRO DOK and KERN DEP, and which I always get confused which ones.

Embellishing means we're thinking something is there that isn't.

And discounting means we are saying something's not there when there is.

It refers to the two cliffs of when we hear, oh, things look like they're coming from their own side, but they're not. We run the risk of discounting if we think they're not there. So they're not there at all.

And when we say, oh, they are there by way of my projections, letting that flop into, there is some way that they are still there from their own side. Which will take us all the way through all the different schools of karma and emptiness. When we're still holding that, there's something pen-ish in our friend the pen, something.

We can have a teacher and be so devoted to the teacher that we believe everything that they say. But he's saying, come on, sharpen your mind. Learn what's in the tradition so that you don't run the risk of misunderstanding what they teach in such a way that would allow us to either embellish or discount. Meaning when we share it with others, we would be either making more there than is really there, or taking away from what is there.

So he's using this embellishing and discounting in a little different way. But implying the traditional, the textual meaning of those two, which is about the two sides, staying in the middle way instead.

(57:25)

You may be suffering night and day,

But unless you stop to think about

The all-pervasive problem

Of this spinning wheel of pain,

You run the risk of continuing

To engage in the cause for pain.

Thus let karmic repercussions

Strike you to the core.

In this verse, he's reminding us to check our level of renunciation.

If you remember Je Tsongkapa, how do you know when you have renunciation? When we think both day and night of achieving freedom. Remember that?

So he's wanting, he is talking to practitioners who are at the level to receive a Lojong, very, very sophisticated and high level practitioners. And he's wanting us to be careful not to forget to go back and check on our renunciation from time to time.

When we do, we actually see that renunciation means more and more subtle things as our practice grows.

It goes from renunciatIng material things, or relationships, or job opportunities, down to really the renunciation of our very ignorance.

But there's all kinds of layers in between, and so it's useful to not think, oh, I've got my renunciation. I'm going to leave it and go on.

But to go back and pull it up, regularly. So that we really are clear that day by day, moment by moment, this spinning wheel of Samsara is nothing but pain. The three kinds of pain we know. So this is a little Lam Rim, isn't it? For the beginning and middle level practitioners.

We run the risk of continuing to engage in the cause for pain. So let karmic repercussions strike you to the core.

Reach that level of awareness where everything's karmic ripenings, everything. Good, bad, neutral, sleeping, waking, everything.

It's actually liberating when we get there.

At first it's terrifying, because we feel so at risk and out of control, and vulnerable. But that's the point of this Lojong, is how to shift our reaction to those karmic repercussions.

Lama Christie was talking all through this, always coming back to the self existent me, who is the real enemy that we're trying to destroy our belief in that creature.

She says again and again, that as we're getting close to cracking that belief, that's such a powerful goodness. It requires so much goodness, let's put it that way, that it stirs the pot of our negative seeds, and that difficult things happen to us.

She says again and again, it's an honor to be working so hard at our growing wisdom that life seems to take a reverse trajectory. Things get worse, we get sick, we have losses, we have struggles. All hell breaks loose, everything goes wrong.

It seems like for Lama Christie, to me I didn't see that in her practice that everything was going wrong at the point where she was teaching us this. But fast forward a couple of years, and it's like, oh, I see, I see.

And then fast forward my own life a couple of years and, oh, I see again.

It‘s an attitude shift, because it could be, oh my gosh, my practice isn't good enough. It must be so bad that all this bad stuff is happening. As opposed to, No, it's a sign of progress.

Is it either one from its own side? No.

Which is why it's so important to be able to hold my response.

Maybe the automatic response is still, what else can I do in my practice to shift this?

I try it, and it doesn't work. I try another, and it doesn't work.

Even when I'm trying karmically, and it doesn't work, and it doesn't work.

It's natural to start to doubt. This teaching says, no, it's natural for it not to work.

The goodness of trying is stirring up those obstacles to it even working.

She says, when we get in a situation like that, our opportunity is to be able to surrender to the process.

We understand, what I do plants seeds in my mind. Those seeds are going to ripen in some future time. I know there's this gap. My task is to keep planting, keep planting, keep planting, keep planting. I'm doing that. I'm doing that. How much longer is it going to take? Oh my gosh, I can't stand it. I don't think I can keep it up.

And it's because that state of mind is focused on the results instead of on the planting.

When I'm focused on the planting, because I know the process is true, all I need to do is plant, and let go the result. That's what she means by surrender.

You surrender to other people's needs. We surrender to the Lama. We surrender. Really, it's surrendering the expectation of the result.

But it's the result that we want that makes us do the deed, isn't it?

So yeah, we surrender, but we don't lose sight. We are motivated by making results. But our focus, our blinders should keep us in the… not should, can keep us in the plant, plant, plant mode colored with our belief in the process, our devotion to the process, born of some big or little experience in which we've proved to ourselves the truth of the problem.

How many times do you need to prove to yourself that it's true about seeds, before you don't need to keep looking for proof. And everybody needs to find that for themselves. Once we have it, that's the point in which we can say, okay, I surrender to the process. The process of planting seeds, doing for others what it is I want to see for myself, and letting go of when it actually comes for myself. Just continuing to plant, plant, plant.

Lama says, from that perspective, this surrendering to being in the process, we won't even recognize it, but amazing things will be happening.

She says, we don't see them, because of this constant worry about, what about me?

It's in there. Even though we may reach the point where, oh, I really understand about karmic seeds, karmic seeds, karmic seeds. There is still, but what about me inside? And it's going to keep dragging us out of the space of just plant, plant mode. Because it's going to say, yeah, but when am I going to get mine? When that person, they aren't really worth it. Yeah, I can plant, plant, plant, but they're just playing nasty. 

It's hard, very hard to hold.

She says, we immerse ourselves in, this is what I want. So I help others get what they want. I plant the seeds to get what I want. That is the process, she says. Right?

But technically, to use that process means we say, what seeds do I need to make to get what I want? What seeds do I need to stop making to stop getting what I don't want?

He says, really, what we would be asking ourselves is what seeds do I need to make to get Luisa what she wants? What seeds do I need to stop making to get Luisa to Buddhahood?

It's radical and it's hard.

It's one thing to learn to plant seeds for me. It's another to learn to plant seeds for everybody else for their happiness. But what seeds are really going to bring us happiness?

What seeds can I make that will help you be happy?

You see the difference?

It's a whole different level of four stepping. And we should probably have a workshop to figure out how to really do that. Because it's not obvious to me either.

How do I plant the seeds? I want to plant seeds for David to reach his enlightenment. 

We have the seeds to hear it, because we've been saying, I'm going to go for Buddhahood so I can bring all beans to total enlightenment. That's been planting the seeds to be able to plant the seeds to do it.

So now we hear it said, maybe for the first time, I'd heard it before, but I didn't register, until I was writing out these notes to share, and it's like, oh my God, I heard that and it just went woo over my head.

How do I four step to help you to reach Buddhahood?

So forget my Buddhahood. I'm going to four steps for you guys. Actually, I have been doing that.

So you can see where exchanging self and others comes in. This is another level of exchanging self and other practice, isn't it? It's pretty awesome. 

(Roxana) Thank you for answering my question this morning. Well, I get up very early to go and walk with Mario. But as I was walking towards the house, I started thinking, oh Roxana, your practice is to do yoga instead of going out with your husband, and so early in the morning. Oh Roxanna, but you have a husband and the rest of the people do not have a husband, and they can take yoga whenever they feel like it. So sometimes for me it's difficult, because I want to do more, but I do have a family to take care of and I'm always busy with home issues with so many other things. So thank you for answering. Thank you.

(Lama Sarahni) Let's take a break. I'm sorry. I yakked right through your break time. We'll finish this chapter.

(73:46) 

That's how it is, and you must admit

You do not want these pains.

So use the force that kills off

Any grasping to a self.

Ten billion warring demon hordes

May rise up as your enemy,

But the real terror of thinking: „me“

Is what you must eliminate.

I talked about that one already.

You might even slide to a lower birth

In service of another,

But in your heart you should take joy

 Without an inkling of regret.

The Butcher who comes to take your life

May rip apart your body,

And still you mustn't be led by

What benefits yourself.

Sure we must bear the negative deeds

Of every living being,

But after we take on what's ours to bear

Our need for praise should fade away.

Sure, your body may be stricken

With a contagious disease,

But since you are the one to blame

Don't bother to try a deluded approach.

So he's giving us little clues as to what it will be like as we are living more in the plant mode, intentionally plant mode. He says, our need for praise is going to fade away. So we're not going to need people to notice. We've talked about that in other contexts. You maybe will get disease, but you'll know where it came from, and you'll know too what to do to get it taken care of.

Old way, you know may or may not work. New way is you load the medicine.

He's just saying, you'll change how you choose to respond to situations, and you'll notice changes in yourself as well.

It is like this my friend—

If nothing that you didn't want

Should ever fall upon you,

It will be impossible

For what you want to manifest.

When the wise have finished,

Everything they didn't want

Becomes the source of all they want;

So take it on with pleasure.

That's a good one. That's the one I was looking for all through class.

If nothing that you didn't want

Should ever fall upon you,

It will be impossible

For what you want to manifest.

Do you agree?

If nothing that you didn't want

Should ever fall upon you

Meaning if you ever get to the point where nothing bad ever happens. He said it would be impossible for us to manifest what we want.

What is it we really want?

I want your Buddhahood. I want my Buddhahood. I want the end of all suffering for everybody.

I want nothing that anyone doesn't want to happen to everybody.

Is he saying, well, don't wish for that, because if that ever happens, then you're not going to bring everybody to Buddhahood. Is that what he's saying?

It's pretty cryptic. But he gives us a clue to what he's trying to tell us. Because “when the wise have finished“, meaning when someone on their path actually makes the transition to their total totally enlightened being, everything they don't want is the source of all they want.

But wait, when you're an enlightened being, you never have anything that you don't want. But to get there, you had to use everything that you didn't want in order to reach this state of being where nothing but what you want happens, meaning good things. For a fully enlightened being, there's only bliss, and more bliss.

Well, you can't say more, because it's always all. But bliss perpetuated.

But there isn't any bliss perpetuated, let alone any pleasure at all, that didn't come from taking some unpleasant situation, and not responding to it in a way that would perpetuate it.

So it means taking a situation that was a result of unkindness, and responding to it with kindness. Now, is there anything that you don't want that could happen to you that would not be an opportunity to create Buddhahood for everybody?

No.

So then, if everything, even unpleasant things, are your tool for reaching Buddhahood for everybody, are unpleasant things actually bad things? No.

Are they unpleasant? Yes.

Are they bad? No.

Are they bad? No.

Are they unpleasant? Yes.

Does that mean we have to act badly because they're unpleasant? No.

Do we have to dislike them, because they're unpleasant? No.

What if we don't dislike bad things that happen to us? Who's going to call them bad? 

(Val) I have a question about what you said about taking a negative situation that came from you being unkind and responding with kindness. So what if in the negative situation people are actually committing serious harm against you, or other people, or committing crimes, or basically doing things that are really bad for them? How do you know that you're being kind to them? Because you may respond really harshly, or report them to the police, or get them in trouble in some way. So what would really be considered a kindness, when the level of deed seems so severe, at least from your side. You see them causing serious harm to yourself and to others?

(Lama Sarahni) What we have to say, it's my motivation and state of mind as I'm doing my response to them. It's like, to what extent do we have to have a good motivation and wise state of mind? Does it have to be sustained through the whole interaction with them for my reporting them to the police, and getting them thrown in jail, so that they can get the help that they need, to be a good deed?

Or is it set it up at the beginning, and then act, and then the dominoes of selfishness build up to where by the time they're thrown in jail, I'm back to meaning they deserve it. It's not an all or nothing thing. The extent to which we hold our worldview in our motivation as we interact, and as we revisit in our memory the situation, all of that has an impact on how those seeds will ripen in the future.

So even an instant of high world view in any part of an interaction with another is better than no instant of high world view. And then the more of it we can hold, the more of it we can use it to guide our next interaction.

The seeds are planted for that. And maybe we could say maybe the closer we get to our Buddhahood, but that wouldn't exactly be right either.

But the more wisdom planted, the better, for everybody. Let's put it that way.

But it's not an all or nothing thing at all. Thank goodness, right? Or we'd never get there.

(Roxana) I'm going to be talking about what goes through my mind. I mean, I know everything about, not everything, but I am very familiar with seeds and planting seeds. But sometimes the motivation, it's not always present. I'm very aware of my adding virtuously actions and non virtuous. So I'm very aware of so many things, but how can I cook motivation, the right motivation into more instance of my daily life? I mean, because as you're saying, a lot of worldviews there.

(Lama Sarahni) Right. So, to just be aware, I'm doing my to plant my seeds. That's a really great motivation right there. And then the task would be to tie that with another mental sentence. Which would be, I don't know, you could choose what level you wanted to work at. You could say, because I'm growing my HLAKSAM NAMDAK, my understanding it's all my seeds, and so I am personally responsible, and so that's why I'm planting these seeds in this way.

Or you could use your term Bodhichitta, that you've been packing with meaning. You can say, I am planting my seeds because of Bodhichitta. If that will have meaning for you. Or you could pack it with, for everybody's highest in their best, or for everybody's Buddhahood. You use some method to train yourself to be in this awareness of seed planting mode. You now take the next step and train the next piece. And of course, your efforts may or may not work, depending on whether they're loaded. So maybe there's somebody else who's wanting to increase their awareness of their motivation. 

How do you help someone else increase their awareness of motivation, whether it's a Buddhist one or not, right? Doesn't have to be the same motivation. Just someone who's wanting to train themselves in a new habit. Help them do it. Rejoice in the ways you've already helped others do it. And then load your own. Load your own seeds with that.

(88:18)

Unless we don the armor

Of a mighty warrior saint,

By willingly taking it on ourselves

And practicing the opposite,

It would be impossible

For any cyclic being

To find any happiness at all.

So take all that I dread the most

And bring it on! I'm ready!

Here he is saying, if you've had any happiness at all, it's because in the past you did this taking on some kind of unpleasantness, and did the opposite reaction.

No happiness comes to us without having tried to give happiness to another. We know that.

All this is found in the life stories

Of the mighty Able One

Teachings, which you holy ones

Should seek to emulate.

Go, live the life of a Warrior Saint.

Here ends the second chapter on

Living off the poison.

He's just reminding us that he's not making this stuff up. He's taking it from Shakyamuni Buddha‘s past life stories, meaning the teachings that he's given, and encouraging us to do the same.

All right, let's go on to chapter three.

Chapter 3 Battling The Dark Side

As the peacock wanders

Through a grove of deadly plants…

I bow down to the Holy One,

The Slayer of the Lord of Death!

Anyone with any sense

Should spend six times a day

Delving into and exploring

The whole big mess of the cycle of pain

And all its various troubles.

This, in turn, incites great fear,

Inspiring us to take and keep

The vows of individual freedom.

He's going back again to the Lam Rim. He touched on it before, renunciation, the three sufferings and karmic repercussions. Now he's saying, look regularly, six times a day. Look at this cycle of pain.

You want to weigh to set your motivation. Check six times a day. What's this Samsara doing? Eh gads, my motivation just cranked up.

He says „incites great fear“. Remember the definition of refuge?

When out of fear, we spontaneously go for protection. I can't remember the word. But the fear is supposed to trigger in us, not like he's telling us to go, ah, I'm all scared. No, it's reminding us of refuge, the basis of refuge.

Then from refuge, what really is our refuge, is having what Buddha teaches guidance for our behavior. There's nothing in the dharma that if we just read it and say it, or look at it, will stop our pain or suffering. It takes behavior change to stop our pain or suffering.

But does that behavior change stop it in the moment? No.

But does it stop it? Yes.

We could say, eventually. But actually, not eventually.

So he says, take the vows of individual freedom. And we know those. The five lifetime layperson vows, or the ordained vows, or the one time 24 hour vows.

Let's go on. I want to get into this a little further.

Once we place our hopes in vows

To ensure our own freedom,

Decide that all these wandering beings

Are your own fathers and mothers.

And then, for them, take on the Wish

And pledge to lead a Warrior's life.

So he's just moved us from the listener's vehicle to the Mahayana.

We've placed our hopes in vows for our own freedom. And then we come to see, wait a minute, I can reach Nirvana and others are still suffering? That's not acceptable. 

But then, beside the wandering beings, our own mothers and fathers, take on the Wish. This is alluding to that 7 step cause and effect method for developing Bodhichitta. Remember?

That leads us to that HLAKSAM NAMDAK. Oh my gosh. It is my personal responsibility to repay those beings who have been so kind to me that I have a human life, that I've made it to this.

And we take on our wish in the form of a prayer, and then our wish in the form of action, taking our pledges and vows, our Bodhisattva vows to practice the six perfections, the six perfectionizers.

(95:11)

Once with thoughts of love, we place

Our hopes into this Wish and pledge,

Then even when the suffering comes

Within our own samsaric forest,

We don't dwell on the pain at all

Because we've placed our hopes in

Hardship, for the sake of others,

Even should it cost our life.

Did we know when we were taking our Bodhisattva vows, that we were placing our hopes in hardship? I think that was the small print. I thought I was putting my hopes in bliss, right? In pleasure.

But he's been explaining, the bigger our heart grows, those selfishness seeds are going to come out. Past selfishness planting seeds of our samsaric forest, it's going to continue to ripen.

But our wish and our pledge to reach total enlightenment for the sake of all sentient beings and all that that means, it's so rich, that it sounds awful to say, but the more suffering that comes, the better. Because we're burning it off. We're burning it off. We're burning it off, and not perpetuating it.

Now, he's not saying that we should then go and hurt ourselves to make the suffering come. Not at all. But we work so hard to avoid our own discomfort, and we're just delaying our own bliss, and the bliss of every being by doing so. Because we're misunderstanding how useful those hardships actually are. So difficult when we're in the middle of them, isn't it?

Which is why it's so useful to have classes like this regularly to remind ourselves.

It's like, oh, I was moaning all day about a building. We went to this building, we had this appointment with a professional, and the whole building, the air conditioning was fragranced. So you walk in the hallway of the building, and it's like this perfume. You get in the elevator, perfume. You get in their office, perfume.

I had my mask on and everything, but it's like I was blaming all of them for putting perfume in the air conditioning. Why would they do that? Them? Did I think of my own sex past misconduct? No, because in this lifetime I don't have any, but there it is. In that whole building, I was just bitching and moaning to myself, fortunately not to everybody else. But it's like I missed this whole opportunity in that hour or so, that I was in the perfumed building. Crazy, because I forgot that I'd taken on hardship for the sake of others. Nuts. Missed opportunity.

Here‘s a great one:

At this point, if you find yourself

Becoming overwhelmed

By the countless beings acting badly

And endless harmful practices,

Investigate their true nature:

They are as lifeless

As a dream, or an illusion—

Sink into that realm of thusness.

Somebody needs to help me with this one.

(Stevie) My favorite thing to do as of late is when I find myself facing a difficult person, I say to myself in my head, what would help me if I were that person?

(Lama Sarahni) Nice.

(Stevie) And I think that that's what that's saying. And I've had a moment, not a lot of them, where it has been truly, the suffering hasn't hurt.

(Lama Sarahni) Yes. Yes. Good, good.

That's a huge experience, to be able to recognize that you can have something unpleasant and not suffer from it. It only has to happen a couple of times before it's like, oh man.

(Stevie) And to feel like you really helped them. I mean, you really do help them when you figure out what I would want in that situation. It's very rewarding.

(Lama Sarahni) Yeah. I agree. I agree. That's a beautiful example. 

(101:25) Yeah. It sounds like he's saying, oh, just see the emptiness of them. And it's not at all. Because that's not useful, because the emptiness of them is not that they're not there. It's not that they're not suffering.

The emptiness of them is, it looks like their suffering is coming from da da da. But really, it's my seed's ripening, making them suffer in the way that I see. And whatever their seeds are ripening, I don't know. So can I do for them what it seems to me they would want me to do for them? But what if what they want is a big bottle of vodka? Is that really what they want?

(Stevie) But that would be breaking my vow. That's where the guardrails are.

(Lama Sarahni) Right. Exactly.

(Stevie) That's the bumper pads.

(Lama Sarahni) Right. And so if what they want is a big bottle of vodka, but what they really want is some comfort, don't they? Some relief of their distress.

(Stevie) They want connection. Addicted people want to feel connected. If they want a big bottle of vodka. Let's talk about it.

(Lama Sarahni) Let's just talk. Really, let's sit down and talk. Can I get you a meal? And let's have a chat. Right.

So it may not be the obvious what they want, but we certainly as humans can be aware of what another human really wants in a deeper situation. Because…

(Stevie) …it is what I would want. It's what I would want in that situation.

(Lama Sarahni) Exactly. Exactly. Nice. Good.

So they're not dream beings. They are not lifeless. They are not illusory.

But the whole situation that's going on is ripening my seeds. They are empty. I want to help them. I want to see myself trying to help. Beautiful. Nice interpretation. Thank you. 

Whenever this formless unreal

Starts to manifest itself,

Extraordinary courage comes:

We don't dwell at all

On the things that inspire terror,

For we don't see anything at all.

It should come automatically,

And solely for another's sake.

These are getting cryptic and difficult.

The formless unreal starts to manifest itself, meaning there will come a point where our awareness, not direct, but our awareness of anything that's appearing to us is in fact this projected reality. The empty natures and appearing natures is this process happening. Itt makes us aware of this ‘me holding pen‘ as a projected experience and nothing but.

He's saying, when we are reaching that point where we have this knowingness that that's what's going on. Not us seeing it directly, but really a high intellectual understanding that that's what's happening moment by moment. He is saying, extraordinary courage arises. And it's like, come on. That wisdom doesn't self existently makes us courageous. But because of what we have to be understanding about where those projections came from, my behavior. That means my current behavior is going to create future experience. That domino effect. It's not happening in mental words, but it's happening in response.

The courage is that, okay, it doesn't matter the pleasant or unpleasant ripening at the moment. How I respond is what matters. And then he goes on to say, that at the level of the Bodhisattva, the how I respond is that matters, that's colored with my response for the other's benefit.

So the courage comes from understanding the thing about seeds in my behavior, and then in a Bodhisattva mind, what automatically arises next is ‘for their benefit‘, for another's sake.

Lama Christie used to say, we're doing difficult practices. It was tough going to Diamond Mountain for five weeks, three times a year, and staying there was hard. And it's a harsh environment, and it was hard. And it was hard. And she would keep saying, when you're starting to wallow in your own difficulty, pull up in your mind someone you know who wanted to get there and couldn't. Or someone you love who doesn't even have karma and emptiness on their radar screen, from our side. Or somebody who's too sick to practice, and do it for them.

We say, oh, I'm doing it for all sentient beings. And that bigness is critical. But we'll reach a bar. We'll reach a level that it's gotten too hard for me, and the ‘all sentient beings‘ isn't immediate enough.

And Lama Christie would say, well then do it for your aunt Jean.

Do it for your cat. Do it for your grand baby, who can't do it for themselves yet.

Do it for somebody specific.

And it doesn't make sense to do it for them if we don't already understand the karmic seeds and the connections in our own behavior, and et cetera. But it can help us get over that barrier of, No, no, this is just too much. If we say no, but my aunt Jean can't do it. She's not even in this tradition. Right? She's nowhere close, or she's too sick, or she's too old. I'll do it for her.

Can we do it for her?

It would make a great debate.

Because yes, we're doing it for her.

Does she know it? I don't know. Worldly wise, no.

Does that mean it's not working? No.

If I do it only for me, is it going to help her? No.

If I do it only for me, is it going to help me? No.

We have to do it for somebody else for it to help us.

(110:26) Let's go on.

Once you choose to take on

The burden of these practices,

The dark side just can't stand it!

And should a big black cloud of demons

Gather ‘round to block you,

Dispel them with the breadth of mantra

Straight into the void.

This is exactly where I wanted to get at the end of class. Thank you everybody. It was perfect.

Once you choose to take on

The burden of these practices,

The dark side just can't stand it!

So the burden of these practices means how do I plant my seeds to get them fully enlightened?

How do I plant my seeds to get them everything they want?

How do I plant my seeds?

How do I stop planting seeds to get them to their total happiness, whether I like them or not, whether they're close to me or not, whether I think they deserve it or not, et cetera.

When we really are on this path to bring them to their happiness, I don't care what happens to me. I'm going to bring them to happiness. The dark side can't stand it. 

What's the dark side?

(Stevie) Our mental afflictions, the believe in self existence of ourselves.

(Lama Sarahni) Right. Self existent me and self existent other. And the self cherishing that comes, selfishness. Self existent me, self existent other, and my selfness can't stand it.

Self existent me doesn't want any part of bringing you to your total enlightenment, no matter what happens to me. Self existent me says, you've got to be kidding.

Certainly you can't do that. Certainly you are not. Certainly that doesn't work. Certainly you have to take care of yourself first. Certainly you have to get enlightened first before you can take anybody else there, right?

If verge is on this great discussion, wait a minute, that's what they say. Buddha taught that. Right? He did. But we're maybe not understanding it exactly the way he was when he said that. We'll investigate it later.

So a big black cloud of demons gather around you and block you.

I don't think in our American culture, we believe much in demons. I mean, I don't think I even knew the word until I met Tibetan Buddhism. I'd heard it, but there are very real phenomenon in the Tibetan culture, maybe other cultures as well. These demons. We'll go into it in greater detail about these demons. Are there such things? Can they really block us? Can they have influence on us? Are they separate from us? Are they something that's not my projection?

No, they are my projections.

Oh, so they're not real.

Because they are my projections, they are very real. And they can have very terrible impact on ourselves and others.

What do we do with that?

He is going to say, I give it away. In the next verse he says,

Dispel them with the breath of mantra

Straight into the void.

It sounds like all you have to do is say this word and poof, they'll disappear. Because straight into the void means they disappear into nothingness. Right?

Wrong.

See? If we're thinking emptiness, the void means nothing's there, we're misunderstanding emptiness. And my mind does it too.

So we have a lot to talk about in this verse that's going to take us to the rest, which has to do with what we do with those demons. Because he is going to say, just holler home at them. And it's like, wait a minute, how can that work? We'll talk about it.

So I'm going to leave you at this place where we've talked about the bad things that happen are bad. But do we have to suffer for them, or can we use them for other people's benefit?

I don‘t know. We're using them for my own benefit to get rid of them.

He says, yeah, right. But do we can use them for an even higher purpose? All these unpleasant things that are happening everywhere?

But it's radical. Don't go to your neighbour and say, this war in Ukraine. It's the best thing that's happening to all of us. They'll smack you, or they'll quit talking to you.

But in your own heart, work with these verses a little bit between now and next Wednesday—because Sunday we won't have class. It's Easter. Happy Easter.

So thank you. Let's do our dedication.

[Dedication]

For the recording, welcome back. We are the study group studying the Heart Opening Practice of the Peacock Gobbling Poison. It is April 20th already. So let's gather our minds here, please, as we usually do. Bring your attention to your breath until you hear from me again. 

[Class Opening]

(7:19) I'm going put our verses up here. I really find classes once a week, it's just not enough to stay connected to the text.

What are we talking about? Where were we?

We left off here. But I can't quite remember how we got here. I'm ashamed to admit.

It was talking about being bound to the “me“, the self existent me, and how that self existent me shows itself in our experiences of life. Ordinarily we do everything we can to avoid what comes next after the self existent me, which is I want, I don't want, I'm better than you. I'm not as good as you. I'm equal to you. And all that happens after that. Which is the basis of those five poisons, which is what more beginning practitioners train themselves in their mindfulness to be aware of situations that would bring up those mental afflictions, and use that awareness to avoid them.

That's great, because then we don't perpetuate them. But it's not so great in that we still have the seeds for them if we're avoiding those situations that would bring them up. We don't really know if we've got rid of those seeds or not until we're in a situation where they would come up and they don't.

This whole teaching is about this next level of training where our mindfulness of our situations that will bring on a mental affliction, we're using that same mindfulness with the mental affliction itself in order to work with the situation in a different way. And to try to transform our natural reaction to that mentally afflicted situation into a wisdom generated response that allows us to burn off the negativity and plant new.

He's been talking about doing that, but hadn't quite gotten to how to do it until we get to this verse. And then it's curious what he's going to tell us. 

I'm just going to read it for interest of the time. So he says,

Once you choose to take on

The burden of these practices,

The dark side just can't stand it!

We talked about that. What's the dark side? Self existent me, can't stand it that wisdom me is starting to take over. And that self existent me and all of its army, which is the seeds that were planted by self existent me, are going to rear their ugly head. And he says, a big black cloud of demons are going to gather around to block you. What do we do with that big black cloud of demons?

He says, dispel them with the breath of mantra straight into the void. And that's what we need to talk about.

What does he mean, and does it really work? So let's go on.

Once you unleash the sound of Huung—

That magic word of terror,

You can then invoke the glamor

Of a wrathful deity

Then that big black cloud becomes

Just like a phantom city.

And you know the sound to be

Just like an emanated sound.

Whatever at all may come to you,

is recognized as nothing but

An amalgamated image

Emerging from your mind.

A projected thought, that never had

The slightest true existence!

Just let it fly then

Into its own natural dimension.

You'll see the realm of thusness

Set free into the ultimate.

(12:30) So let's see what he's talking about. Park these words in your mind, that big black cloud of demons, dispel them with the breadth of mantra straight into the void. What mantra? Huung. And then with that word of mantra, we can invoke this glamor of a wrathful deity.

We had talked about what they mean by demons, and whether they're outside of you or inside of you, and whether they're tangible things or not tangible things.

We can talk about it for a long time and we're not going to.

Just consider that this thing we're calling a demon is a ripening result of our own past seeds. And so they are very real.

And so yes, they are things outside of ourselves just like your neighbor is your projection and is very real.

And yes, they can have shape and form and sound and personalities. And they can look like traffic jams and can't find the thing you want at the grocery store. These demons come in all kinds of shapes and sizes. And they can also come in the form of those negative thoughts in our own mind.

It's like, wait, no, those are my thoughts. Those can't be demons. It's something we need to keep cooking: Real thoughts versus real demons.

The clue, of course, is projected thoughts and projected demons. And what's the advantage of deciding, these negative thoughts in my mind, they're demon thoughts. They're this other thing than me.

Is it true?

You have to say yes or no. From its own side, no. But neither are, oh, those negative thoughts are me. Mine. I'm bad. I just can't have a positive thought because I'm not good enough. Those are projections just like demon. Shut up in there, right? That's just not true. It's not true because those thoughts are lacking existence from their own side. They are true in the sense that they are projected. So it doesn't really matter one way or the other. What matters is how are we going to respond to those things? 

And there's something to be said for deciding, all those negative thoughts in my own mind, they are demon behavior, and they're out to block my growing wisdom. And they're hurting me in the process, and so even if they are some being that have their own mindstream, they are hurting themselves by interfering with me and my practice.

That is unacceptable for me to let them go on hurting themselves, because they're upset with my growing wisdom.

But we don't say, okay, I'll back off on my wisdom to make you happy. Right?

That's when that wrathful mother love comes out and it's like, no, I'm going to take you on Mr. Demon. I'm going to smack your 2-year-old fanny for running into the street for the third time when I've told you, don't do that. You'll get run over.

So to be able to take on our demons with this sense of love and compassion, because they're hurting themselves, takes a whole different relationship with demons. 

Instead of being, oh, yuck, yuck. Get away. I'm going to run away from my demons. 

It's like just another category of being that needs our help.

They're so close to us, because every critical thought, every I can't do this, every I'm too tired, right? There they are, so many of them. So many that it can be overwhelming. But we're not studying something for beginners. We're studying something for hardcore hell bent on stopping suffering for everybody practitioners.

So maybe it's great that you're hearing a teaching like this, even if your demon says, I'm not there yet, right? It's all right to hear the teaching and just think, oh, maybe someday I'll really be able to do that.

That's a huge goodness, right? It's a huge rejoiceable.

So don't let your demon say, I can't do this. Because they're going to. Mine is doing it already. Sounds great. Sarahni. Try it on for size. Yay, I will. I do a little bit.

So by sharing it with others, guess what? Yay. I'll get to be able to do it better myself, and so will you. So yay for that.

So what do we do?

He says, dispel them with this breath of mantra, mantra, secret words. It's the basis of Tantra practice, the secret way, the Diamond Way. I can't talk about it until you're initiated except in a class like this.

And he says, that the breadth of mantra, the mantra he gives is Huung, as in Om Ah Huung. Nothing secret about that. Om Ah Huung.

The Tibetan version of Huung is this. You have a paper and pencil, please write it.

(19:11) I can't do it on my computer. It has the a, I think this is ooh, I think this is the N, I'm not sure. Or it's the G. And then this is another U, makes it the long U.

And then this is what makes it a sacred thing. The drop in the knot at the top.

Usually English says HUNG, but a lot of people would look at this word and say, HUNG, and it's not hung, it's HUUNG. So Lama Christie often would spell it this way, H-U-U-N-G, to show that this U is a long U.

Then somehow in some traditions, this same syllable is HUM. But it's the same thing. 

HUUNG, it stands for the mind of enlightened being. OM is body, AH is speech, HUUNG is enlightened mind. So he's saying that demon, launch the HUUNG at them and dispel them into the void. The void meaning into emptiness.

And again, we could spend a long time talking about, what emptiness? Whose emptiness? What happens when it goes into the emptiness?

What actually gets dispelled into the emptiness? The demon? My distress about the demon? My obstacle? What's really going on?

I'm not going to go through all of that, but I'm going to say the clue to thinking about it is to think of the three spheres. The three spheres meaning the subject side of the experience, the object side of the experience—which would be the demon at work, and the interaction between—which would be the situation that's making me upset.

But that's just really one level of what to investigate.

Another level would be the me, the situation that's making me upset—as the object, and the upset that I'm feeling as the interaction between. Thinking about how do I send that all into emptiness and what happens? What does that really mean?

What if we send ourself into emptiness? We just like poof? Is that what it's about? We‚ll just poof every time you're upset, and you'll stop being upset?

It's like that's not really the solution, because it doesn't actually happen. But it's like this sounds like, oh, okay, I'll have to do is HUUN and it solves the problem. It could be the case that that's true. But the more we understand what we're trying to do with our HUUN, the more likely we can build it into a source of power. Because there's nothing, of course, from the HUUNG itself, or saying the HUUNG that has any power to dispel anything or anybody. HUUNG is just as empty as the demon, as just as empty as the me. Which means just as real as the projection. Which means just as possible to fix a problem as fixing a problem with a screwdriver and a screw.

So HUUNG is said to be the sound of the subtle manifestation of enlightened mind. What's enlightened mind? Omniscience and the emptiness of all existence.

So this word HUUNG signifies, no signifies isn't right. (HUUNG) is the vibration of that omniscient mind in the emptiness of all existing things. Curious.

(24:00) When we use the HUUNG against our demon obstacle, is it really the obstacle we're trying to make disappear? Or is it our negative reaction to the obstacle that we're trying to make disappear?

It's the negative reaction to the obstacle, isn't it?

And within that negative reaction to the obstacle, like inherent in that, is our ignorance. Ignorance and selfishness, and then the situation that makes the mental affliction. So he's taking this starting with, oh yeah, notice your obstacles. Instead of trying to avoid them, face them head on and let's use them. 

How are we going to use them?

We're going to send a HUUNG at them. Out of our love and compassion mind of a Buddha, send a HUUNG at this demon.

But really, the demon is my selfishness, my belief in self existence that makes my selfishness. So I'm sending the HUUNG at whatever target I can hang on to most clearly. At first it's going to be the demon, right? The demon I'm blaming for my jealousy.

As my awareness increases with any practice, this one in particular, my awareness of my selfishness involved can be the target of my HUUNG. The demon gets more subtle. We can go on eventually, apparently, at our very ignorance. Our belief in self existent me. The interaction can be the demon that we target. But that's going to take a pretty subtle level of learning.

He calls it the magic word of terror. Which is so interesting, like when we say OM AH HUUNG, and you hear the HUUNG, is it scary? Are we wanting to send a scary word at somebody? I don't think so, do we? I mean, do we want to strike terror in the heart of anybody? A lot of the Sadhanas talk about that, “Strike terror in the heart of those who are truly evil“. It's like, I don't want to do that. I want to be a puppy dog in their lap so that they melt. And it's like, honey, you're not going to be able to do that until you get their attention.

The same idea is the sending the HUUNG, the mind of enlightened being, perfect love, perfect compassion, perfect wisdom to or at someone, whether it's an other or your own mind.

Why do they call it the magic word of terror? Who's getting terrorized here?

My own ignorance, right? My own self existent me. It is, remember Yamari in the Wheel of Knives? It's like this scary guy who actually represents the three wisdoms and the four parts of purification. I can't remember what his arms and legs were, but all our different wisdoms that, hey, they're supposed to be beautiful, are beautiful to other wisdom minds, other wisdom beings. But to the being to whom wisdom is its destruction, that wisdom is scary.

Wisdom is the destroyer of our ignorance.

Our ignorance is the basis of self existent me.

Our self existent me is the basis of my needs versus yours. My wants versus yours.

I'm better. I'm less than, I'm equal to. And those end up with our struggle against others.

So this deep, deep belief in a self existent me is terrified when wisdom starts to crop up. Because wisdom is the understanding not self existent me, not self existent other, projected me and other, and all the ramifications of that. Which means this one cares for that one more than this one, because that one is this one that didn't make any sense.

Wisdom mind says, yeah, duh.

Self existent me goes, no, no. If I behave like that, I'm going to get totally taken advantage of. „What about me“, comes up fast and furiously? And it's the what about me state of mind that home HUUNG is scary to, because wisdom means that what about me state of mind is going to be recognized for what it really is. Which is non-existent. Not just wrong, absent.

That's so hard to grasp. I mean, it's truly powerful. And yet it makes us think, well, if something doesn't exist, how can it have such a rigid, wicked, hold on all of us.

It doesn't exist, but the belief in it does.

It's the belief that has the wicked hold.

Have we ever changed a belief?

Yeah, all of us have, right? We used to believe certain things when we were a little kid, and we don't believe that stuff anymore. It might be a good thing to put on our rejoices list. Beliefs I have changed my belief system. I've let go of an old belief in favor of a new one. Because we've got a big belief we want to let go of. And if we could just do it by deciding to do it, have at it, right? You'll be Buddha in no time.

It's in our seeds. It's not a decision to let go of it. You have to plant the seeds to let go of it, so that they can be let go of, so that we can plant seeds without it.

The more we try, the more the closer we get there. It's not an all or nothing thing. 

We're planting seeds with ignorance that's less strong ignorance than we were planting before we heard the pen thing. Especially after all the different kinds of things that we've studied, the power of our ignorance in every moment of being replanted, the power is waning, even if we're not consciously remembering emptiness as we do something. Because our belief in self existence is being cracked away every time we do an emptiness meditation, every time we take a class, every time we think about it. So you really are making more progress than you think you are just by way of studying and hearing and trying. Even if you think, I haven't made any progress. I'm the same jerk I was 30 years ago. But you're not, because your seeds have been planted with less intact ignorance than before.

So yay, right? Yay, really yay.

Which is what brings out a class like this, right? Crazy class, deep class. Is because your demon ignorance is already shaking in its boots, and that goodness is coming out like this. HUUNG.

(33:25) This wisdom love that's held within that sound HUUNG is what's so scary to the self existent believing me. And that's really who is experiencing the vibration of the HUUNG. When we send it forth to the demon, whether it's the demon out there, or the demon inside here, or wherever that demon is. At first we use it towards this other, the demon as other. Our seeds are being planted, cracking away at that self existent me. But eventually we'll be sending that HUUNG at that, if we even need to at that point.

He says, using this HUUNG, we will be able to generate this glamor of a wrathful deity. I love that phrase, the glamor of a wrathful beauty.

We think of glamor like the movie star, and she's so beautiful. And it's like a wrathful deity, they are ugly creatures we said to our ignorance. But glamor means they've got some kind of power over us.

A glamorous movie star, people are attracted to.

What does glamor really mean?

Glamor, the glamor of a wrathful beauty.

So by this, Lama Christie said, he could be meaning two different ways of using the power of this word HUUNG to invoke the glamor of a wrathful diety.

She said one way is that by invoking the HUUNG sound in the situation of your demon activity going on, what you do with the HUUNG is call forth this wrathful, be diety, this Yamari like creature. And they come forth and they're the ones who takes on the demon for you. You're sort of the bystander in a sense, the witness. You call it forth, they do it for you. Boom.

The other way HUUNG invokes the glamor of the wrathful deity, is that you use the HUUNG and you temporarily step into your own wrathful deity-ness. And the power of that wrath born of love, is what overcomes that demon of the mental affliction, the demon of the upset, the demon of ignorance. Whatever level we're working at. HUUNG makes me into that wrathful deity and BOOM, I take care of that demon with my love, compassion, wisdom. Not with anger, not with I hate you demon. But with I love you so much demon, that I need to help you in this way.

He says, then that horde of demons will be revealed to be a phantom city.

A phantom city, CITY, like a movie set. I grew up living near the movie studios, MGM, and I can't remember the others, but they were all around the places that we would drive by as I was a little kid. And there was one place that had a great big like a billboard on its property, and the billboard always had a sky on it. It was the backdrop for what they would be filming. And sometimes you drive by and it would be a sky that was blue, and some puffy clouds. Other days you'd drive by and it would be a big rainy stormy sky. And other times it was a sunset. It was always fun. What's the sky going to be today? They would just change it so effortlessly for whatever they needed.

But then the scene, if you were to walk through that movie set, it was an outdoor set obviously. You would walk down and you'd be walking through this little town with businesses on either side, and it looked so real. But then if you opened the door of the bakery and stepped inside, there was nothing back there. There was the other set on the other side, just planks of wood that was holding up the backdrop.

It was like, you're in this city, but you go through the door and you're in a whole different reality. Like that he's talking.

He says, these demons, you send a HUUNG to the demon and they become like a phantom city, like a movie set. Just not, how do I say it?

Not what we thought they were, but not nothing at all.

Before he was saying, send those demons straight into the void.

Which makes it sound like, oh, they're just going to poof and disappear.

But now he's saying, oh, they become like a phantom city. They poof, right?

Poofing into the void doesn't mean poofing and disappear.

Poofing means walking through the door and seeing, oh my gosh, there's nothing, there's no bakery here. Oh my gosh, there's no demon here. Oh my gosh, there's nothing to be upset about here. Right?

What I thought was there is not there. But it's not that there's nothing at all.

Emptiness is important to understand that it's not that nothing's there.

What I thought was there is not there. But it's not that there's nothing there at all.

It's really important.

The phantom city, to walk through life aware of emptiness means you're walking down your street, aware that behind the stuff you see is not what you thought.

It's not that walking down your street, there's no street there at all.

Walking down your street, you're walking through your projections.

You're not walking at all. That's part of the projection. There's just projection happening, happening, happening, happening, happening. And it's me and my world in my experience moment by moment by moment.

With that awareness there wouldn't be upset in response to things.

But there wouldn't be no response at all, because our response is just as empty of self existence.

So he says then, you'll know the sound as just an emanated sound, which Lama Christie did not explain.

You'll know the sound is just an emanated sound. Yeah, of course.

Emanated means, well, we use that word when we think Buddha‘s emanating. Because she could have said, or he could have said, oh, you'll know the sound as just a projection. We're way past that. Of course, we know it's a projection, that's why we're using it.

You'll know it as an emanation, as an emanated sound. I think personally that he's alluding to a hint as to what it is to be enlightened being. It's not like enlightened beings are sitting around saying, OM AH HUUNG all day.

But to be enlightened being, and to have enlightened mind, HUUNG is happening. That vibration HUUNG is happening.

So maybe he's saying, even when we use the sound HUUNG in this highly sacred way, really we're just tapping into this home HUUNG, enlightened mind, HUUNG.

A quality of enlightened being is HUUNG, like their appearance nature.

It cracks that nut of, oh, an enlightened being has this shape, and they look like that, and they have the bump, or they have this or whatever. They look like that. And it's like, I think that's just one teeny aspect so that we can grapple with what it is to be enlightened being. But I think when we get there, it's like, where is that thing?

It's like that was kindergarten understanding of enlightened being. We were never like that. We're HUUNG. We're OM AH HUUNG. And then in my mind it's like, how do you be OM AH HUUNG? It's like, where is that? What does that look like?

But think about it. You'll know the HUUNG to be an emanated sound.

Lama Christie explained what this verses are saying is that he is teaching us about this practice of using emptiness in the form of a sound, a vibration, and shooting it at a circumstance, a thought, a feeling. Shooting this vibration energy of emptiness at whatever is causing our trouble, or whatever seems to be causing our trouble would be more accurate to say.

Included in that has to also be our own emptiness. When we say use the HUUNG to bring up your own wrathful, glamor of your own wrathful beauty, in order for that to be possible, we have to know or understand at least intellectually pretty highly the emptiness of our own self, not just our physical body, but our very self— in order for that practice to be attractive to us, and to work. Otherwise, who the heck would want to turn oneself into this ugly thing with fangs?

The emptiness is the power of that HUUNG. I think it's beyond emptiness. It's the power of that combined emptiness and appearances that is the power of that use of the term home in this way.

It's like, all you have to do is yell HUUNG at your traffic jam, and the traffic jam will just melt away? It doesn't seem to work for me.

All you have to do is yell HUUNG at your jealousy and it disappears? Does yelling HUUNG, or even saying HUUNG, you don't have to yell it. You can whisper it. You can even think it. Is it going to work?

It depends. Remember the stapler thing? You have to load it.

The practice of using HUUNG against our demons is only going to work once it's loaded. Maybe it's already been loaded for some of us. Maybe it's never been loaded for some of us. And so how will we know until we try it?

HUUNG, just the word HUUNG, Lama Christie said, it's not like you're saying, oh, boo, right? The word of terror, boo to your demons.

They'll probably laugh. It's more like you're saying, I use the power of emptiness in the form of HUUNG to transform you right now.

Now that's too much to say in the heat of a mental affliction. But we load our use of the HUUNG with this, sending the part emptiness into this situation, into the three spheres of this situation. Which means this HUUNG is going right to me, to other and to interaction between. The extent to which we have that all in mind when we use the HUUNG, it's going to add to the power of the HUUNG. But even that isn't, it's like just understanding the emptiness of the three spears with the HUUNG isn't going to make it work in the moment if it hasn't been loaded yet.

But we're trying to load it with including that understanding of the emptiness of the three spheres. 

So how do we load it? How do we load a practice like this?

Well, we know to load anything. You have to see yourself doing something for others. 

Maybe, to load our practice of the HUUNG, we have to use it to help others. And again, we could talk about that for days as well.

Am I using the HUUNG to protect my mind? I'm upset in a certain situation, so I'm going to use the HUUNG so that I can reduce my upset, so that I can become a Buddha, so I can help others.

Nothing wrong with that motivation. But maybe here's this demon causing trouble, causing bad seeds for the demon, whoever that is. I'm gonna HUUNG to help the demon, and if I get helped along the side, great. If not, that's okay. Because I help them.

Did I help them? Depends on their seeds. They're a demon. I don't know what their seeds are going to do. But my effort to HUUNG them for their benefit, who's watching? Me, right?

And it's like, oh, come on, demons aren't real. I can HUUNG on demons and come on, I need to HUUNG something more substantial, don‘t I?

So yeah, I guess you could HUUNG for somebody else. Somebody else is having a mental affliction? Stand back, I'll HUUNG for you. HUUNG.

Is it going to work for them? Maybe it would. Imagine what would happen. Be prepared for it to work. I mean that other person is going to throw themselves at your feet. My gosh, do that for me. Wait, would you stay close? Do that for me next time. 

Maybe our own expectation is that it's not going to work. I have to admit my own self. I've never done this for another person. But it's tempting after having thought about it, thought it through. If we had this no expectation but willingness to look like a fool on behalf of somebody else's end of their mental affliction, and step up and go, I will HUUNG for you. And then do it, and walk away without even waiting to see whether it works or not. Because whatever happens next is not coming from what I just did, is it?

So why HUUNG at all?

Because my intention is to do something powerful from my emptiness, understanding to help someone in the moment, whether it works or not.

I've planted seeds for future getting help, for future actually being able to help.

That's how we load our actions, is just trying to help another.

The trying is enough, because it plants the seeds.

How many times would we have to home for someone else in order to load our HUUNG practice so that it's going to work for us against our own demons?

I don't know. But we won't know it all if we don't try it.

It'll be different for you then for me. Maybe for you it'll take two times, and then, whoa, you've empowered your HUUNG practice and now you have to be careful not to use it indiscriminately.

Use it with wisdom, use it when you really need to. And the other times I can deal with this demon myself. But that one, HUUNG.

It is important to use your power wisely, because that self existent me is going to go, huh, look at me. I got a HUUNG practice. I can use it for anybody. And then guess what? HUUNG is going to start failing? Because we're thinking, oh. Self existent me with a self existent HUUNG practice. It slips in so effortlessly. And that's his whole next chapter actually, is to chew us out for falling for that. We're going to get, I hope.

The practice, this Lojong practice of the HUUNG is another version of growing mindfulness directed at what's arising in our experience, and the awareness of our reaction to that.

If the reaction is love, compassion, wisdom, no need for HUUNG.

If our reaction is anything other than that, then we apply our HUUNG to the demon at whatever level we can grasp that demon. Oh, the them who's causing me the anger. Oh, this feeling of irritation that goes into anger. Oh, the ignorant me that believes it's all happening. Whatever level our of awareness we've got in the situation, that's what gets the HUUNG.

It takes first training ourselves to use the HUUNG, and then training ourselves for the awareness of which part of the three spheres we're going to send that HUUNG to.

Technically, you can send it to all three. But if we want to get really specific in our Lojong-ing, we can use this whole practice as this training in working on our awareness of the object side of my moment by moment experience, awareness of my reaction arising, feeling that leads to reaction arising. That's a good place. And then later to finding my ignorance that's inside all of that.

The deepest demon, of course, is that belief in self existent me that leads to the ignorant desire and the ignorant dislike, that leads to the jealousy and stinginess, all the other mental afflictions.

So in this way, we're using the power of our emotions, our emotional reactions, our feelings to overcome these demons of both our inner and outer world. And we have this tool to send emptiness at them, emptiness love at them, by using this word, this sound, HUUNG, HUUNG.

Does it have to be shouted out loud. Lama Christie says, whisper it, say it. But she said from her own experience, she said, the first time I had enough confidence in this practice to actually step up in a situation and holler HUUNG out loud as the response to the situation. She said she did it, and she didn't say what happened, but she said after that I had the confidence to use it.

It took one time out there almost in public of using it for her to break through that embarrassment of somebody's going to hear me say HUUNG to try to get rid of a demon. It just means I'm too crazy for words and I can't do that. To break through that and just step up and do it, would be pretty liberating, wouldn't it? To have that kind of conviction in your practice, conviction in your understanding of emptiness and the power of sound, to just step up and do it.

I have to admit, I have not used the HUUNG in that way, but I'm inspired. Maybe I'll try.

(Luisa) Just for me to see if I understood properly what you just say. So that means when you are using our emotions, let's say jealousy, in the moment I have a jealousy attack. So first I have the awareness, the demon is there, the jealousy, and then second I HUUNG it. And then in that moment, I remember the emptiness of the feeling. Is that the process that we go through? I am a bit lost. Like, okay, where do we start with that?

(Lama Sarahni) Yeah, it's like the very reason to use the HUUNG is because you are understanding the emptiness of the whole situation. And so your choice in your response to the jealousy, rather than saying something nasty, is to go HUUNG to that jealousy. And if it doesn't go away, or it doesn't distract you, or doesn't change your response, HUUNG again. HUUNG. I mean at some point because jealousy expects you to say something nasty. And what you do instead is HUUNG. Your own mind seeds are going to go, what? Right? And sidetrack. The the situation of the jealousy, would be my guess.

(59:30) Let's take a break and then we'll quickly read through the rest of this chapter 3 just to hear his wrap up of it, and then we need to get into 4 tonight.

I wanted to share that. I don't want you do this HUUNG practice. I'm cooking the idea of really trying to work on it. It's very intriguing. But even in cooking the idea of really doing it, it's like, come on, what am I really thinking I'm doing? And I would intend that when I HUUNG my demons, that what I HUUNG them into is their direct perception of emptiness. Because I want those seeds. I want my HUUNG practice to be benefiting them so that my HUUNG practice actually bring about the result of everybody's wisdom. It isn't something that the scripture said, it isn't something Lama and Christie said. I was just thinking what would I really be trying to do.

If I leave it at a superficial level, there are these things, demons. And I'm going to HUUNG them into emptiness. I am still not thinking it through strongly enough to get the result I really want, which is emptiness for everybody. Not just me, not just my freedom from unpleasant situations, but I want those demons to become Budhas too.

So just think it through. Rituals like this work, but they work better if you really plotted through an explanation for your own mind. And there's not an explanation that's right, and there's an explanation that's wrong. It's the explanation that you use your understanding of emptiness and dependent origination to wrap it all into a tool that gives you the confidence to use it, or try it. For any practice that's true.

All right, so let's go back to the verses and get through chapter.

(62:22)

Whatever at all may come to you

As recognized as nothing but

An amalgamated image

Emerging from your mind.

Meaning you're growing this ability to be very keenly aware of your projections happening. Actually, you as a part of those projections happening. A projected thought that never had the slightest true existence.

So does the projected thought not exist at all? No.

The projected thought itself is projected into its own natural dimension, and you'll see the realm of thusness set free into the ultimate.

Then,

Even should the entire world

Join up and rise against you.

Don't let it bother you at all

The words sound like he's telling us what to do and not do. To me, it's more like when we get to this understanding from that last verse, it's like this could happen. The entire world rises up against you, and you won't be bothered at all. Right? So hear the words a little bit differently.

Don't let it bother you at all. Just think, I'm unstoppable.

I'll use the light of mindfulness

To smash all the desire and anger

Of myself and others

On the anvil of my realization.

I'll be just like the one who Slays

The fiery Lord of Death!

But then he says,

Now call to mind all living beings

And think, without a shred of doubt:

These are my father's and my mothers!“

And then draw them near to you

With no care who is close or far;

Wrap them all in your loving arms

Without a hint of bias;

Nurse them all on the two truths.

That's so beautiful, right? This practice of HUUNG against our demons.

What are we going to really do with it? Oh, we're going to wrap every being in our loving arms and take care of them with karma and emptiness, right? 

It's like, yes, Geshe Michael‘s standing on a billion planet thing. I love this, hugging everybody all at the same time and kissing them on the cheek. Wouldn't that be great? We can't wait.

Once you get the hang of it,

You'll be living like the Buddha;

And that will make your refuge objects

Break out into smiles.

Dharma protectors will naturally

Surround this kind of person.

O sons and daughters of the Buddha

Know this to be true!

That's cool. Not only are your arms wrapped around every suffering being taking care of them. The refuge objects, Buddha, Dharma, Sangha, they're all smiling, happy with you. Yay. And your dharma protectors will help you.

I have shamelessly just

Scribbled down this holy teaching.

I think that it was reckless, and

I see it with disgust.

But, this is what you must do

To lead a warrior's life.

So ends the third chapter on

Living off the poison.

Yeah, I don't know why he says he sees it with disgust, except maybe saying he could maybe have done better if he took more time. I don't know.

Chapter 4 Look Yourself in the Face

(66:27) This chapter four is actually really harsh, and we're not going to spend much time on it. But someday, like make a note to yourself that someday, when you're sharing the dharma with others, come back to this Lojong.

Not meaning, share it with them, although maybe. But for your own self. Come back to this Lojong and especially come to this chapter 4.

As we are becoming teachers, his harsh advice in this chapter 4 is important to revisit from time to time to keep ourselves on track. I studied this Lojong with Lama Christie, and it must've been, I dunno, 2006 or 2007 or something like that.

I wasn't teaching much then, only a little bit. And that chapter was like, uh. But you guys made me go back through it. It's like, oh my gosh. Okay, thank you very much for forcing me to read this chapter 4.

So again, if you read it and you just go, eh whatcha talking about? That's fine.

But mark it in your mind to someday come back to this chapter 4 and look at it.

And when will that be? It will be when you're in a position of sharing the dharma with other people and they're saying, wow, you're so great. We love you so much and you're doing such a great job. And go to chapter 4, right?

So keep that in mind as we read chapter 4.

(69:20)

„As the peacock wanders

Through a grove of deadly plants..“

I bow down to the Holy One,

The Slayer of the Lord of Death!

You may be the ultimate saint

Like the disciple Upali,

And you may possess breathtaking

Mindfulness like Ashvajit;

But unless you guide your mothers and fathers

Onto the Bodhisattva‘s path,

These realizations will only oppress

The freedom of your own happiness.

You may achieve an aura of mastery

In the classical subjects of knowledge,

Your reputation may spread widely

So fools everywhere admire you;

But unless you take upon your shoulders

The heavy burden of the teachings

Just give up all this dancing around

Like a drunken lunatic!

You may be lifted up by all

Just like a big shot Lama,

But you don't lift up the mighty weight

Of the body of holy teachings;

Instead you take up your own desires.

You are someone who should be

Spit upon by the Aryas!

You may have convinced everyone

How pure-minded you are,

Yet you're stranded in a forest

Of utterly backwards worldviews.

And when your belief in a self is shaken,

You feel terror, as if for a tigress, or witch.

You are someone who should be

Murdered by the protectors of His word!

You may be a peaceful and dignified

Wearer of the saffron robes,

Yet you're thinking evil thoughts

Just like a sneak cat;

Donning a holy appearance

Without bothering to change your ways.

You are someone who should be

Thrown into the mouths of witches!

You may preside as leader over

A hundred thousand followers,

But, like Vishnu, you have failed

To discipline your mind;

And light rays of your desire and anger

Fly out in ten directions.

You're someone who should be

Thrown into the mouth of the Lord of Death.

You may look after everyone

With a good-natured smile;

But if you encourage corruption

Within your own close students,

Then you‘ll be famous as the leader

Of the faithless ones.

You are someone who should be

Thrown into the lair of the realm of Is.

You may have left this home life

And entered the door to the holy teachings,

But you're constantly embroiled

In endless householder activities—

Disdaining all things you should be

Taking up and giving up.

You are someone who should be

Cursed by all the sages.

You may have donned the saffron robes,

But you do not keep your vows.

And due to increasing interest

In the act of pleasure,

You act unfairly towards

People who are pure of heart.

You are someone who should be

Freed from this world by the angels!

You take on the guise of a holy one

For your own personal gain,

Then roll around in sense objects

Just like a dog, or pig;

Cheating everyone you've promised

On this tantric path.

You're someone who should be

Thrown into the hells by the Holder of the Diamond!

You reject the laws of cause and effect

With talk about a “Greater Way“,

Lying to your followers

With all your useless efforts;

An imposter in a holy body

Just like demons do.

You are someone who should be

Murdered with mantra by those with the pledge!

Because of your vast solutions of

„Profound“ secret teachings and advices,

You don't help the open teachings spread.

Instead, you compose out of thin air

Some poorly-written verses.

You are someone who should be

Outcast by the truly virtuous!

If something would definitely corrupt

The body of holy teachings,

But in the moment it may benefit

Somebody, somehow,

This is like offering rice wine

To a person with a fever.

This harmful help is something that should be

Thrown into the river!

They fail to keep their practice

And don't study much at all.

So they see the world as normal

And are filled with arrogance.

Forsaking the steps of the path,

They end up teaching fools.

These are people who should be

Thrown in the dogs by the learned!

You may think your freedom vows are so pure

That you rise up as an enemy

To the Buddha's word,

Refusing to partake in rituals

That have been properly passed down.

This destruction of the teachings

Truly astounds the Holy Ones.

For not only does this fail to bring

The freedom that you seek,

Instead you lower yourself down

Into the lowest realms.

These demons who destroy the teachings

Won't reach liberation.

You demons who have smashed your vows

Should be liberated from this world!

All of you are lost in darkness

Driven by karma and negative thoughts,

So that the teachings, and the others‘ welfare

Doesn't even cross your mind.

Rage against this enemy

Who is causing harm to you,

Use a secret incantation

To send him to the world beyond!

The ones whose vows are stained

Are esteemed stainless—how amazing!

But, wherever we may be,

In honor of the Victors,

Let's try not to get involved

In deeds that benefit our self.

When something is lauded by

The Victors of the ten directions,

It would make sense to practice it

In any way we can.

Come to understand this

‚O you of able minds—

With everything you take up

Make it pure from start to end.

Even should it cost your life

Reject what goes against the teachings,

For generally, the less you harm

The more you benefit yourself.

Foolish ones are blind to

This progression of events

But to the wise, it's crystal clear.

This too is what we must do

To lead a Warrior's life.

So ends the fourth chapter on

Living off the poison.

(79:28) It sounds like he's criticizing other teachers for hypocrisy. It's like, wait a minute, we've got vows against doing that. I must be misunderstanding what's going on here.

Maybe he is omniscient and is the teacher of his audience, and he is writing for them because he sees inside some of their, well, he sees inside all of their minds and where they could be headed. Not that they're necessarily making these mistakes at that moment. But sharing a teaching from his omniscience that would help the beings who are there then. Which means as an omniscient being, he was helping those who are there later, who would be me, also to remind me or point out what some of the pitfalls might be.

So though the verses sound like he's saying to somebody, you're doing this and this is going to bring you a bad result. Maybe really what he's doing is giving us clues for where it is that our self existent me, even in a high practitioner, the subtlety of the self existent me can still be doing its thing. So there could be a lot more in these verses than meets the eye. Which is always the case, isn't it?

He's pointing out these different arenas where we might be fooling ourselves in thinking, oh, I'm doing a really good job at this point. Because our tendency would be, all right, so I've got that good quality. I don't need to work on perpetuating it, because it is my good quality. The self existent my good quality, the self existent... I can't think of one of the ones, one of his examples.

The vow holder, right. Oh yeah, yeah. I keep my vows well enough. That's a big demon. Because then until we're fully enlightened being, we're not keeping our vows well enough to stop the suffering of the world.

Are we keeping them well? Probably.

But that's the demon. He's talking about the subtlety of getting complacent, or the subtlety of thinking, wow, I'm doing such a great job that we slack off a bit.

All those different verses have these different clues to where we can be checking our own mind. We have a bunch of people, I am getting to know you guys a little bit at a time, and my guess is that we just never think we're doing a good enough job.

I mean, I know that for myself, and it's like, it feels like he's saying, you're right, you're not. And if you think you are, the demon should just drag you into hell. And it's like, oh, that's really not helpful.

But if you read it in terms of, yes, we're good practitioners. Yes, we're working hard. No, we haven't reached our enlightenment yet. What are some of the pitfalls we might come up against?

Now this set of verses might be helpful.

But I read it and I just would get overwhelmed. It's like, oh man, I should just give up.

And that's complete opposite of what I believe he is wanting to instill in us. Not a, oh God, I'll never do it well enough if he can't do it well enough. Who am I?

But rather to just, okay, I see there's a list of pitfalls that we might want to recognize as we are making progress on our path. And so we think, oh, when my progress is being made, it's just going to get easier and easier and easier. Maybe that's a misunderstanding. Maybe our practice has to get subtler and subtler and subtler, which means it's harder and harder and harder. Not easier and easier and easier. 

Maybe that's what he's pointing out to us, that if our practice is getting easier and easier, check out these verses and see which one pertains. And then regroup.

Don't beat yourself up, just use that as you're HUUNG demon target, whatever that verse has pointed out. It's so easy to slip into, oh, my good qualities, and be satisfied with them. And to think that they'll just go on forever. They don't. We need to be perpetuating them. Of course.

(Stevie) It reminds me of my, I live at the end of a dirt road. When it's dry and sunshiny, the dirt road is just fine. But when it rains, there's all these potholes that I suddenly am aware of, and I'm avoiding all these. It's kind of like him telling me that this is the dirt road, that when it rains, you got to avoid these potholes. And it also makes me feel like, not alone. I mean, if this guy's having these awarenesses, it's like, well then maybe I'm not quite so bad. Maybe I'm not quite so stupid.

(Lama Sarahni) Good. That's helpful. Thanks Stevie.

(86:20) She (Lama Christie) said, a clue for when we're maybe getting this pridefulness or complacency would be if we find ourselves in situations where we have an opportunity to help somebody. Somebody's asked for help and we don't feel so good and we say, I'll help you later. I don't feel so good.

I mean, you don't even say it, you just make that decision later. I don't feel good.

It's a clue, she said, that our Bodhichitta is slipping. We're getting complacent. It is that subtle. It can be that subtle. Yes, I want to help you. Yes, I'm going to help you. Just not right now. It's enough to say, oh, wait, wait, wait, wait.

Think of this chapter 4. Not even a specific verse, just the whole thing sounded so harsh to me. He's chewing people out. But I really do think he's talking to his own mind, not to someone else.

But she also said that this verse for someone who's not teaching yet, you might think, well, whoa, I'm just not going to be a teacher. I can't possibly share it with people. I don't see myself a teacher. 

Yet our tradition, like the whole Buddhist tradition, Diamond Cutter Sutra is all through it, right? The highest goodness we can do to stop the suffering of the world is to share just four lines of the Diamond Cutter Sutra with somebody. The more the better. 

So it's like on the one hand, they're saying, don't share until you have realizations, until you're really, really sure your motivation is good and your wisdom is high.

But in order to get that kind of realization, guess what you have to do?

Share, share. So I mean, I'm so grateful because Geshe Michael just sets us up to be sharing the Dharma. He makes it so easy, really. And then he even plucks you out of the audience and sets you there.

What do you think he's doing when he says, for a 100 dollars, what…? And somebody's willing to shout out and answer? They're teaching at that moment.

It's like, duh.

Anyway, we are supposed to be ready and willing to share the holy Dharma to the level that we understand. Make it clear, to the level that I understand. This is what I have heard. This is what I've learned. This is how I've tried it on for size. This is what I want to share. There are errors, they're my own. But let me share.

Only when somebody asks. You don't go door to door.

But on the other hand, I mean that's like formal speaking a teaching. Let me tell you about the pen, or let's do ACI course 1, either one is this formal teaching.

The other way to be teaching, of course, is by way of our behavior. So when you are in a situation, and everybody in your office knows you're jealous and knows the situation that makes you jealous, and expects you to come out flying, and then you don't. Everybody learns something at that moment.

They all learn something a little different. They don't quite know what's in your mind yet. But they learn something.

I know that Nancy and her work that she's been teaching, and things are changing. And she's never sat somebody down and said, let me teach you the Dharma, right?

She is just being amazing empty, and it's doing its thing in her work life.

So teaching by behavior change is probably more potent than teaching by words, isn't it? You deal with kids, know that you can say, do this, do this, do this. But you do that, kids are going to do that. So for us as well, because who's watching? I mean, why is behavior so powerful? Because our own mind is watching and it's watching us have an impact on others. That's why it's so powerful.

All of the chapters he's been encouraging us to live the life of a Bodhisattva. His Lojong is about growing our Bodhichitta. Our Bodhichitta word means the wish to stand on the billion planets and take care of everybody.

It means the direct perception of emptiness. So ultimately, those two together is the direct perception of emptiness and the appearing nature of reality simultaneously, all three times, all places, all beings. And the love that made that possible is then the emanation of that being, perfect love, perfect compassion, perfect wisdom appearing, the appearing nature.

So all of these practices are about planting the seeds that when those seeds ripen, ripen as perfect love, perfect compassion, perfect wisdom you.

But I don't think you'll use that word “you“ anymore. Being, I like “being“, enlightened being, instead of an enlightened being. Enlightened being, is what he's encouraging us to grow, to create.

Our ignorance is the blocker to that. Because it's the blocker to the love planting seeds that will bring that result about.

Master Dharmarakshita is encouraging us if we are teachers to behave in a way as if our students are already there around us, always they are around us.

And behave in a way as if our Lama is always there with us. And she says, actually, in fact, both are true all the time anyway.

So it's like the difference we have that term, let your hair down, right? We're on our best behavior. And then you get in a situation where, oh, I can let my hair down.

And that means you've been behaving really carefully, and then you get in a situation where not. It's okay to be normal, it's okay to be me. And the problem with that of course is that when we let our hair down, what that really means is now I'm going to be just a selfish slob. I'm going to be ordinary me. Selfish me is ordinary me.

It's a strain to always be on our best behavior. But that best behavior, even worldly best behavior means you're being very polite, you're being very careful, you're being very kind. You're putting others first. We've been taught that by society, and it's hard, and it's a strain. Only because deep down we really want to be selfish slob. Because we think that gets us what we want. But it doesn't. And once we figure that out, we can start to recognize that wanting to let my hair down and be more natural me, is a suffering me. It's a suffering perpetuating me. And it becomes not such a strain to be on that best behavior. So he is saying, using a different phraseology, he's saying, be on your best behavior all the time.

And yet we go, what a strain that will be. It's like only at first, because it'll be planting the seeds for that best behavior to become our ordinary behavior, or normal behavior. Because the old sloppy behavior is just seeds as well.

One way to do that is to imagine someone that you want to behave really well around is there with you all the time. And really your Lama is there with you all the time, right? They're omniscient being, they're perfect love. They're perfect compassion. They actually have their arms wrapped around you all the time. They're kissing your cheek all the time. And we forget, and we do all kinds of weird things towards them and others, forgetting them.

Now, they love us so unconditionally that Lord Maitreya probably laughed every time he got spat on by Asanga. But they can't make themselves shown to us, revealed to us. It doesn't come from their side.

So the greater our behavior reflects our awareness that maybe they're there, the more likely, or the sooner we'll start to catch a glimpse of them. I think that Arya Asanga‘s story is like, he saw a little piece of a foot or something, and then it's like little glimpses would come. But it was supposed to look like this. And if it didn't look like this, then it wasn't right. Another avenue of our practice and what we expect to happen, and when it doesn't happen, there's something wrong with our practice. As opposed to, let's just ditch those expectations and be in plant mode all the time.

(Luisa) Sorry, I'm struggling with that, to believe that my Lama or my teachers are always with me. I mean, I understand that they're coming from me. For example, now I see you as teaching me and you're coming from me. You're my projection. But then, if you are not here now with me, or when we hang up the call, then you are not there anymore. I dunno.

(Lama Sarahni) So is an omniscient being, is there such a thing as an omniscient being?

(Luisa) Yes, but my struggle is, for example, okay, to think that how to say this so it doesn't sound rude. You say yourself, I am not enlightened yet. Let's say, and then at the moment I perceive you my teacher and I respect you and I admire you. But somehow when you say I'm not enlightened yet, I get in my mind you're not enlightened yet. Yeah, I don't know how to say this in another way, but I struggle with that. I somehow try to think you are coming from me, and whatever comes out of your mouth is my projection. I created that. But at the same time, there is your reality there simultaneously. When you tell me I am not enlightened, I don't know. Do you know what I mean? I am confused.

(Lama Sarahni) So you're revealing to us for our own benefit, how our belief in self existent other, self and what we hear, is imposing itself on your ability to crack through that nut. You're asking a great question. And the answer is, because of your belief in a self existent you and a self existent me, that blocks that being able to get to the gist of what I'm trying to say, but can't because words are empty also. So I don't want to just say, let me rephrase it so you'll understand better. Because it's important, it's actually more useful for you to keep working at it. And then you'll come to this Aha and it's like, oh man, how come I couldn't see that before? And it'll be much more powerful for you to get at it that way. So keep thinking of the lack of self existence of

teacher.

(Luisa) If I correct that just to see if I reached that point, then what should I think? So that would mean if I crack that, and I believe in the depth of my heart, or let's say I get to this realization, you are coming from me, therefore you could be an enlightened being, therefore you could be here with me after we hung up the zoom call.

(Lama Sarahni) Not could be. I am. Because enlightened beings are everywhere at all the time. Everywhere all the time. But when I say I am, I don't mean this I.

(Stevie) And isn't Luisa an enlightened being as well?

(Luisa) No.

(Lama Sarahni) For whom, right? You have to say for whom?

(Luisa) For me, not for sure.

(Lama Sarahni) It's great, keep at it, right? Keep at it. It's not really easy. It's not easy to come to that deep Aha of how a Lama can look like that, and be that all at the same time. And it all be coming from me, from my projections. If we're still thinking deep down thinking, a projection is not real. Deep down, we think projections aren't real.

(Joana) So does it mean that I'm projecting you, for example, and Luisa and all the others in this call, it's the physical form is one of the projections, and I don't have to see it for the other projections to see them differently yet?

(Lama Sarahni) Every aspect of your experience moment by moment is all projected. And so the, whatever experience, is being had is projected and empty of being what it looks like other than as projection. And in the emptiness is its potentiality. Like that projection is up and gone. Next one, up and gone, up and gone, up and gone. And that process is happening constantly. And the emptiness of the three spheres of that process happening constantly is the potential for the change. That's why everything is changing, changing, changing. And that emptiness is the potential to be anything that ripens next…. which is hard to finish that sentence. I want to say, which could be seeing a body of light in the next instant, and then seeing a body of flesh and bone in the next instant. Could be, but then we're thinking could be not, could be. I can make it that way. I can't make it that way. It's spontaneous happening. We don't have control over it. Fortunately, we appear to have some control over how we respond. Which isn't always the case either, because that's part of the projection. What were you actually asking? I don't think I got around to answering it. Is part of it going to be enlightened and part of it not?

(Joana) The omniscience, if I imagine or… Luisa's question was that as soon as we finish this call, you are gone. So the self existent you that we project, we cannot see it anymore. But there's this omniscient, let's say existence that I don't have seeds to see yet. Is that right?

(Lama Sarahni) Well, it's not right if you're thinking that really I'm an enlightened being who's omniscient. Because really I'm not. But really I'm not not that either, right? So if you're thinking Sarahni is here with me now, and then off the screen, Sarahni is not here with me. That's true. That experience is true. And if we're thinking Sarahni refers to this, then we're stuck in that reality in which Sarahni is here and then she's not. But in your Lion’s Dance meditation about the Lama, and the Lama isn't the one I think is there, but the Lama is there, because it is the Lama that's my seeds ripening. And so my seeds ripening only when their body is there for them to be there? Or can my seeds ripen them here when I'm looking at a piece of toast?

Something like that.

I was going to guide us through a meditation, but we'll do it maybe at the beginning of next class cause we're out of time. That was a great discussion.

We've made it to chapter 5, and we're going to discuss chapter 5 a little bit more.

(Organizational announcements)

[Dedication]

Thank you again so much for the opportunity.

Welcome back. We are Peacock Gobbling Poison / Lojong class. I don't know what number, but it is April 24th, 2022. Let's gather our minds here as we usually do, please. We’ll do our opening prayers and then slide right into a meditation.

[Class Opening]

Guided Meditation

(7:15) Bring your attention back to your breath please.

Now turn your mind to something you are afraid of.

Think of that fear that comes up.

But then imagine yourself as one who lives solely for others, really living life for other people. Would that fear be there?

Would there be any fear at all?

Imagine yourself as a being who lives solely for others. What would you look like? What would your heart feel like?

Love is unbeatable.

When our hearts are filled with love, there is no room for pain, not your own and not anyone’s, actually.

Now, think of some situation recently in which you did have some pain come to you. Maybe it was physical pain, maybe emotional pain, maybe something someone said or didn't say, someone did or didn't do.

Something we heard, something we saw, something we felt.

We play the situation.

Find the point at which your mind says, that hurt me.

Maybe not in the actual words, but there's a series of instances in the situation that is that conclusion, that hurt me.

Those three little words reveal our holding to things as self existent, coming from them. The thing, the other that appears to be the cause of the pain, the pain itself and worse, the me that that other has hurt.

This situation, is it a good thing or a bad thing?

Now, I'm going to ask you to replay the situation again, but this time, just as the moment that you're feeling the pain arises, turn your mind to that precious holy angel guide in front of you and you offer that to them.

We try it a few times.

We do it a few times more. And this time, as you offer your pain to them, see that holy angel experience extraordinary bliss, bliss wisdom from your offering.

The stronger the feeling that you have that you are offering to them, the greater is their bliss.

So now all of that we are offering, and thereby contributing to the bliss of our holy beings, is planting seeds of virtue.

And so now, is your pain a bad thing, or a good thing?

If we decide it's a good thing, then can we really call it pain?

Reexamine the feeling, the sensation that we've given the label „pain“.

That label does not come from the feeling. But that label won't be there without the feeling. And what if the stronger that feeling, the bigger your Bodhichitta grows.

What would you call that feeling then?

Now, turn your attention again to that precious holy guide before you. Thank them for their help.

Dedicate whatever little insight, or big, that you just gathered.

Dedicate it to your own heart opening.

And then become aware of yourself in your room, your body on your chair.

When you're ready, open your eyes. Take a stretch. Have something to drink.

Chapter 5 The Battleground

(25:25) So chapter 4, Master Dharmarakshita was telling us all the things we shouldn't do. Meaning mistakes we make even as we progress on our path.

It was pretty harsh if you recall. 

Then chapter 5, he shifts over and he makes this really beautiful pledge of how he's going to be this warrior, this Bodhisattva warrior in the world, and how he's going to live in order to do that. At the beginning he calls forth all the unenlightened beings and all the already enlightened beings to witness his declaration. He doesn't leave anybody out. We're going to see.

We learned at the end of the whole text, we learn he's in deep retreat when he's writing this. So it'll make a little bit more sense when we read chapter 5.

But he's in retreat. He's doing his daily practices. He's working on his Bodhichitta, clearly. And he's coming to these Ahas about his own personal practice, his training, where he sees that he needs to go where he's made mistakes. And he's writing this, it's like his journal, his retreat journal.

He's reached this point where he is like, oh, I catch on. I know what I have to do now. He calls them all into his retreat there with him. You do that in your retreat.

And he makes this declaration, this beautiful pledge, and then it goes on and on about how he's going to live it, how he's going to do it.

He says to the enlightened beings, I make this declaration in front of all the enlightened beings, and I'm going to ask them to please, please help me keep my pledge.And I'm making this declaration to all the unenlightened beings, because I am pledging myself to help you get free from pain, to help you get enlightened.

It's like, I'm not going to quit until everybody's free. So it's really beautiful at the very beginning of chapter 5. It takes him a little while to get into it.

Then he gives us clues, like he says, what he's going to do right. Which of course he's talking to. We have it available now, so we can try it on for size when we're ready. So let's go to the text and read these opening verses where he's calling them all forth. It's so beautiful, because it's like in the same sentence, he's calling forth the unenlightened beings, and then the enlightened ones as well.

So when you get to be the reader, as you're reading, check where the emphasis in the words needs to be according to that awareness.

As the peacock wanders through

A grove of deadly plants…

I bow down to the Holy One

The Slayer of the Lord of Death.

All you of the dark side,

Full of angry thoughts and malice,

Come here before me now.

You eaters of flesh,

You blood drinkers

Come by the score, to this human form

Come here before me now.

I call the groups of serpentines,

The gods, and havoc wreakers;

The clans of demi-gods,

Belly-walkers, and smell eaters;

The infinite clouds of close Angels

Who dance throughout the skies;

The gathering of spirit beings

Whom I owe a karmic debt—

Come here before me now.

I call the simultaneous Angels,

The saints, and the obstructors;

The eighteen great demon lords

Who like to lead us astray;

The witches, and all the protectors

Of any holy deed;

My true refuges, and the collection

Of every realized being—

Come here now, to this place.

All you who sit before me now—

Those in the cycle and beyond,

Without a soul left out—

Hear my words, and

Be my witness

As I invoke this pledge of power

Without a shred of doubt.

Isn't that beautiful? Hear my words, gives me chills. 

Causes and conditions, my

Great goodness in a former time,

Have brought me now this body

Wrought with all the ten.

What a wonder! Let me then

Delight in it both night and day.

How could I fail to partake

In the glory of helping others,

And bringing them to happiness?

Okay, so this is where he starts his pledge, right? The pledge goes on for a long time. Does anybody remember the first time they met the teachings on being a Bodhisattva, or on the heart opening thing, hearing that for the first time?

Does anybody remember?

I have to admit, I don't. It was really a long time ago. And for me, actually, I changed my mind. I do, but I really am asking, anybody have a thing pop up? How did it feel to all of a sudden hear somebody say, you're meant to stand on a billion planets and take care of everybody?

(Luisa) I remember when I had the ACI 7 first time in German, which is not my language, and I freaked out, no way. This is too much. And I didn't take the vows because I was super afraid, and I said, no, no, this sounds super terrifying.

(Lama Sarahni) Wow, good for you. Good for you for recognizing that and saying, no, it's not for me yet. Here you are still. Why are you still here?

(Luisa) I don't know. I am figuring it out.

(Lama Sarahni) Well, I bow at your feet for being here.

(Luisa) No, I dunno. Somehow. Then some years after then Geshela gave the vows now online, and then I took them with him. Although I was still a bit with respect, I would say.

(Lama Sarahni) Okay, out of respect, you mean?

(Luisa) Yeah. Not this fear of I'm going to screw it up, or I'm going to go to the help because I cannot keep them all. I don't know, somehow this feeling, you have to keep them all. But I remember with ACI, the first time I heard, I was like, no, this sounds too much. And a bit, sorry, I'm going to say culty. Like no.

Then my karma shifted and now I do prostrations, and I have an altar.

(Lama Sarahni) Ooh, you're part of the cult. You drank the purple...

(Luisa) This is what my husband thinks.

(Lama Sarahni) Well, oh, well, we're doing it for him. And so he doesn't have to. Anybody else want to share?

(Stevie) I remember hearing about my mother being trapped in an iron cage, chained, and bound, and gagged, floating down a river of pus and blood. And that it was, I know, I know. And I thought, and I was told I had to be the one, that I was one that was going to be able to save her. That opened my heart. So I think it was a precious human rebirth teaching, or a Lojong. But it was very early on. It was one of the first times I sat with Geshela, and I'm like, what is he talking about? And he was very dramatic and very graphic, and I was hooked.

(Lama Sarahni) Yeah, good.

(Rachana) Yeah, real quick. Because I'm not sure if it counts or not, because it wasn't the first time I heard about Bodhichitta. But I didn't realize there was class. I think it was last Sunday I missed it. And so I listened to the recording, I was in the car and driving, and then you Lama Sarahni said that with Bodhichitta, we're not traditionally, we're like, what do we want? How can we give that to others? I want to reach enlightenment. How can I help others? All this stuff, what you said in class just two classes ago. Like thinking about, well, what does the other person want? And it's not about what I want, it's about what they want and doing that for them. And I was like, it's almost like this physical, whoa. I was like, that's so cool. I never heard that before. I got to do that, and it's already helped me this week, so thank you.

(Lama Sarahni) Yay. Yay. Yeah, nice.

(37:37) Many people hear about Bodhichitta, maybe, and it's like, it's not for me. And then there are some where it's like, oh my gosh, I must've been waiting lifetimes to hear that. Creating the goodness for it in lifetimes in order to hear it. And then, oh my gosh, really? 

We've studied Master Shantideva, and his beautiful text about living the Bodhisattva‘s way of life, and it gives us these deeper details. It feels like it's all about recognizing how my own selfishness pushes me and oh, other people have the same wants and wanting to avoids as me, and I would be happier if I tried to help them avoid the things they don't want and get the things they do want.

To me, it was all like, oh yeah, I understand. I figured it out. I understand. Now I can do it step by step.

But really it's, it's about loving people, isn't it? It's like you don't need the checklist of how to do it, if you just love somebody. Parents do it automatically with their infants, right? You love them and so you take care of them, and so they're more important than you are. And then I don't know what happens, but we separate. They grow up and we still love them, but somehow them looming so much bigger, somehow shrinks, I think. I don't have kids, I don't know.

But when we have that love, love meaning you are more important. You are what's important—that kind of love. Then this Bodhisattva way of life is automatic, because we know how to go about getting our own happiness, how to try. And so we really already know what kinds of things, at least for humans, it's likely to bring somebody some pleasure. We don't know the details for different people, of course, whether you like light chocolate or dark chocolate.

But everybody likes a smile. Everybody likes to be hugged when they don't feel good. Everybody likes, well, maybe not physically hugged, but you know what I mean. People want to be praised. People want to be respected. Right? We know that, even if we don't know the details. And when we love someone, it's easy to praise them. It's easy to be patient with them. It's easy to forgive them. It's easy.

Why don't we love everybody?

Because our love isn't that kind of big love like it is with the new infant, like it is with the people that we like. Our love is conditional. Our love is based on what we get. So it's not really love.

There seems to need to be a different word in English, and we only have the one—love. And to me it's so misunderstood, and I love the beauty of our tradition that says love is wanting you to be happy, and compassion is wanting your suffering to stop.

That's so clear.

But what it really feels like and how it's manifested in our day to day life. Now we've got all these nuances, don't we? Because it seems almost impossible for a human to love unconditionally. Because there's always that ‘What about me?‘ inside there.

To love unconditionally seems to say automatically I'm going to get hurt. It isn't true, but the belief in that belief is true. I mean, it is a true belief. We do have it, and so it does block us.

So really, when we're saying I'm trying to grow my Bodhichitta, we're trying to grow our love, our unconditional love. We start out growing it with the people who are easy, or our dogs and our cats, and our environment, and the places where it's easy.

We encourage our heart to open more and more in those places.

But unconditional love means unconditional. Means towards every what appears to be other. And as our wisdom grows along with, this distinction between the self and the other that I'm learning to love is starting to blur. And that's the beauty of love.

The reason a new mom and dad can love that infant so unconditionally is because those boundaries are blurred still, aren't they? The infant's not separate from you yet, even though they're physically separate.

(43:48) When we are in love with every apparent other, then this Bodhisattva way of life is automatic, and we don't even need to check off our vows. Because we'll be doing them. We'll be doing the behaviors of the six perfections, naturally, effortlessly.

So trying to do them before we have unconditional love is helping us to grow our unconditional love. It's really a beautiful system.

You try, you plant seeds. Of course you're going to fail, because we don't have unconditional love yet. But the effort to try makes the getting there happen sooner.

It's not going to just show up out of the blue. We have to make the effort. We have to make the change from selfish me, even subtly selfish me, to no me, but not no me at all. 

We had those seven step cause and effect method for growing our Bodhichitta, and we have the equalizing and exchanging ourself and other method of Bodhichitta. You combine the two and it's supercharged, and all of it is about developing this change more wise sense of being of who we really are.

Lama Christie, in her class, she said, this emphasis on love, it's not unique to Mahayana Buddhism. Geshe Michael and Lama Christie held a couple of really beautiful courses, not at Diamond Mountain, but in the preterm.

They'd come to Tucson and give some classes. When was the questions of King Melinda? Melinda, is that the name? Gosh, I just came across the notes. You know we're moving and packing, and it's like, whoa, look at that. And in there, I remember him making the case for how, was it St. Thomas that got sold into slavery and went to India, and he lived in the area where 200 years later, Nagarjuna grows up. St. Thomas ends up teaching Jesus's teachings in that area of India, according to what I understood from Geshe Michael, and was combining those teachings into the community there. IT must have caught on. Not that it was new, but pre Nagarjuna, we've learned. It was still, I'm blanking out on the term, the lower teachings of Buddhism. Geshela called them the accountant Buddhists.

So the Mahayana meant, let's add the peace on love for crying out loud. Or your emptiness understanding isn't complete, if we're not doing it out of love for others. Our emptiness understanding will get us to the end of our own suffering. But big deal, that actually doesn't last forever. I mean the end of our suffering does, but it's not the end. It's not going to reach us to our inevitable career path, which is totally enlightened being for each of us.

She quoted from first Corinthians in the Bible, which I think is so beautiful. But I'm going to ask you your permission before I read it to you. Do you want to hear from Corinthians? Do you mind?

It's a pretty commonly quoted text.

It's first Corinthians 13. And curiously, we have on our house those stencils you stick on the wall. We have this, the punchline from this over David's room. Go figure.

So it says,

If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels

But have not love,

I am only a resounding gong or a clanging symbol.

If I have the gift of prophecy

And can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge,

And if I have faith that can move mountains

But have not love, I am nothing.

If I give all I possess to the poor

And surrender my body to the flames

But have not love, I gain nothing.

Love is patient.

Love is kind.

It does not envy.

It does not boast.

It is not proud.

It is not rude.

It is not self-seeking.

It is not easily angered.

It keeps not record of wrongs.

Love does not delight in evil,

But rejoices with the truth.

It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

Love never fails.

Where there are prophecies, they will cease.

Where there are tongues, they will be still.

Where there is knowledge, it will pass away.

For we know in part and we prophesize in part,

But when perfection comes,

The imperfect disappears.

When I was a child, I talked like a child.

I thought like a child. I reasoned like a child.

When I became a man,

I put childish ways behind me.

Now we see, but a poor reflection

As in a mirror,

Then we shall face to face.

Now I know in part

Then I shall know fully

Even as I am fully known.

Now, these three remain: faith, hope, and love.

But the greatest of these is love.

That's the famous line, faith, hope and love. And the greatest of these is love.

So in the Mahayana, we're learning the same thing, this thing called love. Which as ordinary humans, if that's what you are, I don't know. We don't yet really know what extraordinary love is.

But we have this glimmer, this ray of aspiration for it, that is based on goodness, on kindness that we've done before, probably many, many lifetimes, over many, many lifetimes before. Whether human lifetimes or other lifetimes. And all of that has gathered to bring us into this space where this is our ripening, to have the ripening of a teaching like this that is so direct. And so I hope clear in helping us pull the veil away of the obstacles to this bigger idea of who and what we are meant to be. What we will become.

It's difficult to stay. It's difficult to keep pushing ourselves. That's not the right term.

To keep the momentum of our spiritual practice in the face of our worldly life, unless we have this deep force pushing us, like almost from behind.

That force, Lama Christie says again and again and again, is the love for someone in your immediate world that seems as if they can't, or won't, or aren't interested, or don't know about doing it for themselves.

We're trained, oh, do everything for all sentient beings, because we need that big, big wish. But when we say all sentient beings, it's just too nebulous.

Yes, it's big, but to me, all sentient beings is beyond my next door neighbor. It's beyond my immediate day-to-day world. Whereas, if we have someone that represents that all sentient beings that we're doing our practice for, and we remind ourselves regularly, that's what I'm doing this for, it's for them. Look, they still seem to be suffering. Why am I seeing their suffering? I have more that I can do. I can open my heart more.

So to even stay on our generalized path, when our motivation goes beyond our own self, then we're much more likely to be able to ride the ups and downs of our practice. Because there will be ups and downs.

It doesn't have to be the same person all the time. You can change people or beings. It can be your cat for a while, and then it could be your cousin for a while, and then it could be your neighbor, and then it could be…

But it's really, really helpful to focus for the benefit of that being. It doesn't mean that that's the person you're interacting with all day. Maybe you don't ever even see them necessarily. But you love them so much and you want to see them be happy that everything else you do during your day we're doing for their benefit.

It's not really that we do actual activities much different than we already are doing.

I would suggest that we're all ethical people. We don't have any big, nasty, bad habits that we need to be breaking. We're kind already. But the attitude, our having the inspiration and aspiration and wisdom in mind. We're really working at that level, most of us at this point, and getting off automatic pilot and instead really having in mind, I am doing this for their benefit. I'm doing the dishes for their benefit.

Like, come on, what is doing the dishes, how does it help my Aunt Jean?

No, no understanding karma and emptiness… I am doing it for Aunt Jean.

It helps us stay on the path, because the path is hard to stay on. If you haven't noticed. It has been for me anyway.

Let's take a break and then we'll go verse by verse for a little while.

(Break)

(Stevie) And Louisa, this is your chance not to doubt. Just saying.

(Lama Sarahni) Yeah, or take the leap despite the doubt. How about that?

(Luisa) What does it mean?

(Lama Sarahni) Take the leap. Go for it despite the doubt. Yeah, good one.

(58:02) Let's go back to screen share. Okay, let's read this one again.

Causes and conditions, my

Great goodness in a former time,

Have brought me now this body

Wrought with all the ten.

What a wonder! Let me then

Delight in it both night and day.

How could I fail to partake

In the glory of helping others,

And bringing them to happiness?

Those who have taken their Maroke, what does the „Wrought with all the ten“ mean?

(Stevie) The 10 virtues?

(Lama Sarahni) Good guess.

(Val) The 10 good fortunes of a human life.

(Lama Sarahni) Yeah, good. Thanks Val. The leisures and fortunes, sweet.

Let me delight in it both day and night. Delight is such a sweet word, isn't it? I don't delight well in my life. I'm pretty stoic and I know I'd like to delight more.

But Vinaya Buddhism is not about delighting, right?

It's about strictness and restriction and discipline.

Mahayana Buddhism is still about discipline, but in this really different way.

Based upon the Vinaya discipline, we bring in the delight of having these leisures and fortunes, and using them instead of taking them for granted.

So how can I fail to partake in the glory of helping others, bringing them to happiness? What we want is happiness. Everybody wants happiness. Everybody wants to be free from suffering, not just human everybody.

So he's saying, how can I fail to use my life to help other people get happy?

Alright, let's go on. See what else he's going to say.

Impelled by the purest prayers,

In this life I have left the home.

Rejecting my own interests,

I have donned the golden robes

Of the Wish and Warrior's pledge—

Finding the highest state of mind,

I have taken on myself

The heavy weight of others' needs.

I have stepped upon the path,

And now the food I feast upon 

Is highest happiness.

When he says, he has left the home life, literally. Well was Dharma Rakshita a monk, I don't know, come to think of it. I'm going to guess Lojonging, he wasn't. I don't know. So I admit, I don't know,.

But left the home life. Left the home usually means, oh, I've taken my ordained vows. I'm a monk or a nun, I live in the monastery. I wear my robes. I have that discipline of avoidance type life, where I direct myself to my prayers, to my meditation, et cetera.

But he goes on to say, the golden robes that he donned are the Wish and the Warrior‘s pledge. That does not require ordained vows to take your Bodhisattva vows. It does require having some version of your Pratimoksha behavior gathered, whether it's your five lifetime layperson vows, repeatedly doing the one day vows, or at least following, avoiding the 10 non virtues before you can actually get your Bodhisattva vows.

So he is really saying, left the home life here means his attitude, his mental attitude directing his life is now the attitude of taking on others' happiness, taking on the responsibility for others‘ need. And he's happy about it. He's not feeling like, oh man, this is such a big burden. He calls it the heavyweight. But he stepped upon the path of the food he feasts on his highest happiness.

So he's intending, or pledging to have a good time carrying this weight of the burden of others' needs. Not so that so I can become happy. It's like I eat this highest happiness now. It's really beautiful.

Just look at all the masses

Of crude and evil beings

Who take the side of darkness—

How little goodness they possess!

Contemplating all these things,

I can no longer bring myself

To pray I pass to heaven.

If you go back to those previous, his opening verses, where he's calling all the unenlightened beings and the enlightened beings. He goes through this list of masses of suffering beings, all these different terms that we hadn't seen before, probably. And he says, oh, they who take the side of darkness.

It doesn't mean they're choosing the darkness.

It means the sight of darkness means where there's just no glimmer of wisdom, no glimmer of understanding where the end of suffering and the source of happiness comes from.

Any of us that are still stuck in that me, and other, and interaction between all being what they appear to be, we are in the dark side.

It's not just dark side, meaning totally selfish, totally cruel, totally awful.

It's the lack of the glimmer of understanding.

It's like Dharmarakshita is recognizing that if they really are that from their side, if they're seeing themselves that way, it's because they possess so little goodness.

The only reason they're suffering beings, belly walkers and smell eaters, and I don't know all those other terms that we saw. If they see themselves that way, it's because they lack the goodness to see themselves as humans.

Human is said to be the best suffering being, because we have what we need to end suffering. And apparently only as humans do we have what we need to be able to do that during that human life, theoretically.

So it's an extraordinary goodness to see ourselves as humans, if we do. And those who don't see themselves as humans, and technically those we don't see as humans. We don't have the goodness to see everybody as humans on their path.

So he's saying, oh my gosh, they're lacking goodness.

But then his conclusion is, so how can I keep praying for my own self to pass to heaven, if I see these beings without enough goodness to even have a human life? Like really deeper down, for him for himself, who's he blaming? Himself, right.

If I can see a hell being, it's my seeds ripening for that being in hell.

Does that mean they're not really in hell? No. That means they really are in hell, and I've got to do something about it.

So he's pointing that out.

I see infinite numbers of demons

Bereft of any merit;

I see the unbearable torment

Of those in the lower realms.

I see so many beings like these

Immersed in harmful actions!

How could I take any joy

In my own place of happiness?

I guess I already talked about that. I, let's see what else it says.

I see how easily children turn back

From deeds that would cure their ills;

I see how the armies of demons think,

And how they act as well.

I see them racing by for them

With not a breath to stop to think;

And so neither do I feel happy

To remain in this hermit's cave.

(69:59) Remember he's in retreat. He's in his hermit's cave.

When he says children turn back from deeds that would cure their ills. We know you've got to hold the little one's nose to get them to drink their penicillin. But he also means when we use the term children, it can be code for meaning someone on their spiritual journey, even who doesn't have any understanding of emptiness and dependent origination. Like someone before they've heard the pen thing, is children. 

From when we've heard the pen thing and have contemplated it a bit, up until seeing emptiness directly, Master Kamalashila says, you know what? Let's call you teenagers, because you are at least on the path.

But when we're still at children level, we could even be starting on our spiritual path, and it's really difficult to stay on it with the ups and downs of life. And so, even though they may have the tools and the clues, still it's likely that, as children, we would turn back from our path, from that which would cure our ills. And then with the armies of demons, again, demons are no, let's not go there.

He's recognizing that, staying in retreat, he's feeling limited, staying in retreat at this point. He is wanting to get out, and to go about these beings in his world to do stuff to help them grow their happiness.

It's an interesting conundrum, because if we think taking our spiritual practice into retreat, we are escaping from our worldly problems, and that that's why we want to go into retreat. Like I need a vacation. I need a break from life. I'm going to go into retreat. Then our retreat will just be a vacation.

I don't know, I remember all my vacations. I really enjoyed them. But when I got home, I was more tired than when I left. And now, I was behind in my work, so I had to work really hard to get off to go on vacation.

I went on vacation, I had a great time. I came back exhausted, and I was behind in my work. And it's like, right.

Retreat, if we're going into retreat like we're going into vacation, it's not helpful. It's just an escape. And people often think that about spiritual practitioners going into retreat. Oh, you're just taking a break from life. You're going to leave me home with the 4-year-old.

But retreat, that's not the purpose of retreat. The purpose of retreat, of course, is to focus, focus, focus on one's practice. And once I was well-trained in retreat, I feel like I can do so much more for the world from retreat, because I'm not limited by my physical body anymore. Whereas out in my world, I'm limited by my physical body.

So, it's just a state of mind. Do I get out of my physical body in retreat?

No, of course not. I still have to sleep. I still have to feed. I still have to poop.

But what I do in my practice is so much vaster.

Then when I get out of retreat, have I seen those results happening? Sometimes yes, sometimes no. But I know that what I did in retreat sent out this wave of vibration into my world that's still going. That's still there, still having its effect.

So I love doing retreat, because I can do so much more. But it‘s hard work, and it's not… Well, it's fun, but it's hard work. It's not like going on vacation.

Anyway, he is at this point where he's been in retreat, and he's coming to these deep Ahas about his love, and he's now thinking, oh man, I got to get out of retreat and go check out the level of my love. It's easy to love everybody in retreat, because all you see are ants and flies. But get back out in the world and do you still love the angry yelling boss like you love them in retreat?

That's what he's telling himself. That's what he's saying to this group of beings that he's pledged in front. Ah, I'm not happy in my retreat anymore. I'm going to come out and see how my love has grown. He's going to go back into retreat. Not in this teaching, but you know he is going in and out of retreat. That's what practitioners do.

All right, let's go on a little bit. Did I say everything?

I'm a yogi entering

A poison battlefield,

Meeting foes aplenty

Who rage against the truth.

In these days of darkness

Things look pretty bad,

How could I ever be content

To pass to the Angel's realm?

Wait a minute. How could I ever be content to pass to the Angel's realm?

Our Bodhisattva is supposed to be hell bent on gaining their own total enlightenment, so that they can finally help anybody in that deep and ultimate way.

And is he saying, I don't want to do that?

No. Sounds like it, doesn't it?

But surely, this Lojonger, this Bodhisattva Lojonger is not saying, no, I'm going to delay my Buddhahood. Because there are other suffering beings.

But remember when we had Master Chekawa, wasn't it him? And the end of his life, he's praying to go to the hell realms, and I can't go. All I see before me now is the paradise of a Buddha.

He wasn't on his deathbed going, wow, may I reach Buddha paradise for everybody.

He was saying, may I go to hell realm for everybody. And then that's not what he saw. It's really interesting, you really like cook that, because it's beyond words to really get the crux of the meaning of that.

This is not inconsistent with saying Bodhisattvas do not delay their enlightenment until every being gets there. Bodhisattvas are in fact focused completely on reaching their total Buddhahood. Which requires trying to help everybody get to theirs.

Even as we're thinking, I want to reach my own Buddhahood so that I can finally help everybody get there. We are misunderstanding Buddhahood. We are misunderstanding our me, and we're misunderstanding others.

Lamas say, if we feel like our practice is not progressing, or we're slipping a bit, he's telling us too. Get back out into the world. Get back out into the ripening of suffering. Apply your emptiness understanding. None of this is necessary. It's all driven by the big mistake, and grow that love for others.

It comes out of this understanding that all this suffering is unnecessary, really unnecessary.

Is it real? Yes. But it's all driven by a big mistake.

Drop the mistake, and it will all go away, swiftly, not instantly, but swiftly.

Why is it so hard?

Love means, I want your happiness, worldly and ultimate. And really it is a lofty, lofty state of mind. It's very hard to have when our self existent me still exists.

Does it exist? Has it ever existed? No.

Well, then why the heck is it so powerful? It's the belief that exists.

How powerful are beliefs? Completely powerful. Crazy.

Geshela has said, we waste so much time. We do our habits, our activities by habit, by automatic pilot mostly. But it's not that we need to do things differently. It's that we want to have our reason for why we're doing them be to benefit others. So we're driving, we are driving safely, we are driving carefully, and it's just a little tweak in our awareness that says, I'm driving safely to protect all of you automatically. We're driving safely, protect ourself, our car, whoever's in our car. But we're also protecting every car that drives by that we don't crash into every time we stop at the red light, and protecting life. I'm protecting you, and being safe for you. I'm being safe for all the others.

It's just somehow remind ourselves to think that. How many times do we have to think it? How many times are we on automatic pilot I'm driving safe for me?

We don't think it, but we're doing it.

So can we get that ‚I'm driving safe for you‘ attitude to be just as pervasive.

We don't just turn it on and off. It comes with training. It comes with seeds ripening. So You remember at one time, and it's better than the bazillion other times you've driven down the street without thinking of it. And it plants those seeds, little bit at a time. They will grow. Repeat, repeat, repeat. Others benefit.

Let's go on.

(83:15)

The beings of highest power

On every single planet there is

May rise now as my enemy;

But not a lash will I blink;

I have donned the inner armor

Here in the cycle of pain.

Inner armor. What does he mean by the inner armor?

(Carlos) Bodhichitta.

(Lama Sarahni) Yeah. Bodhichitta. What kind of Bodhichitta? What kinds are there?

(Stevie) The wish for Bodhichitta.

(Lama Sarahni) Yeah, the wish.

(Luisa) And the ultimate.

(Lama Sarahni) And the ultimate, and the action. Yeah. All of the above.

The inner armor, it's everything that we mean by, I want to become a totally enlightened being for the sake of all sentient beings. We're packing that Bodhichitta wish ,the deceptive wish.

Is it deceptive? Is it fake?

No, but it's in words. It's a concept. It's the appearing nature of our growing Bodhichitta. So it's part of our deceptive reality. Appearing reality. But that alone doesn't protect us without the understanding that it's grown from, which is our understanding of the lack of self existence of self, other, interaction between.

The ultimate Bodhichitta is that experience of the empty nature of all existence, including one's self.

Our intellectual understanding of that lack of self existence is the basis upon which our deceptive Bodhichitta grows, and the growth of our deceptive Bodhichitta adds to our goodness that deepens our understanding of ultimate Bodhichitta.

Those two go hand in hand, are cyclical you could say. And the inner armor takes both—to say, oh, I want to become a Buddha for the sake of all sentient beans and have that be strong enough to not yell back. Probably will fail us if we don't have as its basis the understanding that the whole situation in which I am upset, and want to yell is Steve's ripening. And if I yell, I'm going to make more of it for everybody, and I really don't want to do that. Right? That's applying our emptiness wisdom.

If we can hold it long enough to not yell back, and the whole scene shifts, hooray. Even if we hold it long enough that we delay our yelling back, every moment of the delay is 65 instances of different seeds planted. So together that does form the inner armor that does protect it. 

Does it stop the speeding bullet? Maybe. Maybe not. Probably not, if we're human still. But does it help us choose a different response? Absolutely. And that's where our protection lies, in how do we respond to given situations of life?

Our ordinary reactions perpetuate the cycle of pain.

A response born of wisdom, even intellectual wisdom, is enough to start to chip away at that cycle of pain, getting us closer and closer to where we are no longer perpetuating it. Which happens after direct perception of emptiness. Ultimate Bodhichitta experience, direct.

Let's go a little further.

Contagions may sweep the people here,

Pestilence may shake the earth's foundation;

But I will place upon me the mighty armor

Of becoming the world's Physician,

Of becoming the world's Nurse.

Nice. Do you remember Master Shantideva? 10th chapter, his dedication chapter by the power of this dee, may I blah, may I blah, may I, blah.

One of them, if I recall was, may I be the doctor for all the illness. May I be the nurse, may I even be the medicine. I think it was in that chapter. I always loved that.

The physician is the one who diagnoses the problem and says what we need.

The nurse is the one that gets the medicine and administers the treatment.

The medicine is the medicine.

Can we be all three of them at one time? Absolutely.

For whom? For everyone.

What a mighty armor that would be, to know what people need. People being any being. To know what treatment to help them with. To be able to actually do it, and then even to be the treatment that you give them. To be the medicine, to be the herb, to be the water, to be what any being needs.

So he is like he's saying to this group of beings that have come to his retreat cave. In this situation, this is what I'll do. In that situation that's what I'll do. That I'm pledging to be this until there's no more pain and suffering.

We might actually finish.

When I shelter helpless beings with kindness

And then the wrongdoers come and tear

This beauty away from them,

I will place upon the warrior‘s armor

Of helping and loving these enemies

Even more than I did before.

Wow. Well that's pertinent.

He's saying, I'm taking care of people. And then other beings come and hurt them. 

How are you going to feel? How would you feel? You're taking care of people, going out of your way to take care of people, and then other people come and just hurt them. Wah, get out of here. Right? We would fight with the enemy.

And he's saying, no, I'm going to love those enemies even more than I did before. 

Wow, man. So inspiring. I hope I could.

The merciless tigris, her terror cruel

May stalk these poor ones

And thirst for their life;

And I'll place on myself

The armor of working for others;

I will race to that place

Without a moment's hesitation.

Wow. It seems like he's talking about even helping animals. Right?

But come on, the tigress has to eat.

I don't know. How do you work for both the tigress and the prey?

There must be a way, right? Maybe you feed her you instead.

But wait a minute, I need my body. She should eat the rabbit. Not me.

I'm closer to enlightenment than the rabbit.

You know, they're all, are we?

(Stevie)  Are we?

(Lama Sarahni) Are we, right. Good. Let's go on.

The earth itself may be covered

In every kind of evil sign,

With things that others seek to avoid—

Armies of war dark over the land—

But I'll be there, to place on me

The armor of taking the loss myself,

To smash the foes, the wrongness rampant.

Wow. How is this even possible?

Is he meaning literally, if I could get to Ukraine and do the Lobsang Chukyi Gyeltsen thing and go stand between the two armies, and holler at them. What would happen to me?

Kabong from both sides, maybe. Right?

According to my seeds. It's so frustrating to not know what seeds are going to ripen. Isn't it? Oh my gosh, it's crazy to not be omniscient. I'm so sick of it.

So what if we were to try and we got shot? Have we wasted the effort?

(Luisa) No. You come back, and then you have good seeds.

(Lama Sarahni) Yeah, so then I'm a little baby. Even if I get a human and it takes me this life, it took me almost 35 years before I met the Dharma. 35 years. Yeah, 35 years before I met the Holy Dharma. Maybe I'd do it faster next time around, I'd be 20 before I met the Holy Dharma. 20 whole years. I guess maybe it's a drop in the bucket, right? But it sounds like a really long time, and my self existent me is speaking here. It's like, I can't do that. I'll help in some other way. I'll send money, I'll send food. I'll do the best I can. But I can't take myself over there and put myself in that position. I'm too puny.

It's that fear coming up. True. I'm not saying just go. But our belief in self existent situation is what makes it a whole conundrum.

(Luisa) But then would it be more powerful to work harder on yourself? I mean, you don't have to be in Ukraine. If you see violence is because we have planted violence. So what about our anger attacks or at least this is what I'm trying to do. I cannot go to Ukraine. I can‘t. But you can go and retreat. You guys are going to retreat.

(Lama Sarahni) That's right. We are going to suck that right out of the world. Yeah.

I will be there to place on me the armor of taking the loss myself.

I will be there. As you say, Luisa, does he have to be there geographically?

No. We are all doing something for Ukraine and Russia, and everybody else who is involved in this conflict. It's not just those two countries. It's the whole world. Some of us more aligned than others.

We can place it on ourselves, and take the loss ourselves, and smash those both by smashing our own ignorance, our own selfishness. It's hard.

The confusing illusions wrought by karma

And the afflictions of the mind

Is something that no worldly person

Would ever want or need;

I though will place upon myself

The armor of feeding upon it

So I can rip the life away

From this tendency of grasping

To things in the things around me.

Wow. A confusing illusion wrought by karma and the afflictions of the mind.

Do you remember the opening lines of third chapter, Abhidharmakosha?

Deeds create the multitude of worlds.

Karma and the afflictions of the mind are what create our world.

The confusing illusion is what he's calling our world, like our moment by moment experience. I don't mean the blue marble in the sky world. I mean it is that, but me and my world, is me and my life moment by moment by moment, is this confusing illusion he's talking about.

The confusing illusion wrought by karma and the afflictions of the mind. Meaning me and my world is something that no worldly person would ever want or need.

What does mean by that?

We don't want the confusing illusion. We don't want a world just by karma and afflictions of the mind. We don't believe it even once we hear about it, until we prove it to ourselves.

And so he's saying, just reject it—as if we could. As we start on our spiritual path, it's like, no, I'm going to quit this Samsara. I'm going to get out of Samsara. We use those words. And he says, no, I'm going to feed on it. I don't want to get rid of it.

Wait a minute. Does he not want to get rid of it? Really?

How's he going to get rid of it? By using it.

You can't avoid it anyway. You can't make it stop happening by wishing or by going into retreat, or by meditating. You can't even really make it stop happening just by seeing emptiness directly. You still have to do stuff afterwards. You have to habituate to that wisdom.

So he says, I'm going to use my mental afflictions and karma, and all of my experiences that it brings about, that it is technically. And I'm going to use it to rip away this tendency of grasping the things in the things around me.

What does he mean by that?

(Luisa) To stop ignorance. The belief in self existence.

(Lama Sarahni) Yeah. The belief that things are what they seem, that things are, what they appear to be. That the things I do bring what comes next. That I am same me, moment by moment by moment.

Lama Christie spoke to this particular verse. She said her Lama really, really worked hard with her to overcome her expectations of things happening in a certain way. And they would go to places that were really beautiful and sacred. So she would expect to have some kind of angel experiences, or magical experiences. And she said just things would go wrong and she'd have a horrible experience.

And then they'd be in some horrible, ugly, awful, potentially even dangerous place, and she'd have these magical experience. She'd called them experiences of the mandala. Meaning magical things. People doing, saying things that were divine.

She quickly came to recognize that she had these expectations of what should happen in any given situation.

We have those kinds of expectations. We decide to go out to dinner. So I expect to get good service. I expect to have a nice meal. I expect to get a bill and to pay the bill, and figure out the tip. We have all these expectations, and those expectations limit our experience.

I expect to be in an ordinary Chinese restaurant with the ordinary Chinese waiter, and I know him. And that blocks me from being able to have an extraordinary experience. 

Whereas if we go to the Chinese restaurant for dinner without expectation, anything could happen. Not meaning, oh, go and expect to have a divine experience, because  that won't work either, necessarily.

What would it be like to go through life with no expectation? To get in your car, to go to the grocery store and not expect to get there? It's like, what?

Why would I get in my car to go to the grocery store if I don't expect to go there?

Why would I turn left at that corner instead of turning right, if I don't expect to get to the grocery store.

We don't even think it's possible to go through life without expectations, and still get anything done. But it's our tendency of grasping to things and things around us that limit us in this way.

Everything could be. I mean, everything is the potential to be something ordinary and something magical at any given moment.

Do we make it magical by just deciding it‘s magical?

Not really, but in fact, yes. Because by pretending they're magical, even if they don't seem magical, you plant the seeds for magical in the future.

But do we really want everything to be magical?

Then it all becomes ordinary.

I don't know. Once you're Buddha you in Buddha paradise, is your paradise ordinary?

No. They say it's bliss, bliss and more bliss. Bliss wisdom, bliss wisdom, bliss wisdom. But I think we're thinking of it wrongly. If we're thinking, oh, me Buddha having bliss and perpetuating bliss. If we're not Buddha, we're misunderstanding those words. We're compelled to misunderstand, because we're thinking self existently at some subtle level. The tendency to grasp things and things around us, it's in every seed until we've seen emptiness directly. It's still in every seed that anyway, not in the seeds newly planted, but it's still in the old seed.

So he's saying, I'm going to stop running away from Samsara.

I'm going to stop trying to avoid it.

I'm going to stop trying to stop it.

I'm going to use it. I'm going to use every moment of it to rip away this belief in self existent things.

Surely he is going to go on to self existent me later. But when you're doing that Mahamudra meditation where you're finding the me that's being the meditator, that's being aware of whatever's arising, then you make that me be your object of meditation. It's like that's the things and things around me, right? My me is part of the things around me, technically.

Alright, enough for tonight that gives us something to cook for a few days.

Are we strong enough to use Samsara, or are we still trying to avoid it?

So any comment, questions before I leave you?

(Val) I was wondering if you could talk a little bit more about the meditation you did at the beginning of class, and how we might use that. Do you recommend just listening to the recording and internalizing it? I felt like it was very powerful and I was wondering if you could speak to it a little bit.

(Lama Sarahni) Lama Christie was wanting, helping us to look at the awareness of a sensation that we automatically label as a pain, or a distress, and to intentionally make that as an offering to the holy being. And include in the seeing yourself offering, assuming your visual, that you're contributing to that holy being's bliss void wisdom.

I don't know what that looks like. I'm not visual, but maybe a big smile comes to their face, or maybe they glow a little bit brighter. Somehow you make this offering of this thing that you don't like, and see them get bliss from it.

Then I didn't say anything about it, but think about the seeds you just planted. Contributing to the bliss void wisdom of an enlightened being is an extraordinary thing. And then go back to that thing that you offered them.

Why am I calling it pain? Why is it something I was avoiding? Where did that label come from? What happened to that label when I offered it?

Whether you come to a new conclusion or not. Just the going through that, not even in the mental words, in the feeling of it, is planting seeds. And that's what I think, that's what she was hoping to help us do. The Lojong is about cracking open our heart. To crack open the heart, we have to recognize self existent me, self existent other, self existent interaction between, and see that, oh my gosh, that's all misunderstood and out of the blank.

The availability is the all potential to be anything for anyone. Everything for everyone. That's how the words I use in my mind. And then just expand into it. Does that help a little bit?

(Val) Yeah. And does that connect to what you just said at the end, when you talked about Samsara? Because to me this feels like it's using Samsara. It's like my mental affliction can be turned into an offering, which I can see as a positive thing. Which I can see is doing some good in the world. Transform Samsara.

(Lama Sarahni) Right. But that does not mean you get to walk back into the world and let your mental affliction fly. We still, we use it. Yes. Thanks for pointing out me.

[Organizational announcements]

[Dedication]

Thank you. I love you.

Welcome back. We are Peacock Gobbling Poison / Lojong studiers. I think this is our last intro class to it. We should finish chapter 5 tonight. It's April 27th 2022.

Let's do our usual opening prayers, and we'll do that same meditation again that we did last class, maybe a little bit modification now that we know it. But so we'll go from opening prayers right into that.

So gather your mind here, please, as you usually do. Bring your attention to your breath until you hear from me again.

[Class Opening]

Guided Meditation

(7:25) Bring your attention back to your breath. Find a specific location where you are aware of it, and just park your attention on it as if it's the most fascinating thing right now.

As you breathe out, you relax, and as you breathe in, you get a little more bright, and clear, and focused on that breath.

Now bring to mind something that you are afraid of, some fear that you have that's different.

Recognize your natural tendency to avoid any situation that could possibly get you close to that fear coming up.

Maybe there are other people involved in this avoiding the fear and/or the situation in which that fear is likely to arise.

Maybe there's a feeling in your heart of resistance towards those people, resistance towards that situation.

Now imagine having that Bodhichitta kind of love for these others, regardless of that situation that needs avoiding.

What happens when you love those others so much?

Imagine being so much love that there's no room for fear. There's nothing to fear. 

What would it feel like to go through your day? What might you look like?

Yep, that's attractive to you. Make a resolve to become that being someday, a being made of love.

Now turn your mind instead to something that happened recently in which some pain came to you, some kind of distress. Think of the situation, identify the others involved. And as you clarify and replay the situation, recognize the healing, the belief where you had this conclusion ‘That hurt me. They hurt me‘.

Probably it wasn't in mental words. It was a reaction.

Where in the string of events did that arise?

Now, focusing on those few moments of that experience, as if you can freeze frame, look and find those three underlying beliefs in self existence, meaning the other who is doing the hurting. Whether it's a conscious other, or an inanimate other, what is to blame? Find the feeling of blame, the belief that they did that to me.

It's odd, because it's really subtle and really obvious at the same time.

Then check the distress itself, the pain, the feeling of pain. It's obvious, but find the belief that that feeling, that experience is a pain in it.

The third culprit is this self existent me, the me that they did that to me.

Now pick any one of those three levels of belief, and mentally use words to explain to yourself why the way you are holding to that itself in it, has to be incorrect.

When you catch it for one of the three, apply it to another of the three.

And then to the third of the three.

And so who, what is there to blame?

Who, what is doing the blaming?

Do I mean nothing happened, there's no me?

No, of course not.

Now drop all that and go back through just the experience again.

Then I'm going to ask you to go through it one more time. But this time catch the moment that distress arises and recall your precious holy angel guide who's there in front of you, and offer it to them. Try.

Do it a few times.

Now add recognizing the thought that when you offer anything to that holy angel, they experience bliss and wisdom.

Now imagine into your future, next week, next month, imagine some similar situation arising, and see yourself into that situation, and ready and prepared to offer it even before it gets to the point where it's distressing.

So now, if this situation from which you experience pain also gives bliss to your holy angel, is it a bad situation, or is it a good situation? Is it something to avoid?

What if the more of those situations you encountered, the bigger your Bodhichitta grew. Would you avoid those encounters?

Now turn your mind again to that precious fully guide there with you.

See how happy they are with your efforts.

Ask them to please stay close, to continue to help you, guide you, bless and dedicate what we've done just so far to a world in which love is known to be the ultimate practice.

And then bring your attention back to your body in your room.

When you're ready, open your eyes. Take a stretch. Have something to drink.

(32:03)

(Luisa) Can I ask something to the meditation? In the first part, when you say, okay, you think about something you're afraid of, and then think you love that person involved in that situation, I don't get why, if I love that person, then my fear is going to disappear. Sorry.

(Lama sarahni) Well, does anybody else want to answer Luisa? What's the love that is such that fear can't be there at the same time?

(Luisa) Self existent love?

(Lama Sarahni) Well, it's a love that cares so much for the other's wellbeing that there's nothing they can do to my me that would make me stop loving them in that way.

(Luisa) But what about the fear is not because of them. It's kind of with myself. I don't know. For example, I just started this situation with this interview I mentioned last time. So I am afraid to apply because I feel I am not good enough. So I'm afraid of that. Then to love that person, I didn't see how it brings me…

(Lama Sarahni) Okay. Because your fear isn't the other person. Your fear is your own failure. So your love would be towards that you that's going to fail. And if you have love towards that, you that's going to fail. It's like, that's okay honey, if you fail, I love you anyway. I mean that's what you would say to your daughter, right? Go to the interview, I love you so much. It doesn't matter what happens at the interview. Like that.

(34:18) Lama Christie shared that at this time when she was teaching this before, anyway. She was in New York City at one point and preparing her book, the Tibetan Book of Meditation with all those different kinds of meditations in it. And she was teaching various groups of people in New York City. She said, they were very sophisticated students. They'd taken some of the ACI stuff, they'd studied the YSI things. A lot of them were Asana Yogini people. They had some experience with the channels, and the drops, and the winds, and they could go right along with her and the emptiness meditations, and go right along with her and the dependent origination meditations, and even go right along with her with the channel stuff that she was taking them through. And she said, and then she shifted to Lojong. 

She took them through not this particular meditation, but one of the earlier Lojongs where you're learning how to equalize and exchange yourself with others, and you're just growing that willingness to be so aware of someone else's pain and to want to do something about it at your own expense. We've just finished our course 14, we know the depth that Lojong was talking about.

And she said, these very sophisticated students, as she was going into this, she could feel their minds, their hearts go, oh no, no, no, no. As she was helping them crack open, she said, they just shut down.

I know she didn't mean everybody. But she had this sense that it was like, whoa, that's too vulnerable. Whoa, no, I'm going to get hurt if I love that much.

You love the angry yelling boss? They're just going to throw something at you. We know that. We know that, don‘t we? We think we do. But that's not love that we're talking about.

So she felt to her, it gave her this really clear insight to how very powerful these Lojong practices are. They don't seem that deep, that powerful.

Oh great, I'm just going to love people more, and all the different ways I'm going to do that. But she said the Lojong practices, they're designed to take us viscerally into our self existent me, and see how dangerous that is. How that self existent me is the cause of all distress for everybody. It's like the Lojong take us there by way of being willing to look at others' pain instead of look away. Being willing to look at our own pain instead of avoiding it. Not just look at it, but step into it. And that deep reaching of the belief, the self grasping and self cherishing, those two states of mind, to get so close to those that you can almost get ahold of them. It's powerful and it is visceral. 

And she said, by doing that, you are already almost all the way to your wisdom. You're so close to your emptiness understanding by way of doing Lojong.

It helps to do Lojong with a high conscious awareness of emptiness at the same time, because there's nothing about the Lojong from its own side that works otherwise.

But with that understanding and motivation, to do Lojong practices where you're willing to get into that pain, that distress, that fear, that blame, that wrong view, and investigate it from feeling it, instead of from being a meditator. Like from here, when we're doing it from our heart, it's a very short step, she says, to a growth of our wisdom all the way to seeing emptiness directly.

It's compelling to dig in this deeply and recognize that, I mean, we've been given these tools and I don't know, I've always been focused on understanding emptiness so that I can explain it to somebody. Because words fail, you got to do it again, and again, and again with greater and greater subtlety. And that's all which I'm good at, and so I stay there. And yet interestingly, my first introduction to the Tibetan system was Tonglen. And to get higher training, deeper training on Tonglen, I had to do course 14. So it wasn't my first introduction to ACI. The first course I took was 6, the Diamond Cutter. But the first one I really studied and worked on in practice was Lojong. It cracked my heart.

But then they still stayed like this: head, heart, head, heart, head, heart. And they still, they're getting closer. But they still haven't quite touched for me. So I was so thrilled to get this piece in Lama Christie's teachings where she's talking about how Lojong is the piece. Find a Lojong that speaks to you. Whether it's the Peacock one, or the Wheel of Knives, or the Seven Step Cause and Effect, or the Eight Verses, whichever one you like the best.

Don't put it on a shelf. Incorporate it, use it, draw it into your daily meditation practice. 

Whatever it is, include something about your Lojong, because it's so simple and profound. I encourage you, it will help our whole spiritual path be sustainable, because the harder it gets, the more we Lojong. And the more we Lojong, the easier it gets. It's this beautiful cycle where we quit avoiding, avoiding, avoiding and hoping that we've burned it off with our purification practice, to not avoiding anything. Just take it all on, use it all. And it's interesting because that's what the Diamond Way is all about. Shush, I am not supposed to talk about it. Where you use everything as your path. You transform pleasure, you transform avoidance, you transform your ignorance, you transform everything. That's why it's so fast, because there's no moment that you're not using that ripen and replant in a different way.

Lama Christie said, she also caught on that back in the days that Lojong was going into Tibet, it was early on. Tibet was a Bon country, spiritual but not Buddhist.

Then Buddhism was already very ancient in India, and had gone into what was Burma then, spread and then it goes over the mountains into Tibet. And those, not the first, but the early practitioners, was that group of Sakyas, remember those not ordained people but different families that were attracted? And that one would go study this and come back and teach it and that one would go study that and come back and teach it. And everybody was sharing with everybody. We learned that about that lineage.

It's all in an open context, open teachings. But it's like no, Lojong wasn't open, they weren't taught publicly, they were held very secretly. They said because people would disrespect, and it would be bad for them. Those are the same arguments for why Tantra's not taught openly.

And Lama, Christie goes, oh my gosh, Lojong was the tantra of the early days in Tibet, maybe. She's not taking that from scripture. She's putting two and two together to come up with four. And I find it really useful.

The Lojong was an oral tradition. It was given to students who were ready, who had the seeds, who had the background, who had the desperation in the sense of, so ready for that message, the personal responsibility.

Yeah, the goodness, totally, had the goodness. But not enough for them to just change it themselves. The goodness to have a teacher, but not the goodness to not need a teacher. Kind of funny.

Lama Christie's proposal is that, although Lojong did come out and become public, from the secrecy of it evolved the tantric lineages. There are many. We just have access to one main one. But with that two or three or four others in our lineage.

But the whole practices of Lojong we're really based on the tantric practices from India. Not identical of course, but it is just very, very interesting to see that.

Then, when we go back and read our text, which every chapter says, I bow down to the Diamond, the Lord of Terror, the end of death. It's like that when we say the obeisance at the beginning of a text tells you what your subject matter is. That's telling us that this is a tantric text. And I'm not supposed to tell you that until now, the last class. Sorry. But now you're in it.

Not that you're in tantra, but you're in Lojong. And maybe that's all you need, is a really powerful Lojonging. And for those of us that need to go and get the initiation and do the a hundred thousand mantras, four times or maybe eight, that we're the flunkies, and that those who can get enlightened by Lojoning, have at it. You don't need tantra.

So not to worry if you think, oh my life, I'm never going to be able to get to tantric teachings. Lojong like crazy. Truly, truly.

But for the recording, that is not from scripture, that is from Sarahni putting two and two together and coming up with four. So I hope it helps you.

Continuing Chapter 5

(47:50) Let's go to the text here, and start again on chapter 5.

For the blessing of it. Let's read it again and then we'll find where we left off, and carry on.

As the peacock wanders through

A grove of deadly plants…

I bow down to the Holy One

The Slayer of the Lord of Death.

All you of the dark side,

Full of angry thoughts and malice,

Come here before me now.

You eaters of flesh,

You blood drinkers

Come by the score, to this human form

Come here before me now.

I call the groups of serpentines,

The gods, and havoc wreakers;

The clans of demi-gods,

Belly-walkers, and smell eaters;

The infinite clouds of close Angels

Who dance throughout the skies;

The gathering of spirit beings

Whom I owe a karmic debt—

Come here before me now.

I call the simultaneous Angels,

The saints, and the obstructors;

The eighteen great demon lords

Who like to lead us astray;

The witches, and all the protectors

Of any holy deed;

My true refuges, and the collection

Of every realized being—

Come here now, to this place.

All you who sit before me now—

Those in the cycle and beyond,

Without a soul left out—

Hear my words, and

Be my witness

As I invoke this pledge of power

Without a shred of doubt.

Causes and conditions, my

Great goodness in a former time,

Have brought me now this body

Wrought with all the ten.

What a wonder! Let me then

Delight in it both night and day.

How could I fail to partake

In the glory of helping others,

And bringing them to happiness?

Impelled by the purest prayers,

In this life I have left the home.

Rejecting my own interests,

I have donned the golden robes

Of the Wish and Warrior's pledge—

Finding the highest state of mind,

I have taken on myself

The heavy weight of others' needs.

I have stepped upon the path,

And now the food I feast upon 

Is highest happiness.

Just look at all the masses

Of crude and evil beings

Who take the side of darkness—

How little goodness they possess!

Contemplating all these things,

I can no longer bring myself

To pray I pass to heaven.

I see infinite numbers of demons

Bereft of any merit;

I see the unbearable torment

Of those in the lower realms.

I see so many beings like these

Immersed in harmful actions!

How could I take any joy

In my own place of happiness?

I see how easily children turn back

From deeds that would cure their ills;

I see how the armies of demons think,

And how they act as well.

I see them racing by for them

With not a breath to stop to think;

And so neither do I feel happy

To remain in this hermit's cave.

I am a yogi entering

A poison battlefield,

meeting foes aplenty

Who rage against the truth.

In these days of darkness

Things look pretty bad,

How could I ever be content

To pass to the angel's realm?

The beings of highest power

On every single planet there is

May rise now as my enemy;

But not a lash will I blink;

I have donned the inner armor

Here in the cycle of pain.

Contagions may sweep the people here,

Pestilence may shake the earth's foundation;

But I will place a upon me the mighty armor

Of becoming the world's Physician,

Of becoming the world's Nurse.

When I shelter helpless beings with kindness

And then the wrongdoers come and tear

This beauty away from them,

I will place upon me the warrior‘s armor

Of helping and loving these enemies

Even more than I did before.

The merciless tigress, her terror cruel

May stalk these poor ones,

And thirst for their life;

But I will place upon myself

The armor of working for others;

I will race to that place

Without a moment's hesitation.

The earth itself may be covered

In every kind of evil sign,

With things that others seek to avoid—

Armies of war dark over the land—

But I will be there, to place on me

The armor of taking the loss myself,

To smash the foes, the wrongness rampant.

The confusing illusion wrought by karma

And the afflictions of the mind

Is something that no worldly person

Would ever want or need;

I though will place upon myself

The armor of feeding upon it

So I can rip the life away

From this tendency of grasping

To things in the things around me.

Phet!

Ya-ho!

Lord of Death!

Maraya!

Jayaram,

Lion who rips open the throat

Of  this evil demon within me,

The wish to be happy, only me.

I utter a curse

Over the sleeping head

Of my own utter laziness,

Ams I chop from me

The knots that tie me

Here to the cycle of pain.

Those of us suffering here in the cycle of pain

Must come to see what lies at the very bottom

Of all of it: the king of Me on the throne over there

In the Palace of Misperception at our heart.

Put the blame on him, where it lies;

Struggle to fight against him;

And he'll reply in offended tones,

Why me? I've been here since the beginning,

Of time with no beginning.

I'm the Lord of all there is,

Of all three lands: the outside of you,

The inside of you, and everything between.

I'm the king of the true and the false,

And everyone knows

All six kinds of consciousness

Within the mind are my domain.

Who now will I fight?

I myself am my enemy.

Who can protect me?

I myself am my own savior.

I myself am the sole witness

To all that I do, or fail to do;

I am the one who must act to break

This wild I—and then I will be free.

If it were one person

Who had to break another,

Only then could there be a struggle.

And whenever there's tension or struggle,

Then the evil ones are attracted like flies;

A person who likes something,

A person who hates something,

Will never see a change to be freed.

Dance. Then then in the yoga

Where the mind is free form thoughts.

A-la-la! Who do we sing our song to?

Maraya! Death to thinking that things exist.

Jayara! Death to thinking that nothing exists.

The king who holds that things are things

Is the one whose fault all this is—

Cut the head, and the body dies.

Break the wild horse at the head,

The awareness of your own thoughts,

Or run the risk that the King himself,

The one who thinks that things are things,

Will lie in hiding and lead you astray.

Break the wild horse at the head,

THe awareness of your own thoughts,

And every other leading horse,

The eyes and the other senses,

Will fall tame into your hands.

And this is exactly why,

If you break the wild horse at the head—

This awareness of your own thoughts—

Then you'll see that none of the rest,

The things you see or hear,

The things you smell or taste or such,

Could ever have been there at all.

Nothing was ever something

And never either did I believe;

That anything was something;

The King of Misperceptions

Will die without his food.

Speak thus to this King;

And watch as your misperceptions

Vanish to the Land of Is,

All by themselves.

None of the six kinds of consciousness

Is something real; just some elephant

A magician has conjured up.

None of what you experienced

Of the person that experienced it

Is something real; just the holy work

Of the emanation of an Enlightened One.

And so let me take all these misperceptions

And rip them out from their very root:

There is no experience

There is no one who experiences;

Let me take this view that things are things

And send it into the Realm of Is.

There's no me, there's no you—

Let me rest then my likes and dislikes

In what was there before the beginning.

No one is more or less intelligent

In the practice of spiritual things:

The antlers on a rabbit

Are neither sharp nor dull;

So come now let us rip

The life from death itself.

The child of a barren woman

Is neither clever nor dull;

Come let us rub all the things there are,

In the cycle of pain, ob or beyond it,

Into a single ball of The Equal.

The fur that grows on a turtle

Is neither thick nor thin;

Let take all these startings and stoppings

And leave them on the road to The Middle

These things that exist but in words

Were empty from the beginning,

No more solid than an echo

Let us take them all and wrap them 

Into a single ball of The Ultimate.

These are typos. The AA and the BB are typos. So please, in your reading, will you correct them? The two A's are supposed to be this, which is A, which is the short A, which is pronounced A. So that would be A A. Nothing ever starts just there like the sky.

The B B is a typo that is supposed to be this, which is the vowel I, written I, but it's pronounced like a double E, E. So A A, nothing ever starts just there like the sky. E E, nothing ever stops a holy form free of elaboration. And it's significant, the A and the E later. And then the last one, Om. This is Om, means body, speech and mind of enlightened being, Om.

A A

Nothing ever starts

Just there like the sky

E E

Nothing ever stops

A holy form free of elaboration

Om Om

Come to see

That all the variety of the world

Is the Dharma Body

Of perfect purity

Karunika

Embrace it all

Within your heart's compassion.

(64:30) Beautiful word, Karunika. The one of Karuna, of compassion. Okay, let's do the last one.

And so there it is: the work I've named As the Peacock Wanders through a Grove of Deadly Plants. It was written by myself, the yogi named Dharma Rakshita, who has labored hard to open his eye of wisdom, so that he can see the billions of knowable things—who has not the slightest doubt about the fact that mystical power of the infallibility of cause and effect, and the view of emptiness, are indivisible one from the other. I composed the text in retreat, deep within the Mountains of Ebony, motivated by a great compassion towards all living beings: a compassion, which nonetheless, never looked upon any of them. And I pray that it may prove a goodness.

Sarva shubham!

I don't know what shubham means.

Alrighty, let's take a break and we'll wrap this up.

(67:15) He's called all beings, those beyond suffering and those still in suffering, those we see directly, those we've only heard of. He's heard a lot more of than I've heard of. But he calls them all together and he says, listen, I'm making you this pledge, all of you. And then he seems to outline a bunch of different outer, unpleasant experiences that he pledges he's going to use to destroy unpleasant circumstances for others.

I remember there was one of them that he says, the merciless tigris. He pledges, he's going to go and somehow overcome the merciless tigress. It's like, wait, you can't do that. She needs to eat. Then he says something about, I see a world where there's war everywhere. I'm going to go fix it. I don’t know about you, but I was thinking, how does one guy do that? How do you stop meat eating animals? How do you turn them to vegetarian? I did it a bazillion times in my three year retreat, that was on my list. Make all animals vegetarian, because that would really, really help. And I got out and we still feed our dogs and cats meat.

He catches on too, doesn't he? Because he shifts from addressing what seemed to be outer enemies to this inner enemy.

Let's go dig up where we see that shift happen, and see how it applies to us.

This verse is the one where he's recognizing that the real, what the real enemy is, similar to Wheel of Knives. When he's like, oh, now I know who's really to blame my self cherishing, my self grasping.

But here he says, the tendency of grasping to things in the things around me.

It's so poetic that he's comparing the confusing illusion brought by karma and mental afflictions to my tendency to believe that things‘ identities are in them.

So when we say things, don't think he only means inanimate things.

He means any other. But of course he is not going to leave it there. It's like, oh, everything else is lacking self existence, but me. I'm not. But he is going to get there too.

I will place upon myself the armor of feeding upon it.

Feeding upon what? That confusing illusion, he is going to use it.

We've already heard that he's using everything he's teaching us to use everything as the path. But now he's going to show us that he's even going to use the tendency of grasping to things and things around me as his path.

That's what he means by that King of Me. It's our ignorance.

So let's go on.

Here's another clue, that we're dealing with secret teachings.

Phet!

Ya-ho!

Lord of Death!

Maraya!

Jayaram,

Lion who rips open the throat

Of  this evil demon within me,

The wish to be happy, only me.

I utter a curse

Over the sleeping head

Of my own utter laziness,

Ams I chop from me

The knots that tie me

Here to the cycle of pain.

Phet, sound, mantra. Sound that it's similar to what it sounds like. It just blasts prana out into the universe. It's used for a lot of different reasons.

Then Ya-ho is just shortened for the Lord of Death. So Ya-ho is saying Lord of Death.

Then Maraya, we tend to say it Maraya, but it's Mara Ya. Mara means the illusion. Ya means cut. Lord of Death is Maraya, cut that illusion.

Yayaram cut the misbelief, or something like that. We'll get it a little bit later.

I don't quite know why he's calls it the

Lion who rips open the throat

Of  this evil demon within me

Maybe because Shakyamuni Buddha, open teaching, Buddha is often called the Lion among men. So maybe it's talking to that, I don't know for sure.

But he finds that deepest demon, which is my own wishing to be happy. It's like, what's wrong with wishing to be happy? I mean, if we don't want to be happy, how are we ever going to grow the wish to help everybody be happy?

He doesn't mean that, does he? He doesn't mean, oh, just ditch the wish to be happy. 

What is he going to tell us to ditch? The self existent me that gets happy by eating ice cream, by getting a better job, by sleeping later, or not sleeping later, whatever we think is going to make us happy. We have those three spheres of the situation. Any one, or all of which we are holding to be in them, coming from them, mistakenly so.

JEM SEY is some kind of curse. I don't know it. I don't know. Curses don't use it, please. But where he's saying the only thing to curse is our own laziness, our own letting our ignorance self existent me go on and on and on.

Is that just laziness? I don't know. That seems kind of harsh. But yeah, technically it is.

I chop from me

The knots that tie me

Here to the cycle of pain.

Again, anytime you hear the word knots, think oh, alluding to the way my two side channels loop around my central channel and choke it off, so that the winds can't get into it. So this is not a completion stage practice. But he's alluding to things that he knows, and things that he practices by using these clues in this text.

So I can't wait. We're going to dig into this deeply, more deeply and we'll see if we can unravel some of these hints that are inside. I hope we'll have fun doing that.

Those of us suffering here in the cycle of pain

Must come to see what lies at the very bottom

Of it all: the King of Me on the throne over there

In the Palace of Misperception at our heart.

I think that is so funny. Find your King of Me. That's such a beautiful verse.

Who are you going to blame? Blame your King of Me. I've got one.

Our tendency of course is going to blame your King of Me. But don't ever do that.

Our own King of Me in the Palace of Misperception at our heart.

With the blame on him, fight against him, her.  Right? We've got more hers here than him, but them. Put the blame on them, struggle to fight against them.

And what happens when you do it?

Our self existent me says, what's up with you? What are you blaming me for?

I've been here since the beginning of time with no beginning. Like I'm the original truth. I've been here since forever. I've helped you, I've challenged you. I've been born again and again.

Our self existent me is really, really powerful. This creature.

I am the Lord of all there is, 

Of all three lands:

meaning the object sides—everything outside of us, the subject side—everything inside of us, and everything in between. So meaning the three spheres. Our self existent me is the Lord of the three spheres.

What do you think he means by that?

It it's in there, that ignorance is what we're talking about here. Our belief in the self existent nature, the identity in them, in it, in me. It's in every instant of every experience. I'm the king of the true and the false.

And all six kinds of consciousnesses are its domain. Because there isn't anything that we can experience that doesn't also have our belief in the self existent nature of that, of the three spheres of that experience.

So that King of Me, the belief in self existence, is in every seed that's ever been planted. If we are not Arya yet.

It's a compelling argument. How can we fight and a foe who's ubiquitous everywhere, even in the fight, even in the one fighting. How do you fight with a foe who is the foe?

Why would you fight with a foe who is both, the enemy and the hero?

We better.

But that's what he says. So who do I fight if the self existent me, the Me King and the misperception in my heart is my enemy, and the me that's going to fight the enemy believes in that enemy being in it.

How do I fight it, without perpetuating it?

It's a conundrum.

How does a belief in self existent me, a holding to things as self existent me, fight with the belief in self existence, especially when the things that that belief holds to be self existent, aren't self existent, never have been, never will be? They aren't even there. The very foe, that we have to fight against, doesn't exist.

The belief in them exists, but not the foe.

So if we're still fighting with foes, and not fighting with our belief in that foe, we're not ever going to get free of it.

He's going to point that out. We need to fight the belief. Beliefs are really slippery creatures.

He says, if I were one person and the foe was another, well then we could duke it out.

And when there's a duking it out, the vibe of the tension, the struggle, attracts those who like the struggle.

Where are they coming from? Also me.

And what do they look like? A person who likes something, a person who hates something—ignorant liking, ignorant disliking, gross liking, gross disliking.

As long as we're still holding those beliefs of liking things and disliking things, we're not going to get the chance to be free.

But we need to be sure to read between the lines. Because if we didn't know better, we'd say, oh, he's making the case for just complete neutrality. Like don't like things, don't dislike things. Have a mind that's completely free of thoughts. That's like being a zucchini.

He can't be meaning that. He can't be meaning just be like a vegetable, or be like a robot. Thank goodness we've had enough training to say he must mean something different. But what different does he mean?

Add the term ‘self existently‘. As if those words are going to make us understand any better. But they seem to, at least at first.

A person who likes something ignorantly doesn't know they're liking ignorantly.

So they go on believing that their happiness is going to come from getting what they like. And they go on believing that what I do now brings me the result I get next.

When it doesn't, neither of those two work.

Same with disliking.

But without liking or disliking at all, we wouldn't have the urge to stop the cycle. If we were robots, we'd be just fine being robots.

So in a sense there needs to be, we need to have the brokenness of our world and ourself in order to wake up, that it's all a mistake.

And then when he says the mind freed from thoughts, it's a little slippery. Because a mind freed from thoughts doesn't mean it doesn't think anymore.

It's that, when they say thought, it means that you're doing the process of conceptualizing to come up with an identity.

So ’a mind that's free of thoughts‘ is a term that means a mind that's experiencing directly things. Which technically you need to be Arhat or Buddha to be at that level. 

A-la-la!

It is one of the tantric celebratory mantras. A-la-la, it's like a song.

Maraya! Death to thinking things exist.

Jayara, Death to thinking that nothing exists.

Those are the two extremes.

The king who holds that things are things

Is the one whose fault all this is.

He says,

Cut the head, and the body dies.

It seems so violent. We've been talking about transforming things, not killing things. 

But when it comes down to this King of Me and the misperception in my heart, who is the foe of everything and everybody. He goes back to this violent imagery of cutting the head, cutting the head of the king, cutting the wild horse at the head, et cetera. Again, these are all code words and have a whole lot deeper meaning when we understand the code words.

To cut the head doesn't really mean to cut it off. It means that belief in our thoughts and our logic, and our thinking, and our conceptualization as real, as true existence. 

That's what he's wanting us to cut—the separation between heart and head.

When we cut the wrong beliefs, that are not held in the head but perpetuated in the head more than the heart, by cutting that belief, that's when we could say heart and head merge.

He just doesn't use that terminology. He uses ‚cut the head‘, ‚break the wild horse at the head‘. He is calling the wild horse the awareness of our own thoughts.

What, I'm supposed to stop being aware of my own thoughts?

He doesn't mean that. He means the awareness of my own thoughts as coming from them.

Well come on, my thoughts do come from them. What do we really mean when we say ‘self existent thought‘?

We are holding to thoughts that have some kind of identity other than projected.

Are our thoughts projections? Yes, everything is.

Does that mean it's not the thought, Oh, my CT scan got canceled yesterday or tomorrow, so I have extra time.

There's nothing wrong with having that thought. But there's everything wrong with believing that that thought is not a projection ripening.

And do I believe that it's not a projection ripening? I must, because I believe everything is not a projection ripening.

But it's hard to catch, because it's not included in the mental words. It's included in the experience of the mental words.

It's hard to even comprehend or imagine, what would it be like to hear my mental words and know they're projected.

How would it be different to know their seeds ripening? I don't have an answer for that. You can cook it.

So the one who thinks that things are things, means this belief in any piece of our experience as something other than projected results of my own past deeds, not anything other than projected results of my own past seeds. Is what we mean by thinking things are things.

When we cut that awareness of our own thoughts, believing that those things are things, every other part of our experience is going to also be tamed, be cut.

We have the eye, we have color and shape, we have the eye consciousness, we have the color and the shape, the eye awareness, the eye consciousness from that becomes the thing I see. Every piece of that has included in it the identity in it, versus, oh seeds ripening. Oh, result of past behavior.

So you fix the Uber misunderstanding, and all the rest of the misunderstandings fall away. You don't have to do them separately. If you cut the belief in self existence of anything, all the rest get cut.

On the other hand, you could theoretically cut the belief in self existent things that you see, and not necessarily translate that into things that you hear. And I would just imagine if we went blind, we would very quickly recognize, gee, those things that I thought had their identities in them, I can't see them anymore. There must've been something about me that was contributing to those visual objects, but it's still happening with my hearing. But once we understand about self existence is impossible, they all follow him—is what he's trying to say.

Again, the awareness of our own thoughts conceptualizing about things, when we cut that, all the rest of the three spirits aspects drops away as well.

He says,

The King of Misperceptions

Will die without his food.

They tell us when we come out of seeing emptiness directly for the first time, and you go back to perceiving things wrongly, but now you know you're wrong. It means that you're no longer replanting seeds with ignorance.

Then it's just really a matter of time before you reach Arhat and/or Buddhahood depending on your motivation for that. That's what he's alluding to, when he says, the king of misperceptions will die without his food.

So you could theoretically see emptiness directly and not really consciously, intentionally drive yourself through the Bodhisattva Bhumis. But just carry on, and you would eventually reach our Arhat or Buddhahood.

The King of Misperception is not being fed anymore, after seeing emptiness directly.

Or, you could really go at that end of the king of misperceptions with greater intensity, if you knew what you were doing, and worked with your Bodhisattva vows and tantric vows, et cetera. But either way, once that king of misperceptions is not being fed anymore with the continued belief in belief, anything could exist that's not a ripening result of my own past seeds…

I lost my train of thought in that sentence.

The king's got to die.

So tell him, I'm onto you buddy. I know I can't stop seeing things as self existent by forcing myself. But intellectually I understand. So intellectually even I'm feeding you less, I am starving that king even by a growing intellectual understanding of emptiness.

As we do reach the direct perception, those misperceptions vanish into the land of Is. 

We've heard that term, the Is-ness, or the land of Thusness, things like that. Terms that they use to try to spark this understanding, that the lack of self existence does not mean non-existence. It means the absence of something that we thought was there, that never was there, right? That slippery concept of nothingness, not nothing. They use that term Is, the land of Is, to try to help us catch that meaning.

And then what is appearing, we recognize as just like the elephant that the magician has conjured up. Not not there, but not the elephant that we think is there.

What elephant do we think is there? The one that's from its own side.

What elephant is there? The one that the magician casts the spell on the stick and on my eyes, that makes me see an elephant.

I like the mirage, I use the mirage thing. I think there's water there.

I realized there's no water. It's a mirage. The mirage is there, the water is not.

Any appearing thing is appearing. My seeds are ripening that appearing.

But the that from its own side the way I think it is, that's not there.

The yelling boss, from their side, because they're nasty, because they don't like me, because their wife yelled at them today. That yelling boss is not there.

Is there no yelling boss at all?

Technically you have to say, for whom? Is there a yelling boss for the fly? No.

But is there a yelling boss for me? Not from their own side. But definitely from my side. So who's the one I need to blame?

The them, or the me, or the fly? My own past deeds.

They use this term “real or not real“. And it confuses us again and again and again, because we hear the term “real“.

If it's not real, it must be unreal.

If it's unreal, it means it doesn't exist at all.

And actually it's true, because the self existent me doesn't exist at all.

But the not self existent me does exist, and always has, and always will, and is never the same two moments in a row. So which am I? That.

So he says,

Just the holy work of the emanation of an Enlightened One.

Whoa. Does that mean I'm already an enlightened being, and I'm just emanating? 

Again, you'd have to say, for whom? Not for me, because I'm not perceiving my own mind as omniscient yet.

But because I'm not omniscient, I don't actually know who or what is perceiving me, and how they are perceiving me.

So then it's my job to perceive me interacting with others in such a way that I will in the future perceive enlightened beings interacting together. The only way I can have that perception of enlightened beings interacting together is to create the seeds for it by way of merit, virtue, goodness, kindness towards those that I now am forced to see as not enlightened beings. Which implies that they are suffering beings, because anyone who's not fully enlightened is suffering in some way.

I use my own misperception to have beings with whom I interact in ways that the result of those interactions will be, everyone enlightened beings that I want to interact with.

We can't get enlightened without others. And he says that.

There's no experience, there's no one who experiences. Let me take that view that things have their own nature, and send it into the realm of Is.

Our very ignorance, does it exist?

Not from its own side. So does it exist?

Absolutely, as part of every projection. But in no other way than that.

And so they say, There's no me. There's no you.

But he doesn't mean there is no me, there is no you at all.

The ones that are not my projections don't exist, but they never have.

Then he goes on in all these different ways of pointing out how silly is our holding to things in the things, pointing out all the different ways that we compare ourselves to others, and others to others. No one more or less intelligent.

Why? Because the antlers on a rabbit's head are not smart or stupid. Because there is no such thing.

Does that mean some people are? Everybody's equal intelligence? No.

‘The child of a barren woman‘ is a common phrase that they used to point out something that's impossible. I always think, well wait until she could get barren after her first. But they mean barren (?), the woman's birth.

He is pointing out the ridiculousness of our struggle against things that are self existent. He says, wrap it all into a single ball of the equal.

That term equanimity, how all things are equal, the cycle of pain and Nirvana are equal. Does that mean it's the same? Does that mean Nirvana is going to be just as painful as Samsara? Or does it mean Samsara isn't really painful at all and we're in Nirvana, we just don't know it.

It's like no. Equal means that they're all equally misunderstood, equally not projected result of past behavior. Equal in their nature of lacking self existence. All these different ways to say it. And he does more. The fur on a turtle, a solid echo.

He uses this second piece called, wrap them all into the single ball of the ultimate.

The ultimate means their emptiness. That means the equalness.

It wasn't so much saying, oh look, they're all equally lacking self existence.

If he's now talking about ultimate, ultimate is the lack of self existence. The equal must mean they're all equally projected nature. Meaning the experiencers seeds ripening and nothing but.

That brings him to his concluding statement. Which is the

A A nothing ever stars

Just there like the sky.

That first, the A, is the first vowel in the Sanskrit alphabet. It is said to be the first sound. And so they call it the sound of emptiness. But of course emptiness doesn't make a sound. There is no emptiness that is a sound. But it's the implied vowel that allows consonants to appear.

In Sanskrit, the consonants, they all have the A at the end. You can't say “K“, you can't make it into a letter without a vowel. Maybe it's key, maybe it's Ku, maybe it's Ko, maybe it's Ki. The implied one that you don't even have to write is As.

It's like to have an appearing thing implies it's empty and projected nature, doesn't it? 

It's significant that in Sanskrit, and I think also Tibetan, I could be wrong. The implied consonant is A.

In English, we have different ones. B, C, D, E, F, G, H, J, right?

B—the implied one is E. J—the implied one is long A.

So English doesn't do it right. But the implied A, it's an important clue.

Then the one that here says B B, it's really the I-I-E-E-E. And I'm not sure about how that sound fits. But he's relating it to the, sorry, distracted myself.

Nothing ever stops a holy form free of elaboration.

The endlessness of the marriage of dependent origination and emptiness.

So we had the implied vowel that like the negative necessity, we have that term.

And then we have the appearing nature that never ceases, projections happening, constant. Dead, alive, asleep, unconscious, very conscious. The process is happening constantly. And that process happening constantly is this perfect purity of the Dharma body, the Dharmakaya, the emptiness of the other three aspects of Buddhahood, aspects of anything technically.

In the perfect purity, meaning no more seeds with self existence. Which means no more selfishness, no more mental afflictions of any kind, not even any more obstacles to omniscience.

And that's a long, long whole story about why that's so significant.

He finally says, he brings it all back around to compassion.

I mean he just spent the last however long pointing out how our ignorance blocks our wisdom. But he started out showing us how the things that we avoid in ourselves, we also avoid being willing to see them in others.

But when we allow ourselves, even encourage ourselves, to see others' pain and then understand its lack of self existence, it takes us to revealing that King of Me who is the real enemy.

So our compassion gets us to reaching the King of Me, doesn't it?

And when we have that compassion with wisdom, there isn't anything that we need to avoid anymore, because we know how to use it all. No, not we know how to use it all. We are using it all.

So use it. Just use it. Pleasure, pain, ignorance, fun, not fun. Feel good, don't feel good. It's not that it doesn't matter. It all matters, and it all matters very much. So use it, instead of avoiding stuff. Use it all instead.

It's profound and it's significant. And that's Dharma Rakshita’s conclusion in his deep retreat. It's like, all right, I'm out of here. Let's go see what I can do.

But he's still working from inside himself. Now he's out in his world to plant his new seeds, not new, to continue to plant seeds.

He wants to be out there in the fray, in the fracks, in the mess.

He's been in retreat and it's like, retreat's great, but I need some more in my face chance to transform this whole situation. Because I can, because it's mine, because it's my King of Me who still thinks she's in charge.

Let's go out there and see what we can do about that.

It is an amazing teaching. I didn't catch on the first time I studied it, so thank you so much for the opportunity to look at it again.

It's so complete, so beautiful, so sweet. All right, so I'm sorry I yacked through that whole thing. I didn't give you all a chance. If you want to dig in deeper, we will continue.

Any comments, any questions, any profundities? We have a couple of minutes and then we will dedicate and go our ways.

(Roxana) It was early on when you were talking about how wonderful everything that Lama Christie shares with you, and with the students that she was practicing and maintaining everything. I was thinking with myself, oh, maybe it would be nice if we could find the seeds for her to come. We have her in a retreat with all of us. It would be wonderful. Really sweet. Just, I don't know, you talk about her so beautiful. We and I just would love to meet her, and have her around at least just for a retreat or something. Maybe later on. It would be nice.

(Lama Sarahni) I offer her, when I've taught something that she's taught me, I email her and I offer it to her. And it's been years since I've heard back from her. But I'll include in my offering of this that you've asked her. Please come and teach us and let's see if we can get a rise.

(Roxana) Think she's a very special lady.

(Lama Sarahni) Thank you. She really is. She really is. Thank you for that suggestion.

(Nancy) May I be so bold just to say that she's already here.

(Lama Sarahni) You're sweet. Yes. And  in you, for sure. Thanks Nancy. I do that on purpose. Yes, she is here. But it would be nice to have her with her long, beautiful hair.

Thank you again for this amazing opportunity. I am truly grateful to you and let's dedicate our goodness so that it can spread throughout each of our worlds.

So remember that being that we wanted to be able to help at the beginning of class.

In my mind, they so desperately need help.

And think of what we learned, what we heard, what came out of our own seeds, it's extraordinary and amazing goodness.

And so be happy with yourself. Give yourself some credit.

And think of this goodness, like a beautiful glowing gemstone that you can hold in your hand. Recall your own precious, holy guide being. See how happy they are with you.

Grow your gratitude to them, your reliance and devotion upon them.

Ask them to please, please stay close. 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. That extraordinary love, compassion, wisdom, feeding your own.

It feels so good inside, 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 be complete the collection of merit and wisdom,

And thus gain the two ultimate bodies 

That merit and wisdom make. 

Use those three long exhales to share this goodness with that one person, to share it with everyone you love and to share it with every being you've ever, ever seen or known, or heard of, or who's ever heard you—all filled with this happiness, this wisdom, and sharing it with others. 

May it be so.

Thank you so much everyone.