ACI 8

Alright, welcome back. We are ACI course 8 Death in the Realms of Existence, Class 1, March 23rd, 2025. I applaud you all being here to be honest. I know many people who, something comes up and ACI 8 is not attractive enough to show up. So thank you for being here. It's an important class, obviously.

So 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

Now bring to mind that being who for you is a manifestation of ultimate love, ultimate compassion, ultimate wisdom. And see them there with you.

They are gazing at you with their unconditional love for you, smiling at you with their holy, great compassion, their wisdom radiating from them. That beautiful golden glow encompassing you in its light.

And then we hear them say, Bring to mind someone you know who's hurting in some way.

Feel how much you would like to be able to help them recognize how the worldly ways we try fall short. How wonderful it will be when we can also help in some deep and ultimate way, a way through which they will go on to stop their distress forever.

Deep down, we know this is possible,

Learning about karma and emptiness, we glimpse how it's possible that it's possible. And so I invite you to grow that wish into a longing and that longing into an intention.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Idam guru ratna mandalakam niryatayami

I go for refuge until I am enlightened

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

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

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

I go for refuge until I am enlightened

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

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

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

I go for refuge until I am enlightened

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

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

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

Introduction to the Course

(7:30) In the sequence that we've been working through our ACI foundation courses, we finally met the perfection of wisdom with the Diamond Cutter Sutra, and the Diamond Cutter Sutra was asking the Bodhisattva’s question: What's a Bodhisattva to do? How are we supposed to live? How are we supposed to keep our thoughts?

And if you recall, Lord Buddha said, a Bodhisattva sets out to bring to Nirvana all sentient beings. Those born from a womb, born from an egg, born from warmth and moisture, born miraculously, those with conceptions, those with no conceptions, those with both—conceptions and no conceptions. All those living beings, I the Bodhisattva will bring to their Nirvana. And when I bring all those beings to their Nirvana, there will be no beings whatsoever that I have brought to their total Nirvana. And then the parentheses is, “which is why I can bring them to Nirvana.”

The punchline of Diamond Cutters Sutra is learning what that phrase means, “because there's no being that can be brought to Nirvana, I can in fact bring beings to Nirvana”.

We got through that. And then ACI course 7 was Bodhisattva vows. Do you see the connection?

Like, oh, I understand now how it is that I could in fact help others reach Nirvana when there's no others that can be brought to Nirvana, which is why I can bring beings to Nirvana. Gosh, maybe I really could do the Bodhisattva track.

And we might've been inspired after Diamond Cutter Sutra to think, okay, I can be a Bodhisattva. And we then learned that course about what it is to have the wish to be a Bodhisattva as one thing, and then what it is to act on that wish–which means, I'm going to actually train myself in these new behaviors. Which are really not new behaviors, so much as attitudes, new attitude to have while I'm doing certain behaviors. And with that new attitude, I won't do the old behaviors and I will do the new behaviors. Learning the new attitude.

We learned about the vows. We learned what the vows are, the exceptions to keeping them, not keeping them, what we do, when we damage them, how we restore them. We learned the details about vows. Hopefully inspiring us to at least want to declare ourselves on the path to growing our wish. Then, if we were already there, determining at some point while I think I'm ready to actually step onto the path of my Bodhisattvahood by requesting and getting my vows.

So the connection between those two courses makes sense.

Course 8 is called Death in the Realms of Existence. It's all about suffering. It's suffering and suffering and more suffering. And I've had students say, I can't finish this class. I can't do the homeworks and quizzes. Because I can't bring myself to review the material and to learn it. It's like it's too harsh, it's too…, it's suffering. And so it's like, why? It's a good thing course 8 wasn't the first course, right?

First course, it's like there'd be no ACI foundation courses, nobody would stay. And here it is sort of in the middle.

I remember when I was going through these the first time, I didn't really stop to try to figure out why. It wasn't until I'd shared them a couple of times through, it's like, why this order? And then it became really, really clear to me that when we've decided, I'm going to be the Bodhisattva and I am going to bring all sentient beings to their total enlightenment, I would want to know what all sentient beings I'm talking about, wouldn't I?

Because my initial blush of Bodhisattva-wannabe, if I only believe that there's humans and animals as the suffering beings that I'll be responsible for, and we go, yeah, okay, I am onto that. I can take care of all humans and all animals.

If that's the extent of our Bodhichitta, it's this big. It's puny, compared to all the beings there are, who are suffering, who need help.

My own mind still questions. It's like, well wait a minute, if I didn't know about them until you told me about them, then they weren't suffering beings in my world for me. Why didn't you just leave me blissfully unaware of hell beings, hungry ghosts, jealous gods, pleasure beings, bardo beings, form realm and formless realm beings? Why didn't you just leave me not knowing about them? Because if they're nothing but my seeds ripening, and I don't know about them, then I can't ripen them. So they aren't a “them” for me to save. You're doing me a disservice to teach me about all these different beings.

But that argument is pushed by believing that this me and this me's experience with what other beings there are is the whole picture for this me.

Just because this me hasn't directly experienced a hell being, doesn't mean the me that is the mindstream hasn't experienced hell beings. It does not necessarily mean, the me that is this mindstream hasn't made the karmic seeds that if any one of those were to ripen at the moment of death could become my reality of being a being who is beating others and being beaten as their entire existence.

Just because we don't know about it doesn't mean that our seed planting of anger, hatred, cruelty, violence, couldn't ripen as that.

So it's like, okay, that argument makes sense from an ignorant limited perspective. And when we see no-no, I would want to know about any possible existence that any seed that I plant, even just in this life could ripen into me experiencing myself as. I would want to know about that so that I cannot make those seeds. And if I have them, so that I can know what to purify.

Then in the process of learning that we learn, oh my gosh, there are these other realities that we as limited humans can't access with our sense powers, but who do exist.

To exclude them from our wish to reach total enlightenment for the sake of all sentient beings means that we cannot reach total enlightenment for the sake of all sentient beings. Because what we mean by all sentient beings does not include them all.

This course, it is about suffering to help our motivation, help open our hearts, and more so it's about the beings who are suffering in those ways in order to help grow our hearts. It's also about what seeds I want to not make, so that I myself won't land in one of those other realms.

It's a multilayered set of classes teaching on all those different levels all at the same time. It'll be my job to try to convey that. I'm on it.

But don't be surprised if you, partway through, it's like, I'm looking for reasons to miss class. Because it's just so harsh. But please don't give into that. Keep coming.

Structure of the Course

(18:18) Alright, death in the realms of existence. Here we go. This first class is, we will learn about the desire realm and the form realms. The text we are going to use mostly is the Abhidharma Kosha, Treasure House of Higher Knowledge. We've already studied it a little bit.

Vocabulary and translator group, they're working on it with some side trips into other ones.

Abhidharma Kosha, written as we know by Master Acharya Vasubandhu 350 AD.

In Tibetan he's called Yik-Nyen. It's hard to say, Yik-Nyen. So Geshela always uses Vasubandhu, it’s easier to say I guess. It's one of the oldest books in the lexicon of Buddhist literature. It's from the perspective of what's called the Vaibhasika School. I'm not sure I've got that spelled right. It's the Sanskrit word (for) detailist.

In Tibetan Abhidharma Kosha is CHU NGUNPA DZU.

CHU means Dharma, also means all existing things.

The CHU NGUNPA DZU means this treasury of the highest of existing things, which is how it gets the name Treasure House of Higher Knowledge.

Khen Rinpoche apparently taught it to his group in Howell over many, many years using a commentary that had been written by the person that's called the first Dalai Lama, who was one of the students of Je Tsongkapa, but not the two main ones.

He had Kedrup Je and Gyaltsab Je, the ones we're familiar with. But he had this third that was also extraordinary and a little bit more in the background. He goes on to get recognized as being this master manifestation of Chenrezig, who then reincarnates again and is given the position of being the spiritual and secular head of Tibet.

He was an incredible teacher in his own right.

The Abhidharma Kosha, it is concise covering all of Buddhism in that term “a nutshell”. All of Buddhism in a nutshell. It's not a nutshell, it's a long book. We have a copy of an early translation of it, and it's like four or five volumes, several hundred pages each. It's one of those kind of texts that when you're in the right frame of mind, you can open up and read it and like, wow, wow, wow. And when you're not in the right frame of mind, you open up and read it, it's like, those are English words, but I don't know, it just…, I can't get it.

The Abhidharma Kosha

It’s first chapter is about parts of the person and mind, that relationship.

It’s second chapter is about the energies within what we call the self.

The third chapter is all the details of the universe, of time, of space, of creation. That's the chapter we'll be studying for this whole course. Chapter 3.

Chapter four goes into the details of karma. LE LE JIKTEN NATSOK KYE. Geshela says it's the best presentation of karma ever, even still.

The fifth chapter is about mental afflictions. Also according to Geshela, one of the best presentations on this subject, this topic of consideration, mental afflictions.

Then chapter six and onward cover meditation, how to liberate oneself, various practices.

It's studied for a number of years in the monastery, and as I say, we will delve into chapter three into the details of existing things, mostly focusing on the existing beings in this world, our suffering world.

According to Buddhism existence is made up of three realms. The desire realm, the form realm, and the formless realm–which doesn't mean no form at all, but meaning the most most subtle form realm.

As humans, most of us only perceive two small parts of the desire realm. Out of all of the desire realm, out of all of the form realm and all of the formless realm, our perception of our reality is really minuscule.

So this course,

Class 1 will be about the desire realm and the form realm.
Class 2, we'll study formless realm and rebirth.
Class 3, we'll study the lives of animals and craving spirits, also called hungry ghosts. That class will have a different text that we'll be studying from. It will come from a text called The 10 Rim Chenmo, which was the text that inspired Je Tsongkapa to write his Lam Rim Chenmo. We will learn.
Class 4 we'll study the lives of humans and pleasure beings. And for that information we will use a text by the first Panchen Lama, Lobsang Chukyi Gyelsten, a Lam Rim called Delam or Path to Bliss. Maybe some of you have studied that recently. And a commentary on that from someone named Ngulchu Dharma Bhadra.
Then class 5, we'll learn about the intermediate state, the Bardo. There isn't much taught about bardo in the open teachings. The details of it we find in the secret teachings, both creation stage, but more so completion stage. But in the Abhidharma Kosha, it goes into the topic and actually proves the existence of bardo beings, and it's helpful to see that proof.
Then Class 6 is a class on what's called the kinds of sustenance, what keeps us alive in this life. And then within that we learned this general description of our world, where it comes from and how it will be destroyed someday. What sustains us and what sustains us comes to an end, what happened.
Class 7 is the hell realms.
Class 8 is a description of time and space. It goes into how, and why, and when Buddhas appear in a world.
Then classes 9 and 10 are the classes where Je Tsongkapa will teach us the detailed descriptions of the meditation on a death practice, that some of us have already learned from the practice module Death and the End of Death, those nine principles of a death practice. Not just to encourage us to be not so afraid of dying, but to inspire our living by way of a keen understanding of what it is to die, and how close we are to it at any given moment . And how to use that to inspire our moment by moment interaction with other beings. It'll take us two classes to cover that material.

Then of course class 11, our review where you will teach it all to me.

(30:47) When Geshehla was first teaching this course, which must have been 1995, or 1996 or 1997 timeframe, I'm not sure of the dates. He started this course very shortly after he had completed his debates for his Geshe degree. So all the courses up to this, he was still in the process of earning his Geshe degree. It was pretty brilliant that he was teaching the material to others that he was learning in order to pass his debates in order to get his Geshe degree.

Like, do we do that when we're in our senior year of college bearing down on our final degree?

Do we go out and find somebody we can teach what we're learning to, in order to improve our chances of doing well on all of our final exams?

Interesting.

He said then that there's nothing in the ACI courses, the ones that had happened up to date, that there was nothing in them that was not included in the questions of the debates that he had undergone to get his degree. Of course as he designed the classes going forward, he kept that same theme going on.

So the homeworks and the quizzes you know: quizzes come from homeworks. Homeworks come from class. And the final comes from quizzes. It's all the material that's most important.

Then the meditations are the topics for which having an Aha about will increase the depth of our understanding of the material that led into that particular meditation. We don't need to figure out that connection between all of those things to understand that the homeworks and quizzes are very intentionally made by Geshe Michael, and the meditations are very intentionally chosen for our benefit so that our practice builds.

I remember those meditations, some of them didn't seem so important to do. Then after I saw the whole big picture and looked back, I went back one day and I wrote out all the meditations. So I had them all on a list. I looked at them and I remember seeing, oh, there's a pattern here, that you really can't see till you look back. But I guess I'm sharing it to ask you to trust the process, that it was designed–not by me–by someone who's seen what beings need. It's really exquisite that we have access to this full foundational material so that it can be passed on in a way that is complete.

The Texts we Study

(35:05) Again, I will share the Tibetan pronunciation words to help us all plant seeds in our minds. I dedicate it (to) that for you they all ripen to someday be able to look at those words in mixed nuts, and read them and know what they mean. It's one thing to read them, it's another to be able to understand them. So we're planting those seeds in these classes. So try.

Already we did CHU NGUNPA DZU.

CHU means existing thing.

NGUNPA means high or highest.

DZU means treasure house.

So the treasure house of highest things, written by master Vasubandhu, half brother to Master Asanga. Between those two, we get half of the textbooks for the Sera Mey Monastery. But when we read the CHU NGUNPA DZU, over my head, and so we go to a commentary.

The commentary is called TAR LAM SELJE. Please say TAR LAM SELJE.

TAR means freedom, TARPA is the word in Tibetan, moksha in Sanskrit.

Moksha is the Sanskrit for liberation.

LAM means path, meaning realization. Meaning what we do to get the realization, but really meaning the realization.

SELJE means that which makes clear, in the sense of like you turn the light on, you're in a dark room and you turn on the light and the light makes clear what's in the room. So it's not the word for cleaning a window so that you can look out. I think that's a different word, I'm not sure.

But this SELJE is like, you illuminate something.

So the text is translated as illumination of the path to freedom.

It's a commentary on Abhidharma Kosha. It's implying that Abhidharma Kosha is a path to freedom, and to illuminate what's in it will help us on our path to freedom. It's a bit curious because wait. We finally met the Middle Way in ACI 6, have prepared ourselves to live by it with ACI 7, and now we're learning from Abhidharma Kosha, which is a lower capacity text?

What's up with that?

And yet again, it's like is it really a lower capacity text?

Is it the foundational material that anybody needs in order for their own personal level of practice to be lesser or higher?

Someone who starts out on the Mahayana track, because of great seeds that they brought into this lifetime, still would study Abhidharma Kosha in order to learn all those details. Now, very likely because they would've studied it before in past lives, they would catch on quickly. And it doesn't mean that if we don't catch on quickly, we don't have good seeds. But my point is, we're not going backwards in our ACI training. We're growing our foundation for our Bodhisattva way of life to be stronger, to be bigger as we plant our seeds. Knowing ACI course 8, we're planting our seeds to include the benefit for all sentient beings. “All” has now become bigger because of our study.

This TAR LAM SELJE, Illumination on the Path to Freedom, commentary on Abhidharma Kosha is this text written by his Holiness, the first Dalai Lama. He's called Gyalwa Gendun Drup. Gyalwa is the title. It means victorious one.

Gendun Drup is his name. His dates 1391 to 1474. The term Gyalwa, or Gyalwa Rinpoche, is what the Tibetans call the Dalai Lama.

The term Dalai Lama is actually a Mongolian term. And so his own people don't call him that. He also gets called Kundun. If you saw the movie, they called him Kundun. The rest of us seemed to call him Dalai Lama.

Gendun Drup is this one, who became the first one. But if I understand correctly, it wasn't after this one. He got the title posthumously when his reincarnation came back.

And so the second Dalai Lama was actually the first one that was in that position. Then the one called first Panchen Lama, when he comes along later, he teaches the young man who is the fifth Dalai Lama. And because of first Panchen Lama’s extraordinariness, Tibet was going to him for the decisions that were being needed to be made in the interim between when the 4th Dalai Lama left and the 5th one got old enough to take charge. It started this pattern of when the Dalai Lama is not manifesting, somebody needs to run this show, they would go to the Panchen Lama. And then the Panchen Lama may or may not be the one that teaches the new Dalai Lama, but once the new Dalai Lama is old enough to take over, 1st Panchen Lama steps away. By then they're an old man, right? Because there are these generational shifts.

So this relationship between the Gyalwas and the Panchen Lamas happened.

This is the first Dalai Lama who wrote this commentary to Abhidharma Kosha.

So he must've been extraordinary, is the point. Must've known what he's talking about. And yet, says Geshe Michael, don't believe any of what I say until you've checked it out yourself. Scripturally, logically, experientially.

Maybe, I hope not, you'll have a direct experience… No, I'm not even going to say it. Direct experience of a pleasure being, there, I'll say that one. And with such conviction because it's direct experience that you could tell a thousand people and they all go, you're nuts. You're nuts. That can't possibly be. But it was your direct experience. Nobody can change your mind. Once you get on the bike and ride it, even if you never ride a bike again, you know what it's like.

But barring direct experience, logic can help us gain the belief, enough to choose our actions accordingly. And scriptural authority can be enough. But only once we've proved that scriptural authority is scriptural authority–which in my opinion is harder, for me it's harder to do than I thought.

Probably we have the seeds of faith, that's why we're here. Seeds of faith can wear out. So we want to be sure that we reinforce them with logic, experience and scripture. We would like to be sure that we don't damage those seeds by doing a full on reject of something that we hear.

We've heard before, Lord Maitreya says, when you hear something that your heart or mind just goes, nah–catch it fast and suck the “nah” back inside and put that teaching on the shelf. Say to yourself, whoa, that one's wild. I don't know, but I'm open to learning more about it. Then don't worry how long that takes.

It's the automatic reject that we're wanting to be on the lookout for, and do our best to stop it in its track.

Alright, so those are the two texts that we'll be using for quite a bit of this course. When we shift to a different one, I will tell you.

The Three Realms of Suffering Existence

(46:56) Next, our existence is made up of three realms, like three parts of our universe. One's called the desire realm. That's the one, if you're human, that's the one we're familiar with.

1. & 2. The Form and the Formless Realm

SUK KAM means form realm, a realm of physical stuff.

We have physical stuff. They have physical stuff.

The form realm though is distinguished from the desire realm in the sense that the physical stuff in that realm has reached its highest, its highest form. Meaning everything in the form realm is exquisite–exquisitely beautiful, exquisitely pleasant, exquisitely. But exquisite according to whom? Remember, we are in Lower School. So these realms that we're talking about, they're not self existent and they have some natures, right? They are existing things, they are functioning things. They are not just our projections, are they?

No, they are our projections, but they're real. Do you see?

The different schools are based on a mindset that believes, if things are just my projection, they are less real, in fact not real at all. They're like a dream, they're like an illusion, right? All the wrong understandings of those words. So we're dancing between the accurate understanding–yes, this is all by projection and that's what makes it real.

This form realm, the most exquisite way that form can be, and the beings who find themselves as beings in a place where form is the most exquisite form, and pleasure it can be, is a reality for them. It's still within the suffering realm. There's still some kind of suffering that happens in this form realm. We're going to talk about that.

Then there's the formless realm. Formless sounds like it means no form at all. When we first hear about it in next class, it does say, that's a place where the beings there are only mind–not like Mind Only School, but their entire experience is mental. They have their own unique kinds of mental afflictions. But you can't have consciousness without something to move the consciousness. Some subtle movement, and that subtle movement has to be a material thing. And so it's not that there's no form at all in the formless realm. It means that form is at its most minimal, most most most minimal–as if there's no form. We'll see, formless realm beings, they don't have houses, they don't have chairs, they don't have beds, they don't need 'em. They're minds, and they're still suffering in some unique way.

DU KAM is desire realm.

SUK KAM is form realm.

Form realm is our topic of consideration, called the form realm because physical matter here has reached its highest expression. That means that beings living there are in these temporary paradises. It might be similar to what in our cultures we would say heaven, like living in heaven.

The beings there live a long time, thousands of our years.

Are they aware of sunrise, sunset? I don't think so. They have some other way of measuring time and measuring years.

I don't know if a form realm being would say, I only live to be a hundred. But their 100 is our 10,000 years.

Geshela often equates this pleasure form realm being to like the Greek gods, or the Roman gods. They're all playing out there. I don't know, let me erase that. Forget that, we're going to go there later.

But imagine beings who are living in these places that are exquisitely beautiful, and they really have no active suffering going on.

Because everything is so exquisite, it's just pleasure, pleasure and more pleasure. But because everybody is experiencing this exquisite beauty, there's no need and no impetus to share it, or to really even so much interact with others because everything's perfect for you. However, that existence is still, of course, an existence that's driven by seeds ripening, seeds planting, ripening, planting, right? Technically happening simultaneously. And they are in such beauty and pleasure that's being burnt off, but not doing anything to replant.

So they are replanting seeds. But the way their seeds are being replanted, they're not replanting more goodness somehow. They seem to be replanting seeds to burn off goodness.

Which, what's going to happen, eventually?

If you got there, because one seed–we'll talk about what kind of seed popped at the moment of the death–from the life before that ripened into the details of form realm being, then all the rest of our seeds that could support a form realm, are sustaining our life in the form realm.

But we're not planting new form realm life seeds.

We are planting seeds, but not new form realm life seeds. And so we're going to use 'em up. Eventually all those positive seeds for exquisite beauty are going to be dwindling down to the last one.

What they explain is that life's great. Life's great, life's great. Until the last week or few days, and then the seeds are starting to wear out. I don't quite understand.

But apparently that being gets a premonition of what's coming. And then, at that same time, their body's making an odor, an ugly odor, which it never did before. It's changing shape, and getting unpleasant to look at, which it never was before.

So as the goodness seeds are getting fewer, have they burnt off all their seeds?

No, just all their seeds for beauty, pleasure, goodness.

What's left in their mindstream?

Any past selfishness seeds, ugly seeds, is what's left. When these ones wear out, they experience a death. And at the moment of that death, whatever that's like, out's going to pop a projecting karma and it's going to send them to their next experience.

If they've used up all their goodness seeds, all they've got left is ugliness seeds, and they land themselves in a lower realm, back in the desire realm. They say, most likely in a hell realm. But it could be craving spirit, it could be animal, it could be human–which would still be a lower realm, but a not so bad one.

But either way, they've used up this accumulation of form realm goodness that had been made.

This form realm has 17 different levels within it.

(58:42) So this form realms, SUK KA, it is said to have 17 different levels. They're called SAMTEN. We've heard the word SAMTEN in our course 3 about meditation. SAMTEN is one of those names for meditation, for concentration, and it is also this word for a level in the form realm.

They clarify that this form realm, it's not in our physical world. We can't not get there as humans by climbing the highest mountain or going to the deepest ocean, or hanging out in a vortex in Sedona.

The form realms are beyond our sensory perception ability and yet it is a physical world and it is said to be above ours. It leaves this connotation that, if you could look up with a special kind of microscope or telescope, that you'd be able to see into it.

But the form of the form realm is beyond the ability of art sensory input to contact it. Similar to, I don't know, an animal that sees in the uv.

They see things that we don't see, even as we're looking at the same thing. Because their object, their eyeball and their eye consciousness work differently than ours do. So this form realm is similar.

Yet it is not something that's like 10 galaxies away into the left either. It is here, we just can't perceive it–are not perceiving it, let's put it that way.

So it has this 17 levels. Those 17 levels are within these four SAMTENs. It's getting a little confusion.

The form realm is made up of four concentration levels, and within those four concentration levels there are 17 different ways that the form realm is appearing.

To understand that we need to understand what seeds make a form realm.

When we were studying meditation, we heard that in order to experience emptiness directly, our mind needs to be in the first SAMTEN level of the form realm. And that in order to be in the first SAMTEN level of the form realm, we would have to be in a state where our sensory perceptions are all shut down.

Meaning they may still be picking up sound, picking up color and shape, but our visual consciousness is ignoring it, because we're so turned interiorly that we have all of our what would be sensory consciousnesses focused on our object, our inner meditative object instead. So no interest in these outer things.

That itself is not being in the form.

So even when they say, our mind needs to be in the first level of the form realm to see emptiness directly, it sounds like, well if my body's still here in the desire realm, and my mind is so shut down from its form or its desire realm existence, that it could actually go out and go to a form realm. It's like, no, that's not what's happening either.

It gets clarified in Master Kamalashila’s Stages of Meditation text, where he explains what's meant by the causal level of concentration and the actual form level of concentration.

When we are deeply meditating such that our sensory input is all shut down, and we have that clarity, and intensity, and focus on our meditation objects such that there is nothing that will pull us away, and there is nothing that will make us dull, that we are at a level of meditation where the seeds that we're planting during that meditation, if any one of those were to become the projecting karma at the moment of death would project us into the corresponding SAMTEN level of the form realm.

As we're meditating in this deep concentration state, we are not doing any kind of desire realm activity–neither with our body, nor with our mind. While we are in that state, we are still planting seeds.

Those seeds, any one of which, would be a seed that would project us into a form. However many of the goodness seeds that could add to that would keep us there, apparently for a long time.

So when they say, set this four different meditative concentration levels that make up four levels of the form realm, divided out in such a way that makes 17 different ways that the form realm manifests–it all has to do with the amount of time and the state of mind when we are in meditation.

If we're not meditators in this life, doesn't mean we haven't done these meditations in a previous life, and they could still be what pops at the moment of death. We wouldn't know.

But if in this life we are doing meditations where we are working to right shut down the sensory input, and reaching that level that's so pleasurable–the Shamata with those SHIN JANGs, and staying in this deep state of meditation for long periods of time, enjoying its pleasure and not using that platform of concentration to shift to the insight, Vipashyana, then we are planting seeds that could land us in a form realm rebirth.

And that would be a delay of our spiritual progress, because in your form realm rebirth, you are not on a spiritual path. There is no concept of spiritual path. Everything's just too pleasurable, and you're using it up, and then it's going to end.

You could still say they still have pervasive suffering, and their pervasive suffering is so much more subtle than ours is and ours is incredibly subtle. Until those last few days, and then their suffering becomes very obvious, very immediate. Then that lifetime ends and they start another.

The form realm levels are all created by way of these different levels of deep meditation that practitioners get to. If we are not taught that the purpose of our meditation is to reach the platform of concentration from which we turn to our analysis of the empty nature of our object of meditation. So thank you Geshe Michael, this tradition, for teaching us from the get go how to keep our meditation on track so that we don't get sidetracked by the pleasures of meditation, that would lead us to a form instead of whatever else we're going to have.

There are many traditions of meditation trainings over the eons of human life that were about: Stop your mind, blank your mind, still your mind. The amount of time that's spent in that, plants the seeds that increases the likelihood of being what ripens at the moment of some death–maybe not even that lifetime death.

We hear stories of people that go into meditation and stay in meditation for days, weeks, months, years, in different traditions. It's admirable and we aspire to that kind of concentration, and even think it's miraculous. And it is.

But our tradition would say, but it's not going to end suffering. It's not going to end their own suffering, and it's not going to end the suffering of the world. Because it creates form realm lifetime. See?

The first SAMTEN level, things that the seeds that we plant in the first SAMTEN level meditation, if we don't use it appropriately, can create three different levels of a form realm experience, three different kinds of experience. What they are, I don't know.

Then second level SAMTEN causal meditation creates the second level SAMTEN form realm. It also has three different ways it manifests.

Third level SAMTEN causal meditation ripens as third level form realm. And it too has three different levels, or three different ways it manifests.

Then the fourth level meditative concentration, it has eight subdivisions. So if we ripen ourselves as a being on the fourth SAMTEN level of the form realm, it can be in any one of eight different circumstances.

When you've got three and three and three and eight, that makes 17, and that's what you need for your homework.

Four SAMTEN levels, four different depths of meditation, that we only aspire to the first one. Thank you very much. So not to worry about the others.

First three of three, fourth one meaning deepest state of meditation can create eight different levels. Alright? Now you know more about the form realm than you ever wanted to know.

The take home is, you don't need to reach a deeper state of meditation than the causal level of the forced form. First out of 17, that should make us feel better. Maybe I can do that, right? Maybe you're already there. I hope so.

(74:25) Geshela gave an example of the form realm. He said a being called Brahma is there, and other beings of the form realm, they sit around him. He's reading the Vedas, and they're reciting them along with him. It's pleasurable, and life is smooth, and it goes on for a long, long time. Then the seeds wear out, you get stinky and ugly and you die.

While they're there, they are beyond any kind of desire for sensory objects. They are experiencing sensory objects, but it's so pleasure and more pleasure, there's no desire for it. It's hard to conceive of.

We see a beautiful sunset, and by the time we've enjoyed it, it's faded. It's like, wow, that was beautiful. The implication is, I want it back. I want to see it again. It's so beautiful, and now it's not.

We have this constant desire, even while we're experiencing the things that we desire, they don't satisfy the desire. Then they're gone and we're wanting for more.

I the form realm there's no sense of that. Maybe more like when we're taking things for granted. Like that attitude.

Geshela says, we can't see a form realm, but he says we can go there. I'm not sure I'm understanding correctly. But if in our deep meditation we do actually reach that causal level of the form realm, one could in that deep meditation apparently find themselves as one of those beings sitting around Brahma reciting the Vedas.

The take home though is, that's not something we aspire to do. The only reason to reach the first level of the form realm depth of meditation isn't to actually be there. It's to use that platform of concentration to turn our mind to that empty nature of whatever our meditation object is that we're so focused on.

We're learning that.

So there are these 17 different levels of nothing but pleasure until it runs out, which is why it's still a suffering world. It's not in the desire realm. Desire realm is another realm within the suffering world, within Sansara.

3. Desire Realm

(78:05) So let's talk about DU KAM, the desire realm.

3-1. Hell Realm Beings

There are six kinds of beings that live in the desire realm, but one of them is hell realm beings, hell beings. Ordinarily most humans can't see how realm beings.

We can't really know for sure that they exist. And it seems like something that if we grew up in a different religion, which probably had a hell realm, and we rejected that religion, maybe in part because it said, you do this stuff, you're going to hell, so you behave. And we took it to mean some kind of control factor, or judgmentalism that we rejected. And here we are right back again. It's like there are hell realms. But it's not that Buddha is saying, I'm going to tell you about hell realms to scare you, so that you'll do what I say.

Buddha teaches, it's up to us to decide whether what he teaches makes enough sense to choose our own behavior.

Probably that's what the other teaching was too. But it wasn't so directly carried down through the ages like that, for me anyway.

Here are these hell realm beings. The reason we're studying it, remember, is that they are our projections and so they are real. And so we could be one. And so we could not ever be one. And so we can actually stop anybody from being one ever again, if they are projections. Not just by wishing it however, don't we wish that we could just wish away hell realms. But we can stop them. We can't stop them if we don't know about them.

If we don't know how a being becomes a hell realm being, we don't know how to help them in the life before they're a hell realm being from creating the seeds that could put them there. So we're trying to learn what to do to avoid creating hell realm being myself, and in the process of learning that we learn how to help other beings not become hell realm beings too.

Then we'll also understand what we can do now, from here, for beings who are hell realm beings now, that we can't even access but we can know about. We can still help them when we know what they need, how to help.

(82:10) We'll learn the detailed characteristics, sorry, of hell realms. And the overview is that a hell realm is created by seeds of violence, anger, cruelty, the ignorant desire that propels the choice to hurt somebody before they can hurt me. To hurt somebody, the willingness to hurt somebody to protect myself or to protect my people, to protect my stuff, is the behavior that plants the seed, that when that seed is the one that ripens at the moment of death, fills in as me being the object of cruelty, hurting and hurting back as the solution. So the hell being finds themselves beating and being beaten, or burning, or crushing, or all these awful ways that we hurt other beings that plant seeds in our mind, that ripen us into this experience of being treated in that same way, and reacting with violence to it.

Those hell realms are only possible because we've done the things, this life and ever before, that planted the seeds that would ripen as a hell realm. If we had not done those seeds, like ever, or if we'd already purified the ones that we have done and not planted any new ones, we wouldn't be able to have this class on hell realms, would we?

Like none of us, there would be no karmic seeds for hell realm.

It will happen someday. Meanwhile.

In the hell realm, there is said to be eight levels of hell. But then they say, there's eight hot hells and eight cold hells. Like hot hells have eight levels, cold hells have eight levels.But they say hell has eight levels. Seems to me like it's got 16. But no, it's only eight. I don't quite get that math.

We'll learn more, unfortunately.

So that's one of six kinds of beings in the desire realm.

What do they desire? For the beating to stop, for the pain to stop. But they have no clue that the way it stops is by caring about the other person that's being beaten.

There's this story about Lord Buddha, some previous lifetime, he's a hell being. His hell is to be pushing a cart full of rocks that's beyond heavy, up this really steep mountain. And when he gets almost to the top, all of a sudden he's at the bottom again, and just this constant toil. I don't know, he has been there for eons, and something triggers him to look to one side. And he sees another guy pushing the cart rocks up the mountain and he has this fleeting instant of compassion for the other guy. He knows the pain. And that fleeting instant of compassion for the other guy and poof, he's gone, gone from the hell realm. Shift.

What came next? I don't know. But like that.

Hell realms are our projections and they're very real.

The way we get out of the hell realm is to have some compassion.

But how much compassion can you have when you're being cut up? Remember the King of Kalinka. Must be possible.

3-2. Craving Spirits or Hungry Ghosts

(87:12) Next kind of being that makes up the six kinds in the desire realm is called craving spirits.

Preta, sometimes called hungry ghost, craving spirit, hungry ghost. Preta being. This is a realm is characterized by being incapable of being satisfied in any way. It's created by seeds of selfishness, stinginess, the kind of pride that means my needs and wants are the most important, not the puffed up pride, I'm better than you, but the kind of pride that me first. A seed, that kind of seed that becomes the projecting karma at the moment of death fills in as this kind of lifetime where you can be starving hungry, or dying thirst.

You see this body of water in the distance. So you go running, running, running to the body of water, of course getting more and more dehydrated and thirsty as you run there. You get to the lake, you throw your face into it to drink the water, and it turns out to be puss and blood. It's like urgh, and you turn and you look.

There's a water over there, you and it repeats again and again.

You see food, you exert this big effort to get the food. By the time you get to the food, it's something you can't eat, something disgusting.

There's another kind of being where because of their unique seed, their throat, whatever serves as their esophagus is like teeny, teeny, teeny. And they try to eat and the food just won't go down.

There's another kind where they can eat, but the food just burns. No matter what they eat, it just burns and destroys their insides. But they don't die. They just experience it again and again.

All these selfishness seeds planted in one life ripen into this whole experience of being incapable of getting one's needs met, incapable of any kind of slightest satisfaction.

3-3. Animals

Third kind of being in the desire realm is animals.

Oh, finally one I can relate to. Abhidharma Kosha says that the greatest mass of animals in the desire realm live in the ocean. Which means, unless we're a diver going down there, we don't really know what they are and what their suffering is.

Now with the underwater drones, they have nature shows that show living beings that are living in the dark under pressure that would implode us. And here's this little worm that glows in the dark and it is living its own life.

There's so much life in the ocean, and then there's so much life on land and in the air, beyond what we can conceive. And all of it, what it is to be an animal is to be in this state of consciousness of eat or be eaten. So they're a desire realm being that does in fact have in mind nothing but food and sex, which is what characterizes desire realm. For the animals, it's like at any moment somebody's going to eat me.

And we say, yeah, in the wild. But come on, domesticated animals, pets, they're taken care of. They certainly don't have this eat or be eaten thing. Probably they still have the instinct. They don't have the circumstance. Yet, the circumstance they have is to be either be burdened by humans, or even if they're like the Dalai Lama's pet dog who must be pampered beyond belief. It still does not have this capacity to choose new behavior in order to plant the seeds, to move it along a spiritual path. It does not have the capacity to use its lifetime in a meaningful way. If that little pampered hooch were left in the wild, it would very quickly be able to hunt and protect itself from being hunted, because of its instincts as an animal.

Animal realms are on this constant alert for self-protection. We have a component of that in our human beingness as well.

3-4. Humans

(94:01) Then humans are another of the six kinds of beings that inhabit the desire realm.

There are four kinds of humans. Here we don't mean Caucasian, Asian, black, and I don't know what the fourth one would be, we're not talking about that.

What we're talking about here according to Abhidharma Kosha is that our desire, our desire realm for humans has four different continents. The beings on each of those four different continents are humans, and they have very different characteristics as humans.

When we learn that 37 pile mandala, it talks about the four continents.

When we do the seven pile mandala, Here are the four continents, Mount Meru, that we're offering. These are the continents we're talking about.

In the Mount Meru, we're not talking about South America, North America, Asia, Europe. We're talking about Dzambu Ling.

The name of them is escaping me right now. [comment by transcriptor: According to the 37 Pile Mandala the 4 Continents are called Greatbody, Dzambu, Cattle and Sound of Terror]

The humans that we know are the humans on the southern continent called Dzambu ling. We have some uniqueness to us humans on Dzambu ling, that the others don't quite have.

We have this perfect opportunity. They have good opportunity, but not perfect opportunity, the way humans on southern continent have.

But they're all called humans. I don't know more.

We'll have a whole class on humans and the sufferings that are unique to them.

3-5. Pleasure Beings & Jealous Gods

The fifth of the six kinds of beings of the desire realm are called pleasure beings. Sometimes called Deva, that’s Sanskrit, HLA is the Tibetan. Deva and HLA, they mean angel or God.

It's easily misunderstood. First because of the Western tradition of thinking, what do they mean by God? And if we translate it instead of God, we translate it as angel, well then it's like, oh, do they mean messenger of God? Which is not a fully enlightened being. They're on their own evolutionary track.

It gets confusing, and then it gets further confusing because they use this term deva or HLA for beings in the form realm. And they use it for these higher realm beings in the desire realm.

So when we see the word deva or HLA, we need to make sure that we understand the context in which the word is being used.

When we use the word we want to be sure we're using it accurately.

Yet the words are still kept and still used, because they do give this connotation of a being that's different enough from humans that by using those words, we're making this designation, we're not talking about a human being. Deva, HLA.

These beings, when we're learning about them, it sounds like they're not really any different than the form realm beings. Because here's a level of beings still in the desire realm where their life experience is nothing but pleasure. They have no impulse to share it. They have no reason to think they need to perpetuate it. From their perception it's going to go on forever. Yet they have the same situation where they're using up the good seeds that created them as that. And in the last few days to a week when they don't have those good seeds anymore, and negative ones are starting to ripen, they stink and get ugly, and everybody around them goes urgh, and they're left all by themselves and down to a hell realm they go.

So the story is the same for pleasure being in the desire realm as for beings in the form realm, but they're not synonymous and they are not in the same place. Pleasure beings of the desire realm are in the desire realm. Form realm is not anywhere in the desire realm. Yet it's here.

Along with these pleasure beings of the desire realm, there are almost pleasure beings in the desire realm. They're called jealous gods, asuras and suras.

Which means that the seeds that ripen them as a pleasure being but not quite are a little less virtuous. Well, I would get slaughtered on the debate ground for that. A little less kind of kindness than a full on pleasure being. They describe the asuras as being jealous of the pleasure beings, meaning they're ripening a really pleasurable place. But when they are aware of the pleasure beings, what the pleasure beings have is just a little bit nicer than what they have. And they still have these seeds for the mind to go, Hey, how come that's not mine?

They say they fight. I don't quite get that. How can you fight as a pleasure being. But maybe that's why fighting in the human realm can be considered a good thing. I don't know.

But the jealous gods and the pleasure beings fight with each other. And of course they're making negative seeds as they do that. So the jealous gods are initiating these negative seeds. I don't know. The whole thing eventually wears out and they all go boom. So neither realm is a realm that we would aspire to reach, because it's not outside the desire realm. And it's not a lifetime in which we have the inclination at all to change our behaviors to make different seeds. Even, apparently, as the jealous gods are fighting with the pleasure beings, it never occurs to them that there's something wrong with this picture until they wear out those seeds.

3-6. Bardo Beings

(103:05) Then the last sixth kind of desire realm being is bardo beings.

Bardo we know means the in-between.

We tend to think of it as in between one life and the next. And that is exactly what it means. But the period of time is between the death of this life, and the beginning of the next life. So it's a very specific experience.

It takes time, it takes seeds shifting time for the death process to end, and the conception and birth of the next life to happen.

When we get to that class, it describes why that must be true. Part of it has to do with the fact that we are not reborn in the same location as we die. Or you would die in your bed at home, and then you'd be reborn in your bed at home. I don't think that's logical, but that's the argument that's given. It must take time to get someplace new. We'll see.

Homework: 20 Parts of the Desire Realm

If we were omniscient, we would recognize that this desire realm then with its six different beings, actually has 20 different levels, 20 different parts. Because they say there are 10 lower births that one can take, and 10 higher births that one can take.

When we say lower and higher, of course it means lower than what? Higher than what?

So another way they describe it is 10 bad births and 10 good births. But those words, good and bad, it means 10 births, the bad births are unpleasant births, and the 10 good births are pleasant births. But none of them are pleasant, because they're all in the desire realm. And that means there's all suffering.

The 10 lower births are any one of the eight hells–of which it seems like they're 16, but eight–any one of the eight hells, the craving spirit realm, of which there are many different variations, but they're not called different levels or different parts somehow. And animals.

Animals, craving spirits, hell realm. It makes 10 because there's eight different kinds of hells. Got it? 10 different lower births.

10 higher births are the four different kinds of humans, according to the different continent. And six kinds of pleasure beings of the desire realm. In that pleasure being realm, with the jealous gods, there's six different levels of pleasure that you could be surrounded by. Pleasure, more pleasure, more, more pleasure. I don't know. But six of those.

So six and four makes ten, eight and two makes 10, math class. And that gives us these 20 different parts of the desire realm.

Homework: Why is the Desire Realm called as such?

You have a question: Why is it called the desire realm?

The basic motivation in all of the desire realm, all of those 20 different parts is food and sex. Apparently the underlying motivation to do anything is to get fed and to procreate.

The characteristic of the desire realm is that we can have thoughts which are harmful deeds that make harmful karma, negative karma. Just our thoughts is enough to make the karma that perpetuates a desire realm.

Form realm doesn't have this. They don't have the kind of desire that pushes the thoughts, that makes everything suffering.

It still has thoughts, and it still perpetuates suffering, perpetuates plant seeds that will create suffering in the future.

In the form realm there's no need for this desire for food and sex. So there's none of that motivation, which is what makes it different than the desire realm, even the desire realm for the pleasure beings.

OKMIN – The Highest Level of the Form Realm

(109:15) Last thing, in those form realms, where we said there's 17 different levels, the highest level of the form realm is called OKMIN.

So this is just a vocabulary lesson, because we'll hear the term OKMIN used in a different context. Geshehla wants us to understand that the same word is used, but with these different meanings, different connotations.

OK means below

MIN means nothing below.

So OKMIN means below none. We usually hear it as the heaven below none, OKMIN.

When it's used in that connotation, what it means is when a being is so close to their final total enlightenment, that they're in that space ready to make that final transformation, they will be in the heaven below none. They will be in OKMIN.

Your almost a Buddha's OKMIN will be unique to you. Mine will be unique to me. They aren't a single place where you need a reservation to go. They will be the place that's manifesting your goodness from which you will manifest your full Buddhahood, heaven below none.

It's not your Buddha paradise. Because your Buddha paradise, it'll have a different name. It'll still be exquisite, but OKMIN is the place that you get enlightened.

But do you see how the words would give the wrong connotation if we didn't get the whole explanation?

Then OKMIN is also (used) for this highest level of the form realm because there's, it is below none.

But the OKMIN of the form realm has nothing to do with getting enlightened. It has everything to do with extraordinary pleasure, but it's not the OKMIN from which the beings who are living at that level are making their Buddhahood come about.

You don't reach Buddhahood from a form realm, and yet they use the term below none. See, it makes sense.

But don't mistake it for the OKMIN that is the environment from which you reach your total enlightenment.

All of these realms, the reason we're learning about them, is so that we can better understand how our behavior creates the seeds that ripen as our circumstances of me in my world. So that we can put together a more accurate picture of behavior choices and why to make them–both, for ourselves and how we become a being who helps others do the same. We learn it for ourselves. We train ourselves in that behavior change. People will be influenced, other beings will be influenced. They will benefit from your greater kindness. They will eventually ask you about it. And we teach, we share.

Alright, class 1, read the readings about form realm, desire realm. As you do, when you feel bad about it, purify. I didn't know any better when I made those seeds. Now I do. I'll do the best I can. I'll do, I'll finish my homework as my antidote. Woo. I'll rejoice that I did it. I'll try to be extra kind in this particular circumstance as my power of restraint and I'm going to change my seeds.

Class Dedication

Remember that person we wanted to be able to help.

We've learned a lot. You may never sit them down and tell them about form and formless realm. That's okay.

But because of what we've learned, our behavior will change.

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

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

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

It feels so good, we want to keep it forever. And so we know to share it,

By the power of the goodness that we've just done

May all beings complete the collection of merit and wisdom

And thus gain the two ultimate bodies

That merit and wisdom make.

So use those three long exhales to share this goodness with that one person, to share it with everyone you love, to share it with every existing being everywhere.

See them all filled with happiness, filled with loving kindness and may and be so.

Alright, thank you again for the opportunity to share. Please let me see your homeworks and quizzes, and I will see you.

Class 2: Introduction to the Formless Realms; The Five Different Births; The Ways of Taking Birth; Pre-Knowledge of Your Birth

27 March 2025

Link to Eng Audio: ACI 8 - Class 2

Link to SPA Audio: ACI 8 - Class 2 - SPA

Welcome back. We are ACI course 8 class 2, March 27th, 2025.

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

[Class Opening]

Vocabulary Class 2

SUK-ME KAM formless realm

NAMKA TAYE limitless space

NAMSHE TAYE limitless awareness

CHIYANG ME nothing at all

SI-TSE the peak of existence

SEMCHEN A suffering being with a mind

DZU KYE Miracle birth

DRUSHER LE KYEWA warmth and moist birth

NGEL KYE womb birth

GONG KYE egg birth

Chakravartin Wheel turning emperor

Review Class 1

Thank you everybody for doing your homeworks. Doesn't it feel good to have them done? Yay.

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

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

We learned that the desire realm is divided into 50 different parts, right?

Liang-Sang says no. You're saying it's divided into way more than 50, so many more beings than just 50, right?

No, you're not saying that either.

So you're saying it's made up of fewer than 50 parts?

Yes. See, when you say yes, you're on the hook. So you can tell us how many parts the desire realm is divided into?

(Liang-Sang) It's divided into 20, starting with the hell beings, then the craving spirit and the animals and these are the lower births. And then you have 10 so-called higher birth or happier rebirth, four types of human beings, because of four continents. And then six types of pleasure beings in the desire realm.

(Lama Sarahni) Nice. That makes 20.

Then we learned that the nature of the desire realm is to desire living in a garden of roses. Right? Who wants? Want somebody to play? You could say yes, and that would take most of class. So since nobody's playing with me: the nature of the desire realm is the desire for food and sex, and that's like raw and direct. We could say sustenance and procreation, and that would make it a little bit more like didactic. Geshela says, just think of it as food and sex.

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

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

Just break it down and do the math is the answer.

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

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

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

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

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

Introduction to Class 2

(17:12) This class, the topic of this class is the formless realm, and the five ways of taking birth.

When this life ends, there will be a last moment of this life, and the ripening of seeds, and the planting of seeds goes on, without a pause. There'll be a last ripening of this life, and then there'll be a seed, they call it the projecting karma seed, that is the next one to go. That next one will be followed by a whole bit much more. That next seed with all its attendance is what shape shifts our next experience, and we call it bardo and then rebirth.

In learning all this business about who's out there, what their suffering is, how it gets made, would also inspire us to live in such a way that we're making fewer seeds that if one of those was the next one at the end of this lifetime would decrease our risk of going to one of these lower realms. And how to make more seeds, any one of which would at the very least shape shift us into another human life on the path with some level of continuation of our program.

Which we learned about with our Bodhisattva vows, that having Bodhisattva vows and especially cultivating those four white deeds helps increase the chance of a lifetime as Bodhisattva again. They didn't say, immediate next lifetime. Because it would depend on how we live according to them and what our purification practice is like.

So we're just getting more information about the method of purify and make merit.

Abhidharma Kosha chapter three, you'll get some of it in your reading. When you read it—I remember reading it for the first time, and it's like my world's not like that. It felt a little bit like reading about when the earth was flat, and everybody was afraid to go out on the ocean, because that edge you just fall off. It's still a pretty convincing argument. That flat thing really does look flat and like an edge. But it's a little curious that you can't ever find it. You keep going and there it is again. And there it is again, like a bad dream.

But still, it took a long time before someone saying the earth is flat that they would just be laughed at. And now, oh, we have photos from space that says, see? It really is round. My own mind still jumps to that conclusion: Proof, a photograph is proof. It's round. So it had to always be round, and when we thought it was flat, we were just mistaken, because we didn't have spaceships to look back yet.

Yet, we have enough study of the pen thing to know, hey, the world is no more round than it is flat, than it is four continents around a huge mountain. It's like, where is that mountain? Thank you very much Master Vasubandhu, where are those four continents? What good are mountains and continents if nobody but you can see them?

The argument that's going on in there is, my own mind‘s insistence that the world is how I know it to be. And yet, we all know the pen thing.

One thing not only can be different things to different beings, but in fact any given thing is different things to different beings. Even when we agree, oh, this is a red and orange and gray pen. We say the words, but each of our experience is unique to each of us, isn't it? We know that.

So here is Master Vasubandhu and read the whole Abhidharma Kosha. We would recognize that the one who wrote it is an extraordinary realized being. He knows what he's talking about. By the time we got to the end of the book, we then might think back to third chapter and go, oh, maybe I was wrong to say that this is some kind of story to get us to behave, or some kind of story to get us more motivated in our practice. That maybe that really is what existence appears to be to a realized being like Master Vasubandhu. In which case, because he's going to tell us about those eight hot hells, and those eight cold hells, and about what it's like to be a hungry ghost, and how you get there. It's like, oh dear, this is serious business.

(24:55) Our perception of our world is valid. Master Vasubandhu’s perception of the world is valid. That's what makes them real, real for me and real for you, and real for Master Vasunbandhu. Someday we will perceive our world with greater wisdom, and it will look vastly different than what it looks like to me now. Because my me is colored by mistaken view, mistaken beliefs, creating mistaken seeds, that ripen as mistaken world.

So this text, Abhidharmakosha can be really, really helpful in our practice, if we can understand it when we read it. Unfortunately it's one of those texts that is written so cryptically, that I can't understand it most of the time.

Vasunbandhu didn't do that intentionally. It's just like, I don't think I could probably read Einstein's paper on how he derived ultimate reality. That would be written in code too. It's not intentional code. It's the one who's writing it, it's so clear to them. It‘s my lack that makes me not able to read it.

So thank goodness there are other beings that recognize there's beings like me who need help, and they write commentaries. The commentary we're studying, we learned before, TARLMA SELJE by Gyalwa Gendun Drup, 1391 to 1474. I have it written down, don't think I'm smart like that.

The 3 Realms of Samsaric World

Those texts tell us our samsaric world is made up of three realms. Not three places, but three states of mind that we learn do come.

1. Desire realm

The most gross realm, meaning the most obvious. Gross doesn't mean icky, gross, although it is. It means the most thick, the most obvious, the most, I don't know how else to describe that. Gross versus subtle. The state of minds of beings who are projecting desire realms are gross state of minds.

We have gross likes and dislikes, meaning obvious, meaning coarse. There, maybe that's a better term, coarse. We struggle to get what we want and to avoid what we don't want. And those things that we want and don't want are experienced through our sensory functions.

2. Form Realm

The SUK KAM, form realm, we learned last class, the mind of the form realm is more subtle. It has less, a lot less, of this active desire—wanting and not wanting. It still has experiences. It has awareness, of course, and it's mostly pleasurable. But then it ends. So they still have pervasive suffering. They still have the inevitability of death and then rebirth. The form realm is still samsaric in nature. It's not the desire realm, but it's still suffering realm.

3. Formless Realm

Then more subtle yet is the formless realm. SUK-ME KAM.

SUK-ME, formless, not meaning non form, no form at all. But meaning that the form that is in the formless realm is prana, energy. Which, if you compare a solid object, like a table, to light, a ray of light. A table is a whole lot more solid than light.

Then say the difference between a table solidity and light‘s solidity is this much. I am just making up a measurement. The difference between the solidity of light and the solidity of prana is beyond measure.

Do you get it?

Light is still a material thing. Prana is still a material thing. But so so so subtle. In the formless realm, there is still this very, very subtle form called prana, meaning simply wind. Not climatic wind, just the impulse to movement.

The mind of a being in the formless realm, its experience is this mind and this ever so subtle movement of it. So, being a formless realm being, there is nothing but awareness.

You think, well, there has to be awareness of something, right?

That of something is so subtle that it's beyond what we can describe.

It's a realm of mind, I want to say mind only, but then they'll get in trouble because our minds go to Mind Only School and that has nothing to do with it.

It's mind. We experience ourselves as minds, minds moving. Those minds have mental afflictions related to what the mind is experiencing, minding.

Somehow, in formless realm, one's mind can still experience jealousy.

There's nobody that you're jealous of, no thing you're jealous of. But jealousy can happen. I don't understand it.

It is still a very, very subtly suffering world. Because again, there's no karmic goodness being replanted. Seems like there is, but there isn't. You're using up your karmic seeds that put you there. And when you're done with that, those karmic seeds ending. What's left is karmic seeds that are gross.

We don't use up all our gross karmic seeds before we can get to a formless realm. It's that a seed ripens us into a formless realm being, and we still have all these other seeds that are not ripening as having gross reality. Because what's filling in the details from that one seed is this whole lifetime as the formless realm being. But we wear them out, and then drop into the realm made of those other seeds of a gross reality. So down you go.

The formless realm is not a realm an educated Buddhist spiritual practitioner aspires to attain. Because it's a dead end in the end.

Geshela shared that at certain level, certain Bodhisattva levels, meaning you're on your fourth path, and you're still doing your meditation, you're working with your six perfections, and you have realizations come from time to time.

One can apparently in deep meditation, he said, have your mind go to a Buddha paradise to get teachings. But he doesn't mean literally you go there. He tried to describe that your experience in that deep meditation will be an experience receiving teachings from Buddha in paradise. And Buddha will be in Buddha‘s paradise giving teachings. Your body is still in the desire realm, but the ripening of your mind seeds are such that you can receive these teachings from Buddha in Buddha‘s paradise. It's hard to, I can't quite grok that. But the idea is, my experience and a Buddha's experience like the pen. Something to look forward to.

The 4 Levels of the Formless Realm

(37:41) Now, in the formless realm, there are four levels. Like we said there are, I forget how many, we said. Three levels of the form realm that have 17 sections, four levels of formless realm. Again, a realm that are just prana and mind, four different circumstances or qualities.

Here's the name of the four:

NAMKA TAYE
NAMSHE TAYE
CHIYANG ME
SI-TSE

Anyone who's familiar with the lion's dance meditation, maybe these are familiar terms.

NAMKA = space

TAYE = limitless.

There is a level of the formless realm, like the first level, if you're stacking these one on top, in terms of level of subtlety, I'm not sure.

NAMKA TAYE is the first, limitless space.

NAMSHE TAYE means limitless awareness.

NAMSHE = awareness.

CHIYANG ME = nothing at all.

The level called nothing at all.

SI-TSE = the cyclic peak

Si = cyclic

TSE = peak

SI-TSE, called the peak of existence. But bear in mind it means the peak of suffering existence. SI-TSE is not the Buddha paradise.

It means, in suffering world, there is a realm, a level of the formless realm that is the most exquisite that it can be, and still be suffering realm.

We already said, that to experience ourselves as a form realm being, that comes as a result of a seed planted by a very deep level of meditation in which our awareness of sensory input is shut down, a single pointed focus that has those two SHIN-JANG, concentration. We go deeper and deeper and deeper, but we simply stay in the enjoyment of those deepening meditations.

We don't use that finely honed microscope mind to turn it on to the true nature of the object that we are holding as our object of meditation. So that as we are in that deep concentrated state, we are planting seeds. One of those seeds is the one that pops at the moment of death, not very likely, but if it does, then form realm rebirth happens.

For formless realm, the level of meditative concentration, planting the seeds that could result in a formless realm lifetime are all that more withdrawn, all that more subtle, and not used to turn to the true nature of the object. Which we only need to be at that first level of the form realm quality of concentration, to turn our mind to the insight meditation. There's no need to go into these deeper levels of meditation. But there are entire religious, spiritual teachings that believe that these levels of meditative concentration is the goal to withdraw so fully and deeply that you go from the experience called limitless space to this experience called limitless awareness, to this experience called nothing at all, to this experience called peak of suffering existence, although they don't call it suffering, peak of existence. To believe that that's my progress on my spiritual path and that will bring me to Nirvana. I'll just stay in seated, say forever.

Our training says actually you don't stay there forever. You stay there a really, really, really long time. Yes, and there's no suffering during that really, really, really long time, true. But it wears out eventually. So we don't learn these. We don't train in these, except in Lion's Dance, which I don't quite get.

Well I do: for planting some other seeds in which these experiences will be used in a different way.

(45:12) When we think about that moment of the end of this life and the projecting karma that pops, it's like a numbers game. The more of any particular type of karmic seed you have, the more likely one of those will be the one that pops out.

So it would take many, many hours in one of these deep meditative concentrations to make enough seeds so that there'd be enough in there, that one of them could be the one that pops out.

I don't know if that's helpful or not. This isn't meant to say, well be careful with your depth of meditation, because you get into one of these. Ah, you're going to end up as a formless realm being. Possible. But if we don't have many, many, many hours of those meditation seeds worth of seeds, the likelihood of one of them popping as we go through death is kind of remote. It's much more likely that my daily selfishness seeds will be one that pops, and I won't get anywhere close to a formless realm. So nothing to worry about. For me, at least I don't know about you.

Where are these formless realms, and how do we get there between the end of this life, the death of this life, and the beginning of that one?

When we understand that the formless realm really, really, really is a place where there is no form like this, no physical form, even no physical form in the sense of really, really subtle physical form. It's only awareness and the prana that can move that awareness.

Can a place like that be a physical place?

Does it need a physical place to be in?

Does our mind need a physical place to reside, or else it can't be?

No. Do we have always a physical place in our ripening?

Mostly, except maybe during dream and deep sleep.

But in formless realm there's no place called formless realm.

The formless realm is wherever the formless realm being mind is. Which they say means, that wherever your current body is when its last moment of that life goes off and finishes, and the first moment of your form realm seed ripens, your form realm will be right there.

But that's in error, because there for it to be. It's just where you were is the same place where the formless realm will be for you. But by then you're not going, oh wow, my bedroom at home sure looks different. It's not that at all.

There's this just shift. The reason they pointed out is because to die from a desire realm and go to another desire realm rebirth, there is a new place that the new desire realm rebirth, its seeds will ripen a new place.

If you die in Arizona and your seeds are ripening the new you in Singapore, it apparently takes time for your, whatever it is, to get from Arizona to Singapore. This is one that I have on the shelf. Because it's like, come on, you don't have to buy a ticket on the plane.

But the shift apparently takes some time.

How long?

Up to 49 days.

Again on the shelf for me. I don't quite understand. But same for hell realm, hungry ghost, Rome realm, these other realms that we'll be talking about more.

It takes time, end of this life before these new seeds fill in enough of the details that we have the experience Me fetus, me hell being, me whatever. It takes time.

That period of time is called the Bardo, the in-between time.

We'll talk about the Bardo later.

Formless realm does not have a Bardo.

If we're going to formless realm, there's not a Bardo time. It's end of this one, start of that one, because there's no need for the getting somewhere different.

Again. It's like, well wait a minute, there is no somewhere different to go. But for me on the shelf.

It takes form to separate places. Curious.

(51:48) If there's no place that the formless realm is, how can there be four different levels of it?

I think four different levels, here they are, all stacked up. Somebody's going to end up on the top one, like the top level of the wedding cake, and the rest are in the lower.

But of course that's thinking of it wrongly, that rather the mind and the experience of that mind that we are saying is in the NAMKE TAYE level of formless realm.

That's all there is for them. There's no other realms, other levels of the formless realm. That's their reality. Is just this NAMKE TAYE, we're calling it that. I suspect that the being who is a formless realm being is not thinking to itself, experiencing to itself, oh, I'm in NAMKE TAYE, and I'd rather be in SI-TSE. I think it's just how we're explaining these different experiences that one could be in formless realm. I guess based on somebody remembering having spent eons of lifetimes there, and then lost it. Somebody remembers their past lives.

NAMKE TAYE, limitless space, is describing a state of mind where the experience is like limitless space.

The experience is mind experiencing mind, like what we would call limitless space. It's a quality of concentration.

NAMSHE TAYE is a quality of concentration that's even more subtle. That's where the mind is experiencing itself, the experience is limitless awareness. So there's a difference between space and awareness in terms of subtlety.

Limitless space is more gross than limitless awareness. A realm where there's no grossness whatsoever.

CHIYANG MA means nothing at all. So even subtler yet, a level of concentration that one we're explaining as being where nothing's happening at all.

Apparently this was the meditation that the Master Huangzang was teaching. Withdraw, withdraw, withdraw, go through these different levels, reach this one where that very subtle state of mind is completely shut down, shut off. And that achieving that level of nothingness would be ultimate reality.

Then, Kamalashila was invited in to debate with him, because people were confused. Not because they thought it was wrong, they were just confused. We don't understand. So let's bring in another meditation master and let him duke it out logically, and see what practice makes more sense for the goals that we want to achieve.

Master Kamalashila won the debate.

His basic argument was if you plant seeds for a mind that's completely shut down, that's going to make an experience of a mind completely shut down. Any rabbit can do that. So it's not really going to be helpful in the long run to get beyond the withdrawal from the attraction to the senses, and use that level of concentration to analyze, analyze, analyze the true nature of things, in order to get to a direct experience of the absence of self natures. Which is not nothing at all, far from it.

So CHIYANG ME is not a goal.

Then lastly, the peak of existence. It's not just the peak of formless realm. It's peak of all suffering existence, from the lowest hell up to is what they're comparing quality of mind to. The highest level one's mind can experience still in a suffering realm. All that's there is pervasive suffering. So, so subtle.

We do need to learn to meditate with powerful meditative concentration, single pointed concentration. But to just withdraw further and further into more and more subtle states of mind is not the goal, and in fact perpetuates suffering dangerously.

Geshela always throws in we do need to reach that meditative concentration that is planting the seeds that would cause a first level of the form realm rebirth if one of them pops at the moment of death. That's not why we're doing that depth of meditation. We're doing that depth of meditation because that's the concentration necessary to penetrate through to experience emptiness directly.

When we're at that level of concentration, it doesn't automatically make us see emptiness directly, and it doesn't automatically make our effort to analyze and come to the conclusion about the no self nature of our object. But it's the platform of goodness that can ripen the circumstances of woosh, you go into it.

If we don't have the ability to get to that platform, or at least to get close to it on a regular basis, the likelihood of having all those circumstances come together at the right time and right place to be able to push us into that direct experience of ultimate reality, they just decrease. The chances decrease.

Those in the know say it takes at least an hour of meditative effort daily, regularly to be accumulating the number of seeds for effort to be at deep concentration in order to have what it takes to hold it deeply enough for the 10 to 20 minutes that we would need for the direct perception of emptiness.

He likens it to an athlete in training or a performer in training.

We train for many, many, many more hours than we perform. But because of our hours and hours of training, when it's time to pour out 100%, we can sustain it for that period of time that we need it.

Without the effort of the training, we wouldn't be able to sustain that quality of concentration called direct perception of emptiness. Those hours and hours of training, if you've trained a lot of time making mistakes, a lot of time making corrections. It's not like every training session is so perfect. They're goofed and try again and try again. Meditation the same.

So a lousy meditation is better than no meditation at all. Build up a minute a week having started from five minutes, and in a year your life has adjusted around a one hour meditation. Then we learn, well, it's a little more, because you need to do your preliminaries first, and then your closing prayers after. So you keep adding a minute for a while until you've got your hour and a half lifetime adjustment made, so that we are building the seeds to be able to sustain that performance, seeing emptiness directly when it comes time. No need to go any higher or deeper in your concentration than that, yay. Makes it sound doable.

The 4 Kinds of Meditation Causing the 4 Kinds of Formless Realm Existences

(64:26) These four levels of the formless realm beings are the results of seeds planted by four different kinds of meditations, as I just said.

The meditation that will land you in the peak of existence of suffering world is a meditation called peak of existence. We don't learn this, but other beings might.

The meditation that will land you in the nothing at all level is, guess what, a meditation called Nothing at all, the one Huangzang was teaching.

Then, to end up in the formless realm called limitless awareness is a meditation called limitless awareness.

You would think that the meditation that lands us in the limitless space level would be a meditation called limitless space, but it's not.

It's called DUSHE ME DUSHE MIN.

DUSHE ME = non-conceptual do means not non-conceptual.

DUSHE ME MIN means not non-conceptual.

So there's this meditation where you reach this state, you try to reach this state, where you are in non-conceptual and not non-conceptual state.

Those are contradictory. What in the world is that?

Whatever it is, it plants the seeds that can ripen as a whole lifetime in limitless space quality of formless realm being. Now, I think the reason that it's brought up, although Geshe Michael did not point this out in class, is that if you recall when we were studying Diamond Cutter Sutra, Lord Buddha's answer to the Bodhisattva was, You're going to take all living beings to Nirvana. And those living beings, there are beings who are born from a womb, and born from warmth and moisture, and born miraculously, and born from eggs. Those who are not conceptual and not not conceptual, and those who are, I can't remember the rest of them. All of those beings that you are going to take to Nirvana, there's no such being that you're going to take to Nirvana, which is why you can take them to Nirvana. Get it?

Thanks for your honesty. No, I don't think I get it either.

This is a state of meditation, and so a state of mind, that is called non-conceptual and not non-conceptual. Apparently, these deep meditations, one can stay in that meditation for a really long time. Not just meaning, oh, you set your timer for three hours and you can stay.

But you hear of those stories of a great meditator. They sat in meditation for six years. That kind of meditation we're talking about. It's like, wait, a human can't do that. Apparently you can.

According to Master Kamalashila's commentary on Diamond Cutter Sutra, he says, when Buddha is pointing out who all the beings we need to help, there are beings who are in this level of meditation right now, and they're just creating for themselves more suffering. They think they're stopping suffering, but they're not. So include them in your wish to reach total enlightenment for the sake of all sentient beings. Don't forget those that are in this deep level of meditation. They need your help too.

How a Mind can Exist Without a Body

(69:32) Geshela gave us three explanations for how it is that a mind can exist without a body. If we didn't wonder, we should, apparently.

In the continuum of a person, what we call a person, is that person physical or mind?

Like Sarahni, is Sarahni physical?

Siri has a body.

But this body isn't Sarahni, because if I cut my finger off, I am no less Sarahni. I'm just a Sarahni with only three fingers.

Is Sarahni the mind, the thinking?

No, it's an idea. It's an idea imposed upon some other information that then that idea imposed becomes: Sarahni has a mind, Sarahni has a body. But Sarahni is neither body nor mind.

Well, then what the heck is it?

It's a concept. It's that existing thing that's neither mental nor physical—you remember that category of all existing things in that chart?

1. As a Concept

One explanation for how it is that a mind can exist without a body is that the Me as a concept. Now, how that quite answers, the mind can exist without a body is a little slippery. Because we're not using the word mind and mental thing as synonyms.

The mind has mental experiences. But somehow this thing mind seems to be bigger than those things which are mental.

Again, it's not completely clear how this argument that Sarahni as a concept helps me understand how a mind can exist without a body.

2. As Energy

Then the second explanation that somebody gives is, well, look, your life energy continues, and mind rides on that. That prana that I was talking about, it's so subtle in the formless realm, it's not a new prana that we didn't have before.

It's movement. The winds that move our minds, and our minds that ride on the winds that move them, they go so hand in hand, that as long as there's a mind, there's a wind. And as long as there's a wind, there's a mind riding on it.

That wind, that energy, that prana is never lost. It never disappears.

It changes. It's a changing thing, changing, changing, changing. But it's not like the prana of this life will disappear at the end of this life.

It's the seeds change, and that makes the end of this life.

But the prana that is part of this life carrying the mind, that's part of this life, that prana goes on, constantly. So subtle, it doesn't have to have the physical part. It is the physical part.

3. As Karma

Then third argument is well, the mind is karma, movement of the mind and what it motivates. The mind continues because of karma. The karma for mind makes more mind. It doesn't necessarily have to make body to have mind. Our karmic seeds for mind are karmic seeds for mind, our karmic seeds for body are karmic seeds for body.

You can have, oh, I almost want to say one without the other, but you can't. You can‘t have a body without a mind and call it a body. You would call it a log or a rock, and it wouldn't be you. Because to be you, it has to have this conceptualization of me, not body, not mind.

4. Because of One’s Own Impermanence

(74:58) Lastly, Abhidharma Kosha says that we can have a mind without a body, because of the fact of one's own impermanence. It's like, oh, another real obvious argument there. The fact of one's own impermanence.

The impermanence of Sarahni is this subtle changing nature of continued existence. So it's like the fact that Sarahni will die proves that the mind goes on. Not directly. The proof is not direct. We would go through before we like, Oh, I see.

It's given in Abhidharmakosha.

Geshela says, basically, mind carries mind. Mind makes mind seeds, and mind seeds make more mind. So to have a mind now, which you know do, it's like the one thing we really know: I am aware—means you'll always have a mind. Not the one you're familiar with now. But technically that one is gone by the time you recognize it anyway. So continuing.

You're going to have a homework question that says,

Homework: What distinguishes the formless realm from the other two?

It's the level of subtlety of the mind.

This thing we call mind is a really slippery creature, I find.

Sometimes they're talking about mind, and it sounds like what mean is our thoughts. For me, my thoughts are these mental words that chatter along inside there. But then we can have a thought about something, and it never makes it into word, mental word.

I don't know, maybe call it an idea, or an impression, or a feeling. But there had to have been an awareness happening. Then that awareness happening, there's no limit as to what it can be aware, of according to whatever is ripening. And it's within every ripening that is ripening, isn't it?

So in each one of the different realms—desire, form and formless, at each of the different levels of them—the being of that realm, of that level, and the realm itself are defined by their own unique mental afflictions and attachments, their own unique karmic seeds ripening. Which is to say the same thing. Mental afflictions and attachments.

The formless realm beings get afflictions about their own minds. I can't relate to that.

That's all I apparently have to say about formless realm.

No doubt there's a whole lot more in it in the Abhidharma Kosha about it.

The 5 Kinds of Birth

(79:10) Next in Abhidharma Kosha comes an explanation on the five kinds of birth.

We've talked about the three realms, and the different levels in the three realms.

Those different realms ripen at the end of this life. So it's natural.

It's a nice answer to a question maybe we weren't smart enough to even ask.

It's like, how do you get born there? What are births like?

There are apparently five different kinds of birth, and four different ways of taking birth.

When we say birth, taking birth, we are always talking about SEMCHEN.

This word SEMCHEN, it is the word for a being that has awareness.

But it has within it the connotation of a suffering being awareness.

So Buddhas are not considered SEMCHEN.

Do Buddha have minds?

Absolutely. But they don't have suffering minds.

And so SEMCHEN means a being with a mind that is suffering.

Then we have to think about it, because it's like, wait, there are some good days and I'm not suffering. Does that mean on those days I'm not a SEMCHEN.

I hope, but probably not. Nope, probably it's a desire realm good day from some kind of amazing goodness that we did in some lifetime. Maybe this one, maybe not. But it's going to end.

When we're talking about rebirths, we're talking about the rebirth of any being with a mind.

Rocks don't get reborn, apparently.

Trees aren't considered SEMCHEN. Plants are not considered SEMCHEN in these teachings.

At what point is an algae, is an algae a plant or is it a SEMCHEN? I don't know.

But we're not talking about just human rebirth, and we're not talking about just animal rebirth, or bug rebirth, which would be our limited understanding if we still believed the only living beings had to be either human, animal or bug.

Now we know that there are other beings with minds in our suffering world, that are included in five kinds of birth and four ways of taking it.

There are five SEMCHENs, five kinds of suffering beings. We've already learned: hell beings, hungry ghosts or craving spirit beings, animal beings, human beings, and the pleasure beings called Deva, or HLA. And we see within the pleasure beings, there's different levels.

Now it's a little confusing, because we have form realm beings who are called pleasure beings, and we have desire realm beings who are called pleasure beings, but their pleasure is different.

The desire realm pleasure beings having different exquisite experiences than does form realm.

Then there's one other kind of being that's not given its own designation as a sixth kind of being. Which is the bardo being. Because it's not its own rebirth with its own world. They all do an in-between.

In-between gets its own category. Not as a separate kind of being, but the being in between. In between what? Death and rebirth. Not between life and death. But between death and rebirth.

So there are these five different kinds of birth one can take.

You'll get born into a hell realm. I hope none of you ever. But somebody will get born into a hell realm. But you don't get born into a hell realm as a hell baby to hell mother, hell father, and you go through your toddler stage. It's not like that.

You just get born as a hell being, poof, you're there. It's called a birth.

Any of these beings, they can be born in these different ways. And then we'll recognize how the birth type is related somehow to the being that's getting born.

The 4 Ways to Take Birth

Here's the four ways to take birth:

DZU KYE

DRUSHER LE KYEWA

NGEL KYE

GONG KYE

1. Born Complete (Miracle Birth)

KYE means birth, to be born, to take existence.

DZU means miracle.

So DZU KYE means miracle birth. Like wow, you get born as Jesus, right?

Immaculate birth. Or Padmasambhava. You just show up on the lotus.

You don't get pushed through the birth canal, you just show up.

But it sounds then like we'd be limited to being this really, really, really special being that has this really, really, really special birth.

But what they mean by miracle birth is to be born complete. Meaning poof. You just show up there, and whatever you are, whatever you relate to yourself as, that's it.

You don't be born into the hell realm as a 2-year-old and have to grow up.

You're just there. Probably adult, unless, if you tried to pin it down. It's like, well, why couldn't you be a 6-year-old hell realm? If your mind ripens that kind of seed, you could be. But then as long as you're in the hell realm, you'll still be that. It's not like you're growing up. It's not like you're maturing. You're just being a hell realm being with what they do.

So to be born complete, one way of being born.

2. Born from Warmth and Moisture

Second one, DRUSHER LE KYEWA means to be born from warmth and moisture. Science calls it spontaneous generation. Science thinks there's no such thing now, because you can always find some little dormant egg case in the dirt that finally got enough warm water, that it activated and became the little mosquito larvae. It's like, whoa, that makes much more sense than warm enough and moist enough and bingo, there's life. Like life doesn't work like that, does it?

It doesn't matter whether we say no, there has to have been an egg there.

These conditions come together, and then life is there, is the meaningfulness of the DRUSHER LE KYEWA kind of rebirth.

One lifetime ends, bardo happening, and then certain warmth and moisture. I mean they literally say warmth and moisture, not dust and fire, warmth and moisture.

The mind ripens that and it ripens life. That next life. Probably bug life, but I don't know who else might be born from warmth and moisture? I don't know.

3. Born From a Womb

Next one is NGEL KYE. It's the prenasal N with the ngal and ngal kye. It means birth from a womb. Oh, finally something we understand. Humans, mammals, some fish, some reptiles give birth from a womb.

4. Born From an Egg

GONG KYE, birth from an egg. Birds, most fish, most reptiles. I don't know if hell beings get born from eggs. Haven't heard that.

These last two seem to apply to human and animal realm. That the other realms are born in one of these other two ways, either complete or from warmth and moisture.

Abhidharma Kosha explains that the first beings to appear on a planet take birth complete. They just show up there as adults, fully clothed even. Then it says, how those beings‘ interactions with others over time degenerates, and goes on to where that world is itself destroyed completely.

Sometimes it's destroyed by water, and sometimes it's by wind, and sometimes it's destroyed by fire.

It explains the sequence of how that happens.

Before the actual sequence of the end of the planet is triggered, the circumstance must be that the hell realms related to that planet must have been cleared out.

Meaning no new hell realm beings are born in that world's hell realm. That means those that are in it, eventually are going to wear off their hell realm seeds, and disappear when they do. Eventually there'll be no more beings in the hell realm of that world.

Then, you would think that would be such a good thing, it would sustain the world.

But apparently that's what allows the circumstances such that that world can then be destroyed.

If it gets destroyed while there's still hell beings, I don't know. It's like the hell beings would be left with no…, I don't understand it.

But there's this common sequence of what makes a world a world, and how long that existence will be based on beings in the different realms related to that particular world, that particular planet. We'll talk more about it. There's another really confusing class that goes into all of that.

Pleasure beings are born complete.

Hell beings are born complete.

Hungry ghosts, it is apparently debatable, because there are some stories about hungry ghosts, where the hungry ghost is a woman who has lots of kids. But it doesn't actually say whether the kids are hungry ghosts as well. It's the mother with all the kids that's the hungry ghost. That one's not quite so clear.

The scripture says, humans can actually have any one of these types of births. Humans can be born complete. They can be born from warmth and moisture. They can be born from a womb, they can be born from egg.

We're on the shelf.

But keep in mind that when we say human, there are four different kinds of humans that live on those four different continents. The only one we are familiar with, if you're like me, is these ones the humans of Dzambuling. So maybe the four different kinds of birth relate to the four different kinds of humans on the four different continents. Geshela did not clarify.

Then some of these four births are considered better births than others.

When we talk about lower realms and higher realms, a good birth or a bad birth, this is talking about the extent to which the birth hurts somebody.

If we were choosing to be reborn, if we had that option and we're Bodhisattva choosing to be reborn, and you think of these different ways that you could be reborn, your concern would be, How much do I hurt somebody in doing it? Somebody else.

To be born complete, just poof, you're there. That's the highest kind of birth, because you don't hurt anybody doing it.

You could start this debate. It's like, well then, hell beings have the highest kind of birth because they are born complete—but in the worst kind of suffering. How does that work?

(96:58) The second kind of goodness birth is the DRUSHER LE KYEWA, because you being born through warmth and moisture. It apparently it's not so comfortable, the warmth and moisture, that you get born out of. There's a little discomfort for you yourself. So that would be the Bodhisattva‘s second choice.

Then third one is that NGEL KYE, the womb birth, because to be born from a womb hurts the mom once, and hurts you once. It hurts to get pushed out, it hurts to do the pushing, and it hurts to be pushed through that canal. So two beings getting hurt.

The worst rebirth is rebirth from an egg, because it hurts the mom to push the egg out, and it hurts you to be the egg getting pushed out. Then you have to pack your way out of the egg, and that hurts you again. So two beings, but more suffering to be born from an egg.

Then scripture says, the frequency of these four is in the same order.

Meaning the born complete is the most common kind of rebirth.

Again, if we go back to human thinking, miraculous rebirth, no, that's not common at all. But when we understand it as born complete, we still think, well, that's not common at all. Except that there are so many more hell beings, hungry ghosts, pleasure beings, than there are humans and animals.

So think of all the humans we know about, what 9 billion? And how many animals, uncountable number of animals.

There's more beings who are born complete in those other realms than that.

Why are we pointing that out? Because I'm going to reach total enlightenment for the sake of all sentient beings. All is a big number. Next level is the DRUSHER LE KYEWA, from warmth and moist. You get it?

Apparently there are a lot of beings born from warmth and moisture.

NGEL KYE, womb birth.

GONG KYE, egg birth.

Beings Aware of Taking Birth

(100:31) Then the text talks about the level of awareness, or the different possible levels of awareness that one could have as they are taking their rebirth.

1. Chakravartin

The text says that someone who's a Chakravartin, the seed that's popped is a seed for Chakravartin.

Chakravartin means this wheel turning emperor. They're said to have such good karma that they automatically become the ruler of the world that they get reborn into.

They show up and everybody says, wow, you're so special. Please be our king.

A Chakravartin.

We've heard the story that when Buddha was born, the seer said he could either be the greatest ruler of the world or the greatest spiritual seeker of the world. He chose to be the spiritual seeker. And that later as he's manifesting, getting enlightened, he again got offered to be ruler of the world. And he said, thanks, but no thanks. Turned it down. Something similar to this Chakravartin thing.

As these beings enter a womb, they apparently know what's going on.

Most of us don't. We'll learn more about it.

2. Self-Made Arhats

Then there's the quality of being called self-made arhat.

Why they distinguish arhat from self-made arhat, it's to say a Hinayana level arhat versus a Mahayana level arhat.

They also have awareness of entering the womb, and they have awareness of staying in the womb. So that implies the Chakravartin has the goodness to know they're entering a womb. But then that awareness shifts and they're no longer aware that that's where they are, what they're doing.

I would guess they're probably not even aware of being Chakravartin at that time.

Then this self-made arhat is aware of going in and staying.

3. Buddhas

Then the third category they talk about is Buddhas.

A Buddha, of course is aware of entering, staying and coming out.

Buddhas are aware of everything. Of course, they're going to be aware of all three.

Then it says, and beings who are born from eggs, they're not aware of any of it.

It's like, it sure seems like beings born from wombs. Most of us are not aware of any of it. So why they say beings born from eggs are not aware?

I don't quite understand that one either.

Then the Abhidharma Kosha asked the question, well, wait a minute.

Why would a Buddha choose to go through being born from a womb, if it gives such pain to the mom, let alone themselves?

We can see why they'd be willing to take the pain themselves, but why would they choose that womb rebirth? And why didn't he just be born complete?

Mahayana says, that he went through all of that as this big charade to show us the truth of suffering.

It's like, the poor mom had to be in on it, if he's going to take the rebirth through the mom's womb. But, if he didn't, if he had just shown up complete, humans would not be able to relate to his story, right?

He's special. He just showed up miraculously. Yeah, he can tell me everything in life is suffering, but... He is missing a piece, that piece of being born, because he didn't do it. So he did do it. Maybe the mom was in on it.

His job in showing up as who apparently became Shakyamuni Buddha, was to show the truth of suffering, the truth of the cause of suffering, the truth of the end of suffering, and the truth of the path to the end of suffering.

Everything about that last life, prince Siddharta becoming Shakyamuni Buddha was about that demonstration.

Geshela said, this chapter of the Abhidharma Kosha is not usually taught to a lay audience. The monastics learn it, but not the rest of us. You can see why.

In modern times it's hard to accept. Science tells us blah, blah, blah, and science is right. We'll understand the power of this course when we get more deeply that there really are beings beyond human and animal, beings beyond our direct sensory experience who are very real, and they're suffering as beyond compare. And it's all born of my own seeds.

Am I creating more seeds to create more of those beings, let alone myself as one of them?

The power of just this little bit of insight into these other realms according to Master Vasubandhu plants these deep seeds to grow our compassion beyond what we can conceive when we first get started.

Why do we want to grow our compassion?

So that our behavior choosing motivation gets stronger to change from selfish to other-ish, all-ish. And in doing so, the seeds that we plant are the goodness seeds that will help our meditation deepen and our intellectual understanding of emptiness grow, leading us to that direct experience of the true nature of all existing things, particularly our own self, our own mind, our own being. Which is that doorway to the conveyor belt to the end of suffering for everyone. That's why we're studying this stuff. To learn about the suffering.

I hope you don't have nightmares. It is a really harsh class, set of classes. Please hang in there. Don't guilt trip yourself. The seeds to get a class like this and stay are incredible good seeds.

We're replanting goodness by studying this stuff, because we're motivated to do so to help somebody else stop their suffering forever. And maybe they never need to take this class. We're doing it for them.

[Class Dedication]

Thank you again for the opportunity. Have a nice weekend. Do your homework.

Class 3: The Lives of Craving Spirits, and Animals

30 March 2025

Link to Eng Audio: ACI 8 - Class 3

Link to SPA Audio: ACI 8 - Class 3 - SPA

Vocabulary Class 3

TEN RIM CHENMO written by Geshe Drolungpa (1199 AD)

KALIANAMITRA spiritual friend

LAM RIM CHENMO written by Je Tsongkapa (1357-1419)

YIDAK (tb) Preta (sk) craving spirit (cannot get their needs met)

JINPA NAMSUM MAJINPA failing to give the 3 types of giving

SANSING GI JINPA lowest kind of giving, material wealth incl food, clothing, shelter, money

MINKJIKPAY JINPA second level giving, protection

CHU-KYI JINPA highest form of giving, Dharma

SERNA stinginess, possessiveness

TRAKDOK jealousy, coveting

LE Karma

LE NGEPA Karma is definite (equal makes equal)

PEL CHEWA Karma grows

MAJEPA DANG MA TREPA Deed not done can’t give a result

JEPA CHU MISAWA Deed done will give a result

CHIY DRIPPA CHEN Beings with obstacles on the outside

NANG-GI DRIPPA CHEN Beings with obstacles on the inside

SEKOM GYI DRIPPA CHEN Beings with obstacles to food and drink

JING-NA NEPA in the middle of warm waters (animal realm)

KATORWA spread out all over the planet (animal realm)

Welcome back. We are ACI course 8, class 3, on March 30th, 2025, all those threes. That's kind of cool. 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 Class 2

(7:08) Last class we learned that the location of the formless realm can be found two degrees south of the planet. Pluto, right?

No. The other way behind Pluto, right?

No. Someplace else? Tricky, right? You could really get me on that one.

No. How is it found?

(Raz) There's just no separate place. So when the person dies and if he had practiced the meditation in the lifetime, then he'll be just born immediately at the formless realm, if he meditated well in his life.

(Lama Sarahni) Good. No specific place. Then, did you read the answer key? The answer he said they appear there with their four heaps.

(Raz) Yes. The form is missing, right?

(Lama Sarahni) The form is missing. Exactly. But even as I was hearing myself explain that to you, there's no form there to be honest with you, I didn't have that idea of what comes to mind when I read, They have the four heaps. I don't know. Do you feel that? It feels different to say a being is there with four of the heaps. They're just missing the form. I wasn't thinking they have feeling, they have discriminating, they have all the other factors that make them up, and they have consciousness. I was thinking they just had consciousness. I don't know about you, but they've got these other three also. They just don't have form, meaning they don't have this form. But it also means they don't have this form either.

No personal heap of form, but no outer form either. Maybe that'll help understand formless realm a little better. That there really is a life there. It's not just awareness happening.

Now how that works, I don't quite understand still, because we relate to how outer objects of the form realm trigger all the rest of these.

And how do they get triggered if there's no thing to trigger them? Which is a clue actually that those things aren't what triggers the other.

Then we learned there were four levels of the formless realm.

Your quiz asked you for the name of them: limitless space, limitless awareness, nothing at all and peak of existence.

Then it asked you how does one reach any one of those four?

We learned that they would be the karmic result of the causes made by certain types of meditative concentration. That those moments in meditative concentration would plant the seeds in our mind that if those seeds ripened as our next lifetime would ripen as the being in that level, that formless realm level. Short version was, four different levels of deep meditation that create the seeds that would direct us to that kind of an experience in a future lifetime.

We don't want to do those meditations because we don't want the seeds to land us in the formless realm– thank you very much–if your goal is Buddhahood. We don't get to Buddhahood from the formless realm.

Third quiz question, what provides the basis for the stream of the mind in the formless realm?

We learned there we're like three different explanations for that. But the Highest School's explanation was, the continuum of me throughout its lifetime is the basis for the continuum of me in the formless realm. I think you could go on to say that that's true for any realm that we end up in, the continuation of me. I interpret that as meaning the subject side of every experience that then gets imprinted as a seed that has a subject side.

You're always going to have a subject side with every ripening, because you always have a subject side with every planting. Because you can't plant a seed in your mind without having a subject side aware of something. You, the subject side, are always aware. It's like it's an important piece to understand deeply, but the words just scratch the surface.

Our me is what goes into the formless realm. And our me is what keeps us there. And it's our me that actually drags us out and puts us somewhere else as well, but not a separate me doing something because it wants to. It's the continuation in every seed of the me.

All right, that's clear.

Then four, what were the four ways of taking birth?

To be born miraculously, but meaning complete.

To be born from warmth and moisture. That's happened in our kitchen recently.

We put our stuff to be composted into the Vitamix container. It all sits there till the Vitamix container is full and then I dump it into the compost pile. So we go all winter with no bugs in the Vitamix thing. Today I lift the lid and out flies a fly. It's like, wait a minute. Where did that fly come from? It hadn't been there since last September, and all of a sudden just the right temperature, just the right... I cleaned the thing in between birth by warmth and moisture. Circumstances are just right and whoop, fly. Now he's in the house.

Womb birth and egg birth.

Four different ways to take birth. Okay, got it? Everybody get a hundred percent on their quiz. No doubt.

Let's go on to class three. The topic of class three is craving spirits and animals. And I have a whole lot of Tibetan for you for this class.

Craving Spirits and Animals

The Text we Are Studying

(16:48) The material from this class comes from a different text. We've been studying Abhidharma Kosha, but for some reason Geshe Michael chose to use this other text for this information.

The text we're using is Lam Rim Chenmo. But he wants us to know about a text called the TEN RIM CHENMO. TEN is the word for teaching. We know LAM RIM CHENMO.

Great Book on the Steps of the teachings.

This predates Je Tsongkapa’s LAM RIM CHENMO. The TEN RIM CHENMO was written by someone named Geshe Drolungpa, a Tibetan. He's in the 1100. He's amongst those Kadampas that some of us have been talking about. A group of practitioners that were more practice oriented than intellectual study, write things down, give teachings oriented. But fortunately this one fellow was inspired to write this huge volume on Lord Buddha's sequential path from suffering being to fully enlightened being. The word Geshe back in the 1100s meant spiritual friend, Kalianamitra in Sanskrit.

Drolungpa means the guy from the area called Drolung. So this is the spiritual friend, the guy from Drolung. It's not actually his name, but that's what he's called. So everybody knows him in this way, like calling me that lady teacher from Tucson, like this.

He writes this amazing book and Je Tsongkapa is reading it and he's so impressed with it. He's talking to Manjushri about it. Well that'd be nice. And Manjushri apparently gives him the instruction, let's write another one. Let's update it a little bit, maybe. So Je Tsongkapa writes what comes to be the LAM RIM CHENMO.

It's not a commentary on the TEN RIM CHENMO, it's like a rewrite. But it's not that there was anything necessarily wrong with the TEN RIM CHENMO. It's just Lord Manjushri said, let's do another version.

They say Je Tsongkapa was taking dictation from Manjushri. I don't know. We know Lama Tsongkapa’s dates. They always go with his name. 1357 to 1419, a couple hundred years after Geshe Drolungpa.

In both of those texts, there are information that helps us gain insight into what it is to be or become a craving spirit and how one becomes an animal. It's these details of the karmic consequence that I think was not in the Abhidharma Kosha, which is why Geshela switched texts.

Again, what we're studying from is the LAM RIM CHENMO. The LAM RIM CHENMO is a rewrite of the TEN RIM CHENMO.

(21:42) YIDAK is the Tibetan word for hungry ghost, Sanskrit is Preta. I hear when Geshe Michael talks about these things, he tends to use Preta more than YIDAK.

Then there's another Tibetan word YIDAM. I'll write it, although it isn't part of this class, so I'm going to write it and then erase it. YIDAM which is the word for like one's personal deity. Don't confuse YIDAK with YIDAM.

YIDAM is you're fully enlightened being that's looking after you.

YIDAK is a hungry ghost, craving spirit.

The TEN RIM CHENMO says that there's four main causes for birth as a YIDAK, a craving spirit.

One general cause, and then three specific causes.

Not meaning you need the general cause plus a specific, any one of them will do the job. You'll see when I tell you what they are.

The general cause for taking birth as a YIDAK is, sorry, I don't have the Tibetan, don't look at this yet. Look at YIDAK, but not the rest.

Specific Causes to Become a Craving Spirit

1. General Cause: Doing the 10 non Virtues with Medium Strength

The general cause for becoming a YIDAK in some future life is doing any one or more of the 10 non virtues at medium strength.

Any one of the 10 non virtues at medium strength, the seed for that, if that's the seed that pops at the moment of a death, that seed colors ourself as next life craving spirit.

So yeah, you could do one act of lying in this medium way. I'm going to talk about it in a minute, and have one seed for that in all your eons of lifetimes. It could be the one that pops.

But the likelihood, because we've got trillions of other seeds for other things, is not that it's going to be it. Are you getting the idea?

So for the doing and one of the 10 non virtues with this medium strength, it would have to have happened enough that we have many seeds for it. So that one of those seeds had a greater likelihood of being the one that is the lottery ball that comes out.

I don't want to give the wrong idea. It's like one little non virtue done medium one time and you're doomed. It's not like that.

But we have that seed.

Unless we do something to make it so it cannot ever be the projecting karma, it's a possibility. That's where we're going with all of these classes in this topic, is that is it likely one time would make your whole rebirth? No, but it's possible.

What does it mean the 10, any one of the 10 non virtues? It means specifically killing, stealing sexual misconduct, lying, harsh speech, divisive speech, useless speech, craving, but really coveting. I mean really that being upset with somebody else's success, or having something, upset with someone else's happiness. Then ill will, kind of happy with somebody else’s unfortunateness. Then wrong view, which is not believing in karma as cause and effect, and not believing in future lifetimes. Because then there's no reason to avoid doing any of those behaviors.

Any of those behaviors, done with medium strength.

What does it mean “medium strength”?

So first to do any of those behaviors with light strength means, oh, we do them now and then, and those four steps that are the four parts of a path of action, the four parts that make a karmic seed planted strongly. Not all four are there. In fact, they're kind of sloppily there at all.

Just to refresh our memory: those four paraphrased are

a clear intention of what we're going to do, what we intend to do,
what we want to do, correct thinking about it,
doing the deed, and then
the completion of the deed being satisfied, happy, willing, intending to do it again

Those four factors.

For a light deed of lying, for instance, it wasn't intended, it just slipped out, habitual way of wiggling out of some problem. You weren't really clear that you were doing it at the time until after the fact and oh my gosh, I just exaggerated. You're not happy that you did it.

There is just…, but you did do the deed. That's light. A seed planted, but in this light way. Which means it'll be easy to damage, it would take a whole lot more of something similar to add enough strength to it for it to ever get over the threshold to manifestation.

Of course, repeatedly doing it is what adds to the power and that's what moves it from a light deed to medium or higher.

Light is, you get the idea.

Heavy doing of any of the 10 non virtues means you have all four of those parts strong. You intended to lie to that person. You had it all planned out. You were thinking clearly about who you're lying to, why you're going to lie, the result you're intending to get.

You've got the lie all worked out, you go and do it and you're happy you did it, and you're ready to do it again.

Same deed, lie. Only now it's powerfully planted.

So somewhere in between those two. You didn't probably intend to do it, but once you're getting ready, you understand and you go ahead for some reason. At the end of it it's like, yeah, that was really the right thing to do. Maybe? Maybe at the end it's like, Ooh, that wasn't so smart, I regret it. But it's not full on a strong planting. And it's not like a, oops, the light one. Somewhere in between. If you think karmically, nevermind, I won't go there yet.

2. Failing to Give

(30:43) Let me go back. The general cause for becoming craving spirit is this doing any one of the 10 non virtues, or any of the 10 non virtues in this medium way. It's enough that if one of those seeds pops at just the right or wrong time, the next thing we know is we are craving spirit being.

The three specific attitudes that will also land us there, this is this Tibetan.

JINPA NAMSUM MAJINPA
SERNA
TRAKDOK

JINPA = giving

MA JINPA = not giving

NAMSUM = the three kinds

So, failing to give the three types of giving. Plants seeds that can ripen as our perception of ourself as a hungry ghost.

This one, karmically we can kind of see how it fits.

A hungry ghost. Well, we'll get there.

What are the three kinds of giving, so that we know not to fail to give them?

There are the three

SANSING GI JINPA, the lowest kind of giving
MINJIKPAY JINPA, second level giving and
CHU-KYI JINPA, the highest form of giving

You know these already, whether you know the Tibetan or not.

1. Not giving material wealth

SANSING GI JINPA = giving material wealth

SANSING = material wealth

But it means food, clothing, shelter, money, the material needs addressing the material needs of someone who is in need. To be the seed for becoming a hungry ghost the circumstance would be you become aware of someone who's in need, you have the ability to help them, you have the resources to help them, you have the circumstances to help them, and you just decide not to, and you decide not to out of, oh, a sense of anger maybe, or jealousy maybe, or being angry with the person.

So really it's a kind of ill will, or somehow thinking inappropriately, I could teach them a lesson, or out of possessiveness for my own resources. That if I give to them, I will have less for me.

Out of laziness and carelessness, you remember all the things from Bodhisattva vows that play into the different factors, you recognize similar here. We don't create seeds for a craving spirit lifetime when we've got a good reason we can't or won't, don't give in the face of a situation where someone is in need. Everybody's in need of something. So there are specific reasons that we have not to give. But if we don't have the resources or we don't have the tools, that's not part of ripening a seed into seeing oneself as a being who cannot get their needs met. That's the key with Hungry Ghost realm, is that the experience is, you have any kind of need. Mostly it has to do with hunger. But any kind of need, desperate need, and you just can't get it.

You just can't get it.

I've had a stretch of experiences where I don't have real needs. But for instance, I use peanut butter as my protein source, and the peanut butter that I want to get. I want just plain peanuts. Maybe salt, but no extra oil and sugar, and I don't want to pay a lot of money for it.

There was a period of time that I could find a peanut, only peanut butter from Walmart, a great big jar for, I don't know, a really reasonable sum. I relied on that peanut butter, and then all of a sudden Walmart quit carrying it. I couldn't find it anywhere else either. The only peanut butter I could find was fancy, expensive, organic stuff. It's not that important to me, thank you very much. So I didn't. Then that went on for a long time and suddenly in our usual grocery store, its own name brand, it's the house brand, if you look down on the bottom shelf in the back, they have Kroger's brand peanut butter, that's peanuts.

It's like, yay. Finally karma shifted. I couldn't get it before.

I didn't do a four steps to get peanut butter. I just waited it out.

But it's like a craving spirit situation. Teeny, teeny. But that's the idea.

We have a need, we can't get it met, to a huge, huge level. We'll talk about it. So it makes sense. If I see somebody who's in need and I just withhold from them, duh, that's going to ripen. Because I can't find peanut butter when I want it or ripe bananas or whatever it's going to be. That's where that comes from.

But imagine that being the whole color of your experience in a whole lifetime. So karmically we can kind of see.

2. Not giving protection

The second level of not giving is the giving of protection.

MINJIKPAY JINPA = giving protection

JIKPAY = fear

MINJIKPAY = not fear

MINJIKPAY JINPA = giving somebody not fear, meaning not causing them fear. Or if they're in a situation that is fearful, not caused by you, you help them feel protected in some way. To not do that when we could, our own mind is watching and it's like, well, I don't know. How often do you have the opportunity to jump in the rushing river to save somebody's life and you don't do it? Never probably.

But how often do we walk by a flock of birds carelessly and they all fly away. When we could have gone across the street, or we could have tiptoed, or we could have been a little more mindful of our seed planting for future craving spirit life avoidance, and avoided contributing to somebody's fear.

It's a form of giving for someone to feel safe around you.

3. Not giving Dharma

Third one is CHU-KYI JINPA, giving dharma

The highest form of giving, they say. Because if you can give somebody a new idea through which they would choose new behavior, through which they would stop by hammering their big toe perpetuating pain. There's nothing higher that we can give someone.

But, technically, that person needs to have their needs met and they need to feel safe in order to have this place to be able to listen to what you have to say. Otherwise they're too busy protecting their life and surviving. So maybe the highest one, we don't even have the opportunity to give the highest giving until we've helped people with the two lesser givings.

To fail to do any of those plant seeds in our minds such that we become a being, can become a being, who just can't get what we want. Whether it's food or clothing or safety or protection or spiritual guidance.

3. Stinginess

(42:35) That's one of the three specific causes that could land us as a craving spirit. Second one is this word SERNA. SERNA means stinginess, possessiveness. Possessiveness means my stuff is my stuff. I'll take really good care of it. Stinginess means it is my stuff. You keep away from it. Do you see the difference?

Possessiveness means I'm less likely to share it. But stinginess means this. You can see how the seeds would make me a being who all I ever get from anywhere is this. If I'm doing that to others in regards to my stuff, SERNA.

4. Jealousy

TRAKDOK, technically the word is jealousy.

Jealousy has this really broad range of emotions, if you've noticed. When it comes in the 10 non virtues, we call it coveting.

Coveting means I want what you have, and I should have what you have, even if it means I should take it from you, or I should be mean to you until I get it. I don't know, it's an ugly state of mind that can't be happy for somebody else having something that we think we deserve better. But it is not limited to just that, is it? It's like someone has any little bit of success and we have this twinge. Why not me?

We're happy for them. We're not wanting to take it from them, but there's just this little, why them, not me? It's human. It's human to have that. But it colors, it makes a seed and it colors our interaction with the other, right? Because there's just a little bit of something between me and them now because it's like they must be a little better than me. And then that colors how I interact with them. It can be so subtle.

Will the subtle ones land us as a hungry ghost if they're the one that pops at the right time?

Of course, big, ugly jealousy makes us do ugly things to get in the way of the ongoing success of the person we're jealous about.

So if we think of it that way, it's like, oh yeah, I see how those seeds could make me into a being where everywhere I go for the success I'm looking for, like food and drink. There's just some kind of block. Somebody gets in the way, something gets in the way out of jealousy. So jealousy doesn't just bring, people will be jealous of me. It will bring that. But it could color this whole lifetime where we meet the obstacles that we cause out of our jealousy to somebody else.

Karma and the Rebirth as Hungry Ghost

How is it that these three attitudes could make us into a perception of me constantly hungry. Me can't get my needs satisfied. We as humans, we do think I'm human. That's animal. That's something else.

But it's hard to relate to hell beings. Does a hell being go, oh, here I am a hell being beating my hell being neighbor to a pulp, because they're beating me to a pulp.

I don't know if they do or not. Or if it's our human way of describing somebody else's reality.

This craving spirit could be the same. I don't know that they think to myself, oh man, now I'm a craving spirit. But they're just having the experience. They have a need and they can't get it met no matter what. And it goes on for a long time. We'll talk about it in a minute.

So why? How can this happen? Geshela said, don't believe what I'm saying until you have enough personal proof about it. I certainly hope that your personal proof does not require waiting until you become one, but rather either on authority or on logic, show yourself the possibility.

For his class, he said, how is it that this is even possible?

Of course the answer is Le, Karma.

In Abhidharma Kosha text, third chapter that we're studying is all existing things. Everything we need to know about how our world exists from minuscule particles to the big picture, to time and space, et cetera.

Then, at the end of that chapter, somebody must say, where does that all come from?

His fourth chapter is, somebody just asked, where does all this come from? And he opens the fourth chapter with LE LE JIKTEN NATSOK KYE. Which means movement of the mind and what it motivates, karma. Karma makes the myriad worlds. That's what LE LE JIKTEN NATSOK KYE means.

Then, after that, I don't remember. What is karma?

Karma is movement of the mind and what it motivates.

So where does our YIDAK me come from?

Karma.

What's karma?

Movement of the mind, what it motivates.

What do we know about karma?

We know the four laws, meaning the four explanations for how karma works. Meaning four explanations for what happens as we are aware of our me subject side, thinking, doing, saying something towards an other.

How does that work? What's happening between one of those and the next one, and the next one, and the next one?

You want an explanation? These four things to know about karma. We know them. Do you know the Tibetan?

LE NGEPA = Karma is definite. We'll get back to it.

PEL CHEWA = Karma grows

CHEWA = like how a wildfire grows. Here's a little wildfire, the wind comes, covers acres, within an hour it's gone kilometers.

MAJEPA DANG MA TREPA = a deed not done cannot make a result. Dah, we say. But if we're not getting a result we want, it's because we don't have the seed, or at least we don't have it ripening.

And if we are getting a result, we had to have made the seed.

Like why did that junk driver hit my car in the parking lot? I didn't do anything to him. Okay, but you did do whatever caused that your experience. Can't blame anybody else for our experience.

Are there other people involved? Absolutely.

Do they have karma? Yes.

Are they making karma? Yes.

But our experience is our karma.

And then the fourth one, JEPA CHU MISAWA, means a deed done will give a result. A result, not the result. Important English distinction.

We know there's the parenthetical. “Unless we purify it”

A done will bring a result.

Why are we talking about this?

Because we're trying to establish a way of showing ourselves beyond a shadow of a doubt that me experiencing myself as a being who can't get my needs or wants met is possible.

It would only be possible if I had made the seeds that had grown into that ripening. Karma is definite.

When we learn, karma is definite. English word sounds like it says karma is true. It's always happening.

But that's not what karma is.

Karma is definite means it is definite that being aware of ourselves do something kind, helpful, must bring a result that we find pleasant.

And a deed that we perceive ourselves doing that is unkind, hurtful, harmful, gross or subtle, must bring a result that we find unpleasant.

If you think it through, we can understand why that must be true given the other three rules, the other three explanations.

Because it grows.

Because a deed not done, can't give a result.

And because a deed done must give a result that's bigger than the original one.

It becomes this circle.

(54:55) If we have seeds that in small ways ourselves aware of having situations where we could give but we don't, or we act with jealousy, or what was our other one? We're stingy with our stuff.

Those seeds grow. We have the seeds, they grow. And then any one of those happens to be the one that pops at the moment of death that then calls upon all the others to fill in the details.

What would you anticipate your being would be experiencing if everything about that whole lifetime is coming from all these seeds from not giving, or stinginess, or jealousy?

Can you predict what it might be like when those seeds ripen?

Just think about it. It's like, yeah, I can get a glimpse.

Others would be constantly obstructing me and my happiness if it was jealousy that put me there. Because of what I did from my jealousy.

There would be resources that I need, but when I get to them, I wouldn't be able to partake of them, from withholding when somebody had a need.

You see? It makes sense. The seeds can grow into a whole realm of that just in the way some small seed grew into the whole realm of human me in earth school, same way.

We're talking about the four laws of karma, not because it only relates to hungry ghosts. It relates to our next moment, and why we experience what we experience moment to moment. And then of course it relates to any next life at the end of this one.

(58:20) If we perceive ourselves doing any of those four causes, we could experience ourself as a hungry ghost, lifetime, possibly. It's not a given that we will, but it would become possible.

What four causes?

The general one of doing any of the tendon virtues with medium strength or
not giving, the three kinds of giving when we have the opportunity or
having this attitude of stinginess. My stuff is my stuff and you keep your hands off it, and subtleties of that.
And then jealousy. I would posit that it's not just feeling jealousy that would land us as a hungry ghost. But acting from that jealousy would make those seeds complete enough to be a whole lifetime. But I don't mean to say, okay, when you're feeling jealous, don't worry about it. Because it will go on to make us do stuff if we don't struggle against it.

The 3 Kinds of Hungry Ghosts

There are three kinds of hungry ghosts, three kinds of pretas, YIDAKs.

The names of the three:

CHIY DRIPPA CHEN
NANG-GI DRIPPA CHEN
SEKOM GYI DRIPPA CHEN

1. Hungry Ghosts with Obstacles on the Outside

DRIPPA CHEN = obstacles

CHI, this first kind of hungry ghost, are called beings with obstacles on the outside.

CHI DRIPPA CHEN = obstacles on the outside.

They are explained like this. These beings perceive themselves, constantly perceive themselves as extremely hungry and thirsty and they have nothing to eat or drink.

They see in the distance a beautiful lake and they go, oh, water. They exert themselves to run to it. When they get close enough to perceive it clearly, like up close, ready to dive in, ah, it's puss and blood and feces. And they go urgh. They look and in another distance a lake, same over and over and over again.

They see a desirable place. It's gross when they get there.

Because of the seed, seed followed by seeds of this not giving, stinginess, jealousy, or just plain medium strength harmfulness to others. Because of the selfishness involved in that.

Light strength is carelessness involved.

Heavy strength is out to do harm.

Medium strength is somewhere in between. It's probably got a big component of me and my needs in order to do any of those 10.

Was the lake a lake, and then suddenly it became a big pile of puss and blood?

Was there nothing there at all?

No. That beings‘ karmic seeds are shifting, shifting, shifting as are ours.

The pattern of their shifting, shifting, shifting goes from attractive to not, attractive to not.

2. Hungry Ghosts with Obstacles on the Inside

Second kind of hungry ghost, NANG-GI DRIPPA CHEN.

NANG-GI = inside, obstacles on the inside.

These beings are also extraordinarily hungry and thirsty, but their mouths are like the eye of a needle and their esophagus is like a guitar string and their bellies are big and round like Santa Claus. They can't ever get enough sustenance to go in to satisfy the hunger. They have the goodness to actually have access to food and drink. Their obstacles aren't on the outside. Their obstacles are inside them.

It's like so teeny. No matter how much they partake, partake can't get ahead of the hunger, the thirst.

They have this whole life of being unsatisfiable.

Where would that come from?

Yeah, my reaction too, oh my gosh.

3. Hungry Ghosts with Obstacles to Food and Drink

Third kind of being, SEKOM GYI DRIPPA CHEN.

SEKOM = food and drink

These are beings who have obstacles to food and drink.

Well like they all do, but this is a more specific kind of experience, apparently. Because they have the food and drink. So they're not going for something that looks nice and it turns to puss and blood.

They have the food and drink. They have the mechanism from which they can partake. But when they partake, that food that's supposed to give them sustenance, harms them. Instead it's something, their ice cream cone burns and destroys. The delicious salad. Their obstacle is both, you could say both, outside and inside. Because the food is the food, but when they eat it, it harms them.

It causes tremendous suffering.

But the thing is with all three kinds is they don't die.

They don't die of their hunger and thirst. They don't die of their exertion running after the leak. They don't die.

They have this karma for apparently like a set period of time.

Where did we learn, or have we learned, that in this realm, lifetimes are not set?

Do you remember that? Where is that from?

Death in the end of death practice module.

The implication is there are other places where lifetimes are set. This is one of them. And apparently these lifetimes last 500 days.

It's like, oh, that's not so bad. But one of their days is a month of human time. So if you do the math, their 500 days is, I did it, it's like 46 years or something like that. Almost 50 years, 50 human years of a lifetime running after the lake and finding pus and blood, or hungry, hungry, hungry, can't get it in or eating pain. Pain. Ow.

Then you wear your seeds out and it shifts. But the likelihood that a preta being has done any kind of kindness for anybody during that lifetime to add to the goodness that they still have in their karmic pocket is remote.

Probably they haven't done much to hurt anybody either, but they probably have seeds of having hurt people in other ways still in their karmic pocket.

So it's a good thing when they wear out all their seeds as hungry ghost. But where they're going to go next is hard to say. It will depend on what seed pops at the moment of the end of that life after those 50 years human time.

The Hungry Ghost Realm

(69:16) Where are these beings? Where is their hungry ghost realm?

Like we asked where is the formless realm? Wherever it is that that being died.

Where is the hungry ghost realm?

Those two texts explain that there is a Preta realm below our earth.

So it's like, wait a minute, if our earth is round, does it mean inside our earth or does it mean underneath our earth? I don't really know.

If our earth… Who studied the 37 pile mandala?

There's the wind disc and then there's the water disc, and then there's the mountain that comes out of it, and then the seven mountains and then the oceans and blah, blah, blah.

Then inside the outer mountain there, these four continents. The four continents are in the directions, and one of the continents is the southern continent, DZAMBU LING. That's our continent. There's a hungry ghost realm underneath that continent.

It's like, well, where's earth? What's earth? This round thing, this marble, blue marble. Where's that? How is that The southern continent? Park it on the shelf for this one, because I can't quite get it straight.

The point is, there is a preta realm somehow related to our world that's under it that we don't see, we can't reach, because it's below. Then there's a hungry ghost realm.

The text says it's some distance from this one, way over there. Then there's a hungry ghost realm that actually is all around us. We just can't see them.

Their existence is at a different frequency and our high ear, nose, tastes, touch frequency doesn't match, so we can't see them. Except sometimes at night. Apparently people get glimpses of the nearby hungry ghosts, probably there are some people who have some kind of awareness of them.

In our western culture, we don't talk about hungry ghosts, we don't have that concept so much. But we do have the idea of ghosts or spirits, and they aren't always benevolent. Sometimes they are. I don't know much about what my culture believes in them. But growing up I wasn't thinking about them being like a mindstream that I maybe knew once upon a time, or who could benefit from some help from me, or maybe I could even somehow make a contact with them so that I could help them get to a better place at the end of their preta realm, or maybe even help them get out sooner. I don't know what. But that's why we're learning about them partly to learn what karmic seeds could land us there so that we could avoid it. And partly to increase our awareness of who is all sentient beings, that we are growing the wish to help stop their suffering.

(73:452) At one point apparently somebody asked Lord Buddha about this going to a higher rebirth or a lower rebirth. He took his finger and did this against his cushion.

You know how you do that to show how much dust is there? He goes like this on the ground of where his cushion is and he holds up his finger. He says, the amount of dust on my finger is the amount of beings that will go to a higher rebirth at the end of this life. All the dust in all of earth is like the number of beings who are going to a lower rebirth.

Animals

(74:58) We still need to talk about animals. The TEN RIM CHENMO and LAM RIM CHENMO say there's a general cause for taking life as an animal. An animal in general, the specific kind of animal would be related to the seeds that fill in the details. A certain seed ripens at the moment of death, and that's headed us towards animal realm. The seeds that follow with it, elephant, gnat, skunk, it could be anything.

The general cause for rebirth his life as an animal is doing any of the 10 non virtues to a lesser extent. Doing any of those non-virtuous accidentally, or carelessly, meaning with unclear intent, or not towards an important object, or not repeatedly would be the seeds of doing them to a lesser degree.

If you recognize those four categories, they're the opposite of what makes karma more powerful.

Making karmas in these not powerful way, negative karmas in a not powerful way, any one of those seeds ripening at the wrong or right moment will make us see ourselves as animal. Meaning the subject side is the state of mind of the animal.

Then there are two specific causes for animal rebirth.

1. Habitually breaking minor rules

One of them, they say, is to consistently and repeatedly break minor rules, like habitually telling white lies, habitually hurting somebody's feelings. Habitually. And again, if we're thinking karmically, it makes sense. Animals operate on instinct, on automatic pilot. They don't have the capacity to stop and think, what's the kindest thing I can do right now? They don't have that capacity. Even the most intelligent of them, they don't have the capacity for it to occur to them that morality is necessary. That's unique to human.

Without that capacity, we don't make moral choices. Animals do kind things. I'm not saying they don't. But they don't do the kindness to be kind. Their instinct makes them do that thing. It's sort of this automatic pilot state of mind.

What will put us into that as our whole being is automatic pilot state of mind, eh gads, a lot of that going on.

2. Doing great many minor wrong deeds

Then the second specific cause for animal realm is doing a great many minor wrong deeds such as disrespecting others. They say any minor wrong deed, repeatedly, repeatedly, repeatedly. Like we have two of them here about that. But then this one says specifically disrespecting others. Again, we can see why animals are consistently disrespected by other animals. Guess what? Their lunch.

To humans, they are lesser beings. So to be aware of ourselves interacting with another from a state of mind of that other is somehow lesser, that's what disrespect means. Can be planting seeds that if it ripens, could ripen us as us being the one who's constantly disrespected.

When we learn about all of these different realms, we can see how similar seeds could ripen as a human. But with these circumstances that could have been a hell realm, a hungry ghost, an animal realm.

But actually they are a human unable to get their needs met. There are such, right? There are humans in the position of just constantly disrespected by others.

There are humans in the position of not actually able to change their behavior.

We can make a case for these different realms are not entirely different realms. They are different human experiences.

It is true that we could have a seed projecting karma be good enough to push us into a human realm. But the circumstances of that seed, like the seeds it's dragging along behind it, are seeds that if they had popped instead of this one, that being would've been animal. Now instead they're a human with all the same circumstances an animal would've had, which is constant disrespect. Always the lower, slave, can't get a high paying job, just used and abused human—but human. With the capacity to change it. If they can ever get feeling safe enough and having enough resources that they're not in survival mode to be able to meet a spiritual path that could help them.

We tend to think, oh, animal realm. They are so in nature, they're probably feeling at one with all life all the time. These teachings say, get real. They are constantly on alert to eat or be eaten. Animals are constantly aware that they must be vigilant like their life is in danger constantly.

If that's not the case and they have the circumstance of being under the care of humans, probably meaning domesticated mostly, they still are under somebody's control. Many of them are in this situation that they are still used and abused or eaten. Even if they have the karmic goodness to be your pet cat, they still are restricted by you, right? You call it, you care of them. And of course they enjoy the pleasures, but they still do not have the freedom, nor do they have the capacity to choose differently.

Animal realm is a lower realm. Even the animal who is the Dalai Lama's dog, the best animal karma you could have, but still dog.

The scriptures say there are 360 million species of animal on our planet.

I asked the omniscient Google, how many species of planet are there. It said this illogical thing. There's 8.7 million species. 7.7 million of them are animals. But only 950,000 of them have been described. Wait a minute, how can you count 8.7 million of things you don't know what they are and call them animals? It's like cross that out. Google doesn't know what it's talking about. But 950,000 described species of animal. That's a lot. Even if it's less than 360 million that scripture says.

Then they say there's 80,000 species alone that live on or in the human body.

I googled that as well. It says that we know of 10,000 different species that live in or on the human body. So it sounds like we have more to learn about.

But I love thinking about that actually. Because karmically, you already are the caretaker of trillions. They say there's more foreign DNA in you than your own cellular DNA, by a lot. We're feeding this whole universe of beings. We're taking care of them, we're providing them with life. It's really a cool idea.

If we, I rejoice and all those beings that I'm the uber existence for. I'm their Buddha.

They probably pray to God, right? The God of the parasite in my intestine, and it's me they're talking about. It sounds silly, but karmically speaking, it gets us a little closer to maybe what we mean by, I want to stand on a billion worlds and save everybody.

The words sound great, but look, you're already the place where trillions of beings live. So take care of them. Feed them good food, not too much, not too little. Give them a chance to rest. You can think about it.

Animals live in two places apparently:

JING-NA NEPA
KATORWA

JING-NA = warm waters

NEPA = in the middle

They live in the middle of warm waters. Doesn't that sound nice? Meaning the vast majority of the animal realm lives in water, in the oceans, the lakes, the streams, the water of our continent.

There are more animals in the ocean than the other place.

You can guess where the other place is.

KATORWA = spread out all over the planet

So the second place animals are the land animals, but that also means the air animals. Because they need to use land as well.

So we've got water based animals and land and air based animals.

Every planet that has life, which isn't all of them, has the same structure as ours in terms of the realms.

They have a hell realm. They have hungry ghost realms. They have animal realms. They have human realms, but they're not necessarily these kind of humans, but they're still human. They have pleasure beings and partial pleasure beings. And they have BARDOers, beings that are in between all of those in the process of moving from one to the next.

(89:35) If the teaching on emptiness is true, which tells us that everything is projections of our minds forced by karmic results, than it is plausible that we could perceive ourselves as one of these beings in the instant of a karmic seed shift. It's possible. Just a shift in projection is all it takes. Shifting projections is all it takes to sustain our life as well. That's what we're experiencing.

How much human Me do we have in our pocket? We don't know.

How much 10 non virtues do we have in our karmic pocket? Can't really know from past lives. We can think, what have I been like in this life? We can look at the circumstances of our outer world, which is a reflection of seeds that we have.

As we experience things, we burn them off. So we've burned off a lot of hell realm, hungry ghost, animal realm seeds by not responding in kind to those circumstances.

And we're planting new seeds constantly.

We now have the tool of purification.

We have the tool of the four steps, how to plant our seeds more strongly, the ones we want.

We have the tool of rejoicing practice to give strength to the good ones that we know we have.

And we have the power of dedicating to lock the good ones in the trajectory of our spiritual path.

So we're gaining all the tools.

We can keep our tools in our toolbox, and not use them, or we can use them.

We can become a good, skillful carpenter and be using our tools constantly.

We're learning how to do so.

Okay. Craving spirits and animals, how to not become one.

[Class Dedication]

Class 4: The Lives of Humans and Pleasure Beings

3 April 2025

Link to Eng Audio: ACI 8 - Class 4

Welcome back. We are ACI, course 8, class 4. Thank you everyone for sending me your homeworks. It's so wonderful to see you getting them done. I'm really rejoicing in that, as will you when it comes to doing your final exam and you have them all done and yay. It is April 3rd, 2025. Let's gather our minds here as we usually do. Please bring your attention to your breath until you hear from me again.

[Class Opening]

Review Class 3

Last class, we used a different text to study about hungry ghosts and animals. That text primarily was the TEN ROM CHENMO, the Great Book on the Steps of the Teaching by someone named Geshe Drolungpa from the 1100s in Tibet.

That book inspired Je Tsongkapa’s Lam Rim Chenmo.

No doubt Geshe Michael was comparing those two texts for this information that we learned about, what are hungry ghosts, what are animals?

We think we know animals. We learned that there was one general and three specific causes for birth, rebirth, birth as a hungry ghost, as a preta being.

That general cause meaning any seed done by the deed that qualifies as a general cause meant doing any of the 10 non virtues with that medium strength. Which remember medium strength was not just out of forgetfulness or carelessness or being on automatic pilot as an ignorant human, and not premeditated, intended, setting out to lie to somebody to get your own benefit doing it, happy you did it, would do it again. Somewhere in between, which is like some situation a mental affliction comes up, we do one of those non-virtuous, thinking it's going to solve the problem, and unfortunately often it seems like it does.

And then we automatically think, oh, okay, that worked. When really, if it was a non virtue, it's going to come back to hurt us and it could not have brought us a positive result, even though it looks like it.

Medium strength, we'd have to think about it pretty carefully to really be able to identify what might be a medium strength non virtue where I would make seeds that if one of those were to be the projecting karma, I'd end up hungry ghost. So that I'd know what to avoid doing.

Or you make yourself avoid any of the 10 non-virtues in any way. But if we could do that, we would just do it.

So anyway, thank goodness for the four powers.

Then the three specific causes for birth of a craving spirit, you recall, is failing to give any one of the three kinds of giving in the circumstance where we could.

Second one is doing anything, or not doing anything with that possessiveness—my stuff is my stuff and I don't want to be separated from it.

Then the third specific reason for Hungry Ghost is jealousy, acting out of our jealousy.

Not just feeling jealousy, thank goodness, right?

But acting from it, are the seeds that make jealousy become a cause of hungry ghost. Karmically that makes sense too. Being unhappy when somebody gets something that they want is going to make the seeds for me not able to get the things I want, in some way.

Your third quiz question was named one general and two specific causes for birth as an animal.

The birth as an animal is caused by any of the 10 non virtues done to that lesser extent on automatic pilot. When you're so dulled out, you're not making conscious choices. Because animals are run by instinct.

When we as a human animal are run by instinct, we're making seeds to see ourselves as a being that can only run on instinct.

Then the specific causes are to break a minor rule of morality regularly.

What's a minor rule of morality? I'm not absolutely sure.

If we use the 10 non virtues again, it would be doing them in little ways. But the important piece here is the regularity of doing some minor wrong, little white lies regularly, that kind of thing. Because of the regularity of it, the automatic pilot of it, is the seeds that would make you a being that can only operate on automatic pilot. Which for an animal the automatic pilot is survival mode, eat or be eaten, and procreate. That's the main focus.

Then the second specific cause is doing a great number of wrong deeds.

It says, specifically, like disrespecting others.

Again, if you think of the karma of animals, everybody considers animals as lower than them. Every human considers an animal as lower than them. When they're lower than us, there's an automatic kind of disrespect. Even the greatest animal lover is still seeing the animal as somehow lesser. That's why we love them. They need us. But that state of mind of them lower makes us lower, makes us one of the lowers. Animal.

So really, in that class about the causes of becoming one of these lower birth beings, as important as the specific information is getting an idea of how the process functions. How our deeds that we see ourselves do now has these multiple layers of components that are included in the seed planted that if that's the seed that ripens us into a next life, it's not, oh human me with those qualities. It's those whole qualities ripening into the Me. This constant disrespect means I see myself as a being constantly disrespected.

That could be a human, who's one of those humans in a situation that's just constantly disrespected. We understand those. But it can go so far as how you see yourself is this whole species of being that's disrespected in that way.

I like that class for that purpose as well, that we get this better understanding, and then we can extrapolate that to the other realms also, because the same process happens.

(17:54) Tonight's class is humans and pleasure beings.

Similar kind of information about the kinds of beings called humans and pleasure beings. In the Abhidharma Kosha, it describes humans and pleasure beings in terms of the geography of our world. With the four continents and the four different kinds of humans on the four continents. Geshe Michael felt it was more important for us to understand the sufferings of humans, and the sufferings of pleasure beings than it was to understand better these four continents and four kinds of human beings.

That's a curiosity about the four continents, et cetera. But in terms of motivating us for our path to our own Buddhahood, a whole lot more motivating to learn about what it is to be human.

We kind of think we know because we've been one for a while, but when we hear what this class has to say, it's like, oh, there are parts I didn't understand. And it's again one of those kind of classes where we might at first go, no, I'm not like that.

Let yourself have that question. Don't doubt the teachings, but investigate. Oh, maybe that is something I didn't realize about what it is to be human.

Unfortunately it's not very positive. It'd be nice, like tomorrow morning, come tomorrow morning's class, we'll hear something special that's positive about what it is to be human. But tonight's class, it's like a kind of suffering that we're not aware that we have that's unique to humans and pleasure beings.

Vocabulary Class 4

DE LAM the path to bliss

1st Panchen Lama Lobsang Chukyi Gyeltsen (1567-1662)

RINCHEN BANGDZU Chest of Jewels

Ngulchu Dharma Bhadra (1772-1851)

DUK NGEL DRUK the 6 kinds of suffering

NGEPA MEPA nothing is fixed

NGOM MI SHEPA no satisfaction

YANG YANG LU NDORWA to shed our body again and again

YANG YANG NYINGTSAM JORWA being reborn again and again

YANG YANG TO-MEN DU GYURWA high to low again and again

DROK MEPA no companion

The Text Sources on Human and Pleasure Beings Realms

(20:56) There are two texts that you're reading will come from. The first one, the name of the text is DE LAM. Some of you may be familiar with that one already.

DE LAM means the path to bliss. It's a Lam Rim taught by my personal hero, the first Panchen Lama Lobsang Chukyi Gyeltsen 1567 to 1662.

He was an extraordinary practitioner. We've heard about him through Geshe Michael's Lam Rim teachings. He's the one who stood out between the two armies and hollered at them until they quit fighting and they all went and had a party.

He wrote, he actually taught a Lam Rim and then it got written down, and it becomes this text called the DE LAM, the path to bliss. Beautiful, beautiful text.

Then someone came along later, a hundred years later and wrote a commentary to it.

That commentary is called RINCHEN BANGDZU. RINCHEN means precious one. BANGDZU is the jewels. Sorry, a chest of precious ones. Here meaning the chest of jewels.

I get in my mind this big wooden rectangular chest and it's got the curved pop, and it comes up with its hinges, and inside are all the gleaming jewels, pearl necklaces, diamonds. I don't know where that image came from, but the one who owns it is going, oh my gold. Like all their wealth in that one big treasure chest. This is RINCHEN BANGDZU.

A commentary on DE LAM telling you, what's inside the DE LAM is like this chest of precious jewels, and it really is. So this commentary is by someone named Ngulchu Dharma Bhadra. His dates are 1772-1851. Again, a Tibetan in the Gelukpa lineage, and someone that if you go on to study the Diamond Way will become familiar with. We will study from many of his texts. Lama Quicksilver, he gets called.

Then, the DE LAM, when it gets to this section about…

Let me go back. LAM is the steps to the path of reaching our total Buddhahood. It actually starts recognizing that something's wrong and we need help. So we go looking for a teacher. Long story there. We find a teacher, we're smart enough to ask them to help, and they go, Get the essence of your life.

Then if we're smart enough to ask, what do you mean by that? Then they point out the rare and precious opportunity that we have as a human being, and then they leave us to think about that for a while.

If we think carefully about it, we'll actually come to our own next conclusion, which is, Gosh, I could lose it at any moment. And that's our impermanence.

Then from impermanence we would recognize or get taught that just because you're a human now does not guarantee that you'll be a human again. They would teach us about these different realms of possibility. In the learning about the different realms, we would learn about the different kinds of sufferings of the different realms. Included in the different kinds of sufferings would be those sufferings that are unique to human, because they've been saying, what's the suffering unique to hell realms. What's the suffering unique to craving spirits? To be consistent, we should recognize the suffering unique to human. Which then helps us deepen our renunciation that got us started, that will help us spur our willingness to change our behavior, which is what our refuge motivates.

Then from there we learn about karmic consequences and purification practice, and then we go on of course to: if it doesn't, we don't figure it out ourselves the Lama will spark it in us to say, Look, if you're suffering like this, any other being that you see has got it the same or worse. What about them?

We move onto the Mahayana.

In DE LAM, Lobsang Chukyi Gyeltsen is pointing out that to understand humans and human worlds, we need to understand what's called the DUK NGEL DRUK. The DUK NGEL DRUK is the six kinds of suffering. He makes the case that although humans are very familiar with being humans, they may or may not actually realize that they have these six kinds of sufferings.

If we don't realize what suffering we have, we can't really be sure what we need to do to make them stop. It's a little like you have to identify the GAKCHA in order to stop making the GAKCHA in order to stop experiencing the GAKCHA. It's the same with the kind of suffering we have.

It seems silly. I know what it is to suffer as a human. Panchen Lama is saying, yeah, you think you do, but there's some more subtle stuff going on that will help you be a better human if you understand these underlying sufferings.

Again, this whole course is a big downer. If you thought you were suffering before, just wait.

The end result is good, I hope.

The 6 Sufferings of Humans and Pleasure Beings

(29:25) There are six sufferings that are unique to humans and pleasure beings. Pleasure beings have these same six. They're just happening at a much more subtle level, much more subtle level. We'll get to pleasure beings and what they are, soon.

Here are the six sufferings of human.

NGEPA MEPA is the first one

NGEPA MEPA nothing is fixed

NGOM MI SHEPA no satisfaction

YANG YANG LU NDORWA to shed our body again and again

YANG YANG NYINGTSAM JORWA being reborn again and again

YANG YANG TO-MEN DU GYURWA high to low again and again

DROK MEPA no companion

1. Nothing is Fixed

MEPA = not, and NGEPA = fixed.

So one of the sufferings of humans that we mostly don't realize we have, is that nothing is fixed. Things shift so unpredictably and that shifting nature of things is a suffering. We really know it. One minute Mary is my best friend.

All of a sudden we're not talking anymore.

It's happened to all of us, hasn't it? Probably as kids or teens, and we just go, yeah, yeah, that's what it is to be human. But it's a suffering. It doesn't have to be like that.

The more subtle level of this is, I like something and I put a lot of effort into getting it, and then I have this ingrained urge to continue to do that, to get that. But then it's like I don't care about it anymore. It shifts the thing, doesn't bring me the pleasure that it used to, or maybe it never did in the first place and I need to find something else that will take its place.

Just shifting, shifting, shifting, never, ever stable.

We meet someone new, we've fall in love, and six months later, urgh. Or 60 years later, they die. Either way. The whole time it's been shifting, shifting, shifting.

The problem with that is that we want things to stay the same. We want something to be solid enough that we can rely on coming back to it.

That every time I go to bed my bed will be comfortable and safe. It's been like that for almost my whole life. So I assume it's going to always be like that. Which means of course I don't need to do anything to ensure that it continues to be like that. Most humans have no understanding that my safe bed tonight will be a ripening of some kind of safety I provided for somebody else in the past.

I admit, I don't think that every time I go to bed, in my safe little bed. But it's not that in it, from it.

So, the very nature of a desirable thing is that it is a projection forced by karma. We know all the words. It's a ripening result of some way in which we have brought something similar to another. That happens moment by moment, by moment by moment. So of course things are shifting, shifting, shifting. Technically they're shifting every 65th of a second.

Fortunately, the shift is so minuscule it still seems the same until enough shifts have happened that it's not the same. And now it's morning and it's time to get out of that comfortable little bed.

What changes, really, when your friend becomes your enemy?

Oh, they met somebody else who influenced them in this ugly way, and then they change their personality, and that's why I don't like them anymore. Really?

What changed? Yeah. Yes, maybe that happened, maybe it didn't.

But either way, it's my experience of that change having happened. If we weren't already knowing the punchline, my mind would still be going, no, no, they changed. It was my karma for them to change. Do you see? I'm still saying wrong thing.

No, my seeds changed me and them, and my experience of them. I don't know what they experience.

When things are wonderful, when things are going great, we are ripening the results of our own past wonderfulness, having been wonderful to others. No wonder that wears out. Because I don't know about you, but I can't be wonderful to everybody all the time, it seems.

So it wears out, so my seeds will see others wear out as well.

As we wear out our wonderfulness without replanting new, we use it up. Then we have rottenness seeds still in there. And when rotten me seeds ripen, rotten other is the experience.

It could be the same face as before. It could be a different face as before. It doesn't make much difference. It's still coming from my rotten seeds.

They say this really wrenching thing, that to perceive ourselves as young is ripening of goodness.

As ignorant humans, we have angers and resentments that things don't go our way, maybe even especially as teens.

That anger, we've learned, a moment of anger at a Bodhisattva can damage our whole store of virtue. But any anger is not only replanting anger, but it is negating some goodness.

If we have anger that's this big and some goodness that's that big, they kind of do this. So if our anger is really big and our goodness is little, our goodness gets squished.

Fortunately, we have lots of goodness and not much anger, so the goodness just goes down like this. Do you get it? But what happens is, anger accumulating through our adult life, is damaging our goodness. The way that it's experienced is aging.

We wouldn't age if in our young years, I mean younger than we are right now, is young. We didn't have so much anger. Blaming others for unpleasant things is what we mean by anger.

Then that anger burns out goodness, and that lessened goodness ripens as: my world's getting worse, it's harder to do everything. I'm looking uglier. My life is coming to an end. That's all a result of burning off the goodness that we started with. Scary thought, right? Because to just hear it doesn't mean we can go, oh, I'm going to turn that off. I'm going to stop doing that. If we could, aging would stop. And it's like, yeah, I don't know a little late for this one, but you can do it yourself before you get here. Before everything's a pain.

There's nothing about the body that's getting older. There's nothing about my outer world that's getting worse. It's goodness having been squelched by anger, and nuts. Because right now, the state of my country, I'm angry about it and it's like, oh no, that's just going to make everything worse.

Why am I talking about that? Because it's part of this “No certainty”. We think we have certainty, because things seem to stay the same. And we know eventually they're going to end. But we really don't live in the knowing that at any minute our seeds could shift. It's like, ACI class? What in the world is that? Why would I be interested in that? Not even, I used to be interested, but now my circumstances are changed and I can't do it anymore. Not even that. Just like, what is that? Who would…? It just like whole shift in perspective. It can happen. It has happened to people.

NGEPA MEPA. A suffering of humanity that we don't really know we have, until it's pointed out. And then it's like, oh yeah, duh

2. No Satisfaction

(41:31) Next one, NGOM MI SHEPA.

I don't know how the words break down. But it means no satisfaction.

You know that song from I think the sixties, I can't get No, everybody sings it, satisfaction. And it's true. That whole song is true. So remember that song. That's this second of the six humans’ sufferings. We see something we like, something we want. We go and we obtain it.

They say it becomes a part of us. Anything that we own. Human is to say, I'm me and I own that. It belongs to me. In Tibetan they say, it becomes a part of you. It's kind of a clue, really, for later.

So we now own the thing, and it's supposed to make us happy. But what actually happens?

Now we have the additional stressor of keeping it, taking care of it, knowing where it is, knowing if it's safe, making sure nobody's going to break it, or hurt it, or deciding who we'll share it with, and who we won't share it with. The list goes on and on. Because it's mine, and it makes me happy. It makes me happy. We cling to it.

Now. Whatever we did to get it, we think is what got it for us. Which means we think doing that same thing will get us either more of it or something similar.

We think that by keeping it close and keeping it protected, we will have it as long as we want it. And as long as we have it, and want it, it will bring me the same happiness that it always had.

When you check your experience with something that fits that criteria, does it perform in the way that you expect?

Some seem to. But in the end we see that, why was I so attached to that thing? Or in my struggle to keep it, I expended so much effort to take care of it and keep it. In the end it just disappointed me. It turned around and did that thing to me. And then we blame it.

Even the car. You wanted that car, and then it starts to break down, and now it's so much effort to keep up. It's like time to ditch this car.

Before it was your pride and joy. We can't get satisfaction.

We think we can. So we keep trying, and we do the wrong things to try to get it. Which is why the thing that we get for that satisfaction can't give the satisfaction. The satisfaction isn't coming from the thing or having the thing, is it?

It's a human suffering to not understand that, as we are expecting things, and relationships, and other people, and jobs, and all of that to give us the satisfaction that we are expecting it to give us. It can't, because that's not where satisfaction comes from.

NGOM MI SHEPA.

Scripture says in fact, at the human and pleasure being level, our pursuit of happiness is in fact the pursuit of more suffering. And that's a suffering.

Geshela points out that it doesn't have to be that way. It is that way, that's what makes a human realm a human realm. But even though we are identifying as humans now, our true nature is not that. Our true nature is not any of those kinds of suffering beings. And so it is not the case that this thing you call you will always be out for contentment that it cannot get.

Once it learns how to help others be content, it can make the seeds for contentment.

Doesn't mean things stop shifting. Geshela points out that Buddhism does not promise that we will be able to endure suffering, although we will. Buddhism promises that we can stop suffering, suffering as a verb and suffering as a noun both.

The better we recognize the suffering that we are experiencing, the better we can figure out how we're creating it and recreating it, the better we can stop recreating it. So stop it for everyone, both sufferings, the verb and the noun.

3. Shedding Our Body Again and Again

(48:38) Third of the six humans sufferings is YANG YANG LU NDORWA.

YANG YANG means again and again. Again, again, again, again.

LU = body, and NDORWA = shedding.

So this means we will shed our body again and again and again.

It takes some explanation. It seems like a weird way of saying we'll die and be reborn. It says, we'll shed this body again and again. It feels like a lizard, but that's not quite right.

It does literally mean that we'll give up this suffering body over and over again.

Not this one. I'm only going to give this one up once, because the next one I get that I'm going to give up, whatever body it is, will be different than this one. But that next one is going to get given up as well. And the next one and the next one. Come on. Really? Is that so bad?

I wouldn't mind giving this body up for a newer model. But it's not so much the fact of the giving our body up again and again and again. It's that our obsession with this thing, our body as so much of our identity, that we are willing to grossly or subtly harm others to take care of this. That the suffering comes when this very thing that we work so hard for finally ditches us.

We're left with this kind of resentment. After all I did for you kind of thing. Not in so many words, but eventually this thing is going to cease, cease to be recognized. But the karmic seeds that I did on behalf of it, they go on with me. The body does not, but the seeds I did to take care of it go on.

That has a sense of betrayal in it on some level.

It's like I fed you so well when I wanted to do nothing but eat potato chips, and then you just get sick and die anyway? What's up with that? That kind of idea.

You're not going to go through that as you're going through the death process. But the quality of mind about, you let me down, or resentment. What am I trying to say? It really is that sense after all I did for you, you do this to me. That feeling is this suffering YANG YANG LU NDORWA.

We will resent that the body's withdrawing from us. They call it shed the body over and over again, the suffering of shedding the body. But do you see the suffering is the fact that I will keep the karma of what I did on behalf of that body and that body's going to let me down. That's the suffering here.

4. Being Reborn Again and Again

(52:50) The next one, YANG YANG NYINGTSAM JORWA.

NYINGTSAM JORWA is the phrase they use that means to be reborn.

The literal words means to go over the threshold, to go over the threshold into the next life. Kind of implies, I'm here. There's a threshold. The threshold is the place where your door closes. There's a little rim there, and the door fits into it. In construction, that's called the threshold. You have to step over it to go from inside to outside. So it sounds like you're here as the one who's just died, and then there's a threshold and you step over it, and now you're in your next life. As if the next life is out there on the other side of the threshold.

Lower school probably says, yes, it is like that or better. It's fine to think of it like that until you're ready to understand it more correctly. Which is that it's not like that.

The threshold is a number of seeds, or a certain quality of the seed that ripens. That fills you in into this whole next life being.

So either way, however you're thinking of crossing over into your next life, it's one unique human suffering that we over and over again cross the threshold into another life. It's just a different way of a different perspective from the YANG YANG LU NDORWA, which is I have to shed this body again and again, is on the other side of that, I am going into another life over and over and over again.

Why would that be a suffering? You'd think it would be a good thing.

The reason it's a suffering is that if we die in the ordinary being's ordinary way, then the life we go into has been built by the ignorance that perpetuates suffering. And so that next life is going to be another life of suffering–either more than what we just left, similar to what we just left, or less than what we just left–but not not suffering.

So it is a suffering, that's true of all beings, but apparently there's something about humans that has some level of awareness of this or can have some level of awareness of this. Maybe that's more accurate to recognize that in fact, taking involuntary rebirth is a suffering and a perpetuation of suffering–the causes for more. Both the verb it is suffering to take on another suffering life, duh. And it's the cause of more suffering because we'll plant seeds in the wrong way to get what we want and avoid what we want no matter what rebirth we take. YANG YANG NYINGTSAM JORWA

Geshela said, the energy that drives our this life drives it into illness, aging and death in some order of illness and aging so that the sufferings, those sufferings are inevitable, because of the way we made the seeds. The same energy, meaning the same process of imprints ripening. That same energy that makes us youthful and beautiful, and capable, and smart is the same energy that makes us slow, stupid, ugly and dead. The same process is happening. And when we misunderstand it, that's suffering and makes the causes for more.

Okay, let's take a break. We'll do the last two,

5. After High Comes Low

(59:30) The next one is YANG YANG TO-MEN DU GYURWA.

TO-MEN means high and low.

TO = high

MEN = low.

So YANG YANG TO-MEN means high, low, high, low, high, low. Things always go from high to low, high to low. Which means things are going great. Oops. Then they build back up again. Oops.

And maybe the cycle is long, and maybe the cycle is short, and maybe they're short cycles within long cycles. But it's a human suffering that highs shift to lows.

They don't actually say it's a human suffering that lows shift to highs. But it is, because then the highs just going to go low again.

But that doesn't mean okay then if I'm at a low, I might as well just stay here and give up, because the highs are just going to break again. So who cares?

That's the wrong conclusion.

Rather this recognition that it's human, a human expectation that we're going to do something to make things go right. And once they're going right, we expect them to stay that way. Then when they don't stay that way, we're like, what's wrong with this picture? They did that to me. And if they didn't do that to me, I would still be at that high. And down we go. Then somehow or other, our seeds continuing to shift and things get better. But then the same pattern develops, and we drop again.

When we understand that life's that way, there's not going to be as much suffering when things go from good to bad. And when we're in the bad, there would be more hope. Ah, it's going to get better.

All of it. However, still colored by misunderstanding where it all comes from, that even if we can have this good attitude about it, we still aren't stopping the process.

So again, the goodness of being human, misunderstanding where it actually came from in the first place means that we're using it up as we are human, and we're doing things to try to gather and keep the pleasantness that come to humans, and hold onto them all in the wrong ways. So that we can't keep them, because they were made with seeds of misunderstanding. So they will wear out. YANG YANG TO-MEN DU GYURWA.

There's always the change. DU GYURWA means change from high to low.

What's making that happen? It's that constant change as of projections changing.

The “he did that to me” was projections happening. What they did, and the why they did it, isn't really the suffering. The suffering is the belief that they did it to me versus my seeds made them do that to me. When we understand my ripening results of past deeds made them do that unpleasant thing to me, it is still unpleasant. But we don't have the blaming them factor in the unpleasantness. That alone makes us replant the ignorance that perpetuates the habit of blaming other for our pleasantness or unpleasantness. That blame is mistaken, so it's perpetuating the mistaken factor in every seed planted. The mistaken factor in every seed planted is what perpetuates the wrong belief, that I get my pleasure from that and displeasure from the this.

Thus, perpetuating the displeasure. Even the pleasurable thing actually brings displeasure, either in the moment, or once it wears out, or once we can't get it again.

From high or low, including the high being born to the low of dying.

That process is going on from the moment of conception. We're using up the seeds for that whole lifetime. Well then how can it possibly last a hundred years?

For some people it's like, yeah, exactly, right? And for others it only lasts three months.

How can that be right?

How can it not be?

YANG YANG TO-MEN DU GYURWA.

6. No Companion

(66:50) The sixth one, DROK MEPA

DROK = companion.

There's the MEPA word again, it means none.

So DROK MEPA = no companion. There's no companion.

This again, has many levels.

On a very beginning level, we would see that for many of us, it's very uncomfortable to find ourselves in a situation of being totally alone. For me, the scariest thing would be to be all by myself in a country where I don't speak the language, and I had no ability to communicate, everything's new. I have no idea where to go or how to get anywhere.

To me, that's like I could be surrounded by a million people, and I would feel lost and alone. It's scary.

Then it's like, oh, well, that's never going to happen, because I wouldn't choose to put myself in that situation. Rather than, I'll always make sure that I'm in a place where I can communicate, or I have somebody with me who can. As if I have some kind of control over my life. But it appears that I do, because I've managed to stay out of that situation all by myself.

But my reason for talking about it is that most of us, even if we say, oh, I'm an introvert, I love being by myself. If we really stop and think, it's like, yeah, but I'm not really all by myself. I know that if I had a need, I have a neighbor I could call. I have a grocery store I can go to. All of those at a distance relationships, I still rely upon. I'm not really all alone all by myself.

To think that we are is unpleasant, and actually downright scary.

DROK MEPA has this connotation that in the end, we will be all by ourself going through that process of dying. Your family can be gathered around your bedside. But you'll reach a point where your sensory input has failed. Even when they're holding your hand, you won't know that they're there. The last thing that goes is hearing. So they'll be whispering, I love you, I love you, everything's going to be alright. But you'll be at a point where you won't really know, oh, that's my daughter whispering to me. You'll hear, but the identity, me, my daughter–I don't have a daughter, but I'm using that as an example–is already gone. You're going through that dissolution process all by yourself.

It's scary. Because we really haven't ever realized that in fact we are actually all by ourself.

But that doesn't mean to say, when we think everything is my projection, that me is the only really existing thing, and everything that's coming out from me, it's all like a movie. It kind of sounds like this DROK MEPA is confirming that. You're the only thing that exists and everything else is like a dream. That's not what this means here. So be careful to get that right in your mind so that when you share it with somebody, you don't leave the wrong understanding.

This DROK MEPA mainly is talking about this fact that when we are making this transition called dying, we are all alone, actually for the first time. Because all the rest of the time in our human life, we have some kind of relationship to reach out to.

We don't recognize that in fact, each of our worlds is unique to us.

That understanding, you don't share with a beginner on their path.

If I had heard somebody say that to me, when I remember first really cooking this stuff deeply in the late 1900s, early 2000s, they would've just like, oh, I don't understand what that means. Now it's like, oh man, that's such a window into possibility, that I love to hear myself say it. I do it all the time. Unique to this one. I don't even call it me anymore. Because me gives the wrong impression. But unique to this one.

And so sharing it, adding it. Because theirs is unique to them. At the moment, I had friends over this morning. At the moment, there were three or four different realities mixing, sharing with each other.

So this DROK MEPA does mean each of us and our experiences are unique to us. In that way, we are alone. No one can experience the same. We can't have the same experiences. I mean, if I had absolutely identical twin sister, and we lived together our whole lives, we would still hear a certain piece of music, and experience it differently. Wouldn’t we?

We can't experience somebody else's experience. In that way, we are alone with our karma.

That's only a suffering when we misunderstand it.

When we understand that process, that's what frees us from suffering altogether.

When we understand that this is unique to me, unique to you, and so we can all contribute to each other. That's not coming across quite right. It's not a suffering, it's a joy. Then our natural interaction with others is, here. Here's me for you. All of this is me for you. The opposite of DROK MEPA.

We go through life depending upon our companions for our comfort, our security, our happiness. And we go through our life blaming those others when they don't give us comfort, companionship, pleasure. We're using our others in the wrong way and thus perpetuating our suffering. Humans have the unique situation of being able to become aware of this mistake, aware that we're relating to others with these underlying mistaken issues involved.

Other beings are too busy surviving. Or with the pleasure being, they have so much pleasure that it's not going to occur to them to wonder where it comes from.

Who says, oh, why did I win the lottery? Right? It's just, yay, thank you very much.

We don't wonder where pleasure things come from. But we wonder where unpleasant things come from.

So humans have just the right amount of pleasure and displeasure, and the ability to ripen lives that are not in survival mode so that we can turn our minds to asking those questions.

Not all humans, it's not a given. So if we are a human with that kind of leisure and fortune, we've got this amazing opportunity. And it's changing, changing, changing. It will go from high to low, and we will give up our body again and again. But take the karma with us that we made on its behalf, et cetera.

Pleasure Beings

(77:25) All Geshe Michael said about pleasure beings was that they have these same six sufferings, but on a more subtle level until the last 24 to 48 hours of their existence as a pleasure being.

Keep in mind that there are beings of the form realm, are also called pleasure beings, HLA or Deva. We already talked about them and their kind of suffering. Which isn't a suffering until the last short period of time, and then they drop.

In the desire realm, pleasure beings, it's a similar scenario.

The desire realm pleasure beings is that realm where form has reached its highest manifestation.

So the physical world in the desire realm, pleasure being realm, is extraordinarily beautiful, extraordinarily pleasurable. Everything about it is beautiful and pleasurable. The beings there, they're just enjoying, enjoying, enjoying. They are enjoying the karmic seeds of goodness, of having avoided harming anyone in gross and subtle ways by way of many, many, many seed planting moments in deep meditation in which they're not harming anyone.

A meditation deeply withdrawn, deeply pleasurable, but not using that platform to turn the mind to seeing emptiness directly. Same kind of story can land us in a form realm as will land us in a formless realm. And what's the difference? I don't know. I'm going to guess. It has to do with the level of withdrawal of the sensory input in the level of the meditation that we get to.

Desire realm pleasure beings are pleasured out in a realm that has exquisite beautiful form.

They live a long, long time, enjoying themselves there. And then as their seeds, they're using up their seeds of goodness. Not just the one that pushed them there, but all the rest of the pleasure making seeds they're using, using, using, using. Eventually they use them up. So you could see how it could take a long, long human time to use up all their good seeds from all their lifetimes before. And then, when they're running out, in this last period of time, human 24 to 48 hours, they get ugly. They start to stink. Any other being that was around them distances themselves. They find themselves all alone and giving up their body, and resentful that it's doing it, going through that process alone from high to low, and ending up being pushed into a new birth. Which is going to be a lesser birth. And they say probably a really, really lesser birth, because they've used up all their goodness.

So about all you've got left is angry violence seeds. So probably you go from pleasure being to hell realm being. But you could debate that. Still it's going to be more suffering than what you love.

So even pleasure beings of the desire realm are still in a samsara, which means they still have pervasive suffering. Then they have outright suffering and the suffering of change in those last few hours of that existence. They have these six. They just aren't aware of them until the end.

We had spoken a little bit before about that category of being called the Demi gods. Which in this pleasure being realm, there are these two factions apparently. This is one of those teachings I have on the shelf, because it doesn't quite make sense to me that you can live in a realm where form has reached its highest evolution, so beautiful, be a being whose pleasure, pleasure and more pleasure. And then see this group of neighbors who's looking at you, and who's jealous of what you are and what you have. And that because of their jealousy, yeah, they're going to be a little ugly to you. They are still a pleasure being in every other way that jealous gods are also in a world of highest form exquisite pleasure, except for this one piece. They see the pleasure beings and feel some jealousy.

They say, the scripture says, and because of that, the two fight. And it's like, how can fighting be in the pleasure realm? I haven't figured that one out yet, except that there must be something really pleasurable about fighting and oh my gosh, look at our human realm.

People go to fights for entertainment. It's like our competitive sports are in a way fighting with the other team. I mean football, fighting over that round thing to get it over there. It's like, wait a minute, there's a wrong view going on in our human realm that we all take as right view. Maybe there's something in there about how it could be that as desire realm beings, it's pleasurable to fight. But what seeds are you making as you fight thinking it's pleasurable? Oh.

So it does seem to me like you're making suffering seeds while you are in the pleasure realm, if you're amongst this group that are fighting. Because you are interacting with others. Whereas apparently when you're a pleasure being that it's just your pleasure being, somehow you're not interacting with other. Again, I can't quite grasp that. But it's like two really wealthy beings, and they go out to dinner. Maybe it would be like, I'll buy my own dinner. You buy your own dinner. Because you both have enough resources, so you just take care of your own. As opposed to, Let me buy your dinner. I mean, how many of not wealthy people go and find a wealthy person to go take out to lunch?

We don't. We take somebody less fortunate out to lunch.

Nobody takes the wealthy people out to lunch. They should take us, right?

But it's like, oh wait, wrong view there, Sarahni.

So something like that in the pleasure realm. The important piece is, we don't aspire to be pleasure realm beings, because yeah, it's pleasurable for a really, really long time. But then it wears out and then we've used up a whole lot of goodness that we could use in a different way, maybe. So we don't aspire.

My guess is that there are spiritual traditions who believe that what the equivalent of what we are saying is a pleasure realm would be what they're aspiring to. Like calling it heaven. No need to fight with them about that. But recognize, it's like I hope they're thinking correctly about the heaven they're aspiring to, or right in the end they'll lose it. I don't know. That maybe is not such a bad thing.

Pleasure beings. Still suffering beings, both the pleasure beings of the desire realm and the pleasure beings of the form realm. Suffering in different ways, because form realm is more subtle. Desire realm beings are suffering in more subtle ways than humans, but in grosser ways than form realm pleasure being. Got that in your head? Okay.

(88:44) Alright, that's class 6. We're done early. Hooray. Yeah. So let's do our dedication and then if you have questions about anything, I'm happy to stay. If you feel like I just want to cook this material without getting distracted, that's okay too. We can say goodbye early and I'll keep the minutes for the future.

[Class Dedication]

Class 5: Beings in the Intermediate State (the Bardo)

6 April 2025

Link to Eng Audio: ACI 8 - Class 5

Link to SPA Audio: ACI 8 - Class 5 - SPA

Vocabulary Class 5

BARDO “pardough” being in between

BARSI Lifetime in between

BARDOWA the Being that is experiencing the life in between

DRISA”dtreesa” Smell eater

DZUKYE born complete

RIKPA using logic/clear thinking

LUNG using scriptural authority

DRU GYUN the stream/continuum of a piece of grain

CHELE JUNGWA cut off the continuum

SIPA DUN TENPAY DO the teachings on the 7 kinds of beings

MA-RUNG DATSEN DEN a menstruating woman

PAMA CHAK SHING TREPA parents have desire and make sexual contact

DRISA NYEWAR NEPA a smell eater is nearby

BARDO DAWA Nirvana (gone beyond the Bardo state)

HLAYCHEN the eye of a god

TRULKU the emanation of an enlightened being

Welcome back. We are ACI course 8, class 5, April 6th, 2025. Let's gather our minds here as we usually do. Please bring your attention to your breath until you hear from me again.

Review Class 4

(7:50) Last class we learned about those six sufferings of humans and worldly gods. Sufferings that are unique to those two kinds of beings.

There's no certainty, and lots of different levels of meaning of that. Friends become enemies, enemies become friends. Pleasure turns to pain. But mostly we don't know when any of that change is going to happen. The no certainty isn't so much the fact of all that change. It's like we don't know when it's coming.
We can't get no satisfaction, that struggle to get what we want and to avoid what we don't want. That just leaves us discontent anyway.
We shed our bodies over and over and it is like, well, every being does that. The suffering here is the fact that the karma that we make on behalf of this body goes with us. The body doesn't. And as humans, we somehow have this greater awareness of the absurdity of that situation. We take care of this thing, take care of this thing, take care of this thing. Doing all kinds of unkind things to do so. And then the body ditches us, and we get to keep the karma. It is a suffering for humans. Any being's going to have the same situation, but something special about that for humans and worldly gods.
Then the opposite. We take birth over and over again. Like every being takes birth over and over again. But this ability, I guess, to be aware that the very nature of birth is illness, aging, death, and then we do it again. It’s the “And then we're going to do it all over again” part of this birth over and over. We somehow know that and it's a unique suffering that it happens. It seems like an extra unique suffering that we can't make it stop just by hearing about it. Oh, that's stupid. I'll quit doing it. I wish it were so easy.
After high comes low. Same as uncertainty, same as we can't get no satisfaction, but specifically we struggle. We get the improvement. We think that what we do to get the improvement is what's making the improvement. And so we expect it's going to last. And then guess what? I'm doing the same thing. How come I'm getting a different result?
Then lastly, no companion. There's no companion. In the end, we lose everything and everybody. But deeper than that is, we are the sole experiencer of our karmic consequences. We are the sole planter of the seeds that bring about those karmic consequences. Nobody can take our karma for us. Nobody can give us their good karma. It is no one but us, can change us, can change this suffering. And in that way, we alone are the one responsible, that kind of no companion.

So humans and worldly gods similar, worldly gods just on a much more subtle level as we learned.

Bardo Beings

(13:35) Tonight's class is about the type of being called bardo being. Bardo being like the B and the P sound in English are very separate, but like in French, you can hardly tell them apart. It's more like the French B, or P, can't really say it well, Pardowa

Pardo, for this class. We are back studying from the commentary to the Abhidharma Kosha, the commentary called the String of Jewels. If I have that right. By the first Panchen Lama, what's his name? I had to look, Gyalwa Gendun Drup.

Here's the word bardo. But here's what it sounds like to me when Geshe Michael says it Pardo. The BARDO is the in-between. Sometimes it's called BARSI, which would mean the life in between. So the BAR means in between, and the BARDO means being in between.

What the bardo being is in between is the death of their last life, the end of their last life, and the beginning of their next one. It's like, well, if they're dead but not yet reborn, what the heck are they?

Where are they? Who are they talking about somebody else. But then, it's going to be me someday. In between this one and the next one, what happens?

So the BARSI refers to this lifetime in between. When I say lifetime, it's not going to be like we think of a human lifetime, but it is a whole experience of entering into it, staying in it for a while and then passing out of it.

It is called a lifetime as a bardo being. So the being themself is called BARDOWA. We have, it's not the place, but the experience happening is the bardo. The BARSI is the one who's there doing it. Well, the lifetime in which it's happening, excuse me. The BARDOWA is the being that's experiencing it. Got it?

They have a nickname. The nickname is DRISA. DRISA. It's spelled D-R-I-S-A. But the D is one of those Tibetan letters that you can't quite tell the difference between a D and a T. When you hear Geshela say, it sounds like DTREESA, but if you listen carefully, you can hear the D in there too.

Then the I is like a long E. So for my own pronunciation, I make it up according to English phonetics: DTREESA. It means smell eater. Apparently what the sustenance of a bardo being is fragrances, odors. They don't need to eat solid food, they just need to smell something and it sustains them. I don't really know anything more than that. But anyway, DRISA, sometimes they're called.

Geshela shares with us that there are many teachings on the bardo. Gelugpas claim that they are mostly corrupted in some way, meaning misunderstood and probably mistranslated.

So our tradition says, don't bother with those instructions on the bardo from other teachings. Which is kind of like breaking a vow, to be honest with you. They do seem to work, particularly they're talking about the, there's a text called the Bardo Thodol, which is the Liberation on Hearing. It's become fairly popular or common anyway in the west. They use it to read as prayers for the dying or recently deceased as an instruction manual for what that mind can follow, to help them find a good rebirth.

Our tradition says those teachings are corrupted. That's the word he uses, meaning they've been misunderstood or rewritten, or something added to them, so no longer authentic. We are counseled not to use them. But that said, people use them and they get the signs that the one they're praying for got the message. So just put that on one shelf for later.

(20:53) The Abhidharma Kosha and this commentary that we're studying from is information collected from the Buddha sutras, and is said to be authentic and unchanged. We can rely on what's written in those two texts. But they are not practice texts. They are not texts for how to use it for somebody who's passing away. They are texts for understanding what the heck this process called the bardo is.

Geshela reiterates that our job is to learn the teachings in an authentic way so that we can use them appropriately, and then and when we are going to pass them on, we want to pass them on authentically as well. If you have experience in whatever it is you are teaching authentically, you are very welcome to share: This is my experience, this is what I've used. This is the apparent result that I got from what I used. But we always add: But the scripture says this. Separate your own personal experience from the scriptural tools that we've been given so that the lineage can pass on purely.

There are more teachings and practices about the bardo that come to us in the Diamond Way coursework that are authentic and are useful and helpful. They're not so much about helping a dying person get through the bardo. It's how you utilize your own bardo. That will come to us when we get there.

How our bardo was born

(23:20) They are born DZUKYE, miraculously. Meaning complete, born complete. Once you are born into your bardo being, you are full on. It's not that you're a bardo baby with bardo mom and dad, just you're there. In a sense, becoming a BARDOWA means you have taken a rebirth of sorts. But not through a mother, not through another being. They actually don't call it a rebirth. And we'll see why shortly.

But you, what else can you call it? When you've died from this life and now you have this next set of experiences, you have been reborn in a sense. What happens is that we take a series of very brief rebirth moving us through this stage called the bardo that culminates in taking the rebirth, that the projecting karma at the end of the previous lifetime is pushing us towards. That projecting karma pops and with it a whole string of others. I think of it as trailing behind it, but that's not really accurate. That are the power that's propelling us towards the whole next life, that those seeds are going to delineate us being.

It takes change for that to happen. Change, change, change, change, change until the new change is, let me say solidified, although that's not quite right, into the whole next life. That process somehow happens within certain periods of time. I'm getting ahead of myself. We'll talk about that process of moving through the bardo later in this class.

Logic Proofs of Bardo Beings

(26:26) I'm supposed to first tell you about how Master Vasubandhu approaches giving us tools that we can use to prove to ourselves that there are such things as bardo beings.

If we prove to ourselves that there are such things, we would have to admit that we're proving to ourselves that we could experience that ourselves.

He uses two different methods, the usual two: RIKPA and LUNG.

RIKPA = using logic, clear thinking to come to a conclusion

LUNG = using scriptural authority to prove our case

Really, we're trying to prove our case to ourselves more than anybody else, so that we can better influence our own behavior choices. Because of our understanding of what happens at the end of this life, this life in which we have understood that, oh my gosh, my behavior choices create my future.

We don't have any guarantee that we will remember that, know that in our next life, unless we keep our Bodhisattva vows really well, especially those black and white deeds that increase the likelihood of a seed popping that will push us into a human life surrounded by the dharma, so we can learn it as four year olds instead of waiting until you're 35 or however old you are.

The logic, he gives two reasonings. Geshela didn't share it like a logic syllogism. He gave these two statements.

DRU GYUN the stream/continuum of a piece of grain

CHELE JUNGWA cut off the continuum

1. The Continuum of a Grain

DRU GYUN means the stream or the continuum of a grain, of a piece of grain.

So one reasoning for there needing to be a being in between, in the in-between, between the death of this life and thus birth of the next life, is that in the same way that a piece of grain must happen in a continuum to become the plant that produces another grain. In that same way the being, the mind of a being, is like the piece of grain that has to go through a continuum of change, change, change in order to become the result, if you will. A kernel of corn has to get moisturized, and swell, and sprout the first little sprout. That sprout has to grow into a seedling, and that seedling has to grow into the stalk, and the stalk has to grow into the whatever that gets pollinated to become the corn. That's all happening in a continuum, is it not?

So the kernel of corn becoming the mature corn plant that can produce more corn happens in a continuum. The analogy is: And so does our mind. You can't just go from kernel of corn to ear of corn. You can't just go from dead me to reborn me without something happening in between. Got it?

DRU GYUN it's called.

2. To Cut Off The Continuum

The second RIKPA explanation is CHELE JUNGWA.

CHELE = to cut off

CHELE JUNGWA = to cut off the continuum

This one is sort of a negative argument., because it says that you can't just cut the continuum. The continuum can't be cut in the sense that if your last life ended in Tucson, and your projecting karma is projecting you to be born as a street dog in New York City, it takes a continuum for that mind to get to New York City.

It's like, wait a minute. So there's a New York City with a mom dog waiting there for somebody's mind to get there. It's like we learn, come on. It doesn't happen like that. And yet, well first of all, recall the school we're studying from. For that school, yes, it does happen like that. There is a New York City with dogs, not pregnant yet, that are going to get pregnant, and my mind can be in one of those.

It's not that somebody else is stuffing you into the little dog body. Your own mind is going to stuff you.

But if your mind dies in Tucson, New York is a long way away. You have to get there. Your mind has to get there. It feels a little absurd. How come it takes time to get there?

But if you think about it, it's like it does take a certain number of 65 per instant shifts, shifts, shifts to even shift Tucson, which is gone by the time I'm dead–for me, Tucson's gone–to shift, shift, shift, shift, shift into dog mom in New York City. In that period of time, it's not that I'm just sitting there waiting for it to happen. The mind is shifting, shifting. It's in this continuum that can't just shut off here and start up over there. There has to be a continuum. And that thing called the continuum, whatever experience is going on, that's what we mean by the bardo. It's not a place. It's kind of a state of mind, but more it's a state of being that's the transition between one manifestation and another manifestation.

These two arguments:

The grain has to go through its stages to become the new thing and
The mind doesn't get caught off here and start up over there without having a continuum to get there.

It's like, oh, is that a proof?

Geshela concedes that probably it's not a proof that you could give to somebody who's not interested, and that they would hear it and go, oh yeah, you're right. But once you have had a direct experience of a bardo being, your own or someone else's, and then you allow anybody to try to prove that there's no such thing, they won't be able to prove to you that your direct experience was incorrect.

Sometimes these reasonings, they're more accurate once they are true. Like, that's illogical. But then you use them sort of in reverse to see if you can disprove your personal experience. If you can’t, then that personal experience was a valid but incorrect experience. Then it's like, well you say direct experience is direct, yeah, but it has to be direct accurate, correct, valid, all these qualifications.

Anyway, two of many logics that there are such things as BARDOWAS.

(37:48) In the reading you'll see someone must say to Master Vasubandhu…

Wait, let me give you a totally analogous example to show that it's not necessary for there to be this continuum of mind to get from one place to the other.

They're trying to disprove that continuum argument as proof for BARDOWA. They say, look, an image in a mirror can continue to be in the mirror–whether the object that's reflecting in the mirror is close up, or far away, right? This is saying, it's not necessary to have this continuum to go from Tucson to New York City. Because whether you're in Tucson or New York City, you still have the image in the mirror. They say that's totally analogous to this Bardo being needing a continuum. It doesn't matter how far or close.

Master Vasubandhu’s answer is, actually, that's not a completely analogous argument.

Which if it were, it could disprove something.

But he says, it's not. Because we're not talking about the image in the mirror being continuous. We're talking about the one who's doing in front of the mirror, and that one is continuous. That one is still there, whether it's here, or over here. It's the thing that's reflecting in the mirror. So even though you could say it doesn't need a continuum, because you could go, ah, now there's a closeup image in the mirror. Now there's no image in the mirror. Now there's a far away image in the mirror. You don't need the continuum. It's just there, and then not there, and then there again

Master Vasubandhu says, yeah, but the thing in the mirror is not the thing.

So the BARDOWA, the mind that is the BARDOWA, that the arguer was saying, see, it could be here, blink out and show up here. In the same way an image and a mirror can blink out and show up differently.

He goes, that's not analogous at all. Because you're talking about the image in the mirror, and I'm talking about the thing that is being imaged. Completely different. And that thing, when it goes out of the mirror, is still going along until it gets over here and then shows up in the mirror again. There is two a continuum. Tada.

Believe in Bardos now? Me neither. Put it on the shelf.

Highest school of course says, ultimately everything is projection. Shifting, shifting, shifting. Even the learning about what happens during the shifting called dying, dead, pause, reborn. All of that is shifting, shifting, shifting projections–and so something is happening.

When we say, oh, it's just projections. It does not make it not real. It in fact makes it real, makes it happen.

It's karmic seeds ripening that force us to see ourselves taking a bardo body, usually multiple times that will then force us to experience our bardo body taking a rebirth. It's all suffering. It comes from causes that have within them the ignorance of what makes it happen in the first place.

So it doesn't have to be, does it?

Nice.

Scriptural Proofs of Bardo Beings

Then Master Vasubandhu gives us scriptural proof, a couple of them. Scriptural proof, meaning quoting from a Buddha Sutra.

SIPA DUN TENPAY DO the teachings on the 7 kinds of beings

MA-RUNG DATSEN DEN a menstruating woman

PAMA CHAK SHING TREPA parents have desire and make sexual contact

1. The Teachings of the 7 Kinds of Beings

The first one he speaks to is that SIPA DUN TENPAY DO.

SIPA DUN TENPAY DO = that The Teachings on the Seven Kinds of Beings

SIPA = kinds of beings

DUN = the number seven

TENPAY = teachings and

DO = is teachings of the Buddha book, short book, a short teaching by the Buddha

In that sutras, says Master Vasubandhu, Buddha taught there are seven kinds of beings, and one of them is BARDOWAs.

Do you remember back in course 4, I think it was. When we went through the reasoning of Buddha being one who has turned correct. We were supposed to be using that to show ourselves that what it is to be Buddha is to be a being who cannot hear oneself, be aware of oneself, think, say, or do anything that's incorrect, anything false.

So that means an omniscient being can't hear themselves say something that's wrong, or mistaken, or left out. They are having direct experience, and it has to be both valid and correct.

Then, as we study the teachings, it's like, well, there sure seems to be contradictions in here. And we will end up studying about, what do we do with that? When we're studying from a being that we've showed ourselves cannot say anything in error. And then they say two different things at two different times that contradict each other. Eik.

(46:49) If we've shown to ourselves beyond a shadow of a doubt that everything Buddha teaches is accurate, then when Buddha says, there are seven kinds of beings and one of them is a BARDOWA. That right there is proof to the one who's established Buddha as omniscient. It's proof for that being, not for anybody else.

Really only we can ourselves can use scriptural authority as proof. Unless you know the person you're trying to use it for has also come to the conclusion that anything Buddha taught is correct. It's slippery.

We want these arguments to be cut and dried, black and white, and doggone it. They never are. Where's that coming from? Oh man.

Buddha said so, so they must be. Not allowed to just say that without having proof to ourselves that it's valid and correct to say “because Buddha said so”. Got it?

2. Buddha taught the 3 Conditions Necessary to Enter a Womb

There's another teaching Buddha gave, I don't have the name. But I have these three factors.

In that teaching Buddha was talking about the three conditions that are necessary for a being to enter a womb for a womb birth.

Remember, we learned that four kinds of births, and one of them is birthed from a womb. Then it's like, oh, that's humans, some reptiles, some fish. Don't know about other realms, but you're not born from a womb as a hell being. And I don't think you're born from a womb as a hungry ghost. And it does not appear to be that you're born from a womb into that desire realm form being, nor the formless realm. So it seems like it's animals and humans that have the opportunity for womb birth, and that's who he's talking about.

So these three conditions that are necessary:

MA-RUNG DATSEN DEN a menstruating woman
PAMA CHAK SHING TREPA parents have desire and make sexual contact
DRISA NYEWAR NEPA a smell eater is nearby

1. A menstruating woman

The first one is MA-RUNG DATSEN DEN.

DATSEN DEN = possesses the sign of the month, a being who possesses the sign of the month. It's the way that they mean a menstruating woman.

MA-RUNG DATSEN DEN = there has to be present, existing, a woman who's still menstruating

First condition for birth from a womb. Makes sense.

2. Parents make sexual contact

Second condition for birth from a womb is PAMA CHAK SHING TREPA.

PAMA = the parents, Pa and Ma, parents

SHING = and

CHAK and TREPA

CHAK = desire

TREPA = make contact

So their second condition is that the man and the woman, the male and the female, have desire and make contact, meaning have sexual contact, have union. That has to happen.

3. A smell eater is nearby

Third one, DRISA NYEWAR NEPA

NEPA = to be in the immediate vicinity

DRISA = that nickname for a bardo being, meaning a odor eater, a smell eater

Lord Buddha has said in his explanation of three conditions necessary for a being to take birth from a womb is that there must be

a menstruating female.
There must be men, women, have desire and make sexual contact, and
there must be one of these bardo beings nearby

So even if we didn't learn anything more about what does he mean by all that, the fact that Buddha gave this explanation and said there has to be a BARDOWA nearby in order for a being to take birth in a womb, says see, another place? Buddha, the omniscient Buddha who can't say anything wrong, has told us that there is such a thing as BARDOWAs who then take birth into wombs.

Do we know beings that take birth from a womb? Yes.

Well, this is how it happened. This is where it came from.

Geshela went on to explain what's happening in this situation.

The Bardo being is on this trajectory to their next life driven by the projecting karma and all its attendance. That being's experience is that they see somewhere nearby something occurring that looks fun and attractive. Who knows what it is. It's not the same as what the PA, MA are seeing. But the DRISA is attracted to what's going on there, and their perception is that they can join.

They see a baseball game going on. Oh, can I come play?

Or they see a picnic. Can I come?

They get attracted, attracted, attracted. And as their karmic seeds are shifting, shifting, shifting, suddenly it shifts into being in this confined dark place. What it is is that they are now, they're karmic seeds have shifted and they are now in the womb. I don't know whether they realize they're in a womb yet. But their karmic seeds shift, shift shift until they are ripening this being in a womb and they're trapped there, until they're pushed out of it.

So the MA and PA, they're having their own experience consistent with everybody's seeds ripening in their own way. So again, this is used partly to describe what's happening at womb birth, and partly to describe the fact that Buddha demonstrates that there are such things as Bardo beings by way of this explanation for womb birth.

3. Buddha taught about getting to Nirvana from Bardo

(55:58) The next example that he gives from scripture is a teaching that Buddha gave called BARDO DAWA. It's not the name of the sutra, but it's a topic that Buddha spoke about.

Bardo = the bardo state, like being in the bardo state

Not like Kansas, but that state of mind.

DAWA = another word for “gone beyond”. So it's another word for Nirvana, Dawa.

Buddha gave a teaching at one point that said, of the five states from which you can enter Nirvana, Bardo is one of them. Interesting.

Again, another example of Buddha stating the existence of the bardo. Not saying, you know what? The bardo exists. He's talking about reaching nirvana, and he says, one of the places you can get to Nirvana from is your bardo: end of this life, before rebirth. Ah, son of a gun detour to Nirvana.

Wish it was that easy.

Gesehela said very quickly, don't misunderstand and think that you can wait until you're dead to reach your nirvana. That's a big gamble. Unless you have so many seeds for Nirvana that one of them has to be the one that pops. Otherwise, don't risk it. Reach your nirvana while you're still living.

Then Master Vasubandhu, someone must say, well, but wait a minute. We've learned that with the five immediate misdeeds, you immediately go to the worst hell realm.

So how can you say that there's always the Bardo? If with one of those misdeeds it seems like it is saying the instant you're dead in the lifetime in which you did one of those, boom. The next instant you're in that awful hell realm.

It sounds like it's saying there's no lifetime between the one in which you did the deed, and the hell realm that's coming next. And that is true. There's no additional rebirth with the seeds of the misdeed hanging out, waiting to ripen. But it's not true that you don't take the bardo time to get there. Because it still takes this shifting, shifting, shifting set of seeds to go from dead to hell.

Now how long does it take? Probably not long.

But there is still a BARDOWA existence in between. It's that there's nothing that can divert you. There's nothing that can happen that will change your direction, and where you're headed, because of the power of the misdeed is that worst hell.

They say there really isn't anything that can change your direction to any next life from the bardo.

Although then they say, well, but if a strong practitioner does prayers for the recently deceased, those prayers can impact the mind and that impact can help them in this direction that they're going for their next lifetime. And you can have an impact on them. My own personal experience is that you can't have an impact.

But the tradition is, you can't.

I can see why it would be presented that way. Partly because our human tendency would be, oh, then I'll just rely on my bardo and my friends saying the prayers for me, and then I don't have to work so hard in this life. I just set it up that my friends will read for me my directions, and then that I'll reach the clear light then.

That's only going to work if we've got these extraordinary good seeds from having lived an extraordinary, kind, helpful wise life. That would mean that we wouldn't be a lazy practitioner that's relying on our friends saying prayers for us. We would be setting up the likelihood of those prayers working. Do you see?

We would misunderstand what it is to change direction in the bardo. So they say, don't count on it, because it is rare for it to happen.

(62:58) Geshela asked, why doesn't Master Vasubandhu just say, I've seen the bardo?

He is an Arya. When you come out of your Arya making experience, it's one of the things that you now know is true. So why doesn't he just say, I've seen it?

Does that make it true beyond a shadow of a doubt for Master Vasubandhu and any other Arya? Yes.

But does that make it true beyond a shadow of a doubt for me? No.

I would have to have already established that that being telling me that cannot lie, cannot be trying to influence me in the wrong way.

Believing it is one thing. Really holding that conviction deep down is another. Because what if that person that I so believe anything they say is true. And then 10 years later they do something that hurts me so badly that everything gets negated, and it's like, nah. Now I don't believe what they said.

What happens to all that belief that I had before? It suddenly shattered.

So to prove to ourselves something, and then have a direct experience of it, you don't then use that to say, see honey–to our spouse or somebody. It has to be true for you too. Because until they have the direct experience of it, there's nothing we can say that will prove it to them, that they couldn't lose when their seeds shift.

So he doesn't ever say I've seen it, so I know it to be true.

The Nature of the Bardo

(65:55) Next Master Vasubandhu talks about the nature of the bardo.

He describes that a bardo being's body is made of very, very subtle matter, and their appearance is that of the being that they are going to be next. It's curious, because the texts will say they look like the being that comes before. Which sounds like in English means where you came from. But what it means in the Tibetan syntax is what's before you. So you look like the being that's before you, meaning the one you're headed to. So by the time that this mind, this life's mind projections have ended, and the projecting karma has popped, followed with all its attendance, you already look like the being that you're headed to become.

But to whom do you look like that?

Well to yourself mostly, and apparently to any other being in the bardo who's headed into that same kind of rebirth. BARDOWAs headed to a hell realm, can apparently see each other, and they look like charred pieces of wood. It's like, yeah, but a living charred piece of wood, I don't know.

Then beings who are headed to their hungry ghost lifetimes, they're said to be translucent like watercolor. Somehow they can still be seen, but they're clear.

Animals are said to be smoke colored, smoky colored, so like a gray, I guess.

Humans are golden color and have the appearance of five or six years old. So the BARDOWAs headed for human rebirth, they look like little kids. Curious.

Desire realm devas, same: golden colored, five, six years old.

Pleasure beings in the form realm are colored white. They have an adult appearance, and they're clothed. Adult what? My mind assumes they look like a superhuman. We've heard that they're really, really big and they live a long time, like a superhero. But I don't really know, either way, they're white and adult.

Then what do you suppose the formless realm being looks like?

No form. There's no form there. They don't look like anything. They don't have a color, because they don't have a shape. Wait a minute, they have movement of the mind and that's all. Which means, does a being who is headed for the formless realm even need a BARDOWA time?

No, because they don't have anywhere to go. Their formless realm being is where their last life that projected them into that ended. That's where their formless realm will be. So they don't need this continuum to get there. They're already there, projecting karma, formless realm being, done.

There's a lifespan for our bardo being, and there's apparently debate about it. I don't know what that debate is. But what's most widely accepted is that it takes seven human days for this stream of karmic shifts to move us into through and out of a given BARDOWA lifetime, a given timeframe for the shifts that are happening. That apparently can happen seven times. So the maximum stay in a bardo is 49 days, apparently 49 human days. Every seven days, that being experiences another kind of death and another kind of projecting. It's not a new projecting karma, because we just learned you can't start out going to a hell realm and then detour over to some other realm. It's not that you get a new projecting karma, but it's like your projecting karma gets a reboot, and it gets boosted every seven days.

The bardo, what it is to be the bardo being, is that you are compelled to your next lifetime, your next reboot. It's like that's all that you're about is getting to that place, or that state of shift.

We can think of it as that bardo being is looking, is it there? Is it there? Is it there?

And when you use the bardo Thodol, for instance, or other instructions for the dying, you're reading to them prayers about, if you see this, don't go there. Don't be attracted to that.

If you see this be attracted to that.

It's these instructions, because things appear in certain ways. But then when the bardo being gets there, the apparent shifts to something else. If you don't know the code when you're in the bardo, you'll be attracted to, I don't know, a big beautiful Greek temple. Oh, I think I'll go there. And then when you inside the Greek temple, oh my gosh, suddenly you're a hungry ghost realm, and there's no Greek temple at all. Something like that. I'm just pulling an example, not from scripture, but just out of my understanding.

Every seven days if the mind has not found its next place, it does this death and rebirth into another bardo and keeps looking.

Something about the momentum means you will find your next rebirth within those 49 days.

The prayers that are used to direct that being, there are certain ones used on the first day, which means the day that the mind leaves, the day you die. Then there are prayers for the seventh day after that. Then prayers for the 49th day after that in our tradition.

It's like there's some special window of opportunity in the first seven days, and then it repeats, repeats, repeats every 7th day until the 49th. If you're still waiting for a rebirth at the 49th, give them this powerful instruction. They got to find some place by 49th. I don't know what happens to you if it doesn't, it's not like you are going to disappear. It's that you will have found rebirth by 49 days, according to this tradition.

If you're thinking of somebody who died a long time ago and we're wondering are they still in the purgatory or someplace or have they taken rebirth? This tradition would say within what 49 days is less than two months they got reborn somewhere.

You could kind of figure out. I do it for my parents. They'd be somebody in their forties right now. And then that makes me go, wait a minute, all of you 40 year olds like hey. But whether that's true or not, who knows.

Anyway, there is something about every seventh day up to 49.

Who can see the BARDOWAs?

I already said that similar BARDOWAs can see similar BARDOWAs.

The Eye of A God

(77:05) There's this term called HLAYCHEN, the eye of a God.

We actually heard it in the Diamond Cutter Sutra when Lord Buddha is saying to Subhuti, what do you think Subhuti? Does the Buddha have the eyes of flesh? Yes, of course. Does he have the eyes?

The eye of God was one of them.

It's a certain power of vision through which one can perceive–not with the eyeballs, but with this eye of God–beings that are beyond normal human perception. The bardo beings are a part of that category of beings that one can see.

The eye of God is mainly happening during deep meditation. It's during deep meditation that you actually perceive these other beings, if your eye of God is activated. No doubt that could go on to be activated while you're not in meditation. But that would get a little bit disconcerting, if you're seeing all these other realms at the same time you're trying to drive on the freeway.

Geshela shared, there are 11 conditions that prevent us from getting the eye of God. There are 11 obstacles to deep meditation that if we removed those obstacles we would have the eye of God.

I have no idea what those obstacles are. I could guess, but he never taught the 11.

You could ask him.

Now, someone asked, I don't know if it's from the scripture or if somebody asked Michael, what about the TRULKUs?

The TRULKU is the Tibetan word for a reincarnated Lama. For instance, when Khen Rinpoche manifested passing away, because he had been Abbott of the monastery, that meant that his rebirth could be recognized as the new version of Khen Rinpoche.

Then they go looking for that being once the original or the previous one has passed. Within a certain period of time they get clues, they get directions, they go to try to find them, they sometimes identify more than one. Then they take the belongings like the ritual items of the one that's passed, and mix it with other ritual items and they show it to the young child.

If the child picks out, how the child behaves around the ritual items gives clues. They look for all these clues and finally they have enough evidence to suggest that we found the new incarnation of who was Geshe Lobsang Tharchin. Then they go to His Holiness to ask to confirm it. If it gets a thumbs up from His Holiness, then that child is invited to the monastery, and then cared for and educated, and prompted to become a teacher, and pick up where the incarnation left off.

But this term TRULKU, it really means an emanation of enlightened being.

It really means an emanation of enlightened being, a Buddha. An emanation of a fully enlightened being just spontaneously is wherever any beings’ karmic seeds ripen them to see them, to be aware of them. Buddha’s emanations are happening everywhere. Just, I see the fly, I don't see the Buddha’s emanation.

The fly could be Buddha’s emanation. Or Buddha’s emanation could come looking like this glowing angel of light. But it's spontaneous and effortless on the part of the Buddha. And it's totally dependent on the observer of them as to what they see. In that regard, a TRULKU, you don't have to talk about Bardo time and death of the previous body. It doesn't apply to Buddha’s emanations.

But they use the same term for a reincarnation of a high lama, implying that that lama was Buddha, and now their reincarnation is just one of their many emanations. But then it gets a little bit mixed up with whether...

I think they do it on purpose, for our good seeds, to help us become more aware of Buddha’s emanations.

BARDOWAs, they cannot be diverted from the rebirth they're headed to, with the exception of someone who's on the way to a form realm, is someone who can apparently divert to a Nirvana instead. I don't know if that means, by way of somebody else's prayer influence, or by way of their high keen level of awareness of what's going on while they are in the bardo.

Which if you had significant meditative concentration ability enough to be sending you to a form realm rebirth, you might have enough concentration ability even as you're mindstream in the bardo to realize that's what's going on. And use it to go to Nirvana instead of form realm.

But it is not the case for any other headed for rebirth, that we will have the meditative concentration to recognize, Oh my gosh, I'm a bardo being headed for a hell realm, and I don't want to go there. So I will divert myself.

We don't have the capacity by way of the seed that ripened us. In the moment we won't be able to do that. It's not like Buddha decreed. Once you're headed to a hell realm, you can't get redirected. It's that the way the karmic seeds are ripening make it such that. Once those are ripening, that's where we're going to go.

They say a bardo being who is headed to a lower realm than the one that they left, they will be traveling head down. Meaning traveling upside down. It doesn't matter what direction they're going, their feet are up, their head is down.

A being who's going to a higher rebirth than the one they left, is traveling head up.

Who knows who's going to see that? I don't know.

But remember, in the Wheel of Life, you've got your center core with the snake, the rooster and the pig. Then outside of that there's a ring where half the beings are headed down, and half the beings are headed up. This is what they're talking about.

You are driven upside down or right side up towards a next life.

So you're just compelled until the change happens, and you are experiencing hell being, or experiencing hungry ghost being, or experiencing in a womb, forming, forming, forming to be pushed out. Or in an egg, forming, forming, forming to be pushed out, and then have to crack open.

Or to be warmth and moisture, whatever that feels like.

Apparently that time, seven days from zero to 49 days, that being is sustained by odors.

I don't understand why they need to be sustained by anything, but that's why they're called odor eaters.

The Events at the Moment of Our Death

Geshela explained that events happen as we die. The elements that make up our physical bodies are, they call it collapsing or dissolving. But what it means is that the karmic seeds ripening us to have those elements are no longer ripening.

If we don't ripen seeds for earth element, we can't experience any earth element, and the experience of a solidity of our body stops, and we can't move.

Then the fluidity dries up, and then the heat blows away. Then even the blowing away comes still. And then other stuff happens as well.

It's painful and it's disconcerting. It's frightening for most of us.

Unless we're highly trained in those experiences, when they start–which is well before actually being dead–our state of mind is chaotic.

The likelihood of being able to control what we're thinking about is remote for most untrained people, most non meditators, especially.

Then by the time you get to the point where the physical body is declared dead, your mind withdrawal still has several states of withdrawal to happen before the mind actually gets completely free of projecting what was this physical body.

It's at the moment that that mind gets finally completely free of projecting what was this physical body, that's the moment that the next karma that ripens is the one that's going to start the process in the bardo towards the next rebirth that that karmic seed characterizes.

If that state of mind, by the time it's at the subtlety of going through those last few dissolutions, is in this terrified state or angry state, which is another possibility, fearful, angry, clinging, clinging to more of what I knew. Different states of mind that could be ripening. It's not me, Sarahni so afraid. That's too concrete. It's very subtle movement of the mind, and whatever one is there at the end of this life, the next moment is likely to be similar. That becomes the projecting karma.

A projecting karma of anger, hatred, violence–hell realm.

Disrespect, dullness, stupidity–animal.

Stinginess, clinging, craving. I want more. Don't let me go–hungry ghost.

That propels us towards the whole next circumstances called me and my life, but with a completely different understanding of the “me” and the “my life” than it was before.

Which is why we're learning about all of this.

Of course we're going to end up talking about Je Tsongkapa’s death meditation, and how to live in such a way that that process of the withdrawal we'll have nothing to worry about. Because we have already done massive purification, and planted huge amounts of goodness seeds, so that it's like great. Whatever ripens at that moment of death, it's all going to be okay. It's going to keep me on my path.

That's where we're going towards the end of this class.

Of course, we still have a little bit more to learn about what it is to survive in this desire realm before we can take up that practice of death awareness, and use it to change our seeds significantly enough that there's nothing to worry about anymore.

[Class Dedication]

Class 6: The Types of Sustenance, and a General Description of the Physical World

10 April 2025

Link to Eng Audio: ACI 8 - Class 6

Vocabulary Class 6

DROWA SE-KYI NEPA-YIN the beings need substances to stay alive

KAM GYI SE (SK dathu or datu) portionable sustenance

DUTSI (sk amirta or amrita) nectar

REKPA contact

SEMPA (sk chitta) movement of the mind

NAMSHE consciousness

GYE PAY GYU SHI the four causes for our bodies to flourish

KA-SE food (mouth sustenance)

LEK-JA taking good care of the body (doing good)

NYI sleep

TING-NGEN-DZIN single pointed concentration

SAK JE stained, polluted

JIKTEN (sk lokta) perishable base

LUNG GI KYILNKOR (sk mandala) a huge disc

Dzambuling another term for our world

All right, welcome back. We are ACI course 8, class six. It is April 10th, 2025. Let's gather our minds here as we usually do. Please bring your attention to your breath, breath until you hear from me again.

[Vocabulary Class 1]

Review Class 5

(7:18) Last class we learned about the beings called bardo beings, BARDOWAS, who are in that in-between state, in between having died and yet to be in their next… qualification of being a next life, but have to happen in the next life in order for the next life to form up. Let's put it that way.

Your quiz asked you what was that example of the seed needing…? How does that example of the seed needing to go through being a sprout before it can become a full up plant? How does that show that then there must be such a thing as BARDOWAS. They offered as a proof, which I don't know, I still have that one as a proof on the shelf as an explanation. Okay, I get it, but I don't quite see how it proofs something. But anyway, that's just me.

The explanation as you recall, is that just as a seed has to go through these stages of changes before it becomes a full-on plant in the same way the continuum of a being needs to go through these stages of changes, changes, changes in order to get to the location of their next rebirth. It's like, well, what if their location is right there where they died? How would that work if we're thinking human rebirth? Well, that's impossible, right? Because the mom would have to be there. It's not the same place. It can't be the same place. Even if it's the same town, same room, same house. It's not the same place. Then the only time you don't need a bardo being interim is when the projecting karma is ripening the being into the formless realm. Because the formless realm is wherever you are. There is no I here and over there the way there is in desire realm and form realm. So for what it's worth.

Then we were given scriptural authority, a couple of different scriptural places where Lord Buddha mentioned bardo beings. It's not that he was teaching about them and that they really were them. But rather in his teaching of something else, bardo beings were included in the explanation about the something else. That means by default, Buddha at least knows that there are such things as bardo beings. And if an omniscient being is aware of them, who am I to argue? If I believe that the one teaching those teachings is in fact omniscient. And that was a long story from course 4 I think it was.

Anyway, your quiz question asked, one of the scriptural authority pieces is that Lord Buddha was teaching about the three conditions for a womb to happen. Those three conditions, that there must be a woman who's still having menstrual cycles, and then there must be a feeling of desire and sexual contact made between the two prospective parents to be. Then the third is a smell eater must be in the vicinity.

The only way a womb birth can happen is if there are these three circumstances coming together. Therefore, there must be such things as smell eaters, because there is such things as beings born from a womb. So there had to be a bardo being, also known as a smell eater, DRISA. There have to be such things, because there are such things as babies born from wombs. Got it?

Then your quiz asked you, who can see a bardo being?

Of course enlightened beings, fully enlightened beings can see a bardo being. That's not part of the answer. But the answer says other BARDOWAS of a similar type, they can see each other. They don't necessarily see other bardo beings. Then anyone who has that meditative power called the Eye of God, they can also see bardo beings. I think they mean in meditation. I'm not sure if you see them outside of meditation.

Fourth question was, is it possible to be diverted from the kind of BARDOWA that you are…

goes through maybe up to seven end of that one and rebirth to another one. The question is, can you be being projected to a hell realm and then lose that momentum, and then have another bardo time when something happens that you can be redirected to a human rebirth? Because that would be the hope, right? That we could direct ourselves in the bardo.

They explain that the driving factor in our bardo time, no matter how long or short it is, is that seed called the projecting karma, the one that pops at the last moment of the life that's ending. That seed has a–I don't mean a physical color, but it has a color to it or a taste to it, that is what's driving us to the next form that continuum of being will see itself as. That seed, it's already done its thing and it's dragging all these seeds with it. So the specific circumstance of what that's life is going to be hasn't filled in yet. That's taking time. But they say that once that one has ripened, it's already done. Like any other ripening seed. Once it's ripened, you can't change its result. There's an exception to this is (checking internet connection issues)

The only time it seems like one can be redirected after the fact is if the projecting karma is sending you to a certain high level of a form realm rebirth, somehow something can happen that you can reach instead your Nirvana. They don't tell us anymore. Is that by way of somebody else influencing you? Or is it by way of something you do with your own concentration ability? Which must be really high to have enough seeds to ripen one that would send you to that level of a form realm, that maybe you could count on that to instead get to Nirvana. But I'm just sharing what the scripture has said, what Geshe Michael shared with me. I don't begin to understand.

Then lastly, your quiz asked, how is it that a BARDOWA enters the state of a rebirth?

We had that explanation of how the bardo being, who's being compelled to their next rebirth, they're like looking for where. It's not that they get a choice. This is all describing forced rebirth. Keep in mind, this process (is) forced by the process of karmic seeds ripening. The bardo being is looking for its next rebirth, compelled to do so by its seeds, seeds, seeds, seeds. It sees at a distance something that looks fun and interesting, and so they're attracted and they go closer and closer and closer. Then their seeds shift and they're trapped inside a womb that they can't get out of. Somehow they were able to get into it, as if it was a thing there that was solid, they could move through it. But then once they get into it, the seeds have shifted enough that they can't get out. Now they don't say, does that being know it's inside a womb? Does it know it's going to be a human? Science says it's just these two cells that have divided into four, then into eight and then into 16. At what point does it have the capacity to be aware? And then, is it going to be aware of being in a womb somehow? I don't think so. But the process that's happening is described in this way.

Remember, Abhidharma Kosha is from the point of view of “Things do exist. Nothing is totally self existent, but things exist, things that function. There is suffering, and there's a cause of suffering. Enough about it. Okay, so let's go on to class 6.

The 4 Kinds of Sustenance That Keep Beings Alive

(20:47) Class 6 is again coming from Abhidharma Kosha, from the third chapter. The third chapter has a lot of information in it. These classes are only touching on a small amount.

This section is its explanation of the types of sustenance, what keeps us alive. Once we're in our next birth, not just human birth, any birth, what keeps us alive.

The second half or second part of this class is Abhidharma Kosha’s explanation of our physical world. Geshe Michael calls it a geography lesson.

This first section is DROWA SE-KYI NEPA-YIN, for the Tibetan.

DROWA, the word literally means “those who go”. Those who go. It's another word for living beings. Usually we say SEM CHEN for living beings, meaning suffering beings.

This is another way of describing living beings: those who go, those who do things. Those who go places or maybe meaning those who go through the cycle, the wheel of life. Can have different meanings, DROWA.

NEPA-YIN means to stay. They stay.

SE-KYI is how it is or what's involved in them staying.

DROWA SE-KYI NEPA-YIN means the beings need substances to stay alive.

(23:10) Master Vasubandhu says that Lord Buddha taught that there are four kinds of sustenance that keep beings alive. We're not just talking about humans.

Here's the four things that keep beings alive once they're in their next birth, whatever it is.

KAM GYI SE
REKPA
SENPA and
NAMSHE

1. Portionable Sustenance

KAM GYI SE

SE = sustenance

KAM = it can mean family, as in the group you belong to. It can mean the district that you live in. It means your personal propensity to something, although maybe that's spelled a little differently.

In Sanskrit, it's dathu, that we see that word sometimes, dharma dathu. Often just written this way, datu. But apparently there's that H in there.

Together then KAM GYI SE means a portion, sort of like a unique to you portion of sustenance.

They translate it as a portionable sustenance and it's like that's awkward. That's not anything we ever say in English. “May I have my portionable sustenance please?”, when you're asking for your peanut butter sandwich. But they don't just… What it means is sustenance that you take in portions.

Forhumans, we're talking about food and drink. Because we take a bite, we swallow, we take another bite, we swallow. That's what is meant by a portionable sustenance. They don't just say food though, because we're talking about the portionable sustenance that any being would rely upon for keeping them in that lifetime that they're in.

Hungry ghosts that don't get much, the hell beings, animals, apparently this applies to any being in any life, any suffering being in suffering life is the punchline. It comes later. So they can't just say food, because hell beings don't eat food. But they do take portionable sustenance of something that contributes to them staying in their hell realm if they have any kind of body.

Which our mind should go to, well then what happens to being in the suffering realm that doesn't have a body? What do they live on? We'll talk about it.

KAM GYI SE means portionable sustenance, which for humans and animals means food and drink.

We rely upon that to stay alive.

For the BARDOWAs, we learned that they eat smells. So the smells are their portionable sustenance. They take them in sniffs, is how a BARDOWA eats.

Desire realm pleasure beings, they also take in portionable sustenance, and it's called nectar. Now we hear the word nectar, DUTSI. In Sanskrit amirta, sometimes written this–amrita. But this one's more accurate. Because everything they partake in is going to give them great pleasure. They partake of it in parts.

Lastly, the food of the first humans on a planet is also said to be nectar. But it's a different nectar than the form realm beings, because they're not form realm beings. They are the first humans on a planet. We'll hear about planets and how they form. But there can be a planet that is not yet inhabited with beings. Then some beings have the projecting karma that sends them to that location, that planet.

Put your science mind aside and just let there be a place that's not yet inhabited. Then the shifting karmas of some beings shift such that they show up on that planet. Those beings, their bodies will be made of light, and the light of their bodies will illuminate the place. It doesn't have a sun and a moon yet, but when those beings get hungry, they just take their finger and swipe the earth and eat the earth like wherever they are. And they call it nectar. I don't know, it must be like chocolate, apricots, I don't know. But delicious and wholesome. Then over time things shift, their karmas shift, and crops start to grow. And things shift more and more and more selfishness sets in, and the crops that are so abundant get gathered and stored. Then, because they're being stored for future use, the state of mind of the beings shifts into “this is mine, not yours”. And things degenerate from there. As the minds degenerate, their bodies and their surroundings get more and more solid until they're living with this kind of solidity that we would relate to as humans. The degeneration continues to happen. As it does, their lifespans shorten and shorten and shorten. At some point their lifespans are so short, and the degeneration of their physical place has gotten so degenerated that it's hard for beings to be sustained there anymore. Sooner or later, the whole planet is destroyed. It goes through cycles, that sometimes it's destroyed by water, sometimes it's destroyed by wind. Apparently our world, the one that we as these humans know, will be destroyed by fire. We'll learn more specifics about that.

The reason I'm talking about it is that we think humans are like this, like us. There are different kinds of humans, we learned already. Even the humans in our place weren't always like this.

(32:53) There's gross portionable sustenances, and there are subtle portion sustenances. For gross portionable sustenances that's like food and drink. That we know food and drink for humans is food and drink that the body needs to separate the pure from the impure. The impure is let go as waste, liquid waste and solid waste. The pure is absorbed and used by the body for the sustenance.

With the subtle sustenance that it's able to be so fully absorbed by the beings who are sustained by subtle sustenance that there are no waste products. It's used. It's used completely.

Geshela mentioned that we reach the form and formless realm. We make the form and formless realm karmas by losing our desire for the things in the desire realm. In meditation is where we demonstrate that, where we're withdrawing our attraction to the objects of the senses. So we can get into that deep enough meditation to be at those different levels of concentration that are planting the seeds for those form or formless realm future lifetime, if they become our projecting karma. Because that interest in the desire realm desires of which food and sex are the two main ones, then form and formless realm beings have no need for food. They have no smells or tastes there. Again, I can't comprehend that, being a form realm being, where physical matter has reached its highest expression and they don't have any attraction to it?

So little attraction that they don't even want to eat? I mean, not that they don't want. They just have no ripening of needing to eat. I don't get the correlation. There's some big advantage.

Now, there certainly is a big advantage to not needing to eat, or not wanting so much to eat with all our attendant attractions and et cetera. But rather really knowing I feed my body in this way just so that it can stay. That would be an almost dysfunctional relationship with human food eating of course. But somewhere in the middle is this, I know I have to eat. I'll find good things. There are some things that I still crave. I can have those sometimes. Most of the time just feed this body to keep it alive.

2. Contact

(36:50) The next of the four kinds of sustenance is REKPA. REKPA means contact. If you remember from the 12 links of dependent origination, this is one of those links, REKPA, contact, making contact.

Contact here means the convening of three things specifically related to the portionable sustenance.

For humans and animals, it would be food that we're talking about. REKPA means this contact. So the convening of the three things that are what's meant by contact is

the object. In this case a piece of food
the sense power that's perceiving it, whether you're seeing it or smelling it or actually tasting it.
the third thing is the consciousness, which is food. Because we could theoretically have the thing there, the object there, and our sense power is perceiving it, but our consciousness says dog poop. And it's like urgh, No thank you, not food.

To be a sustenance factor, these three things happening together is contact.

We're not talking about the object making contact with the eye power, that then makes contact with the awareness. We don't mean that. We mean when those three are happening, we have this condition called contact. And that condition called contact is a sustaining factor for our life.

To perceive something we see as food is enough to sustain us for some period of time, even if we never partake of the food. It's interesting.

Geshela said, a horse never drops over from thirst, or drops over dead from thirst as long as they can see water. The contact happening will keep them alive till they get there. I don't know if that's really true.

But they give this example, the scripture gives this example of this father and two sons. There's a famine or something and they're so, so hungry and they just don't have anything. Somebody comes along and gives them a bag of stuff and says, there's flour in this bag, but this is all there is. So you really have to not open it until you're absolutely at desperate stage.

The person who's giving it to them, actually what's inside the bag is sand. But they know that by telling them it's a bag full of flour and just don't open it, they know that that will keep that father and those two sons alive, and get them more time for whatever the circumstances were to shift so that they could get actual food.

The story goes that they've got the bag there and they're looking at it getting more and more hungry, more and more hungry. At some point their curiosity overwhelmed their ability to decide, are we at the end yet? They opened the bag and saw that it was sand, and all three of them dropped over dead. Because their hope, their expectation that they had something to carry them through when they were the end just disappeared. REKPA, contact.

3. Movement of the Mind

(41:45) The third factor is SEMPA. SEMPA in Sanskrit is chitta, which means movement of the mind.

This scripture says one of the four factors that keeps us alive is movement of our mind.

The fact that our mind goes from one thing to the next, to the next, to the next contributes to keeping us alive. It would make a good debate, because it sure seems like it's contributing to our dying. Because with every movement of the mind we're using off karma. Oh, but we're also planting karma. And that karma is growing. So actually movement of the mind is contributing to more life. But then more of this life, or just more life, more me? So this has different levels of consideration.

In that REKPA, where there was that factor of hope or expectation. Within this contact of these three things then arose the mental function that that stuff will sustain me. That's a movement of the mind. So this movement of the mind that food is what I need to survive makes it such that food helps us survive.

Then they say, wait. Movement of the mind is what sustains us, could also be talking about what sustains us into another rebirth. Like not movement of the mind is sustaining us in this life, but it's what pushes us into our next life. Movement of the mind, don’t we know that as karma? What is karma? Movement of the mind and what it motivates. Why didn't they just say, look, one of the things that sustains us is our karma.

It seems like it would've been so much more clear. But remember, they're talking to an audience who uses the term karma and means something entirely different than what we've been taught is meant by karma.

Movement of the mind and what it motivates, is very different than karma being duty, or level of function within your society, or fate. All the different meanings in other traditions of karma. So Buddha didn't use that word often, so that people wouldn't hear him say one thing and take it to mean something else because of thinking they understood that he meant the same thing by that word.

I'm not saying that here, it's karma as we understand karma. However, there is a factor of movement of the mind that sustains us through this life, and then sustains us going on at the end of this body's life, through the bardo into the next rebirth. When we're thinking of it that way, we're thinking of a different me that's being sustained, than the one that's being sustained in my this life.

What sustains this body for this life? The mind continuing to move, move, move, move, move from this to that, to this, to that, to this, to that. Which it's always doing, sustains this lifetime. Then, when this lifetime ends anyway, that movement of the mind continues to move my subject side me, which won't be Sarahni, but will still be a subject side me continues to sustain my me. Do you see?

SEMPA.

They go on to say the main karma that sustains this life is that projecting karma that went off at the last moment of the previous life. That is what pushed this one into being. We tend to think of, well, that karma went off a long time ago. But in some way it's continuing to go off losing its impetus as it goes. When it loses it completely, that's the end. It is some kind of factor that that projecting karma is still somehow doing its thing. My explanation isn't accurate. But think of it as the projecting karma is still functioning as long as I still have this human life that it put me into. It is going to wear out. SEMPA.

4. Consciousness

(47:47) The fourth kind of sustenance that beings rely upon is NAMSHE. NAMSHE means mind, consciousness, awareness. The mind itself, this general constant state of awareness contributes to this sustenance of me and my existence, me and my world.

That consciousness is always on. Geshela says NAMSHE is, the light bulb is on. Even when we're knocked out deep, deep asleep, anesthetized, the light bulb is still on. Ever so dimly, but it never goes out, can't go out.

This mind is a necessary factor in our sustenance. It's not like we have a choice about it.

It's not that we'll ever not rely upon it, it will always be there. So it has to be considered a factor in our sustenance.

Master Vasubandhu explains that all of the realms have three out of these four sustenances. All the realms rely upon REKPA–the contact factor, the movement of the mind factor and the NAMSHA–the awareness itself factor, as types of sustenance. It's only the desire realm that also has the portionable sustenance, whether gross or subtle.

So when we say all three realms, we mean desire realm, form realm, formless realm.

Formless realm has no physical body or place. So obviously it's not going to have any physical food. Yet still to be sustained in your formless realm being you'll have contact, movement of the mind, and consciousness. Same for form realm.

You don't need gross or subtle food to take. But you do still need or have contact, movement of the mind, and consciousness.

The 4 Things That Nourish Our Bodies

(51:35) The next topic is the four things that nourish our bodies.

All of a sudden it's like, wait, I thought that's what we were talking about. The four kinds of sustenances. It seemed like it was like this is how we keep this body alive with these four different things. It's actually no, it's like this is how we keep my me alive with those four different things. It's a little different.

But here's four things that help our physical body flourish. When we have a physical body, we would want to know how do I keep this thing flourishing. There are four factors, GYE PAY GYU SHI.

GYU SHI = the four causes

GYE PAY = flourished

The four causes for our bodies to flourish.

These are four factors that help us promote the elements that make up our physical bodies’ ability to do their constant dance between them through which our sense powers function, our digestive powers, our physical powers function.

On whatever level that we're looking at, there are these four ways that the elements, once properly nourished, that they go on to support all the rest of the systems of our physical body.

This tradition and others speak of the four elements–earth, water, fire, and wind–that our physical bodies are made up of. There's a fifth element–space, of course. But these four, earth, water, fire and wind are the ones that contribute to the physical body. Those words are describing qualities of energies that are always existing in various amounts relative to each other and relative to our circumstances of need and experience.

Earth means our solidity. The solidity quality of our physical body is called our earth element.

The water element is all the factors that have to do with fluidity. So it really does mean saliva, and mucus, and blood, and sexual fluids, and digestive fluids, all that stuff literally. But it also has this elemental quality of changeability. The fluidness of our being.

Then fire element is the metabolic process, the temperature. Not just 98.6 temperature, but the heat that's necessary within our system in order to function.

Wind is capacity for movement. So moveability, literal movability. But then also changeability movability.

They talk about how these four elements are in a constant state of balance. When they're out of balance, that manifests in disease, and each disease, unique to itself because each disease has a different kind of relative imbalance of each of those four elements.

I tend to hear the word balance and it sounds like, oh, you should always have 50% earth element, 10% water element, 17% fire element and whatever the rest would be with wind element. And when it gets out of balance, it always tries to come back to those numbers. But that's not right.

Balance means the ability of each one of those elements to adjust itself according to how one any of the others shift. So as earth for whatever reason goes up, all the rest are going to adjust themselves to keep it from going up too much. Because too much earth element, it's called stroke. You can't move, paralysis, you can't move.

Too much water element, not enough earth element. You still can't move. But now you're like going in all directions.

Too much fire, fever. Over 106, you burn up and die. Not enough temperature, metabolic slowdown, nothing works. So it's not just the temperature, it's this quality of ability to burn up calories, ability to move, waste, all of that. Then wind is this flexibility and movement.

So when one goes up, all the rest adjust to keep it from going too high.

When one goes down, all the rest are supposed to adjust to keep it from going too low, to bring it back to where it's just right. And they're all doing it together.

In Chinese medicine, each of those elements directly supports a specific one which directly supports another specific one. It goes around in the cycle. Each one of those elements directly suppresses a different one. And each of those do the same thing.

Then each one is suppressed by a specific different one, and each one is supported by a specific different one.

This beautiful dance is going on all the time.

When this beautiful dance is adjusting, adjusting, adjusting so smoothly, so perfectly, we are healthy. We ourselves can adjust and change, and morph, and we're strong, and happy, and our body is reliable.

But when that dance is getting overpowered, one element is overpowering the others, that one that's supposed to keep it in check is overwhelmed, it can't do its job. All of those have different symptoms that we experience when they're out of balance, either too much or too little.

Then the practitioner's job is to sort that all out, and figure out either with whatever their management skill is, how to support those elements so that the one that's not able to keep others in check gets a little stronger. And the one that's over strong gets pulled back a little bit. It's the skill, the art of the provider.

Why am I talking about all that? Because these four elements need to be sustained.

There are these four factors for sustaining our elements in these physical bodies.

1. Food (Mouth Sustenance)

(59:57) The first one is KA-SE.

There's the word SE again = sustenance.

KA = mouth sustenance

Before we called it portionable sustenance. But that was in this broader term of what any being eats.

Now we're talking about physical bodies. They need food that we take in by mouth.

The food feeds the cells that make up the physical faculties of our body.

So our food is our nourishment for our eyes, ears, nose, taste, touch, which is what we're sustaining.

NYI

TING-NGEN-DZIN

2. Taking Good Care of the Body (Doing Good)

The second one, LEK-JA. The other thing that helps support our elements to support our physical body is called LEK-JA.

LEK-JA literally means doing good. It sure sounds like that means doing good deeds. Keeping our vows causes our physical body to flourish. And it's like, yeah, right on. But that's not what it means here. It's like, I want it to mean that, please thank you very much.

But what it means is taking good care of the body helps it to flourish.

Remember the school that we're in, the school in which Lord Buddha was pointing out how all the world exists, how we exist, how everything exists. And then he says, and by the way, it's all suffering. But we're not at the level of school that's going into the details of karma and emptiness yet.

However, when we think of all of these things from that perspective, we can still see how, okay, it's not wrong to understand it in either way. It has a different effect on our being to think of these things from the Higher School. Which would be it's all by projection, do you see? But if when we say, oh, it's all by projection, it makes us think, So none of this is really useful. We're understanding “by projection” incorrectly. We're thinking “by projection” means not really when in fact by projection means really it's like this by projection. Do you see?

So LEK-JA means doing good.

What kind of good exercise it, massage it, apply the necessary ointments. It really says that. Get a massage from time to time. Gosh, my last massage has been, I can't remember when.

LEK-JA, take care of your body. Be nice to it, in healthy, wholesome ways. It doesn't mean doing what it wants. I want more chocolate. Sorry buddy. We will give you this instead.

3. Sleep

NYI. My personal favorite, NYI–means sleep.

Our bodies need sleep to be sustained. For those elements to get a chance to chill out enough that they can do their rebalancing better. We understand in deep sleep it's when our brains get to detox. It's when our rest, relax, restore, release happens. It's when our vagus nerve gets to kick in undisturbed. Sleep is an important factor. Too much sleep is out of balance, as is not enough sleep. Sleep in the proper amount.

4. Single-Pointed Concentration

The fourth factor is TING-NGEN-DZIN. We know that word, single pointed concentration.

Single pointed concentration is a necessary factor for sustaining these physical bodies. It's interesting, isn't it? Concentration of any kind is a physical nourishment.This tradition would say as much as food.

People practice single pointed concentration, not just in meditation. Athletes do it, dancers do it, artists do it, a lot of different… When you're reading a good book, you're doing it. Seeing a good movie.

As we've learned in meditation classes, most of us don't have the ability to turn it on and turn it off according to our own plan. That it occurs as a factor of the object that we're focused on. Something about that object seems to have enough interest or importance that we're able to zoom in on it, and stay in this clear minded on it, even if it itself moves–like a movie is moving along. But your mind is single pointed on it in the sense that it's not jumping off to car traffic, kids hollering, what's on my phone. It's not popping around, and it's not dulled out with disinterest. It's bright and alert. TING-NGEN-DZIN.

A mind that's bouncing around stresses the ability of those elements to do their delicate dance. We call it stress. A mind that's bouncing around ends up as a stressful situation. Stress, as science tells us, eats away at our longevity. So things like mindfulness based practice for mindfulness based stress management, it seems to be really effective. They have all their accurate explanations for how and why.

And here's another one. Because mindfulness is a concentration practice.

The physical body needs all four of these to be sustained.

We see that people who use TING-NGEN-DZIN in a practice way, actually need less food, less sleep. They seem to sustain themselves with less of the other three, because of their single pointed concentration. But it doesn't mean that our bodies don't still need the other three.

Geshela said, the ramification of all of this is worth contemplating in terms of why do we need these things? How do those things manifest in my life? What is it in this teaching that can help me sustain my Me better, help my body function better?

But he says ultimately, these are not remedies. These sustain our physical body, but it sustains our physical body here in Samsara. So they're all SAK JE.

SAK JE = stained

They're all polluted.

Ultimately we want to plant, create our seeds such that we don't need any of those anymore. And we don't do it by just deciding to do it. To perceive ourselves as a being that doesn't need any of that will be a ripening result of extraordinary love, extraordinary compassion, extraordinary wisdom.

So we use this other information to help these bodies be such that we can use them for long enough to create the virtue. We can purify our obstacles and create the virtue that will ripen us as a being that doesn't need any of them.

The bodies that we sustain by way of these factors gets old, sick and die in some order of that.

Our World, the Perishable Base – The Mandala

(72:40) The next section of this class is the section about JIKTEN.

JIKTEN literally means JI = perishable and TEN = base

JIKTEN = the perishable base

It's what they call our world, the perishable base.

Our world gets another name, Dzambuling. I'll get there in a minute.

But it is the perishable base of our existence, lokta in Sanskrit to be complete.

In the Abhidharma Kosha Master Vasubandhu is describing how a world comes into being.

They say how our world comes into being or came into being, but it's not unique to our world. Like any world that comes into being apparently does it like this, I believe. It's called the perishable world, because the very fact that it comes into being means it's going to get destroyed.

We are again, talking about a samsaric existence. So any existing thing in a samsaric existence is ending from the instant it has begun. That makes a nice exploration.

Before our world was here, there was a place for it to be.

We've studied space. The place the pen is in, technically is now over here. But the space it was in that it's in now is still there, isn't it? So because our earth is in a place, before our earth was in this place, that place was there for it to show up in–not self consistently, don't think that. It wasn't the place the earth is in, or even the place the earth will be in. It's just place.

Then something happens. I don't know why.

LUNG GI KYILNKOR

LUNG here means wind.

LUNG GI KYILNKOR means a huge disc, a mandala.

Mandala is the Sanskrit word. LUNG GI KYILNKOR is the Tibetan for mandala.

It means a big flat round thing. It has the connotation of it turning, although I guess it doesn't have to be that. LUNG GI KYILNKOR.

There's this space and then something happens and this wind stirs. A wind starts to move, circular move. It's spinning, and it's going around and around and round and round, getting faster and faster and big. I don't know if it's getting bigger or if it's just defining, you know how a cyclone or a hurricane. You could see the pictures from space they show us, and maybe the first day it's just the clouds looking like this and then it (whirl up), until you've got this huge horrible storm.

Similar to that, there's this turning happening, and then it turns and turns faster and faster and faster. The faster the wind spins, the more solidified it gets. Again, it's like you would think the faster it spins, the more it would disperse. But it's the opposite. The faster it spins, the more solid. It doesn't spin in on itself, it just solidifies until you have this solid thing that was the spinning disc.

They say that this disc once solidified is 7 million miles thick, and 4.5 x 10 to the 60th miles in diameter.

I don't know, get that in your head. 7 million miles, I can't conceive of. Then 4.5 x 10 to the 60th, huge.

That spinning disc, water forms on top of it. I don't know where the water comes from. But now think of it again. You've got this huge pancake, and then on top of that pancake, somehow water forms up. In that water something happens that a disc of gold forms.

The gold disc is 1.4 million miles thick. The water disc is 3.6 million miles thick. Both of them are 5.4 million miles wide.

So infinitesimal compared to the solidified wind disc, but still 5.4 million miles. I can't conceive. Pretty huge.

Then in the center of all this comes up Mount Meru. It is terraced. So Mount Meru is like this and it starts way down below the water disc. Then it comes up and it goes up a certain distance above the water and the gold disc, and it's surrounded by seven mountain ranges going out.

Each mountain range is half the height. So the first one is half the height of Mount Meru. I believe the next one is half the height of that one ahead of it. Next one, next one, next one until you get the seven ranges out. Then there's one more mountain range around the whole thing.

(81:01) Those seven inner mountain ranges are all made of gold. The outer one is made of iron.

In between each one of those mountain ranges is an ocean. So it's filled with water.

The mountains peak up out of the water, and the innermost ocean has a certain name. Certain things happen in that innermost ocean. Each ocean has its own name. You get out, there's the outer ocean, which is the one just inside the last ring of mountains. Different things are happening in those different oceans.

Then Mount Meru itself, they're in the middle. It's the biggest thing. It has four sides, like four discreet sides. So it's like a pyramid, a step pyramid, curious. And each of those four sides is made of a different precious substance.

The east side is all made of silver.

The south side is made of lapis lazuli. So blue with flex of gold.

The west side is made of ruby, so red and the north side is made of gold, gold color.

Then the sky above that side of Mount Maru reflects the color of what that Mount Meru was made of. So the sky above the eastern side of mount marrow is a silver sky.

The sky above the southern side is blue. Like, here's the mountain going out to the end of our wind disc is the side, not the whole mountain side, but the sky above all of that is still related to the Mount Merus’ lapis.

So everywhere you go in its eastern sector will have a sky that's blue. Guess where we live?

The west side, the sky is red, the north side, the sky is gold.

The sun and moon are said to move around Mount Meru. The sun goes and the moon chases it.

The scripture gives the exact dimensions of each of those mountain ranges, and the dimensions of the oceans.

In the outer ocean, meaning the seventh ring of mountain, and then you have the outer ring, the ocean between the seventh and the outer in there, there are these four continents.

So there's a continent out there to the east, there's a continent to the south, a continent to the west, a continent to the north.

Each one of them has two subcontinents to either side of it, smaller, similar shape.

Each of those four continents have their own quality of the place.

They have their own quality of the human that lives there.

They have their own quality of main mental afflictions and so forth.

Our continent that's in the south wedge going out from Mount Meru, is called Dzambuling. It gets its name from a tree that grows at the edge of the land and the ocean. Apparently this tree, when its fruit drops into the water, the sound it makes is Dzambu. It doesn't go plop, it goes Dzambu. And there must be so many of them dropping all the time that they call the whole continent, the land of Dzambu, Dzambuling.

I imagine they must be talking about coconuts, and coconut trees lining. The coconuts are dropping and they make the ‘kabonk’. They call that Dzambuling. We live in Dzambuling.

(86:47) If you've studied the 37 pile mandala, coming up soon at Diamond Mountain, you've heard about some of this stuff. When we do the 37 pile Mandala, which means that you have this set of metal rings and a big pile of rice. As you say this prayer, you put these piles of rice, symbolizing the different things you are describing in the prayer, until you have this wedding cake like thing that's full of rice. And on the top of it, you put all the wealth of gods and men right on the top of Mount Meru. You are building a pure world and using it to offer to whoever you are asking for teachings from.

You usually make the 37 pile mandala offering before a teaching, to request it. And then there's another way to do the same practice as a Thanksgiving offering for having just received.

The idea is that we think my human world doesn't look anything like what they've just described.

They're saying that my world, I'm going to catch myself. My world is really like this. Then from that kind of world I can purify it, filling it with all of these unique kinds of beings who are in the prayer, and then offer this pure world looking like this to the Lamas, to the teacher, to the Buddhas, whoever we're offering to.

It brings up questions. It's like, is this what a pure world really looks like?

How does our world, this blue sphere, the blue marble in the great space, how does that turn into this flat disc that's so much bigger?

I asked Google, how big is earth? How wide, what's the diameter? And it's like 7,600 something miles across. That's like an atom compared to what they've just described, how big our world is from their perspective. Our tendency would be, well, maybe we used to think the world was flat, because it sure looked like that the horizon is pretty straight. But then, finally, we were able to get a glimpse of it from far away and no. Now we know it's a sphere. Although technically when you look at that photograph, really in the photograph, it's also flat, isn't it?

But anyway, we somehow know that it's a sphere, it's not a disc. And yes, we agree it's blue and our sky is blue. But come on, is Mount Meru really Mount Everest, and the four continents like India, Russia, China, all the rest? Our linear mines trapped in our mistaken view want to make that explanation fit what we know is true. Do you see the mistake?

Geshela said, think of that angry yelling boss who's yelling at you. You're upset. They're a bad boss. And your coworker who doesn't like you is hearing that boss yell at you, and they're thinking, finally the boss got it right. What a good boss. Then the third person who just really could not care less is just like, who cares what's going on? How can the boss be good and bad and neutral all at the same time?

Part of us goes, of course they are.

But then if we explain ourselves, we would say, because there are different beings perceiving them. Then it's like, yeah, it's their goodness, their badness, their neutralness isn't coming from them, it's coming from who's experiencing them. And we still say, right, there's them there. I experience them according to way my seeds make me experience them.

If we take that a little deeper, we can say, no, wait. My seeds are making me experience them and it's making the them I am experiencing. Which is a little different. It's the difference between Mind Only School and Lower Middle Way and Higher Middle Way.

There's a boss there that's neither good or bad from their own side, versus my mind seeds ripening make me the boss and exactly what am experiencing about them happening, now and now, and now and now and now and now.

Same applies to our world.

Is it like Master Vassubandhu described or is it like we now know it because of science?

We want to say one or the other. It's a diamond deal, isn't it?

What's our world really?

Whatever our seeds are ripening us to see it as.

Oh, so it really is a blue marble spinning in space.

No, that's what our seeds are making it be for us. And it's real. But it's not really that. Do you see?

It's real in that it's happening and it's a valid experience, but it's not real because our belief in it being real means, So see? It's from it like that because that's how I see it.

Like the boss who's really there, just good or bad, according to how I see it.

Same with whether our world is how Master Vasubandhu described it, or how we believe it's been described to us by science.

It's not one or the other. And it's not a third thing. It's blank.

It is a thing, and it's blank. It's a blank thing, because it's a ripening of our own mind movement.

(94:49) When they describe a world that's come into being like this, Master Vasubandhu, apparently if we were to ever study chapter 5, in chapter 5 he's describing in some detail what happens, what experiences happen after you come out of your direct experience of ultimate reality for the first time.

Geshela said, and so when you read that chapter, you know that here's somebody who has experienced that directly. I like that. Anyway.

Part of that experience is to see how the world was made, and what the world is really like. To see the emptiness and dependent origination of the world. It's not that, oh, it means it really is like Master Vasubandhu said. But it really is empty and blank. So it can be what it is for us, but not really. And it can be what it is for him, but not really. So that we can experience directly its profound dependence.

Out of that profound dependence, the pure world that we are projecting, apparently the closer it will be to that 37 pile mandala that we've been offering to Buddhas. It's like, wait, then, wait, wait but…

It's just helpful.

When we as humans perceived and experienced our world as flat, our seeds were ripening us to have that experience, to have that perception, and to believe it, and to live amongst it very well. Maybe lots of people actually fell off the edge of that world. I don't know. And then seeds shifted in the minds of beings and somebody developed the ability to see far away.

Then somebody developed the ability to track how the planets go, and they came to this new conclusion about what was going on. People's seeds were ripening differently so that a whole different understanding of our world came into being.

Then those seeds continued to grow and technology ripened the extent to which somebody actually got to look back and see, son of a gun. It's really not flat.

It was a shift in all of our seeds when that happened the first time. The first guy who really went around just went in orbit. Who is that? John Glenn? I was just a little kid when that happened. But it had never happened before then. Before we already believed the earth was round and it had. It has been proven by physics and science, but it has never actually been experienced by somebody–until him. And it didn't shake the world. He didn't come down saying, wow, I really saw that the earth is really round. But all of our seeds had shifted, you see?

Same with our being. Our whole reality, our whole humanity. Seeds are shifting, shifting, shifting.

How would we make the perception of our world be such that it could again be you just take your finger and go like this to the earth, and you have delicious food to eat.

If that's a good thing, it could only be a result of extraordinary kindness.

So as our vowed behavior improves, improves, improves, as we experience the yuck of our world, the obvious yuck of our world, and then it changes yuck of our world, and the pervasive yuck of our world, we're burning it off as we're interacting with the yuck of our world from greater wisdom and so greater kindness than we did before. We're planting new seeds through which everything is shifting. And we can and will eventually make the seeds necessary to find ourselves as a being living in a paradise world. The only way it can come about is through planting the seeds of extraordinary kindness. Kindness born of wisdom. Which is why we're studying all of this.

Okay, so that's class six.

I have a diagram that was trying to just give us a glimpse of what these discs are like.

I tried to photograph it and then my computer wouldn't open the photograph, so I couldn't get a file to share with you. I looked through my files and all of this, I have in hard copy, but not in computer file. So sorry, I just have to show it to you. Really old fashioned technology. You'll see it if you do the Diamond Mountain program, you'll learn it.

I'm going to show you just the top part first, and I can't do it and see it at the same time.

This is the wind disc. How the water and gold are so much smaller than it. This is not to scale some science person. If you could do it to scale, my guess is this thing in the middle would be like a pencil dot, which wouldn't be helpful.

Now let's go up. In the middle is Mount Meru with the seven mountains around it. Then way outside is that outer mountain range.

Really, there's nine mountains, because Mount Meru is one. Then the seven rings, and then the ninth ring.

Not the ninth ring, it's the eighth ring, but it makes some nine mountains.

Then way out here are the different continents with their two side continents. Can you see?

So you don't need any of this for your homework or quiz, it's just for interest.

The 37 Pile Mandala Offering Prayer

Then, because we still have a little bit of time, I'd like to read you that 37 pile mandala prayer.

Maybe you haven't all heard it.

They're trying to start like an annual mandala festival, mandala prayer festival.

It's a merit making practice to offer the 37 mile pile mandala where you build it and then you do a repeat, repeat of the seven pile mandala that we say that's our, Here's the great Earth.

You do it with a high level of intention for a specific result. And then you offer it to a powerful karmic object.

You can assign yourself, I'm going to do a hundred repetitions before Christmas time, or something, a accumulating merit practice. Someone had the idea, let's get a lot of people knowing how to do this and then one time a year, either get together online or together and just do everybody together, do hundreds of thousands of mandala offerings.

We could stop climate change, we could do all kinds of amazing things, but we all have to learn how to do it first. Yeah. So anyway, if it's something that you're interested in, they're doing an abbreviated teaching of it at the five Houses program. You can ask those ladies to give a more in depth if you want, or I can do it too. So let me read you the prayer. Just listen, there's nothing on your homework from this, not too worry, just for fun, okay? It's called the long Mandala offering.

Here is the mighty ground of gold. That's what that means.

Here is the surrounding outer wall of mountains. That's what the Sanskrit meant.

In the center is Summit, King of mountains

To the east is Great Body

To the south is Dzambu

Body and Greatbody,

Oxtail and the Second,

Moving and the High Path,

Sound of Terror and its Mate.

Here is the Jewel Mountain,

The Tree of Wishes,

The Cow that gives

Whatever you want;

Crops that grow themselves.

Here is the precious Wheel,

The precious Jewel,

The precious Queen,

The precious Chancellor,

The precious Elephant,

The precious Horse,

The precious General,

The goldmine of the Vase.

Here is the Lady posing lovely,

The Lady of garlands,

The Lady of song,

The Lady of dance,

The Lady of flower,

The Lady of incense,

The Lady of lamps,

The Lady of perfume.

Here is the Sun,

Here is the Moon,

The jeweled Parasol,

The Banner of Victory.

Here in the middle

Are all the riches

Of gods and men;

Excellent, total,

All there is;

Totally pure,

Exquisite.

All this I offer

To my kind and holy

Root and lineage Lamas,

And especially

Do I present this Paradise

To my Lama, Lobsang

Lord of the Able,

Keeper of the Diamond

And to His angel retinue.

Give in to Your compassion,

And for the sake of

Every living being

Accept my offering,

Accept and grant your blessing to me.

Idam Guru ratna mandalakam niryatayami.

Which means accept these, this precious mandala and bless my mind. So each of those different things that are being offered have a different pile of rice that you put. And they have different meanings and purposes and places, and it's a fun practice. If you like hands-on ritual, it's fun to do so.

[Class Dedication]

Okay, thank you again for the opportunity to share.

Class 7: The Lives of Hell Beings

1 May 2025

Link to Eng Audio: ACI 8 - Class 7

Link to SPA Audio: ACI 8 - Class 7 - SPA

Vocabulary Class 7

NYEL WA “NYALWA” hell

TSA NYEL GYE hot hells

Vajrasana (sk) diamond seed

DORJE DEN (tib) the seed of the diamond

Bodhgaya the place in India where Siddharta got enlightened)

yogena (sk) a measurement of length

YANG-SU revive, to fix/repair/renew again

TIK NAK black line

DUN JOM to collect and destroy (gather and smash hell)

NGU-MBU to scream

NGU-MBU CHENPO great screaming

TSAWA heat

RABTU TSAWA extreme heat

NAR ME avichi (sk) no torment (hell of no respite)

DRANG NYEL GYE 8 cold hells

NYE KORWAY NYELWA nearby/adjacent hells

NYITSEWAY NYELWA tiny little part hell (partial hell)

All right, so for the recording, welcome back. We are ACI course 8 class 7. 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]

Comment + Q&A for recent Diamond Way 5 Houses Retreat

(7:12) I'd like to comment a little bit on what I came to understand seems to be Geshe Michael's plan going forward. I'm not actually sure I have it right, but it's much more clear to me now than it was before that retreat. So I just thought to share a little bit.

We've seen that they have set forth these prerequisites for being able to be qualified to receive the Diamond Way from Geshe Michael, whenever he ends up doing it, right? First he said these four classes, courses. And then he said, well, probably it's going to be two more and then, right? So that's how it goes.

But for us to be prepared, whether it's four or whether it's six, or whether all of a sudden it's three, the preparation was get those particular ACI courses done, homeworks, quizzes, certificates.

I thought I saw it was course 1, 3, 5, 6, and 7. But then most recently I saw it's 1, 2, 3, 5, and 6. So if I were in somebody's shoes, I would insist that I do 7 anyway. And the reason is is that when you get your highest yoga tantra initiation, you get Bodhisattva vows, whether you want them or not—of course you want them. But whether you know anything about them or not. And as we learned in course 7, there's a lot about them that we want to know so that we can effectively keep them once we get them. So I'm talking to the choir as they say, you've all done your course 7 and you did it beautifully. So hooray.

So then I heard Geshe Michael say that you'll get a version of Diamond Way from him. And then he said, if you really want to master it and learn the details, then find yourself a qualified personal teacher. So maybe Geshe Michael is our personal teacher. But when he and Lama Christie gave initiation to our group there were a hundred somewhat people. And with a hundred people, he and Lama Christie could not be available for everybody for the crises, the questions. They told us in class, don't come to us. Take it to the debate ground. Like your questions, your concerns, your problems, debate them out.

So if he's going to have thousands of tantric students, we're not going to be able to get an answer from him. So it does make sense that you want to cultivate another level of Lama. And my guess, I don't know for sure, this is just my supposition that as this is all being prepared, there will be teachers chosen, provided, for my guess for different areas of the world to be there involved in the initiation so that students will have a connection with that one. My guess it's going to be more than one.

So that would be the one to grow your connection with. The one that's going to be nearby, speak your language, et cetera.

And then, so all that said, I want to encourage you to be able to be accepted into Geshe Michael's Tantra group. It's not a guarantee that we will be, whether we've done it all. I jumped through all the hoops and we still don't get it. It could happen because it's all karmically driven, correct?

So yes, we have all these prerequisites, but the underlying prerequisites is going to be: keep your commitments, keep your book, study, serve and purify, make merit. That will increase the likelihood of when you want that positive result, that's the thumbs up you're in. Whatever that means, it'll be more likely to be a thumbs up.

And then he said, and if you want to learn the details, find yourself a teacher who's trained in the details. So in a similar way that the Lam Rim teaching, Staircase House teaches the material, those who've done Lam Rim and have done some ACI, you see the difference. Lam Rim is effective. The ACI is these details of how it all works.

Diamond Way can be taught similarly, here's the experiences, here's how you do it, go do it. And there's the Diamond Way taught, here's what you do and here's why and here's how. Here's how you help somebody else do it that way too.

It takes the ritual and dissects why the ritual has become the ritual. Because it's all about seed planting right from the beginning all the way to tantric enlightenment.

If one wants that detail of Diamond Way practice and training, it also trained you to become a Diamond Way teacher of others. And I don't know whether or not he will include that aspect in this big group that he's giving tantra to or not. So when we start Tantra, it's like, I don't want to be a Tantra teacher. If we all did that, there would be no more Tantric teachers. And if we all did the Lam Rim version of Tantra, it would die out. So somebody's got to teach it. And so karmically, the way you really get it is by sharing it with somebody else. And to learn how to do that properly then is a great opportunity, not a burden, a great opportunity.

So just be cooking it. And if you get this inspiration, then again you want to cultivate a relationship with someone who's been trained in that way so that when you're ready, you have someone you can ask, will you train me in that way?

And very likely they will have a set of prerequisites also. And very likely we would say to him, I have my initiation from Geshe Michael. And they would very likely say, that's great, but we need to do it again. Because of the power of the connection that you make with this other teacher. So I'm encouraging you to stay on track for Geshe Michael's Diamond Way entry. And I'm just spilling the beans that Samati and I are trained to train people in how to train people. So I'll leave it there. It's not meant as a hint, it's not. I am just saying. So anyway. I do encourage you to get it from Geshe Michael. I guess what I'm saying is, but maybe don't stop there. Okay.

(17:25) Alrighty. So the other thing I wanted to do this evening was just give you the opportunity to, like if there are still questions, concerns in your mind, in your heart, either about this Diamond Way thing or about the five houses, I'm happy to sort out as much or little as I can, actually before we go into in this class. Because I think it's important since it's fresh, having just finished that retreat. Anything you need straightened out or clarified that I can help with? Yes, Joana.

[Joana: I really had trouble with the thought that I have to decide actually. I understand that there's a lot of things, that it grew so much. So I understood all of that. But on the other hand, Geshe Michael also said that we should try to master all of them. Yet we shall decide and just master one to get further. So it's somehow in my mind, the kind of opposite things. And I can't really, actually in my heart, I don't want to decide. I don't know how to go.]

Yeah, I'm thinking that a way to look at that would be less in the sense of I myself will stick myself in one of these boxes to master it. And rather than thinking of it that way, think I am on track to master all of them. And then which one would be the most fun for me to share with someone, share with others? Which one would be the most interesting, or which one do I seem to have a natural affinity for so that I'd be able to share it with others? Or which one would be the hardest for me to share with others, because then that I would have to work really hard to share it with others easier? So thinking of it in that way, it really isn't so much this'll be my specialty and I really won't study the others. Because we need to know all of them in order to be able to zoom in on somebody who says, I learned best in meditation. And then it's like, how do you teach them the details of the ACI by way of a guided meditation as opposed to a lecture?

And if that seemed challenging and interesting to you, then Samadhi House would be the one that you say, I'll help develop Samadhi house by being an experimenter, or by taking a course and seeing how I might create an ACI 2 two by guided meditations. Same for the other ones somehow.

So not so much what you're going to specialize in, but as in how do I want to teach it to others. Plain talking head lecture? Classics House. Experientially, lerung through stories, through meditation, through retreat? Frankly, I just don't quite get it. I don't see how you can teach the details of this material without being a talking head first. And then, let's go meditate on it. Some of us have done that together. Three days of talking head and then five days of deep exploration in meditation. That works pretty well. Yeah, maybe that'll help.

[Joana: Well, I have another question to that, if I may. So with the Lam Rim, this is the fun part. So for me personally, to talk to people and try to make a bridge to this concepts and these thoughts and really try to help them on a daily problem basis. But then I think that I have started so late with the Lam Rim, so Geshe Michael had been teaching many, many years already. So I missed a lot of that and I don't feel like I will ever catch up with what I have missed. So I wonder if we go to Staircase House, for example, how to be able anyway to teach what we haven't heard ourselves. So we could read the freedom in the palm of our hand. I tried, it's not just no experientially talking to people.]

Right, right. If I were doing that, I would assign myself the task to go back and listen to all those Lam Rim recordings.

Yeah. Right. Good. Nice. Anything else?

[Olga: Sometimes I'm a little bit confused because I think that I'm a lot to study. Then I get confused how to keep on track, because yeah, how to keep a track. Because I have to do the ACI system, then Lam Rim, then I did DCI and academic sessions and I'm like, oh my God. And this new thing, what I'm going to do with my ACIs?]

Right, right. Yeah, I would suggest that we prioritize what we're going to make sure we do really, really well. And then the other stuff, you're in it and you kind of go along for the ride. Yeah.

[Olga: Thank you. Yeah.]

Anything else?

[Joana: I have another question. You just said that you have you and Lama Sumati, you are trained in training people how to train people.

So is this some different kind of course or training that you can provide to enable? Because now we are studying and we are more in the role of a student, but to teach and train others, it needs something more than that.]

Yeah, yeah, no, what I meant by that is that we properly completed the 18 Diamond Way courses from Diamond Mountain, which is like a tantric college training. You know how His Holiness will do a public initiation versus the initiations he probably gives when he gives them at Tantra College? Lam Rim versus ACI. Right? So my guess is there'll be that kind of differentiation of what Geshela is going to be sharing. You get the same seeds planted by the initiation. But what to do with them? That training, what we received in those years at Diamond Mountain is more complete than what's taught in the Tibetan tantric colleges according to Geshe Michael, who went to one. I don't know if he went the whole time, but what he saw that they were teaching is not.. It's small compared to what he prepared for us in those 18 Diamond Way courses.

So it really is extraordinary what's available. It takes up two shelves of material that's been translated into English, just waiting, just waiting. But it's hard, and it‘s time consuming, and it's, it's hard cognitively and it's hard emotionally and worth every instant, but not for everybody as it appears to turn out since Geshe Michael is now saying, yeah, I'll give Diamond way after all. But not the way he did it before. Which is available through somebody else, right? But he's not saying it's not valuable that other way.

[Joana: And then he also, I'm getting confused with the ACI teacher training. So on one hand I started to share what we got from you, and I try to stick as close as I can to our class materials. But then I think that maybe we are not allowed to do that with people who really want to go with the path. Maybe we should advise them to go to those certified teachers and it's somehow.. And then I wonder if we go for one of the other houses, for example, and we are supposed to share what we know, but there is no teacher trainings for those things. So on what level can we really go with a clear conscious in keeping our commitments and vows to not make any mistakes and sharing what we have?]

Yeah, that's a great point. When Geshela was first sharing what came to become the 18 ACI courses, he was already saying, share these with other people, share these with other people. Even though they had just started. So whoever he was talking to didn't even necessarily have the whole big picture. And he would say, share it the way it was given to you. So in a way you‘d be the parrot for what you heard. Which for me meant I made written transcripts of the recordings and then I didn't read them, I delivered them. But I just delivered what he taught. So I always said, I'll share it with you verbally. I'm not teaching anybody. I can just share what's been given to me. So I think it's going to be similar with these five houses, is that whatever we have received, we're supposed to turn around and somehow share it without adding our own take, without saying, this is my own take.

And yeah, we'll get some things wrong. But that apparently is overshadowed by the attempt to sgare, turn the wheel, just let the Dharma wheel turn. And then it's only been recently what the last 10 years that they've been doing the teacher training, because as ACI grew and people were sharing it, some problems happened. And then those problems, the responsibility for the problems fell back onto the ACI organization, and all of a sudden it's like, oh my gosh, we actually have resources in that organization that are now susceptible. So if you don't have resources, you don't have to worry about somebody suing you for telling, teaching them something wrong. But now all of a sudden, so now we need these criteria and these standards.

But Geshela still says, you want to teach this stuff in your own living room to people? Don't call yourself an ACI teacher, call yourself an ACI studier, and I'll help you here, I'll help you see it. Just don't call yourself an ACI teacher. And then if you want to be an ACI teacher for whatever reason, then you need to get certified. So that there's this protection of everybody else who is an ACI teacher and the protection of the organization.

So you don't have to have a certified ACI teacher hat to share this stuff. You just be careful how you say what you're doing. Right. Maybe that'll help.

[Joana: Thank you. ]

But for sure you wouldn't share course 15 if you haven't taken it yet, right? Yeah. Good. Okay.

All right. So I'm meaning to try to encourage us all. I hope it came across that way.

Class 7 – The Lives of Hell Beings

(32:48) Let's go into this course 8 class 7. Course 8 you recall is death in the realms of existence. And we've been talking about the realms of existence. And today's class, class 7, we're talking about the lives of hell beings. So it's a terrible, terrible class. Nobody wants to hear it. And when we're done, it's like, oh, oh God, pardon me. Just, I don't know, I've had students say, I don't know if I can go on with this course, that was terrible. So sorry. But do it and do your homework anyway and do your quiz anyway and do it with love in your heart. Okay, so I need to share screen.

The 8 Hot Hells

(34:17) So the subject topic, the object subject, I don't want to use that word. The topic of consideration for this class is NYEL WA. It's spelled with an E, but when Geshela pronounces it, it sounds more like with an A, NYAL WA.

NYEL WA means hell. The reason we're talking about the hell realms is because in the Abidharmakosha, Master Vasubandhu is describing suffering, the truth of suffering. And we kind of lose that as he's been going through form realm, formless realm, desire realm. It sounds more like an encyclopedia of existence, but here's why.

Because that encyclopedia of existence of Samsara is all suffering. And if we thought my suffering, my human personal suffering, which frankly this human life has been tiny suffering as much as I woe as me, it's tiny compared to a lot of other humans, let alone these beings in the lower realms.

So if we are a good practicing Buddhist and we think my own suffering is the worst that it gets, we can be a good practicing Buddhist. But we're not going to make that transformation to the kind of being who can help others, all others stop their suffering. Because our suffering will only know about the suffering of a wee little bit.

So Master Vasubandhu is pointing out all these different kinds of sufferings that in fact exist. But the difficulty is, as humans, we only perceive human, other human world and animal world. And that's only two out of all these other kinds of beings and kinds of realms that exist. It's like, well, I don't want to know about them because if I don't know about them, they don't exist and then there's fewer beings for me to help.

And it's like, unfortunately, it's not whether you know them or not, it's whether you project them or not.

Well, how can I project something? I don't know. It would make a good debate. So thank you very much, Master Vasubandhu, you've told me about something I didn't know about before that now I know about that makes the suffering so much bigger.

And I might go, I wish you hadn't told me. Whereas my wisdom would say, oh, thank you for telling me of the kinds of suffering that are possible by way of projections, because then number one, there are more beings for me to help.

And number two, I realize how it is that my own behavior could in fact be creating the projection of my me in that kind of suffering. In which case I'll do everything I can to avoid that kind of behavior.

So let's learn about the hell realms.

NYEL WA means hell.

TSA NYEL GYE means the eight—GYE—kinds of hot hells.

TSA means hot. Hot hell.

So they say there are 8 kinds of hot hells, and actually we're going to hear that there are eight kinds of cold hells too.

In the Abhidharmakosha it gives an actual location for these hell realms. And they say that they are located directly below vajrasana, I'm sorry, I didn't write those down. Hang on. Where shall I put it? It's like I need it in a different place.

That's Sanskrit. It's not Sanskrit for the hot hells. Vajrasana means the diamond seat.

So it's the name for the place where a being finally reaches their Buddhahood. So it's the name for the place where a Master Siddharta sat down on that pile of kusha grass at the base of the Bodhi tree and said, I'm not getting up until I'm fully enlightened. And that place became vajrasana. It's Bodhagya. I'm not sure if there's an H in there. Bodhagya in India.

In Tibetan, it's called DORJE DEN, the seed of the diamond.

So it doesn't mean when you reach your Buddhahood, you're going to have to have fly to Bodhgaya to do it. It's wherever you are when that transformation happens. That's the seat of the diamond.

For our world, Shakyamuni‘s seat of the diamond is at the base of that great tree in India and underneath that are these hell realms of our world.

They're like a huge chamber, like a huge column stretching down below that location. They say they are 20,000 yogena.

I think it's Sanskrit, not Tibetan. Yogena is a measurement of length, and I don't know what it actually is. But these hell realms are 20,000 yogena across, which is interpreted to mean 90,000 miles across, which is 145,000 kilometers across, which I think that's bigger than our earth.

So don't let your rational mind go, wait, that's too big to be underneath India.

20,000 yogenas wide, 320,000 yogenas deep, so a whole lot deeper than wide.

And then these eight hells are stacked one on top of each another.

So here's one, and then it's on top of another and it's on top of another. I just got off my page, right? Stacked like coins.

The one that's closest to earth is the least awful of the eight hells. And each time you go down, the suffering doubles and the length of time you're there doubles. So it's terrible. And then double terrible for twice as long. And we go down eight times. Well eight levels, not eight times, seven times.

So some of us probably were in a religious tradition before that talked about hells and it seemed like, ah, they're just trying to scare us. There can't really be places like that. Or we just rejected it flat out, I don't want any part of that. And then here we are back to another tradition that seems so much wiser and oh my gosh, they sound exactly the same, maybe even worse as how the Christian tradition teaches it. I don't know about the Jewish tradition, I don't know about other traditions, just the Christian.

So we're going to learn about them from the top down.

1st Level of Hell—Revive Hell

The first level of a hell realm, it's called YANG SU.

YANG means again. We'll come across it in other places where we say YANG YANG something or other. It means again and again.

SU means to fix, to repair, to renew.

So YANG SU means revive.

Like you're sinking, you're so tired, you got to go lay down and you take a nice coffee and oh, you're revived.

So this whole hell realm existence is such that from the bardo, you've gone through the karmic shift that was dead, to the karmic shift that was being in between, to the karmic shift of being the next whatever you are. And it happens, in the hell realms

you are born complete. Remember the miraculous birth? You're born miraculously in a hell realm. That seems oxymoron, but we understand it means you just appear there. No growing up there.

So in YANG SU, the moment you're there, your experience is of this screaming, confusion, hot and burning.

So all of these hell realms are a version of hot and burning. In this first level, you are there, everybody there is screaming and struggling, and you grab the closest thing you can get. It'll be some kind of a club and you're beating everybody off because they're beating you. And everybody's beating everybody. They're all burning hot and miserable and you beat, you beat, you beat. And then all of a sudden everybody passes out from being so beat up. And then a voice comes from afar, revive, YANG SU, and it's happening again.

You're hot screaming, bludgeoning each other. It's awful. There's nobody making you do it. It's just the instant that projection starts, this is the projection of that kind of hell.

And clearly you are ripening terrible seeds and you are planting terrible seeds. Because you're trying to get some relief of your own suffering by contributing to the suffering of others. You're not thinking about it. There's no choice here. It's all propelled, propelled.

You don't die from that. Eventually you'll use up your seeds. I don't ever see how you can eventually use up your seeds if you're making them as fast as you're ripening them, frankly. But whatever the seed was that pushed you there, it's going to wear out eventually. It does end, but it's not that you die at the place and get some relief. It seems like you die, but then you revive and you're right back at it again.

(48:41) Geshela described the pain of the hell realms as there's a special kind of pain that we experience when we die from a human lifetime. That last final pain is terrible. And then they compare the hell realm being's pain to that multiplied infinitesimally. This indescribable kind of pain. And the fact that it never waxes and wanes.

Our worst pain will get worse and it'll get a little better. Finally, we'll fall asleep and we'll get some relief from it. It'll be right back as soon as you wake up.

But in a hell realm, there's none of that. It's just constant.

One day there is years of human lifetime. So they say typically at any of the different levels of a hell realm, you're there for millions of human lifetimes. You're not comparing it because you don't have any awareness of human. But just for us to get an idea of how long something like this might last. It's a long time.

And a single moment of pain there is more than a whole lifetime of pain that we can experience as a human. And that's the lightest level of hell.

Shall I go on? Anybody want to run away? I know. I don't want to hear. Don't make me hear. I'm so sorry. Don't make me say it.

2nd Level Hell—The Black Line Hell

The next level, TIK NAK.

TIK means a line and NAK means black. So the black line hell.

So in this level, next one down, there are actually beings there who are called hell guards, and there're the beings there who are the hell beings.

So hell guards are hell beings, but they have this weird good karma, bad karma thing going on that they're these powerful beings who do these awful cruel things to the beings there.

And thinking of it, it's like, I guess it's better to be a hell guard than a black line hell being, once you hear about it. But it can't possibly be better because you're making the seeds for your own black line hell realm being, oh my gosh. But you don't have the intellect to be able to say, what am I doing here?

So there's hell guards. And the instant you find yourself in this black line hell, these powerful beings, the hell guards, they throw you on this hot burning ground and they put hot chains across your body like throwing you on a barbecue.

And the hot things leave these little lines, right, multiple lines, and then other hell guards come. And you know how whatever tool they have, they cut you up along those lines and the pieces of your body go over here and go over there and go over there. But the thing is you can't die.

And just because your arm is over there doesn't mean you stop feeling it as your arm. Which I guess as a human, if you get a amputation, you can't feel your arm anymore though sometimes you can't. But in this, it's like you are these pieces of flesh all over the place and you're having the pain of having been cut up. And then you're all cut up, you've got all this suffering, and then the pieces all come back together and they do it again. And it just happens repeatedly, repeatedly, repeatedly being cut, cut, cut. Start again. Awful, awful for you and awful for the hell guard because it's going to happen to them.

3rd Level Hell—Collect & Destroy Hell

The next level down, DUN JOM.

DUN means to collect and JOM means to destroy.

So to collect and destroy.

Geshela calls it gather and smash hell.

So this is another level of hell where there are hell guards and then the hell beings that are there. And the hell guards like corral the hell beings into this, what they call it, a blind canyon, a canyon with no outlet. And the two walls of the canyon are these big huge rock mountains that are shaped like animals, like the top of the mountains, looks like an animal head, and the different mountains are different animals. And you're pushed into this canyon and then those mountains come together and everybody gets crushed. And then you're there again being pushed into a canyon, different animal heads, crushed, again, again, again, again, again.

So hopefully you're thinking what kind of karma would make that versus what kind of karma would make the barbecue hell realm, versus what kind of karma would make the bludgeoning hell realm?

Just with the idea of carmic seeds being similar is enough to get some idea of what specific deeds could plant the seeds that would grow into this whole kind of reality. Like butchering a live animal, a live being, or killing lots, different kinds of animals. That's what's going to make the mountain heads be different. Cruelty and violence as a solution to something. We'll make the first level hell.

And then when we were studying, when was it that we were studying what kind of behaviors make what kind of results, it was animal realm we were saying. With the hell realm, any of the 10 non virtues done with a full path of action, or we could say with the four chains, when we learned about the chains in Bodhisattvahood, it's like it wouldn't necessarily have to be the physical cruelty that we're receiving to create a hell realm. But any non virtue done, because you're going to do it to get what you want.

And you'll clearly identify the person you're going to do that deed to.

And you have no feeling that that deed is wrong.

And you go do it and you're happy you did it.

And you do it again and you're rejoicing about doing it.

It doesn't just have to be killing or hurting. It could be lying. And if that's the seed that pops at the moment of the life before‘s death, it could land us in any one of these hell realms.

Mostly hell realms come from cruelty, violence, hatred, anger, but not only.

4th Level Hell—Screaming Hell

All right, so the next level down from gather and smash is NGU-MBU.

NGU-MBU is the word for scream. So they call this level screaming hell.

The hell word's not here. It would be NGU-MBU NYEL.

My guess is there's screaming going on in all of them, but for some reason this one is characterized by screaming. And the reason it is that in this level, the grounds of the hell are iron and red hot. They've been that everywhere but worse here. And you're always naked on this red hot steel where there's nowhere to go that's not like that.

So this one in particular, you can't stand still because it hurts so much. And so you're running and moving, trying to get relief, and of course your feet are burning up and then your ankles are burning up and you're running on the stubs and they're burning up and you get to where you're running on your knees, and you get to where you're running on your hands, everything's just burning, burning, burning, burning until all of you burns up and then guess what? You regenerate and it's happening again. So just this constant burning and running trying to, you get one foot off, the other one's down, ah. Just constant, incessant, for twice as bad and twice as long as the one before, which is twice as bad and twice as long as the one before.

5th Level Hell—Great Screaming Hell

The next one down is NGU-MBU CHENPO, which means great screaming.

How as if that one's not bad enough? This one's worse.

The pain is worse. The hot is hotter.

The time that you're there before you burn off your bad seeds is twice as long as before.

6th Level Hell—Heat Hell

The next one, TSAWA. TSAWA NYEL WA.

TSAWA means heat. So again, it's like, well, they're all hot, but this one's called heat hell. And here you find yourself in a little steel hut without an ability to get out, like no doorway, no windows. And the place heats up and you just roast and you're again running around pushing on the wall trying to get out and it just gets hotter and hotter and hotter until I guess you're cooked. And then of course it starts over, and you're uncooked and you're being roasted again, again and again.

7th Level Hell—Extremely Hot Hell

Number seven is RABTU TSAWA.

RABTU means extremely heat, supremely hot hell realm. And this one you find yourself in this steel hut, but you can see that there's another room. So you're in room, it's so horribly hot, you're roasting. So you go to the other room hoping for some relief and guess what? It's hotter. And so you look back and go, well, it wasn't quite so bad over there. And you go back and guess what? It's hotter still. Until you roast and die. Well, you don't die. And then it starts all again.

8th Level Hell—Hell Without Respite

And lastly, thank you, the eighth level hell, worst one, deepest one, NAR ME it's called.

NA means torment and ME means none. So it's the hell realm called no torment.

And it's like I think somebody's misunderstanding something here because it's supposed to be the worst torment, and that's what they mean by NAR ME. In Sanskrit it's called avichi, which means nowhere.. The torment is never less.

What it means is the worst torment ever, and it never lets up.

Somehow NAR ME is supposed to give that connotation.

It's the worst suffering a conscious being can experience. So don't even try to imagine it. Just recognize that it's possible by projection.

In this realm, this hell level, the instant the being appears there, this hot gas flame is directed at them and they turn into a little incandescent filament.

Do you remember incandescent light bulbs? They had the two little things and then this wire in between them. And if you could look inside the light bulb when it was on this little filament between would be glowing so bright, you really couldn't look at it and it would leave an after image on your eye, which is why they made them all frosted so we wouldn't blind ourselves. If you were touch that it would sear you.

It's so hot that incandescent heat. And that's just a light bulb in the human realm.

So it's indescribably worse to be this avichi hell being who is this incandescent filament of heat. And they say that the only reason it's possible to know that that incandescent filament is a living thing is that it moans.

So you're there, you get blasted, you're just moaning in pain while you're this incandescent filament. And then from time to time, apparently that hot gas flame goes again. If it might be that it was cooling off a little bit, it gets heated right back up again.

Hell of no respite is how Geshehla describes it later.

It's the longest life, it's the worst hell life.

With that, let's take our break. I'm pausing the recording.

The 8 Cold Hells

(67:15) Alright, next on my list is DRANG NYEL GYE.

GYE is eight, NYEL is hell, DRANG is cold.

So similar to there being the eight hot hells there are eight cold hells.

And they say these parallel the hot hells, but they're in a different location.

So we've got the hot hells under Bodhgaya and apparently the cold hells are under the Himalayas, like under Mount Everest, not specifically Mount Everest. But I don't know in my geography, which is puny, it's like a little bit north of Bodhgaya, a little bit north of the hot hells is the cold hells.

They're also stacked in this way and also have an increasing level of suffering and length of time.

The general idea in a cold hell is that the surface is all ice and you're naked, and you have no protection and nowhere to go. And there's no day or night, or more cold or less cold in any of the ones that you're in.

In the first one, it's cold enough that your skin blisters.

In the next one it's cold enough that your body splits open and the next one is cold enough..

They just get worse and worse. We know how miserable cold is, and a cold hell is just off the charts terrible. And the people there screaming and moaning and it just continues again and again.

Then there are hells called the NYE KORWAY NYELWA, NYE KORWAY means nearby or adjacent hells. So if we have this image of these hell realms are like a cylindrical, then maybe you're a hell being in the middle. But maybe you're a hell being out to the side, or maybe as you're wearing off your hell realm seeds, you're getting to the outside. I don't know.

But they say eventually you're going to find yourself at the periphery and suddenly a doorway opens, and the adjacent hells are outside wherever this doorway opens.

There's layers of them going out.

So going through, the first time the doorway opens, you find yourself, like there's a trench of embers there and you know that if you go into the embers you're going to get burnt up. But wherever you're in already has been so bad that they say, although you actually have a choice, you could stay or jump. You always jump.

And so you jump into this bed of embers and you go down to your knees apparently. And then of course you get burnt up to your knees, and then your reform and they get burnt up again. And you're struggling to get out of it and that at some point you do get to the edge of this adjacent hell, and I don't know if it's another doorway or what, but then you find yourself next up to your neck in a swamp of corpses and creatures that are eating at you.

I mean the corpses aren't, they're just scary. But the creatures are eating at you and you're struggling, struggling to get out of that.

So the first one, you were knee deep, this one, you're neck deep.

You finally get free of that and there's a road. And so you get out onto this road and then the surface of the road is made of razor blades with their sharp edge up. And you're running on this road of razor blades getting slashed and cut.

The next level is there's trees suddenly on either side and you hope that you'll get some respite by getting to the tree. And you do actually go to the tree and the trees leaves fall on you and they're like knives. So they slash you all up in this way. Then that goes on for a while and you see another tree and it looks like if I just climb that tree, I can get out of these daggers. And so you start to climb this tree and its bark becomes like razor blades. But you climb to the top of this tree and think, oh, finally and then great big raven like birds come and pack your eyeballs.

Then to get rid of, to avoid that, you climb back down the tree and now there's more razor blades. You're going back down being cut all up. Everywhere you turn that you think you're going to get some relief, it's just awful yet again.

Geshela never said how that finally ends, but it must finally end. Because these adjacent hells, finally you get to the last one. Then he said there's one more kind of hell.

NYITSEWAY NYELWA.

NYITSEWAY means a tiny little part of. So he calls this a partial hell. And by that term what they mean is in these other hell realms, the instant you show up there, there's a whole bunch of beings that are there suffering in a similar way.

When you get to the deeper ones, you're the only one. But this neat, say this partial hell, it is more personalized misery in the sense that it could be finding yourself in a terrible situation that you share with a couple of other actual individuals that are individualized. Like in your general purpose hell realms it's not like hell being Bob and Mary, it's just beings and all the beings are having the same experience in this partial hell realm.

You're there with Like some people maybe you knew or knew. And that what's going on in this hell realm is just terrible and there's nothing you can do about it.

Geshela‘s example was imagine you've been in a terrible plane crash onto a deserted island and there's nothing on the island but rock and the burning airplane. And you know that even if you get away from the burning airplane far enough to survive the burning airplane, you're just going to starve or roast from the sun. And if you stay in the burning airplane, you're just going to burn up.

So it's like there's no alternative. You're going to die and there's nothing to do but wait for it to happen.

He said that's just a puny example of what this particular kind of a hell realm is.

He says, it is not the kind of hell realm where you are a human person in a circumstance of life. That's like the worst you can imagine. He says that is not what this partial hell is about.

It really is a hell realm rebirth, but it's really uniquely different, more personalized, doesn't last as long it doesn't sound like, and doesn't seem nearly as terrible as the other ones. But somehow it is an actual reality of being in a really, really terrible dream that you can't do anything about.

How to Get to a Hell Realm

(77:07) So we would be wondering, how does a being get to a hell realm?

Where do those hell realms come from?

Do they really exist or are these just stories that motivate us?

If they do really exist, how do we stay out of one?

I throw in, how do I help get beings out of one once they're there?

Geshela didn't tell this story here, but there is this story I think in the Lam Rim, Buddha telling about one of his past lives as a hell realm being. And my guess it was one of the partial hells because of the circumstance, he finds himself pushing a cart full of rocks up a really steep hill. It's agonizingly hard work and he pushes it up, it takes him eons to get it up, and then all of a sudden he's at the bottom again, again, again, again.

One day he's pushing the cart up and he just happens to glance and he sees there's another guy pushing a cart full of rocks, and his heart goes, oh, I'm so sorry for that guy. He had this wee little spark of compassion for the other guy because of the pain that he was experiencing and poof, he was gone, right? His reality shifted.

When I heard that, it was like, oh, now I know what I need to do for hell beings, right?

If I could go to a hell realm, I would need to do something to get a wee little bit of compassion to arise in the mind of any one of those helpings and they would disappear in the instant.

So in your imagination, of course you can go to a hell realm and not get burnt up Because we are making it all up, right? And do something to get those hell beings to have some compassion. It's all in our imagination and it's planting some seeds so that maybe someday, as part of our Buddha being emanating everywhere to everybody, we will also be emanating to hell beings in our effort to get some compassion to arise in order for them to stop their hell realm.

Why wouldn't we be able to just go in there and drag them out?

Maybe we could see ourselves doing that. But would we necessarily be able to make them see that?

Their hell realm is their seeds.

If a Buddha could take our seeds, they would've done it. We would all be enlightened already. Maybe you are, I'm not.

So that tells me that as Buddhas we can't change anybody else's karma.

We can teach, we can show, we can guide, we can push, we can.., but we can't make them make a karma. We can't take their karma away.

All right.

(80:40) Geshela says the answer to these questions about where does hell come from and is it real is a life or death thing. To be able to understand that precisely is the difference between stopping creating them and continuing to plant seeds to be in one.

He explained reaching a hell realm can happen as quickly as three different thoughts, three different instances. (snaps her fingers 3 times) Is all it takes.

One ripening-dead, next ripening-bardo, in between, next ripening-hell realm.

We have heard that there are those deeds called the five, I'm blanking out, five heinous crimes is what it's usually called. But he's watered it down. What are those called? Five immediate misdeeds, where immediate upon death, the next immediate life is a hell realm. So you have a seed for one of those deeds. This life ends, your bardo ripens, your hell realm ripens. That fast.

It isn't a place you go to. It's a shift in projections.

Technically same as your grocery store. It isn't a place you go to, it's a shift in your projections. Feels very real, and it is real because it's a shift in our projections. Same for hell realms.

Master Shantideva, he has a part of his guide for the Bodhisattva‘s way of life where he is talking about hell realms and he must know the minds of his readers or listeners were somehow doubting or questioning. And he says, who do you think builds the hell? Some construction company that gets the permit and the plans, and goes and builds it? It's like, no. Our own mind builds the hell realm that we will be in. Our own mind builds the hell realm we come to know somebody else's in.

Our own seeds ripening, forcing us to interpret information in a given way.

Why in the world would we ever choose to interpret information as a hell realm?

It's not by choice is it?

It is by way of past behavior.

Which means by way of current behavior when that current behavior is our past behavior.

Yeah, seems to me when we are saying, what did I do to make this? What did I do to make that? It's a great question. But it seems more important to me to say, what do I need to do to make less of that? What do I need to do to make more of that, as opposed to how did I make such and such.

That's done, that's passed.

How do I create now and now and now what will be what I want in the future?

And when we get that right, we're not going to do things that create more hell realm. Unless all of a sudden we slide back into automatic pilot driven by ignorant selfishness, in which case we're at risk of planting seeds that don't seem so bad, that what left to grow and then be the projecting karma at the end of this life could throw us into the bardo that directs us into any one of these hell realms.

What do we do with that?

Number one, we just think all the ways that I've used any kind of cruelty or violence to get what I want or to avoid what I don't want, even just in this life thinking, did I ever smack a mosquito? Well, what if one of those seeds ripens, maybe I end up in that crushing hell. Did I ever, I don't know. Did people used to roast animals alive?

But you can just freeform think in teeny little ways, what kinds of things do we do as humans that if those seeds were to grow big enough and be the one that directs us into a lifetime, could show up as this life of a being who is beating and beating, beaten, or cutting and being all cut up, or being crushed or being cooked right?

We've got several different levels where we're being cooked and that's enough for us to recognize, okay, where are my subtle tendencies of thinking it's okay to hurt somebody else, to protect myself or to get what I want?

And then we are going to train ourselves to make different choices. And for those seeds that we figure, okay, I must have them, we're going to do our four powers, our 35 confession Buddha, our Vajrasattva, our Thousand Angels of Bliss, and use those practices that we come to be trained in to damage those seeds. Make them such that they can't grow bigger, make them such that the likelihood of them being the one that projects at the moment of death is reduced.

So we do have power over our possibilities of our future, not by just deciding I'm not ever going to be a hell realm being, but applying, keeping our vows and doing our four powers about old stuff and about any of new mistakes that we make, which we will as humans.

We'll get fed up with the ants crawling around on the counter and accidentally or not accidentally, we'll wipe them away and it's like, woo, I regret that.

Alright, so Geshela says, philosophically it's quite possible to go to a hell realm.

If we've ever seen ourselves being unkind to another, he just says unkind, which that could just be rude or that could just be stepping on somebody's toe by accident. That unkind is a whole lot scarier than beating somebody up or something like that.

Protection Behaviour—How to Avoid Going to a Hell Realm

So we want to act to avoid it. How do we act to avoid it? We take our refuge often, not just in words, in the understanding that me the other, the circumstance. All of this is ripening results of past deeds, opportunities to plant seeds in a different way.

I don't mean opportunity to plant or not plant. We are planting seeds. But an opportunity to choose a behavior to plant a seed that we'll be okay with having.

So we get refuge as a powerful act.

Applying our refuge again and again and again grows a state of mind that comes to behold to emptiness and dependent origination. What would be the word? Strongly enough that you would close the door to a lesser rebirth at all.

Animal realm, hungry ghost or hell realm.

There'll be a level of our path of preparation when our experience with intellectual understanding of the marriage of karma and emptiness is strong enough that even having seeds that could send us to a hell realm or lower realm, those seeds won't be able to be ones that.. Let me rephrase that.

Those seeds will also be colored by that understanding if they're the ones that are being the projecting karma. And when they're colored with that understanding, although they might've sent us to a hell realm because of the added influence of our understanding, they won't ripen a hell realm.

They may ripen a human rebirth that's terrible. But they will protect us from a lesser realm.

So refuge is the first protective behavior that keeps us out of a hell realm.

(92:40) Then taking vows. So we get refuge vows when we take refuge, but they're not really vows. We get refuge advices. The first vow level that we take are actually our five lifetime lay vows, or the one day vows, or ordained vows.

And then we have behaviors that we have agreed to avoid, mostly to avoid, in order to not make negative seeds. And as we understand, it's more powerful to avoid certain behaviors because you promise to do it than to just avoid those certain behaviors. It's good to avoid them, but to have vows to avoid them increases the power of the goodness.

And then as we are understanding the value of vows and we want more of them, we graduate to Bodhisattva vows as our Bodhichtta is growing.

And then eventually we move on to the Diamond Way vows as well.

So at any level, taking vows is going to protect us from lower realm rebirths. But it's not just taking the vow. We need to be keeping the vow. We need to be following the behavior that the vow states.

Again, most of them I'll avoid such and such. Some are I will...

And as we're getting to the Diamond Way vows, more of them are stated in the positive: I will do and such. Which is why they're so very difficult to keep. Okay, so.

So the moral to the story of this class is:

Fill your mind with kindness seeds no matter what.

Rip out past unkindness seeds, which we all have. We're not good, bad, worse, better, we have all been mistaken. So we have mistaken seeds.

Now we're having fewer of them. Fewer of them because our wisdom is growing.

Use your powers, your four powers of purification.

Use your vows as guidelines for behavior and reduce your chances of a hell realm, right down to impossible for you.

And then consider when you are saying your Bodhichitta prayer, when we're saying our refuge prayer, for the benefit of all beings. There are beings who are experiencing themselves in these horrible, horrible ways. And include them in your prayer of who it is that you will help stop suffering forever when you are Buddha you.

Don't have bad dreams. Have good dreams.

Some of us have studied that Lojong course. Do you remember?

Where that one Lojong master, as he was dying, he was praying to go to the hell realms. Please, I want to go to the hell realms. I want to help those hell realm beings.

And as he is dying, he's going, well, it doesn't seem like I can do it. All I can see is the paradise of a Buddha before me. He was like disappointed.

And so that says that at some point we ourselves can't be forced to ripen ourselves as a hell being. But apparently we can ripen ourselves as a being, can go to a hell realm and help serve the beings who are there.

I don't know. I don't know if that's so much my aspiration. Can't quite imagine. But how would we get the attention of a hell realm being to get them to have compassion for the other guy who's suffering just like them. If we could figure out how to do that for a hell realm being, we could probably figure out how to do that for another human. It's worth thinking about.

Alright, that's class 7.

Remember that person that we wanted to be able to help. You don't necessarily ever have to talk to them about hell realms, but we have learned something that we will use eventually to help them stay out of one. And that's an extraordinary goodness.

So please be happy with yourself and think of this goodness, like a beautiful glowing gemstone that you can hold in your hands.

Recall your own precious, holy being. See how happy they are with you.

Feel your gratitude to them, your reliance upon them.

Ask them to please, please stay close, to continue to guide you, help you inspire you, and then offer them this gemstone of goodness.

See them accepted and bless it and they carry it with them right back into your heart.

See them there. Feel them there. Their love, their compassion, their wisdom. It feels so good. We want to keep it forever and so we know to share it

By the power of the goodness that we've just done

May all beings complete the collection of merit and wisdom

And thus gain the two ultimate bodies

That merit and wisdom make.

So use your first exhale to send this goodness to that one person.

Then use your second exhale to send a gentle rain down into all of those hot hells.

And by the power of your goodness, the heat goes out and all those beings get relief and they all reach out and hug each other and poof hell realms are gone.

And use your third exhale to send that goodness into every existing being so that they all are influenced, such that they refuse to be unkind so that they don't recreate hell realms.

And may it be so.

Q&A

(102:05) Okay, we have a little extra time if there's questions about anything.

Yes, Claire.

(Claire) Thank you so much Lama Sarahni. Would I ask maybe some recommendations about four power purifications for hell realm seeds? If we have countless seeds from our previous lives, how better to make purifications for those seeds, which can be potentially create lower realms? Because for four powers we are instructed to do some precise moment when we did something wrong. But if we have collection from countless lifetimes how we can purify many ago or some better seed, how better the purify it.

(Lama Sarahni) Yeah. You know what, the 35 confession Buddha practice, how each one of those Buddhas whose names you say, says by saying my name, you purify a thousand eons of this kind of behavior? So you could look at that list and see how they are probably covering all the different kinds of karmas that could create all the different kinds of suffering realms. So one way would be, I'm going to do the 35 confession Buddha practice once a day for the next six weeks to purify all my past life's seeds that could create a hell realm, would be one way.

And I'm just, you decide six weeks, six years, six days, one day, a million times-you decide.

Another way would be to think through these different levels of hell and just brainstorm what kind of seed seeds might've been planted. If I was an animal being, might I have been making hell realm seeds while I was an animal? Probably yes.

And then you could say, okay, I can confess those lifetimes when I was the carnivorous animal and I crushed the skulls of the beings that I ate. And I wasn't mad about it. I was compelled to do it to save my life, but it still made seeds.

You could free associate and it would take a long time to think of all the different kinds of behaviors in all the different kinds of realms we've been to come up with how I've been unkind as a hungry ghost. How I've been unkind as an animal. How I've been unkind as a human, et cetera. And then set up some systematic method of your purification practice to set a criteria. I am going to do this many days worth of purification practice for all my past lifetimes as a hell being that hurt other hell beings.

It gets overwhelming in that way, which is why I think a 35 confession Buddha practice or Vajrasattva practice can be helpful. Because you can lump things together and see all the seeds in your heart, all the seeds forever having had any cruelty in any way, Vajrasattva is going to push that right out of me. And you don't have to remember when you were the the king of Xerxes and you starved all your subjects and then.. You don't need those specifics to purify from past lives.

Does that give some guidance? I know it just sounds too big, but it's not. It can be done.

(Claire) Sure. Thank you so much.

(Lama Sarahni) With Vajrasattva, they say once you've done a hundred thousand Vajrasattva mantras, you are clean. It takes a long time to do a hundred thousand Vajrasattvas, but it would give us a criteria. Right? Anything else?

And rejoice in all your kindness, rejoicing practice. Truly.

Luisa had a question in the chat and she was asking what if it is far for us difficult to believe in those hell realms so we don't feel yet compassion and renunciation?

(Lama Sarahni) Right. And don't believe just because you heard me say it. But rather keep it on the shelf as we further explore karma and emptiness and our keener awareness of how our experience is unique to us, driven by some influence that we've created in some way on our mind.

We'll reach a point where philosophically we'll understand the possibility of hell realms. And Geshela says, part of what you, he says, see. Part of what you know to be true coming out of your direct perception of emptiness is there are hell realms, there are hungry ghosts. Right? You will know it to be true then. Kind of implies we won't know it to be true until then.

Even when we prove it philosophically, we could very easily still have some doubt for a lot of other reasons. So yes, Luisa.

(Luisa) Thanks Lama for answering. In my case is what you say philosophically or logically, I can deduct that this is possible. But it generates a lot of doubt. The detail, the granularity of the description, and that there are so many levels. I don't know. I get a bit like if it's a fiction, fiction book is my feeling. I don't want to sound disrespectful, but I'm just being open and honest. And it happens to me not only with this, but also for example, with certain rituals that we do that I still don't understand. And then I feel, why to go in this granularity and in this detail if at the end they are empty. I don't know. I struggle with that. So it's supposed to give me more, boost both my renunciation and my wish or my commitment to change my behavior. But it's not. It's more like, whoa, this sounds a bit too much fiction or too much. I cannot connect is the feeling. It doesn't scare me in the sense that maybe true or cool. It's more like a feeling of, okay, I need to put it on the shelf. This is, yeah, I hope you understand what I mean.

(Lama Sarahni) I think I do. I hope I do. And I commend you for being honest enough to say, I don't connect with this teaching so much. And you're right to say, I'll just put it on the shelf for now. Geshela's answer to similar questions has often been, the one who's writing this book is one who has seen these things directly. However, recognize that the ones they've seen directly is their own seeds ripening.

(Luisa) Yeah, exactly.

(Lama Sarahni) Well, so if we go, oh, phew, their seeds ripen a hell where you're crushed by mountains, my seeds aren't going to do that. My seeds aren't going to be so bad. We're not saying it consciously, but we might be thinking, well, if it's just their seeds, then that makes them less real.

Their seeds make them very real. Our seeds will make them very real.

Will they be identical to that description? Probably not identical.

But will they be the same principle? Beating, crushed, cut, over the others, cooked. Cooked hotter, cooked worse. Makes a little bit more sense then.

But then our tendency might be to allow ourselves to downgrade the seriousness of it. If thinking of it that way is more inspiring and makes them more possible, then it's fine to say, that was Master Vasunbandhu‘s hell realm. Mine maybe will be different.

But check to see if your mind is saying, is like watering it down.

(Luisa) Yeah, I attended this course many years ago, but I didn't close it. And I remember when I attended many years ago, I really got this kind of feeling of what you say. Like scared, but now it's not happen. It's kind of a disconnection. I don't know. It's a protection mechanism?

(Lama Sarahni) Yeah, maybe so. Maybe so.

(Luisa) But yeah, and it's also part what you say. I always struggle with this, the description of the books, and it is not ultimate. It’s my projection. But it's my projection of their karma. But at the same time is my projection that I am hearing about this. So how much real is this for me? Is this the way this hell realms are going to appear to me because I am listening now that this is the way they are?

Or do I have the power to change these hell realms for me because it's my karma. I always have this confusion.

(Lama Sarahni) Yeah. And it's because we have this subtle but so powerful reaction to hearing, It's only my projection and that getting colored with, And so it's not real.

If we didn't have that, we wouldn't have any of these questions.

We all have it until we've seen emptiness directly and come out of it.

So it's right to struggle with it so that we can weed or decrease the power of that automatic reaction to, it‚s projection so it's not real. When we really get it, we say something's projection, it's like, ah, real. Anything not projection is not only not real, but impossible. And until that's our reaction, we still struggle, work with it, study, practice, pretend, whatever. So you're on the cusp of that.

(Luisa) Thanks Lama.

(Lama Sarahni) Yeah. Okay. Yes. Joana. So we're past time. If anybody needs to go, feel free to go.

(Joana) It's just also kind of theoretical question where it leads to. So when Geshe Michael talks about the direct perception of emptiness and then having the direct experience of Bodhichitta, and he says all the beings in all worlds, but it should be then in all realms, like all sentient beings. Not only in other planets that I can't perceive, but also in the realms?

(Lama Sarahni) Yes.

(Joana) And when we try to develop Bodhichitta and say, all those sentient beings have been our mother, we start with those we can perceive. So it would be humans and animals, but then it would necessarily also include all the other, like hungry ghosts and hell beings too?

(Lama Sarahni) Right. Not that you had a hell being mother. But the mindstream, that's the hell being experiencing once upon a time, your mother, whether it was your rabbit mother, your guppy mother or your human mother or your right.

(Joana) Okay, thank you.

Okay. So sorry. Do your homework. You have to write it all down. And I'll see you Sunday. Thank you so much for making me do this.

Class 8: Time and the Coming of a Buddha

4 May 2025

Eng Audio: ACI 8 - Class 8

SPA Audio: ACI 8 - Class 8 - SPA

Vocabulary Class 8

KELPA eon

JIKPAY KALPA the eon of destruction

BAR KAL intermediate eon

CHAKPAY KALPA the eon of formation

TSE ME immeasurable

NEPAY KALPA the eon of continuation

KAL CHEN the great eon

DE DRANGME SUM LA SANGGYE three countless great eons before reaching Buddhahood (after reaching Bodhichitta)

KALPA SANGPO the eon of good fortune

TSE life

NYON MONG mental afflictions (klesha)

SEM CHEN living being

DU time

TAWA worldview

For the recording, welcome back. We are ACI course 8, class 8 on May 4th, 2025. Let's gather our minds here as we usually do. Please bring your attention to your breath and until you hear from me again.

[Class Opening]

(7:05) Thank you everyone for your papers.

So last class was awful and so I'm not going to do the quiz.

This next class, Geshela said, let's do a fun class. Let's do a description of time and space. But to be completely honest with you, I'm going to bore you to tears and I can't figure out any other way to deliver the details of this class without boring you to tears. And please forgive me, I'll try to, I don't know, maybe I'll tell a joke or a story or something, I don't know. But it's Abhidharmakosha and we're in the third chapter and we are studying about… Technically we're studying about the four Arya truths and the truth of suffering. And the way he teaches us that is he tells us all the details about our existing world. So here's the details.

Geshela called it a class on time and space, but it's a class on the cycles of existence, I guess. Not that there's a cycle of non-existence ever, but you'll see what I mean. So we've probably heard the term KALPA, it's a Tibetan term for a period of time.

And mostly where we hear the term KALPA actually is in the idea of how long it takes to reach Buddhahood once we actually have our genuine Bodhichitta, our actual wish to reach Buddhahood for the sake of all sentient beings. They say from that moment it takes three countless great eons to gather the virtue necessary to make that transformation. And so three countless great eons, an eon in Tibetan is a KALPA.

So three countless great KALPAs. It has a particular name for that. And we would want that to be able to be described in how many years is that. And the thing is this idea of KALPA isn't determined by the number of times earth goes around the sun. But it's determined by the period of time it takes for certain things to happen. So it's more like the way geological time is measured.

I don't know anything about those, but there's the Pleistocene age, and in retrospect they can say it was however trillion years. But in order to establish it to be that number of trillion years, this thing had to have happened, all of this happened and then this had to happen because it ended there. And the time it took for all that to happen ends up being this particular time called the Pleistocene eon or era or whatever it is just for trying to get this idea that when we're speaking of time from Abhidharmakosha, we're not counting rotations around the sun as one year.

That is one year in Abhidharmakosha, whatever they call the year. But it's not a certain number of years that always makes up a KALPA. Do you got it?

So some KALPAs are this many years and other KALPAs are that many years and it's still one KALPA, you see? Because it's established by certain events.

There are many kinds of KALPAs, but we're going to talk about these four main ones that have to do with this cycle of existence, which is samsara. And in these four kinds of KALPA are the JIKPAY KALPA, CHAKPAY KALPA, NEAPY KALPA and KAL CHEN.

Then within those, there's something called the BAR KAL and KALPA SANGPO. So these are the things we're going to be talking about.

JIKPAY KALPA means the eon of destruction.

CHAKPAY KALPA means the eon of formation.

NEPAY KALPA is the eon of continuation, and KAL CHEN is something called a great eon.

So the three—eon of destruction, eon of formation, and eon of continuation—these are happening in a cycle for any given existing planet.

We're speaking more specifically about our earth planet, which is that southern continent of the 37 pile mandala explanation. We'll get back to that.

The Eon of Destruction

JIKPAY KALPA, the eon of destruction, is the time period marked by four things happening at one time. At the beginning of this era, these four things happen and then stuff happens, and then it ends because those four aren't happening anymore.

One of the four things that's happening, not meaning first, second, third, but there are four, they all happen at the same time. One of them is that that planet of beings reach the time when no more beings can take birth in that avivhi hell, the NAR ME. What that means is not that nobody has the karma for it. But it means that someone who has projected the next life as a NAR ME hell being, there's not enough time left in the existence of this world for them to finish off their time in that avichi hell. So instead their bardo being time takes them to an avichi hell of another world that has enough time for them to wear it out completely.

Apparently our world is coming close to this eon of destruction because apparently there are no more beings going to avichi hell of our world. I don't know where that came from. I don't know how it's been established.

It takes a long, long time for a being to use up their time in avichi. But still, if the planet doesn't have that much time to go as determined by other things, the beings can't take birth there. They take birth somewhere else.

It's not that they don't take a life in a vichy how they still do just somewhere else.

Second thing that's happening is that the people who live on that earth, their lifespans reach 80,000 years. But now it's interesting for this eon of destruction to start, beings have reached a lifespan of 80,000 years. It means their lifespans have dropped to only 80,000 years, meaning before that they were much longer.

Once whatever happens that lowers their lifespans lowers to 80,000, that's part of this situation that indicates eon of destruction is happening.

The third thing that characterizes eon of destruction is that the eon of continuation ends. It has to end for the next one to begin. But it's marked as that absolutely has to be clear I guess for the eon of destruction to start.

Then the fourth thing that happens is the eon of destruction opens.

It seems like redundant to say those last two, but it's an important piece, apparently. Abhidharmakosha does not leave out any detail that's necessary to understand what it's trying to describe.

Apparently, once the eon of destruction has opened on a planet, it means that animals and craving spirits… Let me start that again.

Any being on any being who has the projecting karma to put them into an animal realm or a hungry ghost realm, they do their animal or hungry ghost at a different planet.

They for some reason are no longer manifesting those lifespans on that planet that's in the eon of destruction. Which means then that from the human perspective, the animals are disappearing, like extinction is happening.

The beings that would've been animals are animals on some other world. We don't see the craving spirit, so we wouldn't know. But apparently the same thing is happening.

Then during this time, the humans, they are reaching meditation levels of the first level of the form realm. So they're reaching those causal meditations at the first level of concentration and apparently spending a lot of time in those levels of meditation because they're said to increase the number of beings who are having projecting karma pushing them into the first level of the form realm as a next life, as a rebirth.

So somebody reaches the first level of the form realm for the first time and describes to other beings how to do it and how wonderful it is. And so more and more beings are reaching first level of the form realm. And it doesn't mean all of them ripen a next life in the first actual level of the form realm, but many do. So more and more beings are going into the first level of the form realm when they die from that lifetime where they were doing those meditations.

And of those, at the same time beings in the first level of the form realm are apparently reaching even deeper levels of meditation and so they're filling up the second level of the form realm. Over time the desire realm is being emptied out of humans because they're all ending up in the first level of the form realm. And then over time the first level of the form realm gets emptied out and they're all in the second level of the form realm.

The reason I'm describing all of this is it takes a long time for all of this to happen., And all of this is what's happening during this period called the eon of destruction.

This process of leaving earth in the sense of dying and not being reborn into one of the various realms of that earth, it takes what is called 19 intermediate eons.

Intermediate is this BAR KAL. Like the bardo, the in-between, this is an intermediate KALPA.

The process of the earth being emptied of all beings takes 19 intermediate eons happening during this eon of destruction.

So then comes the last part of the eon of destruction, the 20th BAR KAL. And during that time, apparently our sun will supernova, meaning it'll split into two. It takes a long time for that to happen. But when it does, it of course makes things wickedly hot and all the rain stops, and then all the vegetation dries up. The streams, the rivers, the lakes dry up.

Then a third sun appears and it gets even drier. A fourth sun appears and all the great lakes dry up. And then a fifth sun appears and the outer ocean dries up.

The sixth sun appears and all four continents and Mount Meru burn up into a puff of smoke and a seventh sun appears and whatever else might be left.

It says the whole physical world is burnt up to include the first level of the form realm. So even the first level of the form realm gets roasted by these seven suns.

It describes that this splitting of the suns and destroying everything by heat is one kind of eon of destruction. That there are also eons of destruction where the process of destruction can happen through water, so through floods. And another one where it can happen through wind. And then there are apparently many kinds of minor eons of destruction where within the eon of destruction there are these little cycles where people destroy themselves with weapons but not so completely that there aren't still people left, but just this destruction happening in little cycles and this great big cycle as well.

The Eon of Formation

(28:09) At the end of the eon of destruction then starts the eon of formation, the CHAKPAY KALPA. The eon of formation is also said to be 20 intermediate eons long. But the 20 intermediate eons again, it does not mean the same period of time as in the same number of earth around the sun. But rather it takes 20 of these intermediate eons for this whole process to happen. It's split into 20 mini cycles I guess.

So everything has been burnt up right up to the first level of the form realm. Then what happens at the start of the eon of formation is this energy starts to swirl and wind disc forms. It swirls faster and faster and harder and harder until it solidifies. Does this sound familiar?

Then the central mountain forms and the outer ring of mountains form, and the oceans form just like that 37 pile mandala that you learned about recently.

Then beings start to take birth on this world, and those first beings—we are talking humans here, although in other worlds it would be a human of a different subcontinent.

The first beings that show up in a world in its eon of formation, show up there born miraculously. They just show up complete. Their bodies are made of light, they shine their own light.

The earth that they walk on it is solid, but it's such that it's so nutritious when you need sustenance, you just take a handful of the earth and can eat it.

They're extraordinarily virtuous and they live, their lifespans are TES ME. Here's this word TSE ME. TSE actually means measure and ME means not. So the word means immeasurable.

So when we say their lifetimes are immeasurable, it sounds like we'd be saying, well, they're like infinite. But in Tibetan, the term immeasurable for a time period is a specific number of rotations around the sun for that planet. So it is the name of a specific number of years. Geshela said it is somewhere around 10 to the 30th power number of years.

He said the way that it's described, he kind of lost track at 10 to the 30th. So it's probably more than that. That's how long a given being's lifetime is if you are amongst the first to show up on a planet. Hard to conceive.

Those beings, throughout those lifetimes, stuff happens such that they get a bit selfish. They are still samsaric beings, but they have an extraordinary level of goodness to be the ones that show up first on a planet. And that goodness, of course is born of kindness and they're running on those past kindness seeds but not with wisdom. And so they're wearing out, and as more and more beings show up there starts to get some competition or some tension. Greed starts to set in so subtle at first, but it grows and grows.

The eon of formation ends when the first being takes birth in that planets‘ avichi hell. So when the first being has created enough nastiness that one of those seeds projects them into the avichi hell that establishes the end of the eon of formation for that whole planet. And we learned that what will project a being very next lifetime into avichi hell would be one of the ten non virtues. Well, that goes directly to hell, but the actual avichi hell is the, what was it? I'm blanking out now. Trying making a schism in the Buddha, one of those.

So nastiness has had to grow in order for the end of eon of formation to happen. While the nastiness is growing, as those beings are getting behaving more and more selfishly, their bodies are getting more and more solidified, let's say. And as a result of the unkindness, their lifespans are dropping. Because of unkindness those TSE ME lifespans lessen and lesson and lesson until they get down to only 80,000 years. A given being lives, give or take, average 80,000 years.

The Eon of Continuation

(36:15) That's when the formation, the eon of formation of that world is over and the next eon, the eon of continuation begins. NEPAY KALPA. The eon of continuation also lasts 20 BAR KALs, meaning 20 cycles of something or the time it takes for these 20 cycles to happen. And it starts at the point where living beings lifespans are at 80,000 years. Apparently that avichi hell is filling up. I don't know if that means it has a final carrying capacity. It sounds like it, but I don't think that's true. Just meaning more and more beings are making the negative karma that can send them there.

So as people are doing more and more non virtue—killing, stealing, sexual misconduct, lying, harsh speech, useless speech, divisive speech, jealousy, ill will, wrong view—the lifespans drop, drop, drop, drop until they're actually down around 10 years. At that point, as it's dropping, the circumstances of the world are getting such that people need to be living in big, big cities, crowded in big cities. There's hardly anyone out in the country. And they say what happens is that one day there are some people that are out in the country for whatever reason, out on a picnic, and the negativity has come to a culminating point and something happens and all those people in all those cities destroy each other.

Bombs are dropped or fires or who knows what it does. But the people that are out camping, they go back to the city and oh my gosh, everybody's dead, everything's gone. And they wander around right in this terrible funk in grief and horror, and they run across other people that happened to be out of town when the disaster happened. And they're so grateful, so moved to meet other people that instantly they're so loving of each other and so kind to each other because they realized that it was the immorality that had grown in the hearts of people in that society that caused this big disaster. And that those that were left had this opportunity to build things back up and they all say dog on it, we're going to live morally, and they share stuff and they take care of each other and they protect each other and they speak kindly and their lifespans start to increase again.

They slowly increase and increase and increase and increase and increase until they get up to about 80,000 years again. Then that lasts for a period of time, but there's still ignorance happening. And so those 80,000 year old beings start getting greedy again and down go the lifespans all the way back down past a hundred to 10 and some similar tragedy happens again. They start back up again by way of the change of their level of morality.

So in this eon of continuation, there's destruction and formation happening again and again, but not as a whole existence, but rather in these mini cycles that are still mindbogglingly long timeframes when we're thinking of our human time of one year, 365 days. What a lifespan feels like when we're living in a world where our average lifespan is about 74 years old, which when you're 30, 74 seems like, whoa, that's a really long time. When you're 71, 74 does not seem so far away. But it doesn't mean everybody drops dead at 74. It means half the people die before and half the people die older than that.

Back in the 18 hundreds, the average lifespan was 40 years and they said it wasn't because there were no 50, 60, even 70 year olds. It was that so many children died that you had to survive childhood in order to make it to 40, 50, 60 years old. So it made the average lifespan only 35 to 40 in those days. But it meant if you did make it to adulthood, you were likely to live to 50 or maybe 60, but not likely 95 or a hundred.

So it does seem like our lifespans are heading upwards because even if we take away the factor of child mortality, we still see many more people living into their nineties and hundreds than we did back then.

But they say that to live in a time when people's lifespans are 40, or average lifespan is 40, or average lifespan is 70, or average lifespan is a hundred, they say that that variation, it all counts to be in the period of time of lifespans of 100. Because lifespans of 10 means 10 human years. When your lifespans are 10, that means half the people are dying before 10, half the people are dying after 10, but not much after 10 years old. It means you're an adult at 10 years old. And it's like, wow, that doesn't make sense.

We just don't live much longer than that when our seeds from not protecting life are so puny. We are now, these humans are currently in the timeframe that's called the lifespans of a hundred. And it's hard from our own perspective to know whether we're going up or we're going down.

So this cycle of life lifespans coming down to 80,000 and then dropping further down to 10 and then turning and coming back up to 80,000, and then turning and coming back down to 10, that timeframe… let me get it more clear. The 80,000 down to 10 is said to be one intermediate eon. The time it takes for that to happen is one intermediate eon. Then another one intermediate eon is followed by the time it takes for the 10 year lifespan to go back up to 80,000 and back down to 10. That's the second BAR KAL of the eon of continuation. Then it goes back up and back down, that's the third intermediate eon. It does that 19 times. So by the end of the 19th we're back down at lifespans of 10.

And as those beings get kinder and kinder again and the lifespans go up, go up, go up, go up, go up, they reach the lifespan of 80,000 again.

The Eon of Destruction

(45:53) And that starts the eon of destruction. Which is like, whoa, why? They're getting kinder and kinder. Because they've maxed out their kindness and they're about to start to get selfish again. That's going to drop them back down and this time with these other things that happen that trigger the eon of destruction. So let me draw that just to see if it helps it be a little more clear.

[Graphic taken from the student notes from original ACI course materials]

Let's say that we're at this point, we are at the end of the eon of formation, which means beings‘ lifespans are at 80,000 years here. They've dropped down to 80,000 years. Because they're dropping, they're still going to drop. They're dropping because they're getting more and more selfish. So the 80,000 lifespans are going to drop, drop, drop, drop, drop. Sorry my wiggly hand… Until they reach down here to the 10 years and then some disaster happens and there are a few people left and oh my gosh, we've got to be kinder. And up it starts to go again and it goes up to the 80,000. But then selfishness kicks in and it comes back down to the 10. Then some disaster happens, up it goes again and back down again. You following me?

So here is the first intermediate eon of that particular eon of continuation.

Then from here to here is the second one, right? And from here to here is the third one. And it goes on for 19 of those. And when you reach this 10 year lifespan in the 19th intermediate, and people go, oh man, we've got to be kind, up it goes again until it reaches the 80,000 here. But because this has happened 20 times, this from 10 to 80,000 is a whole BAR KAL. Whereas before it took from down to up to down, this one just from down to up. So the period of time that it takes for this to happen and these to happen is somehow measurable. And when we go from here, when the lifespans have dropped to 80,000 up and down, up and down, up and down 19 times, and then come back up to the 80,000 for the 20th time, that's the end of the eon of continuation and we're entering into the eon of destruction. That we talked about before. No more beings in avichi hell. What was the other one?

People's lifespan reached that 80,000 years.

The eon of continuation ends, the eon of destruction opens. Yikers. So the reason we're talking about all of this is because in this awful drawing, when we get to the lifespan of a hundred years, at any one of these sections, the lifespans of a hundred years is a critical time of the amount of virtue versus selfishness.

When Does a Buddha Show up in a World?

(52:19) So that the significance here is when is it in these cycles that a Buddha will appear in a world? When is it a Buddha can show up in the world?

We've learned Buddha show up in the world when the enough beings there have enough virtue to see one. And that even when there's enough virtue for a Buddha to show up in the world, that one may have enough virtue to see the guy or girl as a Buddha, but the one standing next to them may not.

But if there's enough virtue in the minds of beings, a Buddha will show up.

So they won't show up when the selfishness is on the rise, on the rise, on the rise and the lifespans are decreasing. And they don't show when people's motivation to be kind has gotten so strong because they almost destroyed everything. And there's a few that are left, and so now they're being kinder and kinder and kinder and kinder, so are automatically raising their lifespans.

But somewhere along the way as lifespans are decreasing, we get down to that area where lifespans are around a hundred that beings are, they have enough goodness still to be inclined to a change in their behavior, to be inclined to wisdom, but they have enough suffering that they're calling for help. That they're asking for help. So they say Buddhas only show up in a world when the being's lifespans are around a hundred. Not because they're at a hundred, but because their suffering and their goodness in just the proper amount that makes it such that they could see and benefit from having a Buddha walk amongst them. It's interesting.

Let's take a break here. I told you I was going to bore you to tears. Sorry, please forgive me.

The Great Eon

(56:20) So there's another kind of KALPA that Geshala wants us to know about. It's called the KAL CHEN. KAL CHEN means a great eon, and they say a great eon is made up of 80 BAR KALs. So 80 intermediate eons makes up a great eon. But when we look at this cycle of eon of destruction, eon of formation, eon of continuation, each one of those lasts 20 BAR KALs. But a KAL CHEN is 80. So it's like, where's the other 20? Where does the KAL CHEN come in? What are they trying to describe?

And he actually concluded by saying he really wasn't sure. But it clearly is not one of these cycles of destruction, formation, continuation back to destruction, formation, continuation. It's not saying one of these cycles is a great eon. Because there's not enough. There's 20 missing, 20 intermediate things missing.

And yet this term a great eon is significant because it comes up in Abhidharmakosha as part of the explanation for how and when a Buddha does appear in our world. So that comes to us in this phrase DE DRANG ME SUM LA SANG GYE.

DRANG ME SUM means three countless and DE means that.

LA SANG GYE means after Buddha.

So what this is saying is that a Buddha, it takes three of these countlesses to reach our Buddhahood. Meaning when we finally make our heartfelt determination, when we get our Bodhichitta. Now exactly when we get that as takes some explanation. But when we get our Bodhichitta, it then is said to take us three countless great eons of virtue gathering to gather enough virtue to see ourselves as Buddha me in Buddha paradise emanating. A being with the four bodies, the four aspects. So three countless great eons.

The term countless, DRANG ME, doesn't mean so much you can't count. It means a specific number. Just like say TSE ME, immeasurable meant a specific number. So like we call certain numbers thousands and millions and billions, they call certain numbers immeasurables and countlesses.

So countless refers to a number that's whatever the number followed by 60 zeros. One with three zeros is a thousand, with three more zeros is a million, with three more zeros is what? A trillion. With three more zeros I'm beyond my English. But how many do we have? 3, 6, 9, 10, 11, 12. Keep going until you have six zero in years.

Who can conceive of that?

That's one thing that's called countless.

And what we are talking about is countless great eons, which is 20 of these intermediate eons, which are characterized by some kind of shift. It's just mind boggling how long it takes to gather enough virtue to transform ourselves from suffering me with Bodhichitta to a fully enlightened being.

It's discouraging to hear it. Because it‘s like, well then why bother?

On the other hand, says Geshe Michael, to be here in a class hearing this means you probably already have some number of countless eons of virtue already. And we go no way. But maybe yes way.

Give yourself credit for hearing a class that's describing eons and et cetera to come to recognize what it actually takes to transform ourselves and our world from suffering being to no suffering. None for anyone for you in your world. Okay?

So your homework question is going to ask, what is it that makes a Buddha appear in our world? Meaning your Buddha appear in your world. Or what did the one who is the Buddha appearing in our world have to do to become the Buddha?

That's different than appearing in our world? Appearing to themselves as a Buddha is one thing.

So a Buddha occurs from the accumulation of merit and wisdom for three countless great eons, which would be 10 with 59 zeros or one with 60 zeros and three times that for you mathematicians. Three times 10 to the 60th years. No, not years. Countless great eons of years, huge, huge period of time.

More importantly says Geshe Michael, it doesn't have to take that long. We've heard, reach the direct perception of emptiness with Bodhichitta in our heart, and the average is seven lifetimes, seven human lifetimes. Well, if that happens when you're human lifetime is 80,000 years, seven times that is kind of long.

If it happens when your human life is a hundred years long, seven lifetimes less than 700 years.

Geshela always says about 500 years to Buddha appearing in the world. And we think, oh, 500 years and some other Buddha is going to show up in the world. But what he has been sneakily planting seeds for us is like, no, no, 500 years and this Buddha will show up in whatever world it shows up in. It may or may not be this earth world. And it won't matter to that Buddha, will it? Because from their side they're showing up everywhere. Because it's just whether the beings have the virtue to see them as Buddha versus a puppy dog versus a milkshake versus whatever that being is being.

It's all based on the accumulation of merit. And implied within that then is the removal of obstacles and removal of negativity. So purify make merit is the mantra for the behavior that we do.

And then Geshela said, remember Shantideva‘s teachings? We haven't had them yet, but Master Shantideva was the one who said one instant of anger directed at a Bodhisattva will destroy your root of virtue.

And then he goes on to say, and that root of virtue is an intermediate eons worth of virtue. And now it's like an intermediate eons worth. It's like, whoa, that's a really, really long time's worth of virtue.

Then someone says, come on, if that were really true, no one would ever become a Buddha because everybody gets angry at somebody and you don't know who is and who isn't a Bodhisattva. So how could you ever break the cycle? How could you ever get ahead of the game?

They say, yeah, technically you're right. It takes a specific kind of anger just directed at a Bodhisattva. This strong anger with no regret and no doubt and happy you did it and forever you never reconsider and think maybe that wasn't the right thing to do.

So again, this healthy sense of regret helps protect even when we can't help it and we get angry if very swiftly we're going, oh, there it is again. I regret it. It helps prevent this sustained anger, undoubted anger that can actually break our virtues and set us back that far.

The Eon of Good Fortune - When the Buddhas Show up in a World

(69:39) Okay, so when do Buddhas show up in the world?

They say they show up during a KALPA SANGPO. A KALPA SANGPO is an eon of good fortune. Oh, I've got more there. Okay.

So the eon of good fortune is the name of a time within the eon of continuation. So that continuation, when the lifespans are dropping, the eon of formation has ended. Destruction hasn't started yet. Lifespans are dropping. They hit 10, they come back up. They hit 80,000, they go back down. They hit 10, they go up. Somewhere in there is this eon called the eon of good fortune and it's called that because somewhere within those 19 cycles, a thousand Buddhas will appear to our world.

He says, how do we know? Because Buddha Shakyamuni appeared and he was the third. I don't know that that's a proof. But it's kind of like, alright, so if they've promised us a thousand and we've already had three, there ought to be another 997 showing up soon within this timeframe of lifespans. Not soon by any way we know soon.

But before we end up destroying things forever, not forever, but so permanently that we start into the eon of destruction.

The scripture says, Buddhas do not appear while things are improving, while lifespans are increasing because people are getting happier and happier even within the suffering realm. So they're not interested in renunciation, they're not interested in searching for answers.

Things are good and they're getting better. So there's no need for a Buddha.

When things start to degenerate, people question and search. And when their suffering gets enough, it brings on renunciation, and that brings on their need for guidance and that brings on a Buddha.

So for any given individual, it often takes some kind of tragedy to make us question enough that we would be willing to change our behavior as a result of what we learn.

It's not true for everyone that you have to have a disaster, but it's very common.

But in this downswing, a Buddha does not occur once peoples‘ lifespans are going down from a hundred. Like at a hundred and decreasing Buddhas don't show up.

I think I'm contradicting myself earlier, it sounded like I said they show up when we're at a hundred. But it's as we're approaching a hundred that they show up where decreasing lifespans because our selfishness is increasing.

Once we get at a hundred and we're going down, too much suffering is happening. People are just trying to survive. And when we're in survival mode, we are not interested in our spiritual life. We're not interested in having to make moral choices about what I do to survive and to help my family survive. We want to do whatever we need to do to keep ourselves alive.

So as we're at a hundred and going lower, no bud does Buddhas.

As it's coming back up again, no Buddha, because things are getting better, better, better, better, better.

So somewhere in that draw from 80,000 down to a hundred, there's enough suffering and enough goodness that beings draw a Buddha to their world.

Now again, if we're in lower school, there's a real Buddha somewhere and they're waiting for the right time watching us all to see when it's going to be, and then they show up.

When we go from highest worldview, enough of us have a similar projection. A Buddha will show up in our world. So it can show up for some and not for others.

But that's how it is, right? Not everybody saw that guy called Siddhartha become Buddha Shakyamuni. Maybe they heard people call him Buddha Shakyamuni, and they even called him that. But for them, he's somebody's spiritual guide. But you know that message, he says, nothing has any nature. You got to be kidding. Of course things have natures. Do you see? Just because there is a Buddha in our world doesn't mean everybody's going to see them that way.

Same, same idea for us.

So Geshela said back in the 1990s, we are close to one of those mini cycles of destroying our world and starting again within the eon of continuation where life bands are dropping. We're going to destroy ourselves in some way. Some beings are going to be leftover. They'll mate other leftover beings, they'll get together and start to get moral. And while that's on the rise, probably not Buddha until it gets up and comes down again. And it's like, well, that's a whole lot longer than 500 years before a Buddha will show up.

Which rather than discourage us, we could also hear that message and go, but it doesn't have to be that way. So I'm going to be the one that brings that Buddha on sooner. Because how are we going to do it? Purify, make merit.

Come to see yourself as Buddha.

And then they might say, right. And when you do it, it will be because you and the beings who see you as that are at this stage in their eon of continuation where their goodness is such that they can see a Buddha.

That reality does not have a nature of being our reality like this that has to go through all of those cycles before we can have the goodness to see a Buddha walk amongst us.

So why study this stuff? I don't know. Geshe Michael says, you want tantra from him coming up? You don't need to know this. But you want to learn that tantra in really fine detail? Guess what? You need to know this.

So you're here, do it now or do it later. I'm teasing.

Unless this fascinates you, you do not have to spend hours and hours studying the eons of continuation to understand it precisely. Because it really won't help other than to show us the emptiness of existence, the emptiness of time, the emptiness of how long it takes to become a Buddha. To motivate us, not to let ourselves get sloppy to say somewhere in between three countless great eons, which is an unfathomable period of time and the end of this lifetime, I can do it.

Yeah? Where does that leave us?

The 5 Signs of Degeneration

(80:00) So now there are five signs through which we can see that we are in the degeneration of times within our eon of continuation, meaning we're in that cycle where lifespans are decreasing. And here are the five different things that we can notice. The five are

TSE
NYON MONG
SEM CHEN
DU and
TAWA

We're familiar with most of these words.

NYON MONG means mental affliction.

SEM CHEN means living being.

TAWA means worldview.

DU means time.

And TSE we learned means well, we learned it was immeasurable. But here it's saying life.

So one of the signs that indicates we're in degeneration times is that this term life means we know human life is fragile. So it must be that the humans whose lifetimes last 80,000 years, they must be pretty indestructible. Or their circumstances are so extraordinary that if they have a fragile body, it never gets broken. But we have bodies that so easily get hurt, damaged, broken, dead. So many things can kill us. So little keeps us alive. We'll hear it again.

The second factor, NYON MONG, it means mental afflictions or KLESHAs, a state of mind that interferes with our peace. But here it refers to a condition of our world where beings are uninterested in doing virtue. There's very little attraction to doing good deeds. This refers to in unordained people.

NYON MONG.

SEM CHEN, it does mean living beings. But here it's saying, look at the bodies. We just said our lifetime is fragile. Now it's saying here, the bodies of beings in degenerate times, they're not strong anymore. They're not well proportioned, they're not well coordinated. They're not such serviceable tools as they are when we're at those longer lifespans.

So when I was a teen, my family was into sports and stuff, but we weren't really very good athletes. We had to work really, really hard to get competent enough to compete. And then we did okay. So we would water ski in the summer times and we could take friends with us. And my brother, who's one year older than me, he had a buddy, a surfing buddy. I can't remember the guy's name, but he came water skiing with us and he'd never water skied before.

And he saw all of us do a shore start. We just standing on the bank, the boat hits it, you just step onto the water and off you go. And when you come back around and let go, you waltz your way in and end up knee deep in water, you don't even get wet.

And he watched us, each one and he goes, let me do that. And it's like, no, no, you have to learn to ski on two skis first and then you'll drop one, and then you'll learn how to do a short start. And he goes, no, no, let me just try.

Alright, stand like this. Hold the ski like that. Listen to the boat. When it accelerates, you step onto the water. And we all thought, ah, he's just going to wipe out. Because he'd never even skied on one ski before, let alone done a short start.

Boom, steps, off he goes, and he's halfway around the lake and he's slaloming. He's skiing as well as my brothers who had skied for 10 years By then. Because this guy was just this natural athlete, well built, muscular, had this coordination, he could just see it and repeat it. Whereas the rest of us, oh man, we were just flabbergasted. But this is what it reminds me of.

Some people really are that natural. What is it called?

I dunno. There's a body type, not an ounce of fat coordinate.

And in this degenerate times, there are fewer and fewer of us built like that. And more and more of us with bodies that aren't coordinated and can't. It's not like you can diet and become one of those people or exercise and become one. We've got this certain degeneration in the quality of our bodies. This is SEM CHEN what they're talking about, an indication of the declining quality of lifespan. A result of ignorance and selfishness.

Then DU means time. But here it's code for the things that we need in order to keep our time in our life, meaning the shelter that we need, the food that we need, the water that we need, the clothing that we need. Like what we need, what we think we need. And the things that we need get harder and harder to get. And even when we do get them, they have less and less quality. So for instance, food becomes less nutritious, water becomes less pure, less drinkable, medicines less effective. Homes not safe.

We see it. We see it happening already.

I mean, we think, no, no, we have everything we need and we do. But it used to be that foods had more minerals in them than they do now. And it's hard to believe. But apparently when they test them, it really does seem to be that we're growing foods in a way that they don't have the capacity to nourish us like they used to.

We saw that in the karmic correlations. Do you remember that course on karma and what the different correlations were from the 10 non virtues?

A number of them had to do with whether the ops lied to us, they looked right, but really they were rotten. Or if we had done divisive things, we couldn't get the things we need. Or from stealing, we can't get our needs met, right?

It's like this is consistent with lots of 10 non virtues like being the standard operating procedure. So not even making decisions-virtue or not.

Then TAWA is the last one, worldview.

And this refers to a period in the world where the whole population has degenerated to a point where even the ordained people are no longer acting virtuously. So they take their ordination for whatever reason, but either what's included in their ordination is not vowed behavior, or even if it is, they're not capable of following it.

So when everybody is not interested in virtue, so struggling for survival that you're in the me and my family first mode, this is a sign of the degenerate times. And then of course it's going to degenerate times even more because of what we do as a result, thinking that it's normal expected behavior, even thinking it's good to steal from your neighbor in order to feed your family.

As these five degenerations grow, get worse, lifespans decrease further and further. They are why life spans decrease. And part of that no one interested in virtue means that no one's interested in the dharma. Then a pattern or a sequence starts where because of the abundance of non virtue, out of not understanding, of course the first of the dharma that dies out is the realizations. Like no one's getting direct experiences of the different LAMs, especially direct perception of emptiness. The realizations are getting harder and harder and then not possible. You study, study, study, but just not get any direct experience of any of it.

Then at that point, wait, what's he saying here?

At some point then people stopped trying. Then when they stopped trying, they stop studying. When they stop studying, they lose interest in the books. When they lose interest in the books, they get stored away in some basement somewhere. Everybody forgets what they are, where they are, what they are, and then if anybody even comes across them, very likely they're not readable because they are in some other language. And so they're meaningless. And so either they get destroyed or just shoved back into the corner of the basement and then that whole world goes on to get destroyed. And so do the books.

So we've heard that the Buddha Dharma will come to an end.

Does the wisdom end? No, of course not. If there's any Buddha, the wisdom goes on. But our Buddha‘s dharma will disappear in the world because it will, we won't have the virtue to be interested.

(93:50) So are we out of luck?

In this lifetime the amount of time we have to actually do any effort is a spac compared to the three countless great eons that it's taking us.

And Geshela said that's why Buddha taught Tantra.

Some people believe that tantra is some perverted practices.

Some people have a little bit more understanding of tantra and they believe it‘s some long prayer that you commit yourself to reciting day in and day out.

Some understand a little bit more and they believe it has to do with these solitary retreats that you commit yourself to do again and again.

When we are well-trained, we understand that it's about the vows that we receive when we receive our tantric initiation, and that keeping those vows and commitments is the virtue necessary to bring this transformation with within the lifetime that you see emptiness directly from a tantric practice.

So they're not promising the lifetime you get your initiation, you'll reach Buddha.

What they're promising is that if you use your practices, keep your vows, reach that direct perception of the clear light, from that moment on, you'll reach your Buddhahood before this body dies.

So however, that may or may not mean that, oh, if that happens to me when I'm 95 years old and I die when I'm 98, I've reached my Buddhahood in the next two years.

What it's very likely to mean is that the practices that you will do, you will experience what we would've called dying in such a different way that you don't die at 95, you continue your practices.

Now what the beings around you experience, that's up to there karma. But your own mind has shifted so much by way of keeping your tantric vow behavior that once you experience even the approximate clear light, you will not ever stop your path until you reach Buddhahood.

So it's the advertisement to do what you need to do to get on your Diamond Way path. And the timing is beautiful, coming from you, to have this doorway of opportunity to get there sooner than what we had anticipated. And then to decide how deep you want to go into that practice after that.

Okay, so how do we prepare ourself for receiving Diamond Way?

We have the specifics now from Geshe Michael. Study our Lam Rim, put what we learn into practice in daily life, meditate regularly, seriously.

Serve. Serve your Lama, serve your parents, serve the needy, serve your dharma center. Your four most powerful karmic objects.

And then Geshehla says There will come a crucial time when you have the opportunity to leap. And he says, leap.

When we are well prepared karmically, the leap won't be a leap, right? It'll be a step, it'll be a dance, it'll be, you won't even recognize it as a leap.

But if we're saying to our own heart, our own mind, I'm willing to leap, I'm willing to do whatever I need to do, this suffering is enough, seems to be getting worse. That's what brings this opportunity for this huge, huge shift.

(99:35) So apparently Khen Rinpoche was preparing a group for the initiations. He used to give initiation every summer, and if you wanted, you would call him or go see him and ask and he would check on your background and probably he's looking into you, your subtle body and checking you out. And he often would say, come to my Lam Rim program beforehand. So three or four weekends before initiation, you'd go and study the Lam Rim again. And then he would give the highest yoga tantra over two weekends with the Vajrayogini blessing.

And apparently he was preparing someone, some group of students and one group or one student said, well, look, you're going to give us vows, these special high vows. And we've heard that those vows are so hard to keep that we all know we're going to break them. So what's up with this system that you give us vows that we can't keep in the promise that if we keep them, we make this transformation. And apparently Ken Rinpoche said with a perfectly straight face, like in all seriousness, he said, yes, we're all going to a hell realm anyway. But when you get there, you'll be able to say, I am in a roam because I didn't keep my tantric vows well. I'm not here the way you guys are here. And it's like, I don't get that still to be honest with you.

Geshela's point was, Rinpoche was not being funny. There's something significant in knowing that the effort to keep the vows, to do our four powers appropriately when we don't keep them well, to keep getting back on the horse, is the practice. If we could get our tantric vows and keep them perfectly, we would all be Buddhas by now.

It's not the keeping them perfectly that does the trick. It's the trying and fixing. It's the failing and trying again that burns off the negative, implants the positive necessary to pull off this transformation.

Okay, that's class 8. Phew.

Please do your homework. Don't put it off or we won't get to it because this is just so disinteresting and dry. Make yourself do it, please. And the next two classes are the death meditation that we've learned it already, I think. But we revisit it because it's pertinent, right? Where we're left with, I have this precious opportunity now even to have heard a class like this is extraordinary. And how much time do we have? How much time do we think we have? And how much time do we really have?

So to learn a proper death meditation is not what's going to happen when we die. It's a proper meditation on how to live today as if we'll die tonight, which plants the seeds actually for not dying tonight. And then we behave as if we're going to die the next night and then check and see whether we did. So it's a powerful practice to revisit from time to time, even when we're so sure I understand I'm prepared to die if it happens tomorrow. And it's like, no, let's go back and look again.

That would be, you know how we're doing the practice modules? Three days, learn the practice, and then six days dig in deeply. We've done one so far, we're going to do another one this summer, and another one, well, not quite. Yeah, another one in January. This would be another one that even if we've done it before, to be able to do an intensive meditation together would be take us to deeper insights about it.

All right. Geshela says, I shouldn't waste a minute, but I'm going to put those extra minutes in the bank because I need them for later. And let you all get your rest. So remember that being, we wanted to be able to help.

[Class Dedication]

All right, thank you so much.

Class 9: The Meditation on Death, Part One

8 May 2025

Eng Audio: ACI 8 - Class 9

SPA Audio: ACI 8 - Class 9 - SPA

Vocabulary Class 9

CHIWA MITAKPA death impermanence

CHIWA GOMPA death meditation

CHIWA DRENPA GOMPA death remember meditation

CHIWAR MAGOMPAY NYEMIK Disadvantages/problems of not cultivating death awareness

CHIWAR DRENPA GOMPAY PENYUN Advantages/benefits of cultivating death awareness

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

NGEPAR CHIWA death is certain

NAM CHI MA-NGE PA Time of death is uncertain

CHU MA TOK MI PEN nothing but the Dharma helps

All right, for the recording we are ACI course 8, class 9, on May 8th, 2025.

And let me remind us that for class 11, not next time but the time after, you guys will teach me the review of this class. And that means that next class I'll assign the homework, the questions to the teachers. So if you want to be involved in the review class, be sure to be here next class.

So hopefully whoever's interested will hear that on the recording. I know you guys will be here. So now it's official.

So 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]

Is it Raz‘s birthday? Is that the string I just saw? Happy birthday. Yay. Another Taurus. There are so many in my life.

(Raz) It was on May 7th. Thank you.

(Lama Sarahni) Oh yesterday. Yay sweet, happy birthday. All these Tauruses in my life. I love them all.

So let's go right to class.

(8:22) This class and next class are the two classes on death. But specifically it's on the death meditation that Je Tsongkapa teaches us in order to inspire us to live life more conscientiously, more intentionally.

So what we're going to just touch on is this practice called CHIWA MITAKPA.

CHIWA MITAKPA means, MITAKPA we know is impermanence, and CHIWA means death. So it sounds like we'd be talking about a practice where we're cultivating death's impermanence. But it's not that. That's kind of hard to figure out what that would be anyway.

But rather CHIWA MITAPKA means gaining this realization of our own personal impermanence through cultivating our death awareness.

So in the Lam Rim, if you recall, pre Lam Rim is whatever happened in life that propelled you to search for answers, let's call it search for a spiritual path.

It was the start of our renunciation. And if that impulse was strong enough, we would end up with the realization that we need a teacher, a direct teacher.

And if that propelling energy was strong enough, hopefully we found one and we formally declare ourselves to them, and ask them to take us as a student. Meaning we find our Lama and we ask for that Lama to teach us.

Then we've learned again and again once we're brave enough to formally ask that Lama to be our Lama and we say, teach me, teach me, teach me what I need to know. They say, take the essence of your life. And they don't say anything more unless we ask for more.

The moral to the story in this tradition is keep asking, keep asking. Because to ask means we're open to receive. To just go from one teaching to the next, it has a different impact on our mind. Ask.

So if we ask, what do you mean how do I take the essence of my life?

The next thing they'll say, realize impermanence. And that can mean many different levels of impermanence, Je Tsongkapa‘s instruction here is that of all the impermanences that we can come to understand, an important one… I don't want to say the most important, let's say second most important one, is the realization of our own personal impermanence.

To just hear that said, we might say, I know I'm impermanent. I know I'm going to die sooner or later. So to just say I have to realize that, what do I just have to say it over and over? Or what is it to realize our own impermanence?

And again, it will have different levels as you investigate your own impermanence. The realization of that, meaning something that has become real for us that wasn't before, that will reveal to us the precarious situation that we are in if we are perceiving ourselves as a person who has pain, a person who has distress, a person that has mental afflictions as a human in that situation.

So CHIWA MITAKPA, aware of impermanence by way of death, how death shows us our impermanence, it could also be called CHIWA GOMPA.

CHIWA GOMPA, we know the word gompa as meditation, death meditation. And that's what this practice is usually called. There are various kinds of death meditations. This one is very well, they're all very specific, but this one is specific for a sutra class early on in a student's career. So it would come up fairly swiftly in our Lam Rim steps if we were starting from the beginning. And those of us who did start from the beginning in the ACI with me, we have done the death awareness meditation module together, haven't we? Yeah.

But now with the five houses business happening, I am more inclined to do it again for people only in a group meditation form like we did Heart Sutra. Where we would learn the practice again if we've learned it before or for the first time. And then spend five, six days digging deeply into each one of the steps to really feel their impact in a way that probably we didn't spend the time digging deeply into them once we first learned the practice and then went on to something else, which our tradition does. So I don't know, just something to keep in mind for future, to do a deep dive meditation, death awareness meditation.

(17:42) The teaching Je Tsongkapa gives is a teaching called CHIWA DRENPA GOMPA. CHIWA DRENPA GOMPA, the D here sounds like a combination of D and T, DTRENPA. And of course the GOMPA, the P is a combination of P's and B's. So GOMPBA.

Do you anybody remember the word DRENPA? From course 3. That's going back a long way. DRENPA is our recollection, the state of meditating mind that holds us on the object. DRENPA. So here it's the similar idea, but here it means to remember. But not remember in the sense of, think about the last time you died.

Do you remember it? Which probably your answer would be no.

Here, remember means to remember at any given moment of today that my death is imminent. Imminent meaning soon, very soon. A death remember meditation is learning to imprint within us this ability to be aware all day long that I will die. Technically my body will die. Sarahni will die. The mindstream that is experiencing Sarahni and this body that's immortal, ever changing, never the same two moments in a row, but never not existent.

Another kind of impermanence, permanent impermanence, if you remember that discussion between TAKPA and MITAKPA from long ago.

So the reason Je Tsongkapa gives us this meditation is that it's a training in developing this attitude, running in the foundation of our daily awareness, which is I die today.

And it's shocking to hear it that way. Not, I could die today. Maybe I'll die today. Somebody died today.

This is, I die today. To have this attitude all day long, this is my last day. Because can you feel inside how different we would go through our day if we had this as a realization, a conviction? I will not wake up tomorrow. So today's my last day.

What would we do with our last day?

How would we behave when somebody's, I don't know, lousy service at the restaurant on your last day alive? Would you care about lousy service at the restaurant?

Would you care that somebody insulted you?

And it starts a whole long story about why would I even be at a restaurant on my last day?

Maybe my choice of things that I would do today would be very different than what I choose to do when my impermanence realization is that someday I will die. That's a good realization, but it's not what Je Tsongkapa is saying will inspire our practice if we are serious about wanting to stop our own suffering.

This teaching comes early on in the Lam Rim, so it can be directed to non Mahayanists and of course it can be directed to Mahayanits who are revisiting their Lam Rim practice. So our perspective, we are Mahayanists, we can't help it. So we'll be thinking Mahayana ways to relate to this teaching. But keep in mind that this is from the level of the motivation to stop our own suffering.

If we don't have the conviction that our own suffering can be stopped, and the conviction that the way we stop our own suffering is by way of our behavior, then no matter how much we say and feel, I want to stop everyone's suffering. It won't happen.

It's not selfish to say, I'm focusing right now on stopping my own suffering. Because as we understand where my own suffering comes from, we will be choosing to be kinder people, we will be changing our behaviors. And then as our heart grows and we say, oh, well I can help other people do the same thing, we're not learning new material. As Mahayanists we are revisiting the practices we already have accustomed ourselves to and doing them with a different state of heart, a different state of mind. But the behaviors aren't any different. We'll be avoiding killing, stealing sexual misconduct, et cetera.

CHIWA DRENPA GOMPA is cultivating this constant deep awareness: Today's my only day.

Now we know technically obstruct the orifices for four minutes and this body dies. So it really is true that we're never more than four minutes away from being dead. It's kind of a miracle that we've gotten as far as we have. More miracle for me than for you.

The older we get, the more likely that we are complacent about this realization until we've had the realization. Because our mind would say, yeah, I spent my day, I die tonight. I did cool stuff. I went to bed. I woke up the next day. So I didn't die that other day.

And so it gets a little bit harder the next day to believe ourself when we say, well it's today, I'm going to die today. And then so every time you do that and you don't die, when the realization isn't really strong yet, it kind of makes us go, well see? It's not true that I die today. When in fact we have that deep realization then every day we don't die, when we were convinced we were going to die, our state of mind is just as strong the next day. Well, okay, I have another day. But just today. And technically it's true. We really only have this moment. And technically we don't, can't even find that when we go looking.

4 Steps of Death Awareness

(27:30) So this death awareness, he gives it in four steps. He gives four steps. I have three of them in Tibetan, the fourth one not, just in English.

CHIWAR MAGOMPAY NYEMIK the first step.

CHIWAR DRENPA GOMPAY PENYUN, second step.

CHI-LO JITAR KYEPA, third step

And fourth step is, what it is.

CHIWAR MAGOMPAY NYEMIK, it means the problems.

NYEMIK means problems

MAGOMPAY of not meditating on death awareness.

So step one of learning a proper death awareness is to learn first, what are the problems that we encounter If we never learn a proper death meditation. Probably I should say never learn one and never do one. Because we can learn it and never do it. The problems with not gaining this, I die today attitude.

Second step, CHIWAR DRENPA GOMPAY PENYUN

PENYUN means the benefits.

So the second step will be recognizing the benefits of GOMPAY, getting used to meditation, getting used to my death recollection. The benefits of accustoming ourselves to all day long doing our deeds with this awareness this is my last opportunity.

Third step CHI-LO JITAR KYEPA.

KYEPA means develop.

JITAR means what kind of to develop.

And CHI-LO is short for the CHI-LO state of mind, what kind of death awareness to develop.

And within this third step, Je Tsongkapa will tell us what kind of death awareness we do not to develop and what kind of death awareness to develop.

And then the fourth step is how to do it. Sorry, not what it is, but how to do it.

Not how to die. How to cultivate this state of mind: I die today, to be underlying our behavior choices.

Okay, you with me?

The 6 Problems of not Developing Death Awareness

So the problems of not growing our death awareness, this first step, it has six things to consider. Six things that will happen if we continue to go through life without this kind of death awareness that we're talking about.

We are seeking for worldy pleasures

The first one..

If you're making an outline, we have the four steps: 1, 2, 3, 4.

And this is under number one. And then these would be A, B, C, D.

But when I look at A, B, D, C, D, I can't remember which is 1, which is 2, which is 3, so I'm going to call 'em 1, 2, 3, 4, but you get it.

Under step 1, a problem that we will encounter from not cultivating this death awareness is that we will continue to concentrate on gaining small pleasures in life. They call them small pleasures in life.

What they mean is worldly pleasures in life, big or small, worldly pleasures: food, clothes, reputation, job status, any of that. All the things that a functional human adult has learned to be concerned about to function in our world is in this category of without our proper death awareness, we just go on as in a life where those are our concerns.

We get complacent and delay our spiritual practice

(33:48) Second, we stay complacent. Meaning we think we've got time. And so whether it's getting those worldly things or doing the things that we want to do that we kind of have to choose over our worldly, daily worldly life. And then further, if we are on a spiritual path, the things that we need and want to do to continue with our progress on our spiritual path with this state of complacency, oh, tomorrow will come. I can do it tomorrow. I'll put that off until next week.

I'll do my ACI homeworks and quizzes once my life settles down over here because I'll have more time. I'm not criticizing, I'm saying this is what we do. And we're congratulated for being able to prioritize our worldly life. It's like functional, human adult. We're complacent. Yeah, I'd really like to be able to take enough time off to go travel the world, but I can't do that right now, right?

They'd fire me from the job. I have to pay my college loans back. I've got these other obligations. I can't just quit and go travel the world.

Then we think, I'll do it later. I'll do it when I get caught up. I'll do it when… We all do it. It's a kind of complacency, it's a big complacency.

When we apply that to our spiritual practice, we see how complacency just perpetuates our big mistake. Just perpetuates the suffering that we're begging every day to bring to an end, our own and or others.

And so we're being so inconsistent with ourselves. I'll do anything I can to become a being that can stop suffering, but I am too busy. I don't feel good enough. I'll put that off till later. He says it's a factor in not having cultivated our ‘we only have until sunrise tomorrow‘, because we're going to be dead by sunrise tomorrow.

What would you let go of even caring about if you had that realization?

What would become your priorities in your day-to-day interaction?

And it's not an easy answer. We say, oh, I do nothing but dharma.

What does that mean? You wouldn't get off your meditation cushion?

But wait, there's people who need your help. Isn't that a dharma practice too? Yeah.

So the answer to what would you do differently if you were absolutely convinced you would not wake up for tomorrow? What would you be doing instead?

I can honestly say I would be here doing this.

But I look at my life and it's like, yeah, I choose to do another jigsaw puzzle because it's what I do to relax and focus at the same time. But if I were going to be dead, I would not be doing jigsaw puzzles before class just to prepare for class.

I'd have my nose in my books, or I would beyond on my meditation cushion. It's not easy to live by this. If we don't try, it's not going to just show up. Because by the time we actually get that declaration from the doctor, oh, there's nothing more I can do for you. You've got six months. It's too late to make the changes we've been saying, I'm going to do this but not today, because of whatever.

This practice is designed to put this hot poker underneath our rear. And we'll get it for a little while and then things will go good for a while. And we'll lose it somewhat and then we need to go back and rev it up again. That's what the Lam Rim is for, to go back from time to time and check where we're at. Okay? We get complacent.

(39:21) Master Shantideva will teach us when we get there. He's talking about other things, but it's pertinent here. He says, if somebody hands you a bowl full of liquid water or oil and it's filled to the brim, up to the meniscus. And they say, carry that bowl of water across the room without spilling a drop.

You'd say, there's no way I can do that. It's filled to the brim. As soon as I move it's going to spill.

But, says Master Shantideva, if that person holds a knife to your back and says, spill a drop and you're dead. Do you think you'd be able to move that bowl across the room without spilling a drop? Master Shantideva‘s premise is, you could. You would, because our motivation is so strong.

And here in this teaching, it's like that's what we're talking about.

Can you eat your breakfast with this state of mind that says, I want to have a certain state of mind about what I'm doing that looks like eating breakfast, that if I lose it for a second, that whoever's going to kill me.

It sounds impossible. It's actually not impossible. But if we don't make the effort, it's not just going to happen. Okay, next one.

Wrong motivation

(41:02) If we don't cultivate this death awareness, Je Tsongkapa says, even if we do practice some dharma, whatever that means, we'll do it for the wrong reasons.

We'll be doing our dharma for our reputation or for some worldly result. Without a clear death awareness practice we'll even do our dharma with a normal self-involved state of mind.

Geshela shares that in that JETOP YESHE, that aftermath wisdom of seeing emptiness directly for the first time, one of the things that you come to know is that as a samsaric being we are incapable of doing anything, making any choice that's not stained by self gain, gross or subtle. Believing that we have a me that exists independent of other, a me that exists not projected, we can't help but have this self concern. And it underlies every decision, every action.

We're not bad. There's no shame in that. It's the mistake. It's the big mistake and the ramification of that big mistake. A deepening death awareness helps us be more aware of that stain on our mind. Geshela called it that pollution within us.

Our spiritual practice gets loose

(43:30) The fourth one is without a strong death awareness, our spiritual practices can get on remote control, like automatic. Then that allows distraction by our worldly concerns.

We will sooner or later give up our spiritual practice if we let ourselves stay at this level. Oh no, I do my meditations every day.

But even before I finish my mantra recitation, I'm reaching for my phone to see what comes next. It's like knock that off. I'm talking to myself.

If we knew that this was our last day, would we let ourselves be so distracted?

Geshela says, our tendency when we hear this class is that, oh, she must be meaning I should pretend that I'm going to die today. And then make my choices based on that pretend.

He said, like really sternly, don't stay at that level of pretending you die and making your choices. Keep cultivating that death awareness until it is as strong as you wake up first thing in the morning and the next thing on your mind is this is my last day.

Your first, the next thought might be, yeah, what do I have to do and what do I have choices about?

And then we might think differently as time goes on with this practice to really come to see is like, well, the things I think I have to do, are they really the priority? Or is it time to make some changes?

Well, I only have today to make the change. Are we brave enough to make that big a change in one day?

I'm not saying do it. This teaching is consider. Consider. It starts with that idea. Well, I'm going to pretend I'm going to die, but I don't really believe it because it didn't happen yesterday. So it's not likely going to happen today.

But that's going to water down the practice over time.

It is just as likely that you will not wake up tomorrow, that you will wake up tomorrow. That's hard.

And that we could debate that on the debate ground: How could you ever say, how could you ever compare like 50 50 chance waking up or dying? No, I've protected a lot of life. Doesn't that mean I'm lengthening my life by doing life protection?

It's like, well, you plant the seeds in this life. Are they necessarily going to ripen in this life? Did we plant them that strongly, our life protecting practices? Now we can count on them for later, but how much later? Tomorrow, the next day or 10 times 30 countless eons from them. Yeah, we don't know. No. Okay,

Our attachment to things of life grows

(48:07) So the fifth problem that we encounter by not having this keen death awareness is that without a death awareness, as we go through life, we get more and more attached to the things of life.

So when we're younger, we really don't need much to be comfortable. Satisfied? That would be debatable. But we can go camping with a backpack and that's all you need. And you're out there managing.

But then, I don't know, 40 years later, no way I would. Even if I wanted to go out there backpacking, it's like, come on. If I sleep on the cold hard ground, I won't be able to move the next day. If my shoes don't have the proper padding, my feet are going to hurt every step of the way.

We have this, as our karma shifts from perceiving ourselves as young to perceiving ourselves as older, part of what's going on in there is we're getting more and more needy with what keeps us comfortable. What we think we need to survive even gets bigger.

Now, not for everybody of course. But it's common. I don't know, in a way I'm kind of seeing it in my whole culture, is that even young people aren't interested in going out sleeping in a sleeping bag on the sand. Are you kidding? I want to glamp instead of camp. And it's like, what's up with you? You're just a kid, right? You're a teenager, aren't you adventuresome? And it's like, no, thank you.

So my own seeds have spread that I don't need much, but boy, there are some things that don't take 'em away, please.

It's this complacency that leads to these increased attachments. And it's not just the creature comforts. We get more and more attached to our relationships, to our reputations, to all those worldly things that we were spending our time getting, making, creating. By the time we've had 'em for some period of time, we're much more attached to them if we are not keenly aware of our own impermanence.

Their impermanence as well of course, but it's much more impactful on our behavior choices to be keenly aware of our own impermanence over the impermanence of our car. Like I know my car is impermanent, but I don't want to admit that this thing is impermanent (meaning our body). I know it intellectually, but I don't want to admit it.

We feel regret at the end of our life

(51:50) The sixth thing that happens if we don't cultivate this awareness is that without death awareness in life when we die, our experience will be an intense regret. Like as we're going into our actual death, there will be this intense regret even to the point of terror, they say, fear. Regret that one's whole life is past and we didn't do anything significant with it.

And that happens whether you're the guy who just got voted Pope. Seems like he did something really significant with his life, but when we get to this point of death meditation, if, and I don't know, he had lived his life without a death awareness keen, he'll still look back on life and have this deep regret as his mind is withdrawing about not having used the time in a way that could have been right.

So now I don't know him personally. I have no idea what his practice is. I'm just using that as the concept here.

As we're going through the death process, the sensory awareness is shutting down. Even the thinking awareness is shutting down. The ability to have a string of word, mental words put together as a thought is getting chaotic. And even before we reach that place where the body has shut off, but the mind hasn't left yet, it's already at the place where the awareness of that mind is not anything like what it was the few moments before. It's terrifying because everything is disappearing, everything we've ever been aware of, familiar with. It's not just, oh, I'm dying. I'm leaving it behind. It's our contact with anything is going away. And the sense is that you're just disappearing. The fear is annihilation. Which is impossible, but we don't have that conceptuality when we have not prepared ourselves for it.

As we're going through that process, they say, we really do go through a life review. They say we see all the scenes of our life. And this tradition doesn't call it all the scenes, but we do this life review where not to judge ourselves but just to see what happened. And what we'll see is the underlying selfishness. And so we die with this deep beyond regret. They call it regret. You die with regret. But that's just puny compared to what the meaning of the experience is. Okay?

So we have these six different things that happen if we don't live life with our death awareness practice. That's the first step of learning a death awareness practice.

You can see why it's the advertisement to learn it.

The Benefits of Developing Death Awareness

(55:57) Second stage is CHIWAR DRENPA GOMPAY PENYUN, the benefits of cultivating this death awareness. The benefits of going through life: I die today. I die today.

Our practice will be pure

Number one, our practice will be pure, he tells us. Meaning our dharma practice will be less and less infected with those worldly selfish interests that we were talking about in the first one.

What we call dharma will become more and more important to us. And when we first hear this, we're thinking dharma means my classes, my doing the homeworks, my readings, my doing the project that serves the teacher, my serving the Dharma Center, whether it's sweeping the floors or doing advertising for it, whatever. We think the dharma means that focus and it does, but it's not limited to that. And as we go on with the exploration of learning this practice, we're going to come to see that what we mean by our dharma practice is an attitude with which we do anything more than the actual choice of behavior that we're doing.

But it starts with making this distinction between worldly things that we choose to do versus dharma things that we choose to do.

Our pre dharma friends want to go out. With your pre Dharma friends you spent every Friday night at the bar. And then you meet the dharma and it's like, I really have lost interest in the things we do at the bar every Friday night. I still really like my friends, but I don't want to go to the bar.

And it takes a little time sometimes before you realize that sometimes relationships wear out. Maybe you try to share with them your change of heart. Maybe they understand and they go with you. Maybe they don't and you part ways.

But it can be done gently and lovingly and maybe doesn't even have to ever be a confrontation that when they call you come into the bar tonight? It's like, I'm so sorry. I don't think I'll make it today. And pretty soon they'll quit calling.

Anyway. The benefit of a keen death is that those old choices of patterns of behavior will show us whether or not those are things we want to continue to spend our time doing. And without a death awareness, that's less likely to happen.

Geshels said, you may alienate some people. But in the short run, that's okay. In the long run, you're going to help them in ways that you couldn't and didn't help them when you were there every Friday night. It'll just be a while before they understand that, if ever.

Our practice will gain power

Then second factor is, our practice will gain power. So that doesn't seem so different from the first one. The practice will be pure. The second one is the practice will gain power. So the practice will be pure meaning our doing it for any kind of self-interest will fall away. And our practice will be powerful, means that, for instance, if we were convinced that this morning is my last opportunity to meditate, maybe that meditation effort and that meditation practice would be lit on fire, because it's the last chance we have. How clear would you make your vision of your precious angel Lama if you knew that was going to be the last chance you had to spend your time focused on their unconditional love, their compassion and their wisdom filling you?

If we really had this belief and we didn't have the state of being on our death bed, we really could crank up the juice on our meditation effort.

Is it necessarily going to make the best meditation you've ever had?

Maybe, maybe not.

But does it, just thinking about that, a meditation in that circumstance, does it feel different than whatever your meditation was this morning?

It does to me. It's like, oh man, your NAR, that thing called NAR—intensity. It would be on, wouldn't it? If you knew this is my last chance.

A different state of mind, like a misunderstanding state of mind might say, well, if today's my last day, I'm not going to bother. Because every meditation's been lousy this one's going to be lousy too. I just quit.

That's not death awareness impact.

So, our day of choice making would be very intense, very powerful if we knew, if we were convinced that this is the last day that I have an opportunity.

It tightens our practice

Third factor in the benefits of cultivating death awareness is, the verse says, it helps you get started. But what they mean is when we have a slump in our practice, which we will all have, a revisiting of our death awareness will help us kick away the lazies. When we get into some kind of slump, go back, revisit this death meditation, death awareness to get ourselves kicked off the complacency, get ourselves kicked off the ‘I just can't do it.‘ or ‚it's never going to happen‘.

Go back to ‘I have today and no more‘ and see how it helps.

Geshela says, even when we are immersed in nothing but dharma work, we can still get in a situation where we're actually in a slump of our practice and we don't even notice it because all we're doing is dharma work.

But all that dharma work has become a distraction from the actual deepening meditation, study, and cranking up the juice on our understanding of dependent origination and emptiness.

And yes, it's good karma to be doing dharma activities. But then they too become just another distraction if we don't keep cultivating our death awareness.

It keeps us going strong

(65:18) Number four, it keeps us going strong. So again, if you imagine every day you wake up, I didn't die. I've got today. Oh my gosh. We dive into our meditation with that intensity of today's my last day. And then we go on with the rest of our day, today's my last day, and do whatever we need to do with this heart that we're cultivating.

And then you go to bed also with a certain state: do your purification, do your rejoicing, do your understanding that you're not going to wake up.

When you do, if you do, whoah, I've got another day. But do you feel the difference? It almost feels impossible to sustain that. But maybe surprise yourself.

We finish off projects

(66:29) Fifth one is, it gets us to the end, meaning on any project.

So Geshela says, on any project that we have that has a beginning, a staying, and an ending. When we get to 75% of the way to its finish, we start to lose interest. We start to get distracted. We start to get a little sloppy.

And if we're tenacious, we stick with it. But the quality of whatever we're doing in that last quarter, it slops off. The risk is that we don't even finish it.

Having a strong death awareness that 75% rule won't happen, number one, if our death awareness is strong enough. And if we find ourselves at the 75% drop off in any project to revisit the death awareness will keep us going. Right? The 25% rule won't let us drop all the way to give up. It'll push us to the end to finish any project that we're working on.

Death awareness keeps us going to the end is what this is saying.

We die with satisfaction

(68:02) The sixth one here is that when we do die, we die with satisfaction. That life review will be, Yeah, man, I used my time well. I don't know if it's in so many words, but the life review will not have that regret. It will have satisfaction.

You'll see that you had made choices based on virtues, on avoiding harming, having a different kind of criteria than what we have had in past lives.

It's an intense inner satisfaction to know that we've spent our life meaningfully. And that does not necessarily mean that you have to have served orphanages in poor countries to live life meaningfully. It's an attitude that we were able to cultivate in ourselves that makes the life that we live having been one of meaning.

Okay, yikes. I'm past our break time. Let's take a break.

The Death Awareness We Are And Are Not Practicing

(70:32) The next section is that CHI-LO JITAR KYEPA.

CHI-LO is a short way of saying death awareness, death mind.

JITAR KYEPA is what kind to develop, what kind to develop.

Then Je Tsongkapa splits this into two.

The first is an explanation of what kind of death awareness that this is not.

And then the second section is what kind of death awareness it is.

Then of course the fourth step is how to do it.

So this death awareness that we are not cultivating is learning the fine details of what that process is that we go through as the mind withdraws from this life into the bardo. There is a sequence of things that happen that we already heard. We're withdrawing from contact with everything we know, including our own ability to think. And as we go through that, we experience different hallucinations that are typically scary and unpleasant. And they lead to this greater and greater disorientation and fear.

We talked about it already.

There are practices where we learn the details of each of those stages and learn to work with them and even induce them in meditation. But that's not this death awareness. Those practices actually we won't be able to do them effectively without this death awareness first. So we're not learning to go through ordinary death in some way that we can use it better.

Je Tsongkapa says, we don't need to study and learn the process of dying. We have done it countless times before. We don't need to practice. We are good at it, only not good enough to use it effectively. It will happen naturally. You don't have to learn it or practice it. So that's not the death awareness we're training in.

(73:40) The death awareness we are training in is one that will free us and empower us and enthus us in daily life. It will inform our choice making in such a way that we will get off automatic pilot and make our choices much more intentionally and wisely.

So if we asked someone, like somebody on the street, what do you think? No, let me go back. Not someone on the street, someone who is a spiritual practitioner, let's say, and we ask them, why do you do your meditations? Why do you meditate on your breath? And probably they'll say, well, it's a tool for being calmer. It's a tool for being happier. It's a tool for being able to cope with unpleasant things better.

Is that a Buddhist practice?

No, not just the fact that we don't spend time on a breath meditation except at the beginning. But trying to cultivate a better ability to cope is not Buddhist. As our own practices, Buddhist practices evolve, we will cope better, of course, but that's not our reason. It's not our goal.

The minimum motivation for any practice that we do to be considered a Buddhist practice, if one cares, must be that it is motivated by our concern for our future lives, what will happen in our future life.

So the scope of our dharma practice, our Buddha practice extends beyond this current life.

Lesser scope Buddhist practices, the goal is to avoid a lesser rebirth at one level. A good goal. The goal is to reach the end of our own mental afflictions.

Another good goal reaching Nirvana.

Many people never even get to the goal of stopping lesser rebirth.

So even just to take refuge for our refuge to be refuge, we would need to be motivated to be reaching at least one of these levels. That's not right to say. To be motivated to be reaching to close the door to lesser rebirth in the future. Because without that one, nirvana is not reachable.

To be a dharma practitioner our old worldly life goals, they become so secondary. They become the laboratory within which we apply what we've learned about the Dharma guidance in order to create the seeds that will affect our future life.

And then whatever happens in worldly life, it's all, what's the phrase, grist for the mill, right?

It's all what we use to practice what we practice in order to close the door to lesser rebirth, in order to plant the seeds for nirvana, in order to plant the seeds for total Buddhahood.

So we are focusing, learning to focus on our daily activities for these other reasons than we focused on them before. We see then that it's not necessarily necessary to quit our worldly job, to leave our family, to go live in a cave in order to do dharma all the time. Because we need the circumstances that push our buttons, that challenge us, that give us opportunities to plant the seeds in fertile gardens. But our attitude in doing so is directed at future beyond this life..

Death meditation is developing this alert, keen awareness of our own impermanence to the extent that we are using the day-to-day moment by moment current life's circumstances as a tool for at the very minimum avoiding a lesser rebirth.

How to Meditate on Death Awareness

(80:26) So we have these first three parts of the death awareness practice that Je Tsongkapa is teaching us.

Finally, the fourth part is how to meditate to develop this death awareness. And again, when we hear the word meditate, immediately our mind says what I do on my meditation cushion. But the term GOMPAY means to get accustomed to something, to get used to it.

Yes, we get used to meditation on the meditation cushion. Death awareness, getting used to it means take it off your cushion and get used to accustom to having it there off cushion as well. In learning the death awareness, how to do it, Je Tsongkapa gives us these three different truths to explore until they are truth for us.

Three different concepts that we are guided to prove to ourselves, to increase their realizations, to increase our death awareness realization. Each one of those three itself has three considerations that help us dig deeper into the meaning of each one. And so altogether, the how you do the death awareness meditation has nine layers.

The fourth step of his teaching has nine different sections. So it will take us the rest of this class and then class 10 to learn all nine. And then, when we did the death awareness practice module, ooh, we got more icing on the cake that makes that practice module so fun to share, so powerful to share.

The three steps in the fourth step, which is the meditation that we do do, is the first one is my death is certain.

NGEPAR CHIWA

NGEPAR means certain. My death is certain, number one.

Number two,—and it's going to have three parts, number one—NAM CHI MA-NGE. NAM CHI means the time of my death.

MA-NGE means uncertain.

My death is certain. I don't know when. The time of my death is uncertain.

There will be three considerations that we will learn.

CHU MA TOK MI PEN, the third one, means when I die, which isn't in the words, when I die, nothing except the dharma will help me.

MI PEN, we heard PENYUN before, was benefit.

So MI PEN means no benefit, nothing helps.

CHU means dharma, MA TOK means nothing.

So this third step is actually dharma nothing helps. But if you translate it like that, it sounds like dharma doesn't help. Here it means nothing but the dharma helps me when I die.

So if you got the three:

my death is certain
I don't know when, and
the only thing that will help me at that time is my dharma practice, is the dharma. The words say, is the dharma.

So clearly we need to talk about these three, especially this last one, right?

What does it mean? The only thing that can help me is the dharma. Should I die with my head on the Diamond Cutter Sutra and then I'll be okay? I don't think that's what it means.

The only thing that goes beyond death is our awareness, our mind. Everything about our current being and our current world all collapses. It's all withdrawn.

But the awareness movement of the mind and what it motivates that goes on without a pause, 65 per instant in, 65 per instant out. It's just alive, and then I don't even think it's not alive or I don't even think it's dead. It's just no more this, and now it's something else. And from our perspective, we call it, oh, bardo.

So, if all that goes on is our mind and what our mind is, is movement and what it motivates, like all our mind is, is karma, right? Then all that goes with us at the end of this life is the karmic seeds that we planted in every moment of this life, along with whatever karmic seeds are left from every previous life that we didn't use up in this life.

So all that goes on is karma. Karma is made by what we see ourselves, think, do and say towards what appears as other. So that means everything that we do on behalf of this physical body, everything that we do on behalf of our people, everything we do on behalf of our stuff. We lose our body, we lose our people, we lose our stuff.

But the karmic seeds from what we did to get, keep, interact with those things, we take that along. We don't take it along. It is us. It goes along as us.

So that's the punchline to ‘nothing but the dharma can help us‘. Because it's not the books, it's not the bell and dorje. It's the behavior that we chose, guided by what the dharma taught us that goes with us that is the benefit of the dharma at death.

So it is true that nothing but the dharma helps us because it's what guided us to make the choices and those seeds are going with us.

Every other thing that influenced us in our choice making behaviors harms us. Because we planted seeds that will come back as more Samsara, obvious pain, pain of change, pervasive pain. And only the instructions of the dharma helped us to make our seeds in such a way that we can put a stop to that cycle.

So that third realization that comes hot on the heels of the one before, I don't know when I'm going to die. It could be four minutes from now. It could be tonight. We don't know.

And if we don't know when we're going to die, then every moment counts in what we're deciding to imprint into our mind. Every moment counts.

And we won't come to that conclusion. Every moment counts unless we have this deep clear conviction that my death is certain.

And intellectually we know of course everybody's going to die. But if you really look at yourself in the mirror and really say, I know I'm going to die. How real is that?

My guess is, unless you've had a near death experience or a brush like a bad cancer that you had to struggle to get through, that we say the words. Yeah, I know I'm going to die, but I haven't so far.

There's some part of us that clings so exquisitely to itself that it will agree, yes, you're going to die. And meanwhile it will influence our choice making in a way that keeps us complacent.

First Principle of Death Awareness: My Death is Certain

(92:11) In this first ‘my death is certain‘, NGEPAR CHIWA, there are three considerations.

The Lord of Death is Unstoppable

The first consideration, the verse says, the Lord of death is unstoppable. And we're supposed to take these phrases and investigate them, not just say, okay, I buy it, but rather really explore: Do I believe that the Lord of death is unstoppable?

What that means is that we can't, when the time of our death happens, there's no thing, no one can stop it, can reverse it.

And we do argue with that. We say, my Uncle Joe, he was having a heart attack. It was a really bad heart attack. He was going to die. He got to the ER in time. They gave him that TPA, it stopped the heart attack or however they do it. They went on to put in the new blood vessels and they saved his life.

If we investigate that deeply, we come to see that he wasn't ripening dying seeds. He was ripening, got his life saved seeds.

He had seeds to not die from his heart attack.

Yes, he was having a fatal heart attack. But he didn't have the seeds to die from it. Do you see? His seeds weren't wearing out?

How do we know that? Only by the fact that he got saved.

But it is not that the Lord of death was stopped, because it wasn't the Lord of death.

So it's hard because we go, well, if dying isn't defined until you're dead, come on. That doesn't seem to prove anything. But it does in fact prove that you can't stop the Lord of death once you're in its jaws.

When do we get into the jaws of the Lord of death?

The instant we're conceived. Eh gads. My death is certain. Because just to be born is to die. Yeah, but 72 years, come on. They kind of promised me another 20 more, maybe as much as 25. But who can promise that?

Who can promise you more than four minutes?

Okay, so Lord of death is unstoppable. Don't take my word for it, investigate it.

We Can‘t Add Time

Second one, you can't add time. We can't add time.

Seeds in, seeds out.

You can't slow that process down.

You can't ever add more than 64, 65 per instant. I don't know why.

We can't say, oh, they've given me the diagnosis of cancer. I'm going to go do a big detox. I'm going to only eat vegetables. I'm going to do all this stuff to make more time in my life.

If it works, it's not because you ate more vegetables.

We can't add time.

But it's something that needs investigating. Why can't I add time?

Why can't I give more time to somebody else and so add time to my life?

Well, because if it works, then I didn't make more time in my life. I had that time already. And we don't know which we'll see next class.

It really does take investigating to come to your own conclusion. Is it true that I can't add time to my life?

Does it mean that when I was born, there was some seed in there that says, you'll live to be 92 and three months old and then you'll be dead.

And it's like technically not. It's not like that. It's not fate. It's the system, the process.

When Lord of death is doing his thing, can't stop it. No matter how much money, no matter who you know, we can't add time.

We Never Have Enough Time

Third factor in my death is certain is, that we never have enough time.

This one still kind of escapes me. Why does understanding that we never have enough time to do the things we want to do, once we find them, that the Jim Croce song, if you remember that..

How does that reinforce our, my death is certain?

I mean it truly is a direct experience that we have, is that there really isn't enough time to do anything. Is there?

Like yeah, I have enough time to do the dishes and yeah, I have enough time to pull the weeds in my yard. But to transform myself into a Buddha, three times 10 to the 60th countless eons is what it takes? Yikers, I really don't have enough time for that.

And then, I don't know, I had a friend visit today who's older than me. She's in her eighties. She's been a runner her whole life. And then last August, she had an unfortunate experience and got hurt. And then she regrouped from that but wasn't running again yet, and then she had a little stroke. And she got really, really weak and sick and scared from the stroke. But that passed and she retrained herself so that now she's hiking in the mountains. She's running again. At 80, whatever she is, she went from sick to retraining and is more fit than I've probably ever been. She went to the trouble to do it.

Why am I telling you this story?

Because it seems like she had the time to do that.

It seems like I have the time to prepare each class.

But do we? Do we have the time to do the things we want to do?

What is it that you have in mind that you want to do that you don't have the time to do? And why don't we have the time to do it?

Oh, because I work and only get two weeks off. How can I possibly do four lerungs when I only get two off and it takes five weeks to do a lerung. It's going to take me five years. I can only do one a year with two weeks off and take the other two on.. Right? Do you see? We never have enough time.

We make these excuses.

Is it true we don't have enough time? No, it's not true.

It's true because we don't use our time effectively. And so we have the seeds to never have enough time.

And then we see it in our own lineage. I do it to you too. You get one teaching. Finish your final. We do the next one. I don't say, come back when you've gained realizations on your course number 1. When you all have realizations, come ask again, we'll do course 2. If I've waited for that, I would still be working on my 18 ACI courses.

We pack 'em in there and then your job is to go back and work on them to gain those realizations. But who's going to have time to do that?

Do you see? Our mindset is: Did it. Done. Did it. Done. Did it. Done.

And it's a mistaken mindset that we have. Not we didn't make it up. It's driven by our big mistake, which is why we can stop it.

(102:27) Geshela went further and he said, maybe we're a strong practitioner and we really do our two hours of practice a day. He says, yeah, but that leaves 22 hours a day when you're not practicing.

So come on, how strong would your two hours need to be to override the 65 per instant of 22 hours being on ordinary human automatic pilot?

Now, of course, someone who's a strong practitioner, they don't sit for two hours and then get off their cushion and go back to being human jerk. They're trying to do their practice off their cushion too. If they're well-trained.

What if they were trained that your Buddhist practice was on your cushion? And they didn't have this amazing set of teachings that shows that it's like, no, your Buddhist practice is off the cushion time. And your on cushion time is more like study time, more like investigation time. But real practice is the other 22 hours.

And then Geshela says, well, even in a two hour practice, there's probably only 30 minutes that's really deeply engaged. Then now we're even further down on our scale of whether we're using our time effectively or not.

He says, as long as our worldly priorities are still on top, we're just skimming the surface of our dharma work.

It's hard to hear. Because when I first heard all of this, I owned my own business. I had patients I was seeing. I had more financial obligations than I do now. And it was tugging at my heartstrings to just give it all up and walk away from it all.

Which would not have been responsible. We eventually did, but not until we had things arranged. And then all of that was seed driven, of course, that we were able to do that. But then we got busy at Diamond Mountain and yes, we were serving Diamond Mountain, but I can't say that every moment was in this lofty state of mind of why we were serving Diamond Mountain and how wonderful the seeds were. We were like on, I need to do this and we need to do that. It was a worldly state of mind in this powerful karmic object.

It was still better than being worldly for us. But do you see, it doesn't just automatically make us make nothing but great seeds to even give everything up and go live in a Dharma center or a monastery, or even in a cave all by ourselves.

It's not necessarily dharma practice, if our mindset, our heart set isn't working against the selfishness and towards the compassion and wisdom.

Alright. So we do need a right livelihood in order to use our livelihood as our dharma laboratory. And in that case, our right livelihood is a better situation to grow our dharma practice than living in a cave or bumming off other people or sitting on a park bench and doing nothing. It's an attitude shift, of course, as we're learning.

None of this works. None of this can be applied if we're struggling for survival.

So to try to live in a cave or to try to give everything away and just walk off and see what comes, the likelihood of being able to stay strongly on the path is remote. Because we get hungry, we get cold, we get hot, we get sick.

That's not what being a Dharma practitioner is.

All right, so that gives us what we need for your Class 9 homework, Je Tsongkapa‘s four steps of death awareness practice. Fourth step, having the three realizations. Each one with three considerations to come to that realization.

And the first one, my death is certain. Those three considerations are:

the Lord of death is unstoppable.
I can't add time, and
there's never enough time to do anything that I want to do, whether it's Dharma or not Dharma.

And how do those three bring us to this deep Aha: My death is certain.

So I think your homework meditation is saying, meditate on those three. I didn't look at it, I'm sorry. But again, we're just getting this introduction.

The Death Awareness practice module goes into the details. So if you've taken it somewhere, go back and revisit it. If you haven't taken, and this enthuses you, you can get it, either the one I've done or the Geshe Michael's one, and listen to it on your own and work with it. And then maybe someday we'll do a group work into it. Okay? Okay.

[Class Dedication]

Have a nice weekend. I will see you Sunday.

Class 10: The Meditation on Death, Part Two

11 May 2025

Eng Audio: ACI 8 - Class 10

SPA Audio: ACI 8 - Class 10 - SPA

Vocabulary Class 10

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

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

LU SHINTU NYAM CHUNG our body is extremely fragile/delicate

NAMDAK see the purity (in everything)

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 Class 9

(8:18) Last class, we learned that there were five steps in the contemplation on death, right?

No. Claire says no.

So you're saying there's more than five steps?

Oh, no, you're saying there's fewer than five steps?

I saw a nod. Was that a yes? Yes, and you can tell me how many of those steps there really are.

(Claire) There are four steps.

(Lama Sarahni) Yeah, absolutely. And of those four steps, the first one is learning how to position yourself properly when you die.

No, you're saying it something else? Oh, yeah, you can tell me what that first step we learn in the contemplation on death?

(Claire) Considering the problems of not doing that kind of meditation.

(Lama Sarahni) Nice, exactly. And then the second one, the second step in contemplating death, is to understand what happens after death. Anybody else want to play? Don't leave Claire on the spot, going once, going twice. Raz, yeah.

(Raz) The second one is considering benefits of meditating on that.

(Lama Sarahni) Excellent. So to cut to the chase, what's the third one? Anybody?

What it's not, right? What Death Awareness, we're not going to learn. And then the fourth one. Actually the the third one is what it's not and what it is, and then the fourth one is how to do it.

So we learned the first of the fourth one, the how to do it. Which was, my death is certain. And it had three parts. I'm skipping the rest of the quiz in the interest of time.

So in the step four, how to do it, there's three three reasonings. No, yeah, three considerations, and each of those three has three reasons to consider. So you could say that a Death awareness practice has nine steps. But it's really three with three each.

So the first one, my death, is certain. It had those three parts, described as the Lord of Death is unstoppable, number one. Number two, our life is continuously slipping away, meaning we can't add time. And the third one is that there's never enough time.

And so those three are like explanations for investigating why it's true, my death is certain.

So again, when we learn this in the practice module, we go into greater explanation of how to use those three for right now we're just learning what they are, not so much how to do them yet.

Second Principle of Death Awareness: The Time of My Death is Uncertain

(14:03) The second principle of this practice to gain our proper Death awareness is, the time of my death is uncertain, DZAMLING TSE MA NYE.

DZAMLING is short for DZAMBULING

DZAMBULING is the name of our Earth, our continent. Do you remember in the 37 pile mandala, there's the four continents. The one to the south is DZAMBLING, because the tree that lives of the at the edge of the ocean has a great big fruit, and when it drops, it goes DZAMBU. So we get named after that. And then they shorten that sometimes to just DZAMLING.

The second principle is, the time of my death is uncertain. I don't have the Tibetan for that.

First principle of death, my death is certain.

Second principle, I don't know when.

Third principle, is going to be: And when I die, nothing but the Dharma can help me so we can see where we're going.

Now we need of the second principle, the time of my death is uncertain, we get those three ways to think about that in order to come to our own conclusion about whether that is true or not.

Is it true that the time of my death is uncertain?

So they have three reasons why we might find that to be true.

Lifespans are not fixed in this world

The first one is DZAMLING TSE MA NYE.

DZAMLING means here in our realm, on our earth.

TSE means lifetime, MA NYE means uncertain.

So the first reasoning is, here in our on our planet, life spans are uncertain. In our use of this as a practice, we would be investigating whether or not we find that to be true.

The explanation is, first of all, that this implies that there are places where life spans are certain. And Geshela explained that there are other kinds of beings for whom the karma to be born or to appear as one of those beings, includes in it the exact time it takes to to finish that off.

I don't really understand it. I'm not sure exactly what of our different realm beings we're talking about. It does not appear to be animal realm, of the animal realm that we relate to on our earth. But the point is that there are places where, when you show up there, or are born there, your karma right then ripens in such a way that you have a set period of time. And it's not clear whether you know it or not, but you would know that you have a set time. Maybe you don't know how long that time is specifically, but you know your lifespan is set.

Imagine the different mindset it would be if you really knew, Okay, I have 75 years. And I knew that when I was five years old, and I still know it when I'm 71.

It would be a whole different mindset than the mindset that we have included in our karma to see ourselves as Human. Which is, people die young, people die old, people die healthy, people die sick. It seems random.

Some really nasty people live a really long time.

Some really nasty people die young.

Some really kind people live a really long time.

And some really kind people die young.

Don't they? In our experience.

We expect the first to be born should be the first to die. But it doesn't happen like that. We don't know, do we? Okay.

Lots of things can kill us, not many keep us alive

(19:04) The second aspect to the time of my death is uncertain, is here CHI KYEN MANG SUN KYEN NYUNG

CHI KYEN MANG SUN KYEN NYUNG

CHI KYEN means things that can kill us.

CHI is kill or die.

MANG means many.

SUN KYEN means things, the KYENs that will keep us alive, the KYENs that support us.

And NYUNNG means not many.

So the things that kill us are many, and the things that keep us alive are few, as part of how we investigate whether or not we believe, my the time of my death is uncertain.

Je Tsongkapa divides the things that can kill us, the CHI KYEN into living things and inanimate things.

Living things that can kill us, obviously other people, animals, viruses, bacteria. Living things that affect us in a way that end up with us dying.

Then he says, the inanimate things that can kill us, there are those that are outside of us, and there are those that are inside of us.

Those that are outside of us, the inanimate things that can shorten our life, are like any of the outer, inanimate things that could cause an accident, cause us to die. So you know, our car, a gun, a ladder, a rock, a cliff. All kinds of different things. And in fact, when we go looking, is there anything that actually absolutely could not contribute to the end of our life in some weird way. I mean, maybe we could find something like, I don't know, jello. But, you know, we could conceive of a way that we could choke on jello, right?

Any animate thing can kill us.

Then the inanimate things inside of us. What he means by that are those four elements, earth, water, fire, wind. Those four energies that impart those qualities to our physical being, the quality of solidity and shape, form, earth element. It does not mean that we have specs of dirt inside us. It's the energy of Earth. The energy of water, which is our fluidity. The energy of fire, meaning our metabolism, our temperature. And the energy of wind, which means our movement and dispersal.

These four inner factors are interacting with each other, constantly. Helping, strengthening each other and keeping each other in check. I think we've spoken about this before and their needing to adjust this interaction, mutual interaction happening according to influences of outside factors, like what we eat and drink and what the weather is and how much sleep we get. And then they're also adjusting according to their own inner factors in that apparently each one of those elements is somehow compelled to want to win out over the others. I mean, it's not like they're thinking, I want to win the game.

But the way the dynamic works is that if you've got fire element, and you have insufficient water, earth and wind doing what they're supposed to do.

Fire element gets over powerful, we run a fever, right? Or we get hyperthyroid, right?

Our metabolism goes off unchecked, and you let fire go unchecked and run a fever of 105 to 106 and that's inconsistent with life.

So each of those four elements has this, I'm blanking out on the word, like a limit to where once it has strength over that limit, it's inconsistent with life. And the reason it gets over that limit is because the other ones have gotten too weak to keep it in check. So there's this constant dance going on, and we can contribute to that dance. We can learn about it, and we can do what we can with our food, with our drink, with our exercise and rest with the amount of movement we do. All these different factors that we can do our part to assist those four elements to be able to continue to keep each other in check. But at some point, one of them's going to win out. And when it does, dead is the result. And we don't know.

Being in DZAMBULING, we don't know when that's going to happen.

And in Western society, we don't really even grow up learning about too much heat or being exposed to cold wind. And we just don't get that. We don't relate to that at all.

Your kindergartner gets sick like every other week in kindergarten because they're exposed to these new viruses. Then they finally get well, and then they go to middle school, and it happens again because new set of viruses that they're getting exposed to.

Why did I say that? So we just relate to a different way of thinking about illnesses. But the end result is the same. If our body isn't able to get that virus in check, a plain old head cold virus could kill us. Measles can kill people.

So much can kill us, and so little keeps us alive. What does actually keep us alive?

Food, water, sleep, hope, right? We had it earlier.

What sustains us and then, unfortunately, what sustains us sustains us in suffering lives. Not that we don't want it to sustain us, but it isn't really very much compared to what can kill us. And then, if we look at those things that do sustain us, they still can kill us, can't they?

We can choke on food. We can drink impure water. Ah, you know, our bed can catch on fire. We can not wake up in the morning.

So really, even in terms of so little keeps us alive, even those aren't to be trusted.

Then the third, oh no in this one still, Je Tsongkapa in reading will also point out that even in his time, he pointed out, look, we are getting to the end of a that KELPAs cycle, where the lifespans are decreasing. Because of the increasing non virtue our life spans are decreasing. And that means that all the different kinds of things in our world that are supposed to support life become less able to do so.

So even in his time, 1357, long time ago, apparently they were already experiencing that food was less nutritious. Water was more easily contaminated. Medicines were not as effective.

And now we understand the same thing. Foods are not as nutritious. The soil has been depleted. Our water is getting rarer and rarer and more and more contaminated, not just with metals and organisms but with plastics. And then medicines are not as effective. Antibiotics are becoming resistant too.

And so harder and harder to manage the things, not because the things are getting worse but because the karma of the population is ripening results of past non-virtues. Probably not in that lifetime. We are experiencing the results of things that our subject's side was aware of itself doing to others from long, long, long ago.

And it's true for everybody in our current world.

And he says, finally, it's like, look, really, where do you think life is headed anyway?

Right? Samsaric life is headed to its end because it was made by karmic seeds stained with the mistake that thereby makes those seeds wear out.

Our bodies are so fragile

(31:51) Alright, then, so the time of my death is uncertain. Why do I say that?

Because here on earth, life spans are not fixed.

Number two, because so much can kill me and so little can keep me alive.

And three, LU SHINTU NYAM CHUNG.

LU means body.

Do you remember SHINTU?

SHINTU, it was really? From the hidden reality, obvious reality, hidden reality, and really hidden reality. SHINTU KUKYUR. Same SHINTU.

NYAM CHUNG

NYAM means fragile, CHUNG means delicate.

So they put these two together and say fragile, delicate.

Like, not just one and the other, but somehow the state that we are. So our bodies are extremely fragile, delicate.

It's a little bit different than the second one: So much can kill us, so little can keep us alive. Because then we're talking about these other factors. Now we're talking about our own bodies.

Our own bodies are delicate and fragile. And it's like, it doesn't feel so delicate and fragile. Bubbles are delicate and fragile. You know, you look at them cross-eyed and they pop.

Flowers are delicate and fragile. Come on, I'm solid. I'm not delicate and fragile.

But he says, look, you get a little sliver in your finger doing your gardening. And oh, here it's like cacti. Not anywhere near a cactus, but I'm picking up leaves of something else and I've got a cactus spine in my finger. And you know, it happens all the time. I pull it out, you know, I rub it and I forget it.

But one little prick through the skin can just as easily drag skin bacteria and yard bacteria in underneath. And if my body doesn't have the ability to recognize that and fight it off, pretty soon, blood poisoning. And blood poisoning goes pretty fast, moves pretty fast.

So one little sliver is enough to kill us.

One wrong meal is enough to kill us. This anaphylactic reaction to food, it doesn't happen the first time you're exposed to a food, but it can happen the second time you're exposed to a food. And so you've eaten mangoes all your life. This happened to a friend of mine. And she's at a restaurant, has something with mangoes on. And within 10 minutes, her lips are swelling. She can't breathe. She's broken out in this rash. She's having an anaphylactic reaction to something she'd eaten hundreds of times before. Fortunately, they got her, you know, to care in time. But it's like our own body will kill us, given half a chance. Not that it's waiting to do that, but it's just so fragile.

Close these orifices for four minutes, and that's inconsistent with life.

It's a miracle it hasn't happened already. More miracle, the older we get, that it hasn't happened already. Our bodies really are fragile.

In my notes, I just think this is funny. In my notes, when I first wrote these notes, for the first time I shared this class, I think it must have been the first time, I have written down, it's really amazing any of us are still alive. 53 years, air in and air out. 71 air years, air in, air out. How lucky am I? It's like I take it for granted.

I don't so much anymore, but it's like we have this expectation that we'll even get to 50, right? And then, oh my gosh, 21 years later. Well, 53 I was, so it's not 21. But you get it? Like I shocked myself about how long I've been doing this for.

Every time we wake up in the morning, it's a miracle.

That's what we're wanting to get into us.

I die today.

You wake up in the morning? Oh my gosh, I didn't.

Let's use today really well because I'm going to die tonight, for sure tonight.

And then the next day, Whoah, I didn't.

I think His Holiness has that morning prayer. I don't remember it off the top of my head, but it says,

I woke up today.

I woke up alive.

I'm going to use my day in a wise way.

I'm going to use it to be more kind.

I'm going to use it…

It's like kind of implies that he expects to be dead every day. Doing this death practice, even as a really high practitioner. Okay.

Our bodies are so fragile.

Third Principle of Death Awareness: Nothing But the Dharma Can Help

(38:52) The third principle, I don't have the Tibetan for the principle. The third principle is, And when I die, nothing but the Dharma can help.

It sounds like it means, have your favorite Dharma book on your chest or clutched in your hands when you're dying, and that will help you.

And of course, that's not what it means.

The reasonings for coming to the conclusion that when I die, nothing but the Dharma will help me is,

My people can't help me.
My stuff, my wealth, my possessions can't help me.
My body can't help me.

What else is there in life than our people, our stuff, and our body?

Of course, we all know: Karma.

We also are karma, we also have karma.

My people can’t help me

When I die, nothing but the Dharma can help me. We are instructed to look at the things that we are expecting to help us as we die.

Geshela’s example was, think about this beloved father on his deathbed. He's in his home, his family is surrounding him. They're holding his hands, they're begging him not to go. But he can't not go. He doesn't have a choice.

His body mechanisms are breaking down. His mind is in chaos. The brain, that the habit, the association with our awareness is that it's in or from or associated with the brain. The brain is breaking down. It's not functioning well. It's chaotic, no bursts of this and absence of that.

It's not what we are familiar with. And so our awareness is not with what we are familiar with. It's all shifting so dramatically and in a way that's so unfamiliar, that it's frightening. There is no awareness of that loving family around the bedside. The father has already reached that place where his ripening seeds don't have the ripening imprint, oh, my family around me.

He's beyond feeling their touch. He's beyond hearing them. He's beyond that reality.

So for him, that reality doesn't even exist anymore. Right?

He's not, oh, you know, Grandpa Bob is now in a space that can't see anybody.

The identity Grandpa Bob is gone too.

It's hard to conceive. And it's terrifying. Because it's so unfamiliar, and it's so out of control.

We're used to having some version of control. We think we have some version of control. And to completely unfamiliar territory. It's scary.

When we're trying to think about going through death, we think that, oh, I can rely upon the people around me. They'll read prayers, they'll sing music. They'll help me be comfortable. And they will, up to a certain point.

And they'll keep doing those things. But our awareness of them breaks down, shuts down. And whatever we are experiencing is not them taking care of us anymore.

But what does go on with this mind that's experiencing the chaos, that eventually the chaos will stop, the projecting karma will take over. The bardo will be experienced. And the curse onto the next rebirth will happen.

What does go on with that mind?

I'll give you a clue. The imprints of the actions that we did on behalf of all those people. So we do kind and unkind things on behalf of our people.

People that we love, we want to take care of.

People that we don't love so much, we don't care about so much.

People that we flat out don't like, we're a bit more willing to be nasty.

All those karmic seeds go with us. The people themselves don't. So in a sense, if there were a period of time in this withdrawal, that we could actually be aware that those people can't help us, we would have this sense of betrayal.

After all I did for you, you can't help me now.

That wouldn't happen, you know, into the deeper phases of death that could happen at the beginning. But we have this expectation that my people will help me.

No, actually, they can't.

Not that they won't try, hopefully. But our seeds are withdrawing.

We can't ripen them helping me. But we carry with us the seeds of all the things we did on their behalf.

So part of the moral to the story of course is, don't ever be willing to do a negative, plant a negative seed on behalf of someone else. Because what you do may appear to help them. But if we did a negative deed for them to get a positive result, the two cannot be related. And all we did was plant a negative seed that we will carry with us and reap a negative result and the person will not be involved. We leave them behind.

When I die, nothing but the Dharma can help me.

Why? Because my people can't help me.

It's subtle, do you see?

My wealth can’t help me

(47:30) Second one, because my stuff can't help me, my wealth.

There's some weird state of mind that when you have children, grown children, you, the adult want to save your wealth to leave to your children. And you know, it makes sense. You want their life to be a little easier and if you have some leftover, you want it to go to them. Nothing wrong with that at all.

But it's based in this belief that if I keep my wealth to myself, even so that I can share it with my kids when I'm gone, if I keep my stuff to myself, I will have things to share with others. I will have things to use when I need it. So I rely on my wealth, my stuff, my material things for my own well-being.

And we expect that to be able to help us at death.

It's not rational, of course. We know that when you die, you leave everything behind.

But there's this period during the dying process where we feel betrayed by our stuff, even. Like, I have wealth beyond measure, and I couldn't pay a doctor enough to cure my cancer.

We would be like, what's wrong with this picture?

They promised that if I had enough money, I could get anything done.

Who promised? I don't know. Our own mind thinks this way.

So if we go into our death process with this expectation, oh, my hospital bed will keep it comfortable for me because it's the most fancy, comfortable hospital bed.

It will keep my death from being painful.

Guess what? By the time you get to that part of dead, you have no hospital bed going on. You're way beyond that.

Nothing but the dharma can help me.

Why? Because my people can't help me. Because my stuff can't help me.

My body can‘t help me

Last one that we think can help us at death. This one's kind of weird. Even our own body can't help

Well, it's the thing that's dying. Why would I think it could help?

Somehow it has to do with our identity and our identity tagged to the body.

And it's hard. It's hard to even recognize the extent to which we're doing that. But when we think of ourself, the image that pops in our mind is the image we see in the mirror. We never actually see our own face directly.

But we have this huge identity of being this thing.

And apparently, somewhere along the line in our dying process, we will be so withdrawn. Withdrawn, it doesn't sound right. Separated. That's not quite right either.

Our seeds will be inconsistently ripening such that the familiarity of our body will be gone.

And so it's like, who, what are we without that tethering of a physical body?

And it's again, part of the fear that we experience. The fear and pain of ordinary dying process is when we get to this place where our seed ripening is no longer including a consistent awareness of body. And yet, what goes on with us is again, all the things that we did or didn't do on behalf of keeping our body healthy and attractive.

So all the time that we take our vitamins and buy our organic vegetables and eat all those salads, we are just moving that much closer to death. If we were willing to be unkind to make my body feel better, to make it a little bit more attractive, those seeds go with me in this mind as it's moving along. The body I did it for does not go with me.

So same with the stuff, any karma that I did in order to accumulate and keep that stuff, the karma goes with me, the stuff does not.

Do you see how that's a suffering at death?

And can you see how our conclusion is, well, if nothing but my karmic seeds go with me at death, and I understand that the karmic seed that pops at a certain moment of that what we're calling dying, is the karmic seed that directs and then help directs the coloring of the next life. Then the seeds that I plant in this life become the most important thing, don't they?

We don't have any control over what seed is going to push out as the projecting karma at the moment of death. It's a numbers game, we've heard it before.

The more stinginess seeds we have, the more likely a stinginess seed can be the one that jumps out at what's called the moment of death.

To make a large amount of stinginess seeds, it would mean our mindset going through life has this stinginess mindset.

My needs are more important. I don't want to share. Sharing is a little scary because it'll leave me without and I'll end up a bag lady.

It's like this kind of underlying constant pressure that influences our choice making.

Our choice making is our seed planting.

So the likelihood of having a similar state of mind, I'm losing all my things, right? Not in mental words, but in feeling as we're dissolving everything away, we would have this strong, I'm losing everything.

If fear of losing stuff was your mode in life, then the likelihood of fear of not having would be what would be coloring your mind at that crucial moment when you actually make this transition from this life into Bardo. So then the likelihood of one of those seeds popping would be greater and that would push us into hungry ghost realm.

So anger, hatred, irritation, violence to settle something..

An automatic pilot on instinct or constant disrespect of others could be animal realm.

Any of the 10 non-virtues done, whether it was strong, medium or light extent. You can see how the process is really chaotic and then not random, but numbers driven.

So when we're thinking that or understanding that, we would automatically start thinking, well, then what would really help me at death would be some kind of instruction, some kind of guidance that would tell me what kind of behavior would make the imprints. Any one of which could be the projecting karma and I'd be safe.

I'd be okay.

We would want to know that, wouldn't we?

We would want to know, what do I do with all the ick seeds that I planted before I knew any better? Alright, four powers.

But more importantly, what behaviors do I want to avoid? Do I need, do I want to avoid? And what behaviors do I want to do so that I can pack my foundation consciousness with seeds that will push me into a better rebirth?

And it gets even more fine. I don't want a better rebirth of pleasure being, I want a better rebirth human being in the Dharma. In a world where there is Dharma.

We're calling on everything that we're learning in ACI in the ramification of death meditation. Because we want to put in there the seeds to continue our practice if we don't finish it in this life.

We want to put in there the seeds such that we don't have to worry going into that chaotic death process. We know whatever seed is going to ripen, it's going to send me in the right place. That's the conclusion we come to.

My death is certain.

The time of my death is uncertain.

And when I die, nothing but the Dharma helps me.

Do you see how it goes together? Let's take a break.

(59:58) So given what I just explained, when I die nothing but the Dharma can help me, is referring to how our study of the Dharma helps us choose our behaviors, our reactions towards the thing our experiences of everyday life, in such a way that the seeds we plant by those responses are seeds that we're happy to have. And of course it's way easier said than done.

So we rely upon the Dharma for the guidance. What guidance?

Our vows, avoiding the 10 non virtue, practicing with our refuge advices.

It's so interesting that the next course ACI 9 is Vowed Morality. Because at the end of this course, it's like, whah, what seeds do I need to plant? And it comes up, like stay tuned in June.

As we study, meditate, interact with others with our growing wisdom, as we do our purification practices and our gather merit practices, our virtuous instinct grows, and grows, and grows. Gets fine tuned.

Hopefully, sooner or later, our instinct becomes virtuous, becomes kindness, helpfulness. Along the way, we have ups and downs, of course. But we can see now how when they say, Oh, our Buddhist practices aren't Buddhist practices until they're directed towards our next lives. And we see why.

Yeah, it's great to do your four powers to get the worldly result that we would like. It works, for some better than others. But that really isn't using the ancient wisdom. I mean, it's using the ancient wisdom, but it's not spiritual practice. It's not Buddhist practice.

Will it help us in future lives? Sure.

And when our seed planting behavior is done to protect our mind going from this life to the next one, our this lifetime does get easier, it does get better—fast, slow, with ups and downs. But we can see how the connection is, what we're learning and how we're practicing, it's first impact is going to be experienced at the end of this life. And then we move to a next opportunity to continue the same when we've used what we've learned well.

Then that's the urgency of it. Not the urgency to give up everything and go live in a cave. But the urgency to train ourselves to be having the virtues, non virtues in mind, and the seed planting in mind, such that we can move ourselves from react mode to respond mode. We become farmers, where our interest all day long is what am I planting? What am I planting? What am I planting?

It's kind of a shift from the training that we have, which is, anything happening, what seeds did I make to make this? To me, that's interesting and helps us think about karma, which implies we're thinking about emptiness. But what has always felt more important to me is, what seeds do I want to plant here? Because whatever's ripened is done. I certainly don't want to repeat it. So I do want to know what caused it.

But to me more important is what I plant, because that's going to help me moving forward.

So this death meditation, when we take it onto the cushion with enough time and space to really explore it, we'll find that even if we're not actually saying every day, I die today, it will begin to color our interaction with doing the dishes, with brushing our teeth, with driving to work, with grocery shopping. It will motivate us to take what we learn in class, what we work with on our cushion out into life.

If we don't do that, it just stays as an intellectual exercise. And that'll plant seeds for intellectual exercise. Which may or may not really help us much at the end of life.

3 Resolutions

(67:16) The death meditation practice stops at those nine. But Lama Tsongkapa says, a realization of these three, three with the three would naturally inspire within us these three resolutions. And when we're doing the death meditation practice module, for people that have never done it before, these are like, they're so spectacular to take somebody through that visualization of the three resolutions. It's like so impactful that if you haven't done that practice module yet, I'm a little hesitant to spill the beans. You know, it's like maybe it would take the impact away, but it's part of class, so I have to.

So these three resolutions:

Knowing that my death is certain, I must start my Dharma Practice

Knowing that my death is certain, I want to start my Dharma practice, like seriously now. I must start my Dharma practice.

I'll study emptiness.

I'll learn and keep my bodhisattva vows, which implies we have refuge and five lifetime lay vows at least.

I will meditate regularly.

I will try hard to grow my bodhicitta, the deceptive form: I want to be Buddha so I can help all beings stop their suffering. And the ultimate form: experiencing emptiness directly.

So knowing that my death is certain, renunciation, bodhicitta, and correct world view becomes my compass. Those three. I live according to those. Try at least.

We understand suffering more deeply. We generate compassion even for those we don't like. A lot of challenge of that going on right now.

We study emptiness. Everything fits into those three. Everything else that we learn fits in there.

Knowing that the time of my death is uncertain, I must quit my worldly work and start my Dharma practice immediately

It gives the wrong idea to hear the words like that.

If, let me see, in Buddha's time, if we were one of those beings who had the goodness to meet the Buddha and see Buddha as a Buddha, and be attracted to those teachings, just to go and ask for a teaching, boom, you got ordained. And you would give everything up and go with Buddha.

And it's hard. It's like, yeah, but what about your wife and kids, buddy? You just leave them in the lurch? What kind of good karma is that? And I don't know, you know what the answer is. Apparently, that stuff happened in Buddha's time. And those women got left with their kids. I don't know.

Fast forward a couple hundred years, more than that, 700 years and we have Arya Nagarjuna and the love and compassion coming in. And now someone meeting the Dharma, they may have the same kind of attraction and impulse to renunciate worldly life in that way. But their love and compassion, understanding their karmic seeds means, no, I'll devote myself to my practice without leaving my family. I change my interaction with my family to be consistent with my Dharma practice.

What's changing really is our own attitude, right? What we're thinking as we're interacting with them. We still do the dishes, we still take the boy to school, we still go grocery shopping.

The difference is the two husbands in the kitchen thing, right?

To come to understand that when we're having the usual upsets that we have, either with our family, our work, our neighbors, to recall, this is unique to me, my own seeds ripening. My ordinary reaction is the one that's going to bring more yuck to me. I'm going to stall, wait, try really hard to not react the same old way. And I'm going to look to see where is it that with somebody else, I'm behaving like that.

You see? To not yell back at the husband isn't enough. We have to stop yelling at the kid and at the other driver in the traffic, and at the neighbor's dog that's yelling, that's barking, right? All the other yelling at people is what ripens as husband yelling at us.

Maybe we never yell at the husband, but he's the one that's yelling at us, because we're doing it everywhere else.

So this, knowing the time of my death is uncertain, I could drop dead at any moment, let me get on with it. Let me change my own behavior, my own seed ripening.

Now, not later. Not when I retire. Not when I get vacation. Now, moment by moment. Now.

So really what we're quitting as our worldly life is our worldly attitude.

This is what they expect me to behave like at work. I'm supposed to get upset when somebody comes in late. If I say, oh, it's okay, you'll be fine. I'll get in trouble because I'm not disciplining my crew the way I'm supposed to.

It doesn't mean let everybody get away with everything. That just causes trouble. But we skillfully correct, and guide, and share, and push, and inspire in some different way than our ordinary human automatic pilot tells us we're supposed to react.

So to quit my worldly work and start my Dharma practice means I'm going to quit my worldly attitude harder. It'd be easier to go quit work and go live under a bridge.

But quit our worldly attitude that's in the seeds planted by every seed planted by behavior, it takes some willpower and strength, and enthusiasm, and effort. And it helps to tell, it takes a community to help us stay on track.

Geshela reminded us that in the highest level of Buddhist practice, meaning the Anuttara Yoga, Diamond Way, it was designed for kings and aristocrats and business people. It was designed for working people as a method for being able to practice the Dharma in a very powerful way within the realm of your worldly life.

There's no reason why the other levels of Dharma aren't also practiced in that way within the realm of our worldly life.

At first it wasn't. It was restricted only to the monastics. And then, of course, as monastics' compassion grew and grew and grew, they couldn't keep it contained to just other monastics. There are people in the world that could benefit, and let's teach them the Dharma.

And generally, when we hear of a Lama taking the teachings out to the general public in a big way, that Lama got in trouble. But in their wisdom, they continued to do so. And we hear it over and over again.

So the Buddha Dharma is not meant to be restricted to only those who have given up the worldly life. It's meant to encourage us to give up the worldly life attitude and stay in the worldly life and do our practice.

So we want to have a job. And maybe the more stressful the job, the better. Geshela said, you want that work to be work that doesn't harm anybody. And you might want to choose work that pushes your envelope of your main mental affliction.

He had said, so for instance, if you have a big attraction, like if your vanity is really important to you, and it's really important to look really attractive, really beautiful. Then, he said, find work in which what you do is help other people be beautiful.

If you have pride, then rather than finding a line of work that's going to feed your pride, find a line of work where you get to serve people.

I don't know. Somebody wants to be the big one in charge, and always making all the decisions. And they meet the Dharma and they go, Oh, man, that's my pride. I just think I'm the best and I should be.. I will become a nurse's assistant. And I'll be the one that takes out the bedpan and dresses the person and.. I'll be that one.

Do you see what a Dharma practice it would be? What a struggle that would be?

Geshala says, that would be being consistent with, because the time of my death is uncertain, I will give up my worldly way to practice the Dharma.

You're in a worldly life, and you are practicing the Dharma every moment, because you want to run away and go become a lawyer. But you don't, you stay there.

Do you see?You get the idea.

Geshela shared, any other reason for working is meaningless. Don't get caught up in it. Ow. We say the reason I work is that's where money comes from. And money allows me to support my family, multiple families in some people's case. But really, work is not the cause of the paycheck. It's so hard to understand that.

Oh, well, then I should just quit work and I'll still get a paycheck?

No, it's not what we're saying.

Since nothing else can help me but the Dharma, I will devote myself solely to my Dharma practice.

So these three, you see, they're not three separate resolutions. They're just three levels of determination.

The first: beginning determination. Yes, yes, Dharma is everything.

Second one is: Oh, wow, it really is.

Third one is: Oh, nothing else is important.

Do you see where we're going with that? It's the attitude change. No other attitude than whatever I plant is going to come back to me. Any other attitude is not useful.

So our conclusion is, I just want to imbue myself with enough wisdom that I can recognize when I'm not reacting Dharma. I want to imbue myself with the ability to be aware when I am reacting instead of responding. And I want to train myself to react less and respond more. Just making that distinction between automatic pilot selfish reaction, and wisdom response, which lessens the selfishness and increases the wisdom understanding.

Not that we're yet quite at the place necessarily where we're thinking, oh, nothing has any nature of its own. And so when I plant my seeds, I can make anything into anything. You don't even have to go that far.

Simply, I understand enough about karma and emptiness to understand that every interaction is creating the circumstances of my future, not necessarily this lifetime, but forever after.

We don't know what seed will ripen when. The things that were ripening now are very likely from many, many past lifetime. What we're doing now is creating the circumstances for our futures, not just one lifetime, many.

You remember? Karma can ripen in this lifetime, the very next lifetime and any lifetime after that.

Geshela's conclusion is, look, notice the things we spend our precious human lifetime on, there are some things that with a death awareness practice, we will decide, some worldly things that we will decide, eh, I don't need this anymore.

In the old days, you would have a newspaper subscription and the newspaper would come every day. And the Sunday edition was extra thick. And it had all kinds of different sections with all kinds of interesting things to entertain ourselves with.

And you would get your coffee and get your Sunday newspaper, and you would spend, you know, from nine in the morning until two in the afternoon rating the Sunday newspaper.

Geshela said, ditch your newspaper subscription.

Now, can you read the newspaper with Dharma in your mind? Absolutely.

His Holiness talks about. He does his meditation and he watches the news every day in order to see where in the world, some compassion and love and wisdom is needed. And I'm, my guess is he's tonglening as he's listening.

But he doesn't have to spend half an hour now, and a half an hour at noon, and another hour at night, and probably another hour before he goes to bed to make sure the news, right? What's going on in the news.

Get what you need and then drop it. Same.

Now and then go to a movie, have a nice time. But then when you get home from the movie, don't flip on the TV and watch another one.

Know what recoups you and then do it and get back to what your priorities are.

Geshela's personal priority is Je Tsongkapa, right?

For him, he's always translating something. But if he isn't translating, he's reading. Like he wants to spend as much time with Je Tsongkapa as he can before he doesn't have any more time.

Now, Geshela is going to have, he has all the time in the world. But he's demonstrating for us our choice, our choices, right? And how much time does it take for us to relax after a hard day of work? It's totally our own determination.

Nobody's going to tell you, have a cup of tea when you get home. Ten minutes thinking about your day, then go do your homework, right? It's up to you. You are your own judge. And so be nice to yourself. Let yourself relax. Let yourself get some exercise. Let yourself take a nap on a Sunday afternoon if it would help.

But do it wisely. Do it intentionally to recoup this body, mind, so that you can use it as all that much better a tool in your Dharma laboratory called my life.

Life is our Dharma laboratory. And so it's better to be out amongst other people. It's better to have an actual working job where you're challenged and there's some struggle. And that's the place we apply what we're learning.

It’s hard to learn new things when you sit at the base of the tree and all you've got are the ants crawling on your foot and the flies right going up your nose. It's hard to meet our mental afflictions.

(90:12) In the practice module, there's a section that's like icing on the cake. Because when we find ourselves at this point where it's like, well, my life is certain, the time is uncertain, when I died, nothing but the Dharma helps, then Dharma is my priority. Study. Meditate. Serve, serve, serve. That's where the Dharma priority actually comes in.

I will adjust my life so that meditating daily fits, studying daily fits. I will keep adjusting it so that when the time comes, retreat, regular retreat, will fit into life

Make those adjustments, and then when the time comes, it won't be a big shocker to carve out the time for your personal retreats.

Then our next conclusion would be, well, you know, if all of this is true, then I want the highest dharma. I don't even want to waste my time with lesser practices. It's this beautiful image. We're in this dark room, and it's like we have this deep Aha, and it's like, I want the highest practice. And we point to this door that says, Highest Spiritual Practice.

We expect it to be Tantra on the other side of that door. And guess what?

It's not. It's this exquisite, beautiful teaching that I'm actually not going to tell you.

But for this class, Geshela said, the highest spiritual practice that we can do is a practice called NAMDAK.

NAMDAK is the practice of seeing the whole world and everyone in it and everything that happens to us as pure. It means seeing ourselves as pure as well. And so it's a practice that, first of all, can be easily rejected. It's like, my world is not pure. But you're telling me I'm pure. Okay, great, I'll buy that one. And if I'm pure, that means I can do nothing wrong, and I can do anything I want.

Do you see how it's like, uh, wrong.

So this high practice called NAMDAK has many levels, of course.

Because of that no self nature of every object that we ever experience, because of the no self nature of ourselves—so subject, object—and because of the no self nature of the interaction between, meaning the the result we're experiencing that we think the other is doing to us, and because of the emptiness, the no self nature of the reaction that we're going to do, then I then… I lost my train of thought.

Then we have three choices in our interaction within other at any given moment.

We're perceiving them as them doing that to us, and it's unpleasant, for example.

And we can believe that and justify our reaction to do something to get them to stop. Believing that whatever we do, if they stop, it's because of what we did.

Second option, we could decide: This person acting badly, they're hurting. They need my compassion. I'm going to do something to try to help them, instead of react in the same old way.

Third level, understanding that any fully enlightened being becomes a fully enlightened being because their wisdom has been imbued with compassion. Means that upon becoming a fully enlightened being, that compassion propel. They need their compassion to perpetuate themselves as a fully enlightened being, and so they emanate to help beings that don't see themselves as the enlightened beings that that Buddha sees them as. Are you following that?

And so any being that we interact with could be an emanation of a Buddha. If there's one Buddha, they are emanating.

So that person doing that thing to me, they're not Buddha, but they're not not Buddha. Geshela taught this recently, did he not?

They're not both Buddha and not Buddha, and they are not neither. So therefore I can choose to interact with them as if they're Buddha emanation and that will plant seeds in my mind for others to be Buddha emanations. Which will help me plant seeds in my mind, right, for Buddha emanations to become more and more evident to me. And it actually bleeds over into our own perception of ourself as Buddha emanation.

So NAMDAK, this practice of seeing the world as pure, on one level purely my karma. So I can't blame anybody for anything. And how I respond, plants, new seeds.

But getting deeper, seeing my world as pure, it's all emanations of a fully enlightened being who loves me so much, they take whatever form. Mean. They they don't take it. They allow me to see them in whatever form I need, to move me along the path as quickly as possible. And maybe that is ugly. Maybe that's unpleasant. Maybe it's exquisite. Maybe it's magic, right?

It's not them deciding what I need. They are simply being what I need out of their exquisite love, just like mom and dad. Do and be what child needs. Which is different when they're six months old than when they're 16, isn't it?

So see the world as pure.

The end result is how we're going to respond to them.

If the guy at work is the same old jerk over and over again, why be kind?

He's just going to be a jerk, right?

Ordinary human nature is, I'll just, I'll be a jerk back. You know?

We'll just do whoever can be the biggest jerk, and that's fine.

But next level, it's no, no, he's hurting. Maybe I can help.

Next level, he's Buddha emanation, showing me something. Is our response going to be different? I hope so. And the response is different, so the seed planting is different, so the result‘s going to be different.

NAMDAK, see the world as pure.

(100:04) These realizations, making things real, of a death awareness practice happen on our meditation cushion. Taking these ideas into a review meditation, first, till we have it burned in.

Then taking the time to take each one in whatever order you want, but each one and analyze deeply to see how that, that the teachings, what they mean for you, personally, for your day to day life. And you would work with this particular practice a month or so. We don't take time to do it, but somewhere right along your way, find the time to focus specifically on each of these different practice modules that Geshela shared through the course of the ACIs, the death meditation is one of them.

He said, if you don't find yourself and your life changing because of these classes, then why keep taking them?

I don't know. It can be a little bit discouraging when we try and try and try, and life is just getting worser and worser and worser, and it's hard to stay on track.

And I don't ever want to give somebody the opinion or the sense that, oh, I'm going to quit because it doesn't work. But then I also don't want to give the impression that, well, you should quit because you're not working hard enough at it.

But he really did say, if these classes aren't changing you, it's not for you.

And then we have the Lam Rim way of approaching it.

But I think rather that we hang in there, and we maybe stay with the earlier practices of purify-make merit and put all the next, as we go through the next levels, next levels, keep setting them on the shelf, like on the library shelf. Set them there, keep doing the beginning practices. Not because you're still a beginner, but simply because seed planting is happening at that level. And when all that reaches a critical mass, all the rest of this will just wroom, right out of us.

Sometimes we need to give ourselves permission to still be at kindergarten level practice, even as we're studying high school level. So that we don't put so much pressure on ourselves that it can't work for us.

Expectations that aren't being met leaves us really discouraged. And I've gone through that myself, and just had to go back and find the practice of renunciation and stay at that level for a while, until things accumulated a little bit better.

Maybe our practice simply needs to be the seven limb prayer meditation and 20 minutes of prostration. Or five mandala offerings. You know, something that just doesn't seem very potent at all, but is amazingly goodness accumulating. And then apply that to our moment by moment living amongst our world for our goodness to ripen being a little happier even as things go wrong, go wrong, go wrong. Because they do. It does not mean our practice isn't working just because things are going wrong. Thank goodness, or we'd all get discouraged right now.

Death awareness means, this may be the last time I see you guys, right?

Maybe I'll wake up dead.

So you know, I love you, I'll miss you. If I do, I'm happy to spend my last evening teaching the Dharma. It feels so contrived.

But what if we really did not go to bed without saying, I love you to the people who are close that we're just… We take so for granted ourselves and them that, oh, they'll all be there for me tomorrow.

Karmically speaking, we don't know that, do we?

So if we have this attitude that even that person at work that you really don't like, this is the last day you have, how hard would it be to be a little nicer to them? Why not?

The result of our Death awareness practice will be we find ourselves being a little kinder. And that's the point.

Class Dedication

All right, so that finishes our course 8, except for review class. So that's extraordinary. So please be really happy with yourself. This was a hard course to stay through. I agree. So double happy.

And think of this goodness like a beautiful, glowing gemstone that you can hold in your hands. Recall your own precious, Holy Being. See how happy they are with you.

Feel your gratitude to them, your reliance upon them.

Ask them to please stay close, to continue to guide you, inspire you, even challenge you.

And then offer them this gemstone of goodness.

See them accept it and bless it, and then carry it with them, right back into your heart.

See them there, feel them there, their love, their compassion, their wisdom, filling you so full. It feels so good we want to keep it forever, and so we know to share it.

By the power of the goodness that we've just done,

May all beings complete the collection of merit and wisdom

And thus gain the two ultimate bodies that merit and wisdom make.

So pretend that goodness is a shining light inside of you, and it shines so bright you can't contain it. And so shine a big blast of light, and see one beam go to that one person you want to be able to help.

Keep shining. Shine beams to everyone you love.

Keep shining beams out to every existing being, everywhere. Hell realms, hungry ghost realms, animals, humans, jealous gods, pleasure beings, form realm, formless realm. Shining upon them the wisdom of loving kindness.

And may it be so.

So shine your light please. Thank you. I love you. I will see you on Thursday, where you will teach me. Okay, great. I look forward to it.

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